Saudi Arabia is once again sailing in dangerous waters as it increases its military involvement in Yemen. The recent New York Times article on the subject is welcome, because the growing violence in Yemen is perhaps the most neglected news story in the Middle East.

Yemen is racked by no less than three distinct sources of violence, beyond the traditional tribal uprisings that have always wracked the country. The “Houthi” rebellion involves Zaydi Shi’a in the northwestern part of the country near the Saudi border. Also in revolt are some disgruntled southerners, bitter at their steady loss of power since north and south Yemen unified in 1990, and also at their loss in the 1994 civil war. Yemen is also home to many jihadists tied to Al Qaeda of the Arabian peninsula. They have shown up in Iraq and elsewhere, and are increasingly active in Yemen itself and in Saudi Arabia. Yemen was always loosely governed, but the levels of violence are high even by a historical standard. The various rebels do not work together, and their agendas are not harmonious. But together they weaken the state and stretch Yemen’s military forces.

Much of the attention is on the Iran-Saudi competition in Yemen, as the New York Times story notes, because the Houthi rebels are Shi’a. However, their Zaydi interpretation of Shiism is different than the Twelver Shiism of Iran, and the two communities historically have not been close. For now, Iran’s support seems limited at best. (Despite Yemeni government claims to the contrary, I have not seen a credible account of serious Iranian backing, though given the dearth of reporting on this topic that omission is less meaningful than it might otherwise be.)

Saudi Arabia, however, feels it has more at stake in Yemen than just Iran. Riyadh has always felt a proprietary interest in the tribes in the northwest, particularly as some of them straddle the Yemen-Saudi border. Drugs and weapons also come to the Kingdom from Yemen. The Saudis, moreover, have also always felt that they should be the dominant power in Yemen, and for decades have meddled extensively in the country’s domestic politics. (One policymaker I know compared the Saudis’ obsession with Yemen to the U.S. concern over Cuba.)

The danger, however, is that growing military involvement will create political problems for the Saudis and strengthen the insurgents. The Houthis are not likely to suffer more than a minor tactical setback from Saudi Arabia’s military effort (more threatening to the insurgents would be Saudi efforts to patrol the border and stop smuggling). Moreover, the violence seems to be creating some sympathy for the rebels in Iran. Perhaps most important, Yemenis agree on little in general, but there is a strong resentment of Saudi meddling. Saudi intervention delegitimizes the Yemeni government further and may create more support for the rebels.

The tragic killing of the 13 U.S. soldiers in Fort Hood by Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is one is a string of events involving Muslim soldiers and veterans who have gone astray, raising delicate questions about the role and trustworthiness of the 3,000 Muslim soldiers in the U.S. military. The major incidents include the March 2003 attack in Camp Pennsylvania in Kuwait by an American Muslim soldier, Asan Akbar, who rolled grenades into three tents where officers of the 101st Airborne’s 1st Brigade were sleeping, killing one serviceman and wounding 15; the six Islamic radicals who in May 2007 plotted to storm New Jersey’s Fort Dix Army Base with automatic weapons and execute as many soldiers as possible; and John Allen Muhammad, the Beltway Sniper, a Gulf War veteran and convert to Islam who was responsible for 16 shootings and 10 murders and who is scheduled to be executed today.

It would be inappropriate to malign or even question the loyalty of the hard-working Muslim men and women wearing the uniforms of the United States. But it would be equally irresponsible to ignore the amassing evidence that subversive and combustible elements with radical Islamic persuasion have infiltrated our military, often putting our personnel at bigger risk in their own bases than from their enemies on the battlefield.

While Muslim soldiers have served in uniforms loyally for decades, it is the rising number of Wahhabi-trained and converted Muslims that is a relatively recent phenomenon. Since Wahhabism is one of the most radical and puritan strands of Islam, the penetration of Wahhabi thinking into the ranks of the military must be treated with care.

The genesis of radical Islamic thinking within the military was in the 1990-91 Gulf War, when nearly half a million soldiers and marines were deployed in Saudi Arabia to liberate Kuwait and defend the oil kingdom from Saddam Hussein’s aggression. While the Saudis were adamantly opposed to any expression of religious practice by their guests, including a ban on Christmas carols, bible classes and Christian and Jewish prayers, they embarked on a well-orchestrated and generously funded effort sponsored by the Saudi government to convert as many American military members as possible to Islam.

According to General Norman Schwarzkopf’s aide Rick Francona,

Saudi officers appeared to have been directed by their senior military or religious leadership to spot and assess potential converts to Islam among American military members. Once a particular American was ‘targeted,’ […] a few Saudi military officers, including a military imam, would attempt to meet the American in either a purely social setting or at least outside of the work area. These approaches usually included fairly generous gifts and of course, literature about Islam. The gifts included expensive briefcases, pens, books and other personal items. Americans who decided to convert to Islam were rewarded handsomely […] including all expenses paid trips to Mecca, and payments as high as $30,000.

The commander of Saudi forces in the Gulf, Prince Khaled bin Sultan bragged in his memoir that more than 2,000 American troops converted to Islam through this campaign. “These Muslim troops are now the messengers of Islam in the U.S. forces,” said Dr. Abu Ameena Bilal Phillips, a Jamaican-born convert to Islam (1972) who worked during the Gulf war under the auspices of the U.S. Air Force while converting U.S. troops to Islam in his spare time. After the war, Phillips moved to the United States to “set up Islamic chapters in the U.S. Defense Department.”

Nearly two decades have passed since the Saudi conversion campaign, and most of the converts may no longer be in uniforms. But the seeds sown during the Gulf War have germinated, creating scores of radicalized Americans who are a threat to their comrades in uniforms as well as to their civilian communities.

Fort Hood’s Hasan yelled “Allahu Akbar“—Arabic for “God is Great”—just before the shooting. As Camp Pennsylvania’s killer Akbar was being led away after the incident, fellow soldiers heard him shout: “You guys are coming into our countries and you’re going to rape our women and kill our children.” Allahu Akbar, “you guys,” “our countries”—strong words which tell us that it is time to investigate what exactly happened back then in the desert and assess how serious and deep-rooted the damage is.

Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal, former ambassador to the United States, has a suggestion for America: drop this nonsense called energy independence. In a strongly-worded essay in Foreign Policy magazine, which coincides with the 150th anniversary of Edwin Drake’s discovery of oil in the United States, Turki lambastes American politicians for invoking energy independence, which “is now as essential as baby-kissing,” accusing them of “demagoguery.” For him, energy independence is “political posturing at its worst—a concept that is unrealistic, misguided, and ultimately harmful to energy-producing and consuming countries alike.” “Like it or not,” Turki concludes, “the fates of the United States and Saudi Arabia are connected and will remain so for decades to come.” (He said much the same in this clip from last May; if you don’t see it, click here.)

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We’ve heard these lines before each time the United States made progress toward lessening its dependence on oil. In February, for example, Ali al-Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, warned of a “nightmare scenario” if consuming countries made progress in the development of alternative fuels. A decade ago, his predecessor, Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, called technology “the real enemy for OPEC.” This is understandable. After all, no pusher wants to see his client circling around a rehab clinic. For Saudi Arabia, a world where oil plays a marginal role is the nightmarish materialization of the Saudi saying, “My father rode a camel, I drive a car, my son flies a jet plane, his son will ride a camel.”

More troubling is the parade of prominent Americans who deride the notion of energy independence, viewing it as jingoistic, unsophisticated, naive and misleading. One cannot doubt the patriotism of former CIA director John Deutch, who said “energy independence is not a constructive idea,” or former secretary of defense and energy James Schlesinger, who called it a “forlorn hope,” or Pulitzer Prize winner Daniel Yergin who referred to it as “pipe dream,” or Andy Grove, former chairman of Intel, who called the concept “a faulty goal,” or even the members of the Council on Foreign Relations energy security task force who went so far as to accuse those promoting energy independence of “doing the nation a disservice.” But just like Prince Turki, all of those distinguished Americans misunderstand what energy independence really is. As a result, they underestimate our ability to get there.

Contrary to popular conception, energy independence does not mean self-sufficiency. It doesn’t mean not importing any oil or walling ourselves off from the global market. Energy independence is not a function of the amount of oil we consume or import. Rather, energy independence means turning oil from a strategic commodity second to none—one that underlies the global economy and determines the course of world affairs—into just another commodity to trade.

Oil’s strategic status stems from its virtual monopoly over fuel for transportation, which in turn underlies our entire way of life. Worldwide, 95 percent of our transportation energy is petroleum-based. Our cars, trucks planes and ships can run on nothing but petroleum. This is why the much-touted policies that aim to either increase oil supply through domestic drilling or decrease its use by boosting fuel efficiency, while helpful, are insufficient as they do not address the factor that gives oil its strategic status: the petroleum-only vehicle.

Energy independence thus requires breaking the virtual monopoly of oil over transportation fuels, and this can only be done via competition in the transportation fuel sector. (Think about our electricity sector, where a variety of competing energy sources—coal, natural gas, nuclear, solar and wind—can contribute to the grid.) If our cars and trucks were able to run on other fuels in addition to those refined from petroleum, Saudi Arabia’s oil would have to compete over the drivers’ wallet against utility companies, alternative liquid fuels producers and natural gas suppliers. But as long as our cars are gasoline-only, oil remains the only game in town, which is exactly what Saudi Arabia wants.

A few types of vehicle technologies allow us to break oil’s monopoly. The first, and most affordable, is the flex-fuel vehicle that can run on any combination of gasoline and alcohol (alcohol does not mean just ethanol, and ethanol does not mean just corn). It costs an extra $100 per new car to make a regular car flex-fuel. All it takes is a fuel sensor and a corrosion-resistant fuel line. An Open Fuel Standard ensuring that every new car sold in the United States be flex-fuel would not only give rise to an industry of alternative fuels and the associated refueling infrastructure, but it would also drive foreign automakers to add fuel flexibility to all of their models, effectively making it an international standard.

Electricity is another transportation fuel that can compete against oil. It is cheap, largely clean, domestically produced and can be made from multiple sources. Its refueling infrastructure is widely available. All that is needed for an electric car to connect to the grid is an extension cord. Most automakers have already committed to produce models of limited-range pure electric vehicles (EV) or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV). The latter allow drivers to travel on stored electric power for the first 20-40 miles, after which the car keeps running on the liquid fuel in the tank, providing the standard 200-400 mile range. For the 50 percent of Americans who drive 25 miles per day or less, shifting from barrels to electrons would make the visit to the local gas station a rarity. If all of those Americans owned PHEVs, a population the size of New York, Florida and Pennsylvania combined would be off oil most days of the year. A PHEV would normally drive 100-150 miles per gallon of gasoline. If it is also made as flex-fuel and fueled with a blend of 80 percent alcohol and 20 percent gasoline, oil economy could reach over 500 miles per gallon of gasoline.

These technologies are either at or few years away from commercialization. If we only understood energy independence properly and took the relevant measures to open the transportation fuel market to competition, oil would be far less central to the world economy than it is today. If we ensure that new cars are platforms on which fuels can compete rather than perpetuate the petroleum standard, then Prince Turki’s descendants, on the 200th anniversary of Drake’s discovery, will be more likely to ride camels than private jets. No wonder he wants us to think otherwise.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

Until the end of July, the Obama administration had been signaling that the mid-August visit of the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, would be the occasion for the roll-out of a major U.S. initiative for brokering a comprehensive settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In the weeks immediately preceding the visit, the White House scaled back expectations. On August 18, the two presidents conducted a joint press conference. At the moment in the proceedings when President Obama might have announced something substantive about the initiative, he instead treated us to the following:

George Mitchell has been back and forth repeatedly; he will be heading back out there next week. And my hope is that we are going to see not just movement from the Israelis, but also from the Palestinians around issues of incitement and security, from Arab states that show their willingness to engage Israel. If all sides are willing to move off of the rut that we’re in currently, then I think there is an extraordinary opportunity to make real progress.

This statement is a bland reiteration of the doctrine of collective responsibility that the administration formulated shortly after the inauguration: everybody, including the Arab states, has to pitch in to get the bus out of the ditch. In the intervening six or seven months, the president has been doing nothing in the Middle East if not energetically wedging planks under the wheels of the peace process. In addition to dispatching George Mitchell to the region numerous times, he himself delivered his famous speech from Cairo. President Mubarak described this as a “great, fantastic address,” which “removed all doubts about the United States and the Muslim world.” Many seasoned observers agree with Mubarak: American credibility has been restored. Be that as it may, the speech was intended to inaugurate an era of multilateral negotiation, which, however, has not materialized. In fact, the bus might even be more deeply mired than before all of this credibility building began.

With respect to the Israelis, the administration has been crystal clear about what is expected from them: they must freeze settlement building. For many weeks, Washington has been claiming that there is “progress” in the negotiations with the Netanyahu government over the freeze, but a mutually acceptable formula has so far eluded the two sides. This negotiation has already eaten up valuable time and slowed momentum. The administration, however, can console itself by saying that it always expected difficulty with Prime Minister Netanyahu, and an agreement will emerge sooner or later. Moreover, as President Obama recently told American Jewish leaders who met with him at the White House, putting some daylight between Washington and Jerusalem is in the interest of both parties, precisely because it bolsters U.S. credibility with the Arabs. One might disagree with the president on this particular point. Nevertheless, by the standards of his own terms of reference, prolonged disagreement with Israel is not an obvious indication of an imperiled regional strategy.

The same cannot be said with respect to the Arab response to the president’s overtures. U.S. credibility, if it truly has been enhanced, certainly has not generated the expected cooperation. In fact, the Arab states have treated the president to an extraordinary rejection of his basic conception. Until just a few weeks ago, the administration was still pressing Arab states to agree to some gestures toward Israel that might arm the president with something significant to announce during the Mubarak visit. It received a resounding “No” from the Saudis, Jordanians, Kuwaitis, and Egyptians—from, that is, the closest Arab allies of the United States.

It is not all that surprising that the Arab states did not feel obliged to get out and help George Mitchell push the peace process along. What is surprising, however, was the public nature of their rejection. They made no attempt to paper over differences in order to protect and strengthen the president’s supposed credibility. Instead, they openly undercut him. The Saudis led the way in announcing that the Obama doctrine of collective responsibility for peace was flawed at its core. While meeting with Secretary of State Clinton at the end of July, Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal told the press baldly that “incrementalism and a step-by-step approach has not and, we believe, will not lead to peace.” It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The president’s advisors told him that his Cairo address, especially combined with open pressure on the Israelis, would generate a wave of Arab cooperation.

Obviously, that expectation was unfounded. This stark fact begs the question: What changes in conception must the administration make in order to recover? Here’s one, modest recommendation: Drop the notion of brokering a comprehensive peace while reaching out to enemies and antagonists. This idea rests on the erroneous conception of a shared Arab interest in resolving the conflict with Israel. Anyone with a deep knowledge of Arab history knows that collective Arab interest is a shallow fiction propagated by a discredited ideology, pan-Arabism. Thirty years ago, Fouad Ajami announced the demise of this ideology in his famous Foreign Affairs article, “The End of Pan-Arabism.” Although it died in the Middle East itself, the ideology continues to influence the thinking of Western diplomats and intelligence officers, who insist on using it as the prism for viewing Arab state behavior with respect to Israel. They fail to realize that the more the Arabs talk about a common interest, the further it is from a reality. In our own political culture we are attuned to the fact that loud calls to patriotism and solidarity are designed to brand somebody else as disloyal and selfish. Similarly, we need to train our ears to recognize that calls to Arab solidarity are indicative of discord, not unity.

No Arab states see any advantage to getting more deeply involved than they already are. Saudi Arabia, the most influential Arab state, has never been a major player in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and certainly does not want to start now. However, the demands of Arab politics forbid the Saudis from openly admitting as much. In order to demonstrate concern for the Palestinians, protect their leading status in the Arab system, and yet remain aloof they have formulated a position—the Arab Peace Initiative—that effectively states: “Once you guys get the bus out of the rut, we will pay for the gas.” They have stuck to this position for nearly a decade.

It’s about time we started building our strategies around the Saudis as they actually are rather than as we would wish them to be. For President Obama to have repeatedly and publicly called on the Saudi monarch to get behind the bus and push was to court embarrassment and failure at a moment when the president needs to build true credibility, which will be generated more by successful initiatives than by “great, fantastic” speeches.

When the president decided on his doctrine of collective responsibility, he was probably unaware that Cairo, despite enjoying good relations with Riyadh, has a limited interest in seeing the Saudis at the center of Arab-Israeli peacemaking. The Mubarak regime, precisely because it is the leading Arab interlocutor with Israel, enjoys a special status in the international system. Direct Saudi involvement would threaten the Egyptian role, thanks to the massive resources at the command of the Saudis, to say nothing of the preferential access that they enjoy both in Washington and in European capitals.

Fortunately for Mubarak, the Saudis don’t covet that role anyway. Consequently we have recently witnessed the rather odd spectacle of Cairo, which already has a peace agreement with Israel, standing together with Riyadh, which does not have one, in a staunch rejection of the American call for Arab peace overtures to Israel. Both regimes can dress up their self-interested positions as a shared commitment to Arab national solidarity and Palestinian rights. We shouldn’t be so naïve as to believe that a commitment to solidarity is the true engine of their shared policy. Moreover, if our closest Arab allies cannot work together in support the administration’s multilateral project, what can we expect from hostile states like Syria, who have bad relations with Israel, the United States, as well as with Saudi Arabia and Egypt?

By seeking a comprehensive settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict while simultaneously reaching out to the enemies of the United States, the Obama administration has invited an unflattering comparison with the Carter administration. It will be recalled that President Carter’s first foray into peacemaking was an initiative to re-convene the Geneva Conference, which the Soviet Union co-chaired, in an effort to bring all of the Arab states together in a process with Israel. That particular scheme ran afoul of Egyptian state interests. Sadat, who truly sought to end the conflict with Israel, was mortified by Carter’s initiative, which would have given the Soviet Union, and lesser Arab states, such as Syria, a formal position from which to hold Egyptian interests hostage.

Much to the chagrin of the Carter administration, Sadat stopped confiding in Washington and opened up a secret bilateral channel with Israel. When President Carter first got wind of the Egyptian gambit, he reacted with consternation. Egypt was refusing to read from the pan-Arab script written in Washington. To his credit, however, Carter came around and dealt with the Egypt that he had rather than the one that he had wanted. Ironically, it was Sadat’s rejection of Carter’s pan-Arabism that afforded the American president the opportunity to broker the Camp David Accords, his greatest foreign policy achievement.

President Carter blindly shook the tree until a plumb fell into his lap. The fact that it all worked out in the end is hardly a vindication of his strategic conception—especially when one remembers that Iran blew apart in the meantime. From that shock to his worldview, Carter never recovered. Developments in Iran are again threatening to shake up the region. Let us hope that President Obama will be quicker to read the Middle East as it actually is rather than the pan-Arab fiction that his advisors penned for him.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

American presidents have been trying to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict since the days of Truman. Sooner or later, every one of them has learned a harsh lesson about the limits of American influence. There is no reason to believe that President Obama’s experience will be any different. In fact, his opening gambit in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking suggests that his own lesson may already be upon him.

In his Cairo speech, the President said that “the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable,” and he called for a halt to Israeli settlements, which he deemed illegitimate. His advisers have repeatedly explained that this policy includes an end to so-called “natural growth,” meaning construction and population expansion within the boundaries of existing settlements. Obama’s ban on natural growth nullified an understanding that President Bush had reached with then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The Israelis agreed not to appropriate any new Palestinian territory; in return, the Bush administration gave the nod to natural growth within existing settlement blocs.

Out of a mix of motives, Obama reversed this policy. On a personal level, he finds settlements morally offensive. He likely considers them to be a long-term, demographic impediment to a two-state solution. Their continuous growth underscores the impotence of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, sapping him of legitimacy, and validating the hard-line arguments of Hamas. Previous presidents and secretaries of state have held similar views, but they expressed their concerns in a less dramatic manner. Obama chose to take an early, categorical, and public stance in order to launch a shot across the bow of Binyamin Netanyahu. In the 1990s, Netanyahu’s recalcitrance had been a thorn in the side of the Clinton administration. The former Clintonites advising Obama no doubt relished the idea of immediately knocking Netanyahu back on his heels so as to begin negotiations from a position of strength.

In addition, Obama also sought to make an impression on the Arab world. Taking an unyielding, principled stand would, he reasoned, restore the credibility of the United States. According to mainstream Democratic analysis, George W. Bush had abandoned the role of “honest broker” in the conflict. Moving too close to Israel, he lost the trust of the Arabs. Armed with copious polling data, Obama’s advisers argued that the Palestinian issue was the sine qua non for redressing the balance. Strike a powerful note on the settlement issue, they told the President, and the Arabs will gravitate toward you in response.

Neither the Israelis nor the Arabs, however, have reacted according to this script. Netanyahu fought back with unexpected subtlety. When he visited Washington in mid-May, the White House greeted him with a remarkable display of influence on Capitol Hill. It lined up key supporters of Israel to deliver a consistent and stern warning to the new prime minister: “Do you really want to fight over settlements with one of the most popular American presidents in living memory?” Netanyahu was certainly shaken by this power play, but hardly coerced. In a step that the White House did not foresee, he quickly ran to capture the moral high ground in Israeli politics.

Shortly after Obama’s address from Cairo, Netanyahu delivered a speech of his own. In it, he tacked to the political center, presenting himself to the Israeli public as the representative of a mainstream consensus on national security. Approximately two-thirds of all Israelis support the position that their prime minister staked out. On the specific issue of settlements, Netanyahu reaffirmed the basic lines of the Bush-Sharon agreement: natural growth, yes; settlement expansion, no. “We have no intention to build new settlements or set aside land for new settlements,” he said. “But there is a need to have people live normal lives and let mothers and fathers raise their children like everyone in the world.” The warm reaction to the speech in Israel gave Netanyahu renewed political capital. He now turned to his critics in Washington with a warning of his own: “Do you really want to fight with three quarters of the Israeli public over the building of kindergartens?”

Obama is now on the horns of a dilemma. If he backs down on natural growth, he lays himself open to Arab claims that he is a hypocrite. On the other hand, if he sticks to his guns, he will become Israel’s senior city planner, rejecting building permits for a school one day, and a new home addition the next. The president can certainly win the fight over building permits, but he must already be asking himself whether it is really worth the prize. Victory will eat up at least a year of precious time, and it will not have a strategic impact.

If Obama found Netanyahu difficult to coerce, he failed to charm the Israeli Left. Israeli pundits have noted the conspicuous absence of a pro-Obama coalition on the Israeli political scene—this, despite the fact that the Israeli Left detests the settlements as much as or more than Obama himself. Many Israelis simply do not understand how the country’s security dilemmas fit into Obama’s larger scheme. With respect to the issue of gravest concern, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Obama’s strategy remains worryingly opaque. And with respect to the Palestinian question, many Israelis are skeptical about the power of any American president to overcome the Hamas-Fatah split, and to create conditions on the Palestinian side that will achieve a two-state solution capable of guaranteeing Israeli security. In a context fraught with uncertainty, Obama is inviting the Israeli Left to join with him in a fight against Netanyahu in order to achieve… well, what precisely?

In addition to the vagueness of his goals, Obama’s body language has dealt the Israeli Left a weak hand. The Cairo speech cast Israel as a bit player in a U.S.-Muslim drama. The President, stressing his Muslim ancestry, did not take the time to fly to Jerusalem, where he might have reasoned with the Israeli public about the value to it of abandoning the Bush-Sharon agreement. Instead, his advisers denied flatly (and falsely) that such an agreement had ever existed. As a consequence of this disingenuousness, many Israelis fear that the administration aims to buy goodwill from the Muslim world by distancing itself from Israel, and they wonder whether settlements are not simply the first of many concessions that will be demanded. With such doubts swirling in the air, it is difficult for the Israeli Left to trumpet the Obama agenda.

The White House has sacrificed some credibility on the Israeli side, but it surely must have recouped its losses by garnering Arab goodwill. Think again. Today, the peace process is on hold until the settlement question is resolved. Mahmoud Abbas has refused to sit down with Netanyahu in direct negotiations, insisting instead that the Israelis must first implement the total settlement freeze that Obama himself has demanded. This is a wise tactic. Were Abbas to negotiate with the Israelis today, they would simply demand reciprocal concessions. The Americans, however, have already made a public commitment on settlements, so why not pocket it, and hold Washington to its word?

Meanwhile, Washington has simultaneously been attempting to mobilize the Arab states—particularly the Saudis. President Obama and Secretary Clinton have exhorted King Abdullah to take public steps toward normalizing relations with Israel. So far, this effort has registered no successes. The president’s interest in involving the Saudis arises from his realization that the Hamas-Fatah split means that Abbas does not have the power to deliver on an agreement that would guarantee the legitimate security concerns of the Israelis. Hamas controls Gaza, and it will not submit to Abbas’ authority, especially with respect to the key issue of abandoning terrorism.

Hamas is the elephant in the room of the peace process. Washington seeks Saudi Arabia’s help in weakening it. Riyadh could become the linchpin in an Arab support network around Abbas, in order to help shift the balance of power against Hamas. In addition, Obama hopes to offset Israeli skepticism by energizing a normalization process with the Arab states—one that will run parallel to the Palestinian-Israeli track. The Israelis complain to Washington that it has singled them out for censure while making no corresponding demands on the Arab side. “If we are to freeze settlements,” they ask, “what will the other side provide in return?” Washington looks to Riyadh to help formulate a response.

The Saudis, however, have only limited incentive to help Obama with this problem. They and their public do not regard an Israeli moratorium on settlement growth as a concession; it is, rather, a moral imperative and a Palestinian right. Washington is asking them to reward the Israelis dramatically for returning what is, in their view, stolen property.

But Obama’s problem with the Saudis runs deeper than the settlement question. There is a larger, strategic question at play. It’s worth asking whether Riyadh can really offset Hamas in a meaningful way, and whether, in its own view, it stands to gain from diving headlong into the midst of an intractable dispute that has persisted for more than sixty years. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a tar baby. No sober Arab leader could relish the idea of taking responsibility for developments in such an unpredictable and unmanageable arena—particularly now, when peace is hardly in the offing. Quite understandably, the Saudis much prefer to occupy the politically safe position of Arab umpire: they sit on the sidelines and critique the Americans. They quietly help out here and there to keep the game from falling apart, but they don’t want to be players.

The President’s advisers promised him that taking a principled stand on settlements would generate goodwill in the Arab world. There is no doubt that the Cairo speech struck a chord with many Arabs. But goodwill of that sort is not a strategic commodity. Even a popular honest broker cannot reshape the iron interests of the parties on the ground, none of whom see much benefit in taking risks to achieve a goal that they do not really believe in. Many Western diplomats tell themselves that peace is nearly at hand, but the parties on the ground—Arab and Jewish alike—are highly skeptical. And for good reason. The power of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Syria, supported by Iran, looms in the background. It is highly unlikely that, in the next four years, a major breakthrough will take place. In order to maintain good relations with Washington, the leaders in the region will certainly play along with the Obama administration. But the name of their game is not “Peacemaking” but, rather, “Shift the Blame.” Its object is to take positions that paint one’s rivals as the real obstructionists in the eyes of Washington.

The central strategic challenge for the United States in the Middle East is diminishing the power of the Iranian-led alliance. The peace process is not as effective a tool for addressing this challenge as the administration believes, because the disarray of Fatah and the power of Hamas (not to mention the other rejectionists in the region) will not allow significant, forward movement. Everyone in the region knows this, though few will say so openly. Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates are today focused on one key question: Is Washington going to go the distance with the Iranians, and thwart their nuclear program? Obama’s Cairo speech did not provide an answer. It bought a modicum of goodwill from Arab publics on the settlement question, but it did not address the crucial strategic question that is keeping Middle Eastern leaders awake at night.

The American engine is revving loudly, but the administration cannot put the car in gear, because significant obstacles block the way. President Obama will soon realize, if he hasn’t already, that the map that his advisers handed him does not match the terrain of the region. He can take some consolation in the fact that every president before him has reached a similar point in the road. Some of them, like Eisenhower, developed new maps as they went along. Others, like Carter, never did. Their place in history has, in part, been determined by their ability to chart a new course.

The Israeli-Hamas ceasefire, signed on June 9, 2008, had long been a porous one. While Hamas, for the most part, until November 2008 did not fire its own rockets at Israel, it permitted other groups, such as the Iranian-supported Islamic Jihad, to do so. These limited rocket attacks, while clear violations of the ceasefire agreement, did not precipitate major Israeli responses, other than periodic limited closures of the border crossings into Gaza, through which Israel supplied food, fuel and other humanitarian aid to Gaza. Whether Israel should have allowed any humanitarian aid into Gaza in the face of the rocket fire is a very open question: Israel was in fact in a state of war with Hamas, an organization pledged to destroy it, and the rockets fired at Israel simply underlined Hamas’ long term objective by demonstrating its “resistance” to the Jewish State. Under these circumstances, a full border closure might have brought home to the people of Gaza, the majority of whom voted for Hamas in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections, the costs of supporting Hamas.

In any case, fighting between Israel and Hamas intensified in November when Israel found and destroyed a tunnel between Gaza and Israel which the Israeli military thought would be used to kidnap another Israeli soldier, much as Gilad Shalit had been kidnapped in 2006. Ironically, the kidnap attempt was not aimed primarily at Israel, but at the Palestinian rival of Hamas, the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority on the West Bank headed by Mahmoud Abbas. The kidnap attempt appeared timed to occur as Hamas and Fatah were jockeying for position before the start of what proved to be abortive Palestinian unity talks in Cairo. Had Hamas been successful in capturing another Israeli soldier, it would have shown that Hamas was demonstrating greater “resistance” against Israel than Fatah, which had been engaged in fruitless peace talks with Israel.

Following the Israeli attack on the tunnel, the number of rockets fired at Israel from Gaza escalated, reaching a new high after Hamas announced it would not extend the ceasefire unless Israel fully opened the border crossings and stopped arresting members of Hamas living on the West Bank—the latter demand not included in the original ceasefire agreement. When Israel refused to agree to the new Hamas demands, Hamas further escalated its firing of rockets, hoping, apparently, to force Israel to accept the new ceasefire terms in return for restoring quiet to southern Israel. Hamas may have also believed that Israel’s ruling Kadima party desperately needed a ceasefire so as to remove the issue of the rocket firing from the ongoing Israeli election campaign. It had been Kadima that had undertaken the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, and presumably it did not want to remind the Israeli electorate that the withdrawal had resulted in the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel.

If this was indeed the thinking of Hamas, it was gravely mistaken. Kadima leader Tzipi Livni, as early as November, had called for strong military action against Hamas because of the rocket firing, and she also stated at the time that she was prepared to eliminate the Hamas threat against Israel once and for all. Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, of the Labor party, was taking a more dovish position, resisting the use of force. In initially opposing an attack on Gaza, Barak may have hoped to win votes from the dovish spectrum of the Israeli electorate consisting of the Meretz party and the parties that had broken away from Labor because they were dissatisfied with his leadership. On the other end of the Israeli political spectrum, the right of center Likud party, led by Binyamin Netanyahu, was attacking Barak for his judgement in unilaterally withdrawing from Lebanon in May 2000—a step which had led not to peace, as Barak had hoped, but to rocket fire into Israel from Lebanon, the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers, and finally the Israel-Hezbollah war of 2006 from which Israel did not emerge victorious. In addition, of course, Netanyahu berated the Kadima party for its unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, which, as in the case of Lebanon, did not bring peace, but rather rocket firing into Israel in its wake.

Given these circumstances, with Netanyahu’s Likud party leading in the pre-election polls, Livni’s calls for more action against Hamas grew more difficult for Kadima’s lame-duck leader, Ehud Olmert, to resist. For his part, Barak saw his Labor party dropping precipitously in the polls, as his dovish position was not resonating among Israeli voters. The end result of the Israeli deliberations—a major air assault against Hamas bases, missile factories, and arms smuggling tunnels in Gaza—was a compromise between those who wanted a full-scale military assault on Gaza and those, most likely including Olmert, who had been badly burned politically by the 2006 war, and who continued to counsel restraint. The Israeli military action was an effort to show Hamas that not only would the Israeli political leadership not be intimidated by the Hamas rocket attacks into weakening its position on the ceasefire terms, but that Israel too could use force—considerably more force than Hamas was using—and that if Hamas had hoped to use rocket fire to get better ceasefire terms, it was badly mistaken. The military action was also a signal to Hamas that if it still wanted a truce—a very big if—then all rocket fire would have to be halted.

Prior to examining the alternatives available to Hamas after the Israeli military operation, I will now turn to an analysis of the possible repercussions of the Israeli military action in the Middle East, because this will affect how Hamas will respond.

Repercussions

In analyzing the possible effects of the Israeli military operation throughout the Middle East, one has to consider several different Arab and Middle Eastern states which are players in the Arab-Israeli conflict. These include: Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah organization which currently controls the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank; Egypt and Jordan, the two Arab states that have peace treaties with Israel; Syria; Iran; and Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states.

• Mahmoud Abbas. With Palestinians being killed by the Israeli attacks, Abbas has no choice but to publicly condemn them, although he has also been critical of Hamas for not agreeing to extend the ceasefire. It should also be noted that many members of Abbas’ Fatah organization have bitter memories of their colleagues in Gaza being murdered by Hamas thugs—some tossed off the rooftops of multi-storied buildings in Gaza—during the Hamas seizure of power in Gaza in June 2006. Consequently, many will greet the Israeli drubbing of Hamas in Gaza with great satisfaction. While there are likely to be riots by Hamas sympathizers on the West Bank, the test of Abbas’ newly strengthened security forces will be how successful they are in containing the rioters. Since Abbas has been systematically cracking down on Hamas operatives in the West Bank since June 2007 (as has Israel) it is not clear how much strength Hamas retains in the region, and the ability of Abbas’ forces to quell the rioters will go a long way toward answering this question.

While Abbas has broken off peace talks with Israel in the name of Palestinian solidarity—he has to be concerned about a sympathy vote for Hamas in the forthcoming Palestinian Legislative Council elections (if they are held,as tentatively scheduled,in April 2009)—-nonetheless if Hamas is badly weakened politically as well as militarily in Gaza by the Israeli attacks (a very big if), then Abbas will gain politically in what has become a zero-sum-game struggle between Hamas and Fatah for leadership of the Palestinian movement.

• Egypt and Jordan. As the two countries which have signed peace treaties with Israel, both Egypt and Jordan face similar problems in responding to the Israeli military operations in Gaza.

The main opposition force, which is represented in parliament in both countries, is the Moslem Brotherhood (in Jordan it takes the name “The Islamic Action Front”), and Hamas itself is an offshoot of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. Thus the Palestinian issue has been used by Muslim Brotherhood organizations in both countries to accuse both Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah II of Jordan of not being tough enough against Israel.

Yet while both Mubarak and King Abdullah II must be sensitive to the public opinion in their countries, which the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to stir up against them, they are also aware that the United States, their main supplier of economic aid ($2.2 billion for Egypt and $500 million for Jordan on an annual basis), has been strongly backing Israel during the crisis. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has gone so far as to say: “The United States strongly condemns the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel and holds Hamas responsible for breaking the ceasefire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza. The ceasefire should be restored immediately.” Consequently, assuming the Israeli military operations are concluded in a relatively short amount of time, it is doubtful whether either Egypt or Jordan would break diplomatic relations with Israel or even recall their ambassadors as they did during the Al-Aqsa Intifada. Indeed, a defeat for Hamas would politically benefit both Arab leaders.

• Syria. The first response of Syria to the Israeli attack on Gaza was to freeze the current low-level peace talks which Syria has been carrying on with Israel under the mediation of Turkey. As the home of one of the most militant branches of Hamas, led by Khalid Mash’al who has just called for a new Palestinian intifada against Israel, Syria has long championed the organization as Damascus has sought to exercise influence over the Palestinian movement. Yet the Syrians have to be careful how they behave during the crisis if they want to preserve the possibility of a peace process with Israel—and the link to improved relations with the United States which they hope to emerge from it. It should be remembered in this context that the initial post-Madrid conference talks between Israel and Syria collapsed in 1996 when Syria not only did not condemn the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel that took place in February-March 1996, but Syrian state radio actually justified them. If Syria chooses to support Hamas during the current conflict in a major way, it may well jeopardize peace talks with the next Israeli leader, be it Livni or Netanyahu. While Syrian leader Bashar Assad may assume that neither Livni nor Netanyahu puts peace with Syria high on their priority lists, strong Syrian support for Hamas may also call into question Syria’s relations with the incoming Obama administration.

• Iran. Iran, like Syria, faces a choice in responding to the Israeli airstrikes. It could urge its ally, the Lebanese–based Hezbollah, to fire rockets into Israel in support of Hamas. Such an action might be problematic, however, for three reasons.

1. There is the question as to whether Hezbollah would wish to jeopardize its rapidly improving political position in Lebanon by launching rocket attacks against Israel, since Israel has threatened to retaliate against all of Lebanon if Hezbollah launches rocket attacks, not just the southern part as it did in 2006, because Hezbollah is now part of the Lebanese government.
2. Such a call by Iran might hasten an Israeli airstrike against Iran’s nuclear installations, a development which Iranian leaders, despite their bluster, have sought to avoid.
3. An action of this type would make it far more difficult for Iran to have an improved relationship with the incoming Obama administration, assuming, of course, the Iranian leadership wants such a rapprochement. Consequently, Iran may limit itself to spinning the Israeli attack, much as it has done with the Israeli siege on Gaza, by claiming that the Arab world has not done enough to aid the besieged Palestinians because the leaders of the Sunni Arab world are the lackeys of the United States.

• Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. In the minds of the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Kuwait,The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman), the main threat in their region is not Israel but Iran. Consequently, if Iranian-allied Hamas suffers a military defeat at the hands of Israel, particularly in a brief conflict before the passions of the so-called “Arab street” are fully ignited, the leaders of the GCC states will not be unhappy. Indeed, for similar reasons they gave tacit support to Israel at first in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, turning against Israel only when the war was prolonged and heavy civilian casualties occurred. If the Israeli military action is relatively limited in time, it is unlikely that the Saudis and the other Gulf states will take strong diplomatic action against Israel, such as removing the Arab Peace Plan from the diplomatic negotiating table.

The Future

In looking to the aftermath of the Israeli military action, there are several possibilities and they both depend on how Hamas reacts to the Israeli attacks. First, if Hamas follows through on its threat to restart suicide bombings and continues to launch rocket attacks of Israel, then additional airstrikes against Hamas can be expected, along with additional “targeted assassinations” of Hamas leaders, and possibly a full-scale military invasion as well. If, on the other hand, the Hamas leadership decides that the airstrikes and the real threat of an Israeli ground invasion may jeopardize its hold on Gaza before it has consolidated its power there, then it may agree, if only tacitly, to another ceasefire by stopping its rocket attacks on the expectation that Israel would reciprocate by stopping its attacks, in an agreement possibly mediated by Turkey. Were this to occur, Israel would certainly emerge as the victor in the conflict with Hamas, Iran and Syria the losers.

Consequently, one might expect that Iran, and possibly Syria, will urge Hamas to continue its “resistance” against Israel, much as Hezbollah did in 2006, and wait for pressure from the “Arab street,” Europe, Russia, the United Nations, and possibly (if the fighting last sufficiently long) the United States to salvage the situation. Whether Hamas will be in a position to do so, however, remains to be seen, and its fate may resemble more the PLO which was besieged in Beirut in 1982 and forced into exile, than Hezbollah in 2006.

In looking at the impact of the Israeli military action on the February 10 Israeli elections, there are also several possibilities. Since Livni had openly been calling for strong military action against Hamas, and that action was in fact taken, it is likely that Livni’s Kadima party will have an improved position in the polls and in the election, now little more than a month away. This will be the case especially if Hamas agrees to the tacit truce, as mentioned above. Similarly, if the military action proves successful, Barak may cement his position as the indispensable Defense Minister, no matter who wins the election.

On the other hand, if rockets continue to fly into Israel from Gaza, Livni may be blamed, along with Barak, for their inability to stop the missiles. Under these circumstances, Livni and Barak may well urge a full-scale invasion of Gaza. Assuming that the Israeli Army is now better prepared for ground combat than it was in the 2006 war with Hezbollah, and Hamas does not have the weaponry possessed by Hezbollah in 2006, and the invasion is preceded by heavy artillery barrages as well as continued air strikes, a softened-up Hamas may not be a major threat to the IDF, no matter how many tunnels it may have dug. Once Gaza is recaptured, and any surviving Hamas cadres imprisoned, the Gaza Strip can be turned over to Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah organization, and then genuine peace talks, now covering both the West Bank and Gaza, can take place. Whether such an optimistic scenario will actually take place, however, remains an open question.

The Saudis have been remarkably tight-lipped about the U.S. presidential election and about whom they favor among the candidates. Their reticence can be explained, in part, by their bewilderment at the choice.

They don’t know what to think of the real possibility that a young and charismatic black candidate might win. Senator Obama represents the joker in the deck, although they also have a sense that in terms of the pillars of U.S. policy in the Middle East (i.e., oil security and Israel’s security) little will change regardless of the election’s outcome. In other words, they feel the regime’s survival is assured because of the importance of oil.

Historically, the Saudis have favored Republicans for the following reasons: 1) a shared social and economic conservatism and a visceral anti-Communism; 2) the closer ties that Republicans are thought to have to the oil companies and the weapons industry, which represent the two domestic constituencies of, and therefore lobbyists for, the Saudi government in the U.S. political system; and 3) a highly personal (anti-institutional) form of political engagement in foreign affairs, especially in the Middle East. The Saudis like the current President Bush on a personal level, and he appears to relish the all-male gatherings in Saudi Arabia, as can be seen during his last trip to Riyadh in January.

The royal family’s objection to G.W. Bush’s policies have to do with what they perceive to be his impulsive and rash behavior as well as his high-stakes style in foreign policy. On the whole, the Saudis were not in favor of the invasion of Iraq because they were worried of the instability that this would create in the region. The Saudis are, if anything, conservative and don’t like to gamble their survival on military campaigns unless these are absolutely necessary, as in the 1991 Gulf war against the Iraqi invader of Kuwait. Instead, they prefer other means, which include financial inducements and fighting through proxies (e.g., Lebanon today).

Based on all the above, I would guess that the Saudis would prefer if McCain were to win. Furthermore, there are indications that they have a strong dislike to Senator Biden, primarily because of his public criticism of the Saudi royal family, its religious policies, and the very form of rule it represents. The Saudis have been relatively discreet about this animus towards Biden, and when it has surfaced, as in an editorial article by Jamal Khashogi in Al-Watan newspaper earlier this year, it has criticized Biden for his plan to divide Iraq into three parts. I believe the Saudis feel that they can proceed with business-as-usual with McCain but not with Biden, who is, paradoxically perhaps, more ideological when it comes to reforming Saudi Arabia’s regime.

Whatever the outcome of the U.S. election, the Saudis are sitting on a large pile of cash which is the result of record-high prices for oil and they can easily balance their budgets as long as the price remains roughly at or above the $50 mark per barrel. They are secure in the short term and confident that their people don’t want to see an Iraq-like scenario envelop the Kingdom.

The more imaginative among the Saudis think that they can reinvigorate their relationship and alliance with the United States on the basis of the excess capacity Saudi Arabia enjoys in terms of oil production. What this means is that the Saudis today have a significant power over the downward price of oil because they can increase supply of this product at will, and the demand is no longer there to suck up all the world’s production. Unlike the Saudis, the Iranians and the Russians cannot balance their budgets if the price is anywhere below the $70s to $90s per barrel range. The Saudis therefore have the means, but not necessarily the will, to punish the Iranians and Russians, and this is a fact that should not escape any new administration in the White House. The luck of the House of Saud never seems to run out.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

There is so much blame to go around in the wake of the financial crisis that there is no wonder OPEC’s name shows up high in the list of culprits. After all, soaring oil prices and loss of wealth in 2008 to the tune of $1.2-$1.9 billion each and every working day, depending on the price of crude, not only helped pop the U.S. mortgage bubble but have also helped create the economic conditions that brought the U.S. economy to its current dire straits.

I don’t like the oil cartel and have even been called “the most hated man in Riyadh.” My positions on OPEC and its methodical price manipulation and looting of the world’s poor are well documented. But alleging that OPEC by some grand design brought America to the abyss and then pushed her over the cliff or, worse, concocted a vast conspiracy to impoverish millions of middle-class Americans seems like one bridge too far, especially in light of the fact that OPEC countries themselves are among the biggest casualties of the crisis. Oil prices have already fallen to $88 from their record $147 in July.

Since the beginning of the crisis, the Saudi stock market, the largest in the Arab world, lost more than 17 percent of its value. Qatar lost 19 percent, and Dubai’s exchange shed a quarter of its value in just four days of trading. Due to their relative insulation, Iranian and Venezuelan stocks were almost unscathed by the meltdown, but make no mistake: Iran and Venezuela are likely to suffer greatly from the current downturn. The IMF recently determined that oil prices must remain at $90-$95 for Iran and Venezuela to be able to balance their books. If the price of oil falls to $75-$80 a barrel, Caracas and Tehran will have to cut government subsidies and shave government spending. At such price levels the Iranian economy alone will lose $50 billion a year, which amounts to a per capita loss of $700-$800.

Furthermore, sovereign wealth funds owned by Persian Gulf governments are heavily invested in crumbling financial institutions, and their losses are monumental. Only last July, Abu Dhabi Investment Council caused a stir when it bought the Chrysler building in New York City for $800 million. Considering the desolation of New York’s financial district and the slumping U.S. real estate sector, this no longer looks like such a great deal.

So if OPEC indeed has a grand economic warfare plan, as of this writing it proves to be a spectacular failure. No doubt most OPEC governments do not have America’s best interests in mind, but their correlation of interest does not imply causality. The problem with laying the blame for our economic calamity on OPEC is that it hides the plain truth that this crisis is about our greed, not theirs. Any attempt to masquerade this inconvenient truth will only obstruct our lesson-learning process and therefore undermine our road to recovery. As Pogo once said “we have met the enemy and he is us.”

What’s behind the sudden burst of willingness on the part of the Saudis, who announced that they will increase oil output by 500,000 barrels per day in the coming months? After all, for many months they were quite unfazed by the economic havoc caused throughout the world by the rise in oil prices. Even two visits by President Bush, loaded with offers of sophisticated weapons, nuclear technology collaboration and other goodies, didn’t convince them to open the spigot. So what changed? And why are the Iranians so opposed to the Saudi newfound goodwill? “If Saudi Arabia takes a measure to unilaterally increase [oil] output, it is a wrong move,” complained Mohammad Ali Khatibi, Iran’s new representative to OPEC, repeating the mantra that “the oil market is saturated.”

Here is a theory: The dispute within OPEC between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the first and second largest exporting members, has, in part, to do with the upcoming presidential elections. Unlike the Iranians who would like the United States to withdraw from Iraq so they can turn the country into another Iranian satellite, the Saudis dread nothing more than a strengthened and emboldened Iran and prefer the United States to stick around for a while. Their concerns about the regional destabilization associated with a nuclear Iran, and hence their loss of points in the centuries-old Sunni-Shiite rivalry, is only part of the story. What keeps the Saudis awake at night is the challenge to their ability to control the oil fields in the Eastern Province where most of Saudi Arabia’s oppressed Shiites happen to live. Iranian hegemony in the Persian Gulf could inspire a Shiite intifada in the place where Saudi Arabia’s wealth is generated, constituting a real danger to the survival of the House of Saud.

From a Saudi perspective, an American president who plans to withdraw from Iraq while being conciliatory toward Iran is bad news. The Saudis, therefore, vote McCain; Iran goes for Obama.

Pouring oil into the global market five months prior to the elections could influence the tight race in a non-trivial way. The state of the U.S. economy and high energy prices are at the top of the voters’ agenda. Most oil contracts are traded three to six months prior to delivery. The Saudi announcement would therefore signal to speculators that more supply is on the way, driving prices down in the futures markets. This could have a calming effect on the economy in the coming months, which is likely to benefit McCain. The question now is whether Iran will do something in response to help Obama.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

Four months and thirty extra dollars a barrel later, President Bush is again in Saudi Arabia trying to persuade the Saudis to open the spigot and increase OPEC production. Last time the answer was a resounding no. Not even a gift of 900 precision-guided bombs helped convince the Saudis to show more oomph at the pump. The lesson for the Administration: speak softer and wave a bigger gift. This time the United States has agreed to help Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, develop “civilian” nuclear power.

Of course the Saudi interest in nuclear power has nothing to do with energy production but with Iran and the Sunnis’ fears of Iranian hegemony. Does President Bush really believe that helping the Saudis with nuclear technologies would cause Tehran to pull the plug on its nuclear program?

Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi insists that the oil market is well supplied, blaming the high prices on hedge funds and speculators. Considering the fact that OPEC production level is not much higher than its level thirty years ago and that Saudi output is lower than it was two years ago, putting the entire blame on speculators is utter nonsense.

The Saudis have always taken pride in their role as swing producers, claiming to own over 2mbd in spare capacity. But what good is this liquidity mechanism if they are not prepared to use it? When last month Nigeria’s production fell by 330,000 bpd, OPEC did not lift a finger to compensate for the loss. At what level will they provide us with liquidity? $200? $300?

If the Saudis are right and it’s all about the speculators, why not put this to test? This is exactly what Bush should have suggested: pour some oil into the market for a limited period of time and let’s measure the effect on prices so we can determine who is the culprit. With projected revenues of $400 billion this year, the Saudis can surely afford to embark on such an experiment and clear their name once and for all. But as I wrote here in January, we’d rather beg than blame.

The spectacle of an American president begging for oil every few months only to be rewarded with a slap in the face is getting a bit tedious. What’s next? Naming one of our aircraft carriers USS Ibn Saud?