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Speaking in Jerusalem today, George Bush was uncharacteristically modest about his expectations for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process during the rest of his term:

"I'm not running for the Nobel Peace Prize. I'm just trying to be a guy to use the influence of the United States to move the process along," Bush said.

Being that guy may force a president desperate for a foreign policy victory to back away from one of his administration's central stated principles: the refusal to negotiate with regimes hostile to the U.S. and Israel. In a new web-exclusive argument for FP, journalist Laura Rozen explores the possibility of Bush overhauling his diplomatic posture in the Middle East this late in the game:

Though the Bush administration seems unlikely to do a “Nixon goes to China” with Iran at this late date, in some isolated cases it does appear to be at least flirting with a different approach. Recent weeks have seen numerous reports of indirect proximity talks and back-channel diplomacy between Israel and Syria, on the one hand, and between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas, on the other. In both cases, Washington’s role is curious, officially condemning calls for any sort of dialogue with Hamas while at the same time, seemingly tacitly endorsing Egypt’s role as a cease-fire broker between Israel and Hamas.

 Read the full piece here.

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In the second day of an escalating standoff between the Lebanese government and Hezbollah, there are reports of at least one death and five injuries and the possibility of civil war seems less far-fetched.

The unrest first broke out after the government tried to cut into Hezbollah's operations by banning a Hezbollah-run telecommunications network in southern Lebanon. The network was likely Hezbollah's primary means of communication during its 2006 war with Israel. 

Then, reports that Hezbollah had installed cameras near the Beirut airport to monitor the movements of anti-Syria politicians -- possibly to assassinate them -- led the government to dismiss the airport's security chief. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed to keep the employee in his post and to strike back at these affronts, irking Lebanon's top Sunni leader Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani:

We used to think that Hezbollah is concerned with fighting the Israeli occupation, and all of a sudden it is turning to be a militant force to occupy Beirut, and this is why we call upon the Arab and Islamic nations to help us and stop these harmful aggressions in Lebanon."

Meanwhile, Ya Libnan makes an interesting point that Nasrallah's campaign may achieve the very thing Israeli army Chief of Staff Lt. General Dan Halutz threatened at the start of the Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006: to send the country back twenty years. Hezbollah supporters' tent camps have paralyzed parts of downtown Beirut and now they are springing up along the road to the airport which will be a vital source of tourism revenue this summer. It's shaping up to be yet another example of Hezbollah's "resistance" hurting the very people it claims to fight for.

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After last night's party, Israeli political leaders are back to the grim reality of the ongoing corruption investigation that threatens to bring down Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.  A police gag order on  the investigation will be lifted this evening, allowing the the Israeli media to finally report on the full details of the case.

The New York Post revealed last week that Olmert is being investigated for money he may have received as mayor of Jerusalem during the 1990s from a Long Island businessman named Morris Talansky. Israeli media outlets are still barred from publishing Talansky's name or any other details of the case, though the easy availability of foreign news sources in Israel has made the blackout somewhat ridiculous. The ongoing confusion over Olmert's legal status has also made further peace negotiations next to impossible.

Watch this space as more details are revealed.

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At sundown tonight, Israel began celebrating its 60th anniversary. Though continuing violence in the Palestinian territories and political corruption scandals in the Knesset have left many Israelis feeling a bit cynical about the event, Israel's 60th brithday is nonetheless a remarkable milestone for a country whose very existence has been in peril more times than its citizens would like to recall.

Today, Israel doesn't face the same existential threats it once did, but that doesn't diminish the challenges and dangers it must still confront. As Israeli journalist Gershom Gorenberg writes:

At 60, Israel is neither a perfect democracy, nor a Jewish ghetto imperiled by Iranian Nazis, nor a puppet master indirectly controlling Washington. It is more democratic than its neighbors, more reliably pro-Western, and more successful economically and militarily. Nonetheless, it faces the classic dilemmas of a nation-state dealing with minorities, borders, and neighbors. In other words, it is best understood as a real place, not a country of myth.

