Dear Editor:

The article I reference in my earlier post, which assesses (among other things) the prospect of President Ahmadinejad leading his people to national suicide is the following:

Noah Feldman, "Islam, Terror and the Second Nuclear Age", New York Times Magazine, October 29, 2006.

Dr. Feldman also points out that, when it comes to nuclear matters, Ahmadinejad is not really the one in the control in Iran - the real power is Ayatollah Khamanei.

Sincerely,

Shaun Narine

Dear Editor,

It's hard to feel too sympathetic to Israel when so many of its problems are of its own making. That starts with the Jewish settlements on occupied Arab land. Those settlements are probably the single greatest obstacle to peace in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Yet, for domestic political reasons and out of ideological commitment, successive Israeli governments have continued to increase those settlements, brutalizing Palestianians along the way, stealing more land, and further eroding Israel's relations with the rest of the world. Israel has ignored peace overtures from various Arab states, preferring to hold on to Arab land. In being an occupying power, Israel has also lost whatever moral authority it may once have had.

In reading the article, I'm left with the impression that the reason Israelis are down on Bush now is because he is failing miserably in Iraq. Yet, there is no doubt that Bush did what Israel wanted him to do in attacking Iraq. Remember that in the run-up to the Iraq war, there were only two countries in the world where the public was solidly behind the government - those countries were the US and Israel.

The reality may be that a weakened and chastened Israel is good for the region. For too long, Israel's power in the region has been so overwhelming that Israel has not had to think or talk seriously about compromise. Yet, lasting peace in the Middle East will require Israel to give up its settlements and make significant concessions. Maybe as the relative power in the region becomes more even, Israel and the US will think about using diplomacy to deal with their Arab adversaries.

This goes doubly in dealing with Iran. There is absolutely no reason that Israel and Iran cannot reach mutual accommodation. The argument that Iran will attack Israel with its hypothetical nuclear weapons has never made any sense.

The Middle East is a region ripe for diplomacy. But it does need the US and Israel to start treating the other regional states as equals rather than as vassals before that can happen.

Sincerely,

Shaun Narine