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WASHINGTON: The sudden immersion of the Bush administration in the Middle East has quieted speculation — at least for now — of an imminent US military assault on Iraq.
American foreign policy journals and media opinion columns had until recently been filled with analysis about how and when President George W. Bush might carry out his commitment to unseat Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein.
The first post-Sept 11 “anti-terrorism war” had been fought and won in Afghanistan. Soon it would be time to tackle the Baghdad regime that Bush branded part of the “axis of evil” for its repression and reputed weapons of mass destruction.
Or so the theory went.
The Iraq situation was always more complicated than some made it seem. Now it is viewed in a new context, given the intensive fighting between Palestinians and Israel in the West Bank that has brought the region to the brink of all-out war.
Few American analysts doubt that a core of key administration officials remains deeply committed to ousting Saddam by whatever means practicable.
But the Palestinian-Israeli crisis has pushed many other foreign policy issues to the side and made it harder, if not impossible, for Bush to seriously consider a military move any time soon against the Iraqi leader, they say.
Secretary of State Colin Powell is now enmeshed in an open-ended Mideast mission, seeking an Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire that could revive peace talks. Bush is also seized with this issue, which could dominate his international agenda indefinitely.
There is no sign Bush has made key decisions to implement a new Iraq strategy, like massive troop deployments or providing military aid to Iraqi opposition groups, experts say.
RHETORIC FADING: The US anti-Saddam rhetoric has been muted, and even Washington’s staunchest ally in the “war on terror”, Britain, has grown increasingly uneasy about a move against Iraq.
There also are signs that Saddam is no longer feeling the pressure of American military threats. Iraq indefinitely postponed talks on the return of UN weapons inspectors, saying it wanted to keep the focus on the Middle East.
Judith Yaphe, a Mideast scholar with the government’s National Defence University, said Bush faced serious problems going after Saddam right from the start.
But the recent expansion of the intifada into a spiralling cycle of Palestinian suicide bombings parried by Israeli army thrusts into the West Bank has become “a major stumbling block,” she said in a telephone interview.
Hostility toward the United States, Israel’s top ally, is high in Arab countries and to win the support of Arab leaders for a US-led anti-Saddam operation any time soon would be harder than ever, she said.
As evidence, Yaphe cites a photograph from the recent Arab summit in Beirut in which Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah embraces the envoy from the Iraqi leader.
“For that picture to be allowed (to be published) is stunning ... and deliberate ... It says something about the Arabs at this point ... It signals that they are clearly against any move against Iraq,” she said.
Judith Kipper of the Council on Foreign Relations also considers a US-led anti-Saddam operation to be “pushed off for the foreseeable future.”
This has been apparent since late last year when the Afghanistan war stretched thin the US military, their training and their equipment, she said.
AFGHAN ENGAGEMENT: Despite hopes of wrapping up the Afghan operation quickly, US forces remain fully engaged there. Meanwhile, Kipper said it was estimated 200,000 US troops and three aircraft carriers would be needed in the Gulf to take on Saddam.
Fall out from the Mideast turmoil has grown. David Mack, a former US diplomat now with the Middle East Institute, said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s assault on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had backfired, making Bush, not Arafat look “irrelevant.”
“This is a serious blow to US influence in the region, and in the long term it is also bad for Israel,” he added.
For all Bush’s talk of targeting Iraq, James Zogby of the Arab American Institute said: “I never thought he’d do it. The more it was talked about, the less they were going to do it.”
Committing massive U.S. forces to the Gulf could also endanger US allies Turkey and Jordan.—Reuters
