Barry Rubin: The Middle East has indeed changed

Barry Rubin, a prominent Israeli-based Middle East scholar, says in the Jerusalem Post says that the Middle East has just undergone its most significant shift in alignments since perhaps the 1950s. On one side he says are Hizbullah, Iran, Syria, Hamas; and on the other, are almost every other Arab state, Israel and the United States.

This shift has occurred, he says, because of Iran’s insistence on being able to pursue a nuclear program, widely believed to have as its end goal a nuclear bomb; Iran’s designs on Iraq; and of course its proxy, Syria’s designs on Lebanon.

Saudi Arabia is reported to be trying to resuscitate interest in its 2002 Middle East peace initiative, the terms on which Riyadh suggested the Arab states would be willing to normalize relations with Israel. In Lebanon, Saudi Arabia is said to be trying to prop up the more moderate Fatah party in opposition to Hamas, the U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization which is the ruling party of the Palestinian National Authority, which calls for the destruction of the Jewish state.