For more on Israel's history and uncertain future, check out Gorenberg's cover story "Think Again: Israel" from the most recent issue of FP. You can also explore more of the country's turbulent history in the photo essay, "Israel at 60."

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Saddam Hussein may have been A-okay exterminating thousands of Iraqi Kurds and destroying the oil economy of an entire country, but apparently life in prison was a little more than his hard shell could handle.  

The pan-Arab paper Al-Hayat (English version of its news site here) has printed excerpts from the prison diaries of Iraq’s prolific former dictator, written during his stint in custody between 2003 and 2006. In his prison time writings, Saddam describes the hardships he faced, including the personal struggle of asking for things -- like the time he asked for a flower. "It was a serious sacrifice from me to ask for the first time in my life,” he wrote.

Also, while he probably should have been more concerned about his impending execution, Saddam's main worry was actually contracting an STD . . . from his clothesline. Upon learning that his laundry was hung on the same line as the clothes of his U.S. military guards, he wrote:

I explained to them that they are young and they could have young people's diseases…  My main concern was to not catch a venereal disease, an HIV disease, in this place… What can the Americans and other invaders... bring to an (invaded) country apart from dangerous diseases?"

I knew the man was backward, but how early '90s -– if you can’t get AIDS from a toilet seat, you surely can’t get AIDS from a clothesline.

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Former Iranian president and leading moderate Mohamad Khatami is taking some heat from the hardliners over some intriguing comments he made last week:

What did the imam (Khomeini) mean by exporting the revolution?" he asked in the speech Friday to university students in the northern province of Gilan, according to the Kargozaran newspaper.

"Did he mean that we take up arms, that we blow up places in other nations and we create groups to carry out sabotage in other countries? The imam was vehemently against this and was confronting it," he added.

As you might expect, Khatami is being branded as a traitor for these remarks, notwithstanding his (dubious) claims about Khomenei's views:

It is obvious that Mr Khatami must answer for his anti-patriotic comments and explain why he has taken such a stance," said [hardline Iranian newspaper] Kayhan, whose editor-in-chief is appointed by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. [...]

"Mr Khatami has to make it clear whether using fervent martyrdom-seeking young men to combat occupiers is an ugly and violent act or a fully human and admirable one?" demanded [one conservative] MP.

No word yet on whether the former president has been regularly sporting the flag of the Islamic Republic on his tunic.

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OK, not really:

Iraqi students of the University of Technology, Baghdad, pretend to drink alcohol as they drink soft drinks during a celebration of their university day on May 4, 2008 in Baghdad, Iraq.

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Kudos to the Washington Post for looking into the mysterious behavior of the Yemeni government toward the guys implicated in the USS Cole bombing. As Newsweek reported last fall, Yemen even briefly let Jamal al-Badawi, the al Qaeda planner in charge of the operation, out of prison. All told, "all the defendants convicted in the attack have escaped from prison or been freed by Yemeni officials," according to the Post.

The Yemenis defend their actions, saying they have their own special approach to fighting terrorism. A few years, ago, some in the West were even seeing it as a model. But the Post article calls Yemen's terrorist rehabilitation program into question with this devastating quote:

Hamoud al-Hitar, a former Supreme Court justice... suggested that the government had turned lenient because the Cole defendants had participated in a "dialogue and reconciliation program" designed to de-radicalize al-Qaeda members.

Hitar, who oversees the program, claimed that 98 percent of graduates have remained nonviolent. Asked about two Cole suspects who escaped and went to Iraq to become suicide bombers, Hitar shrugged. "Iraq was not part of the dialogue program," he said.

Amr Khaled, an Egyptian televangelist and media celebrity across the Arab and Muslim worlds, jumped dramatically in the rankings today of the world's Top 100 Public Intellectuals.

Why is that?

