With lives at stake, diplomacy is key

With lives at stake, diplomacy is key Friday introduced a new calendar to the Middle East; we hope it also marked the beginning of a new approach. The New York Times credibly reported that the US has convinced Israel that Iran needs at least one year to fashion a nuclear weapon. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, announced that Israelis and Palestinians have agreed to return to direct negotiations.

The news on Iran’s weapon – more seriously than any other event to date – sets a timetable for the course of events in the region; should 12 months elapse without substantial progress in talks with Tehran or on the Palestinian-Israeli front, the possibility of military confrontation will turn into more of a probability.

Even now, respected magazine The Atlantic features on its cover this month a fervent call for an attack on the Islamic Republic by Israel or – just to strip away pretenses – by the US itself (we must note that the article was penned by Jeffrey Goldberg, who served in the Israeli military and previously authored a notorious article trumpeting links between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda).

Obviously, we cannot know how these various diplomatic initiatives will turn out. We do not know how much the international community – and, more than anyone else, Obama himself – will contribute to sealing a peace deal between Palestine and Israel. We do not know how the midterm elections in the US this November will affect Obama’s negotiating positions.