His fans have begun a vote drive on AmrKhaled.net and on Facebook, which FP noted earlier this year was a surprising force for activism in the Arab world. Interestingly, the more controversial Yusuf al-Qaradawi saw a boost in his numbers as well, even though Khaled and Qaradawi haven't always seen eye to eye. Qaradawi and Khaled got into a huge spat over the Danish cartoons issue, with Khaled calling for dialogue and Qaradawi basically calling him a big pansy.

Two weeks ago, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker announced that diplomats and staff could finally move into the massive, new U.S. embassy as early as May. But thanks to a gross underestimation of housing needs, some embassy staff will be forced to remain in their trailers until more rooftop-protected housing can be secured inside the compound.

Apparently this snafu resulted from housing figures, calculated in 2005, that failed to predict the more than doubling in embassy staff that occured between the start and end of the embassy's construction.

To make matters worse, a portion of the staff that will remain in the trailers, currently parked behind Saddam Hussein's former palace (turned U.S. command center) will not be provided with rooftop reinforcement. They will receive some "enhanced protection," though (read: sandbags).

Without rooftop coverage, the Green Zone's looking like an awfully rough place to be these days.

Many commentators have wondered why the Bush adminstration chose last Thursday, of all days, to disclose the intelligence community's findings on North Korea's nuclear collaboration with Syria. Well, Glenn Kessler and Robin Wright of the Washington Post have an answer:

Key lawmakers nonetheless made it clear that unless the intelligence about Syria was described to them in detail, they would block funding for the deal and oppose a key waiver of a law preventing U.S. aid to a country that detonates a nuclear weapon.

Officials said the timing of the administration's disclosure was also influenced by a provision of the U.S. law governing state sponsors of terrorism, a list that has long included North Korea. Under the proposed nuclear disarmament deal, Washington has agreed to remove North Korea from the list, but the law requires that it first demonstrate that North Korea has not assisted another country on the list for at least six months. The intelligence presented this week indicated that North Korea helped Syria in removing equipment from the site through early October, meaning the six-month window only recently closed.

Far more often than they get credit for, U.S. officials do things that seem mysterious to outsiders when in reality they're just following the law. In this case, the aim was ostensibly to move North Korea off the list of state sponsors of terrorism so that a deal could go forward. The irony is that with this disclosure, Republican lawmakers may be much less inclined to give North Korea a pass, and even leading establishment figures want the Bush administration to teach Kim Jong Il a lesson. What seems especially damning is the intelligence showing that North Korea has been dealing with the Syrians all along while pretending to negotiate in good faith.

As an aside, I owe Kessler an apology for this post and this one questioning his early reporting on the Syrian nuclear site. It turns out Kessler's reporting was spot-on and appropriately caveated, and continues to be invaluable. His biography of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is excellent, too.

I was mildly amused to see FP contributor and respected nuclear expert Joe Cirincione labeled "Obama's radioactive potato" and "an apologist for Syria" this week on Commentary's "Connecting the Dots" blog and the Powerline blog, respectively.

At issue are some comments Cirincione made on Passport back in September, when early, sketchy media reports about the alleged Syrian nuclear site were just coming out. Like me, Cirincione was highly skeptical at the time, though subsequent disclosures have obviously caused him to revise his views.

Powerline's Paul Mirengoff seems to think Cirincione is biased against Israel -- even though the latter has family in Israel and describes himself as "strongly pro-Israel." Commentary's Gabriel Schoenfeld, meanwhile, is certain that Cirincione, despite his rather explicit denial, really is secretly the top nuclear advisor to the Obama campaign. I guess conspiracy theories aren't exclusive to the Middle East.

"I am one of over a hundred experts advising the campaign," Cirincione told me over e-mail, "and have never claimed to be a top advisor, nor have I been listed that way by the campaign." Denis McDonough -- who really is a top Obama advisor -- confirmed to me that "Joe Cirincione is one of hundreds of people advising the campaign. He is not Senator Obama's top advisor."

What about Syria? "No one bats 1.000," as Cirincione tried to explain to Schoenfeld, but his track record is far better than most. And if you compare his record on Iraq to Commentary's, well -- it's just laughable. Here's Frederick Kagan writing in December 2002:

THE INVASION of Iraq is an essential requirement of American and global security. That is not simply because Saddam Hussein possesses chemical and biological weapons, or even because he is actively working to acquire nuclear weapons. It is because he is a violent megalomaniac determined to recast the Middle East in his image and willing to use absolutely any means to do so, even if it results in his own destruction.

On March 23, 2003, Cirincione wrote:

Here are four likely consequences of America's first preemptive war: Instability in the Middle East will increase; Terrorism will increase; Alliances will weaken; and Proliferation may worsen.

If the United States had taken his advice and backed coercive inspections (pdf), a whole lot of American blood and treasure could have been saved -- and those consequences might have been avoided. That's a much bigger deal than some hasty comments on a blog post.

Earlier this week, intelligence officials released new evidence confirming that the "Box on the Euphrates" near al-Kibar in Syria was in fact a nuclear reactor. They also released photographs that they used to argue that North Korea was providing significant levels of assistance to the reactor project in Syria.

The Syrian facility apparently contained a gas-cooled, graphite-moderated reactor (a derivation from the Calder Hall design) extremely similar to the reactor at Yongbyon. It's a relatively simple design, extensively described in the public domain, and one that's capable of producing plutonium useable in nuclear weapons. Despite the surfeit of publicly available information on the reactor, the intelligence community firmly asserts that, in this case, the design information came from North Korea.

Noting that the Syrian reactor seemed ill-suited to electricity production (not least because there were no detectable power lines leading away from the site), intelligence analysts also concluded that it would have few uses other than for producing plutonium for an illicit nuclear weapons program. Israel came to a similar conclusion and, judging this to be a potentially existential threat, bombed the reactor as a result.

These revelations raise more questions than they answer. For instance, why release this evidence now? The analysts said it was hoped that, among other things, releasing this information would prod the North Koreans to be more forthcoming in the six-party talks. It seems just as likely that they may just be infuriated and walk away from negotiations (there is no public sign of such a reaction yet, though).

Perhaps most notable in the briefing on Thursday was how coy the analysts were being about the possibility that Syria has a covert nuclear weapons program. They noted very specifically that "there is no reprocessing facility in the region of al Kibar," but refused to elaborate when asked whether the Syrians might be building such a facility elsewhere. They also refused to comment on how Syria might have been planning to acquire the natural uranium required to fuel the reactor and they dodged a question about how North Korean diplomats have so far reacted to this disclosure.

These omissions could be designed to minimize diplomatic blowback -- perhaps the administration simply hoped to nudge the North Koreans gently, rather than shove them -- or perhaps the spooks simply don’t have much more information. Hopefully the North Korean and Syrian reactions over the next week or so will provide more insight. Watch this space.

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Professor Bernard Sabella of Bethlehem University came to Georgetown Wednesday to speak about the decline of the Palestinian Christian population in the Holy Land. It's a group whose unique role as bridge-builders, particularly between the West and the Palestinian Muslims, is increasingly at risk.

Palestinian Christians number somewhere near 50,000, making up less than 2 percent of the population. In Jerusalem alone, the population has gone from 30,000 in 1945 to at most 8,000 today.

As a sociologist, Sabella conducts surveys to discover why Palestinian Christians are emigrating. His results suggest economic and political rather than religious reasons, though 8 percent of respondents say religious fanaticism could be a contributing factor to seeking a life elsewhere. Jews and Muslims are leaving for the same reasons.

Sabella, who has served in the Palestinian legislature, also weighed in on the political situation. The way he sees it, the peace process has reached a critical juncture. If it doesn't succeed by the end of the year, he expects escalating confrontation on Palestinian streets and the election of hardliner Benjamin Netanyahu as Israeli prime minister.

The implications of failure, he says, are serious:

If the political and economic situation doesn't improve, then we are going to lose our youngest and brightest brains."

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Political appointees who are forced to resign tend to go quietly, thanking their boss for an opportunity to serve the nation and vowing to spend more time with their families.

Not so Danesh Jaafari (left), the ousted Iranian economy and finance minister. In stepping down from his post on Tuesday, he slammed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's administration in terms that, per the AFP, had "until now been almost unknown in Iranian politics."

During my time, there was no positive attitude towards previous experiences or experienced people and there was no plan for the future," he said in the speech quoted by the Fars news agency.

"Peripheral issues which were not of dire importance to the nation were given priority.

"For example, changing the nation's time took months of our time," he complained.

What is it with authoritarian regimes and clocks? Anyway, this is the best part:

For example the deputy in charge of the economy... is a veterinarian and he does not know much about economy," he added.

Iran's inflation is running at nearly 18 percent and unemployment could be as high as 30 percent, according to the Associated Press. Ahmadinejad has pushed infrastructure spending and handouts to the poor that have only added inflationary fuel to the fire, policies that Jaafari says he opposed while in office. It should be interesting to watch what happens next, with Ahmadinejad up for reelection in 2009.

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Today's big news is no surprise: U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that Gen. David Petraeus will be promoted to head Central Command, pending Senate approval.

It's been a good week for the top American general in Iraq. On Monday, FP and Britain's Prospect magazine named Petraeus one of the world's top 100 public intellectuals, and he's doing remarkably well in the early voting.

It'll be interesting to see how Petraeus handles his new role. Matt Yglesias is cynical, calling the promotion "a pretty savvy political move" by Bush:

In this new office, Petraeus will have the appropriate kind of standing to argue that, no, those who say we ought to shift resources out of Iraq and toward Pakistan/Afghanistan are wrong.

Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol, in contrast, is highly enthused:

The allegedly lame duck Bush administration has--if this report is correct--hit a home run. CENTCOM is the central theater of the war on terror, and the president is putting our best commander in charge of it.

I'd be surprised if Petraeus proceeds as Yglesias fears and Kristol hopes. The general strikes me as a pretty smart guy who is carrying out his mission to the best of his ability, but not some kind of fanatic about Iraq. Once he gets comfortable at CENTCOM, he's going to have to start weighing priorities and matching them up to resources across his entire command. He may well conclude that a strategic shift is in order, even if it takes some adjustment. He may also conclude, as his predecessor William J. Fallon did, that the United States is going to have to reach some kind of modus vivendi with Iran. But it's also worth noting that he'll mostly do so under the next U.S. president. According to Gates, Petraeus won't be taking the reins at CENTCOM until the fall, leaving him precious little time to effect any major changes on Bush's watch.

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Even undeniably "puerile" debates can sometimes cough up interesting tidbits, and, on Wednesday, Hillary Clinton proposed an interesting way to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions: Extend nuclear deterrence to "those countries [in the region] that are willing to go under the security umbrella and forswear their own nuclear [weapons] ambitions." Unfortunately, moderator George Stephanopolous did not ask any follow-up questions, even though Sen. Clinton’s idea certainly merits a closer look.

The concept of a "nuclear umbrella" has been around almost since the Cold War and the nuclear arms race began. At the most basic level, it involves a nuclear- weapons state promising to use its nukes to respond if non-nuclear ally is attacked with nuclear weapons. Cold War strategists hoped that "extending" nuclear deterrence like this would cement important alliances and, crucially, eliminate the need for those countries to develop their own nukes. A nuclear umbrella is thus a tool of both diplomacy and of nonproliferation.

The key question here is credibility. How, for instance, would you convince the Soviets that the United States really would risk New York to defend Paris? During the Cold War, U.S. strategists achieved this credibility in several ways (pdf). First, American troops were deployed heavily in allied territory, placing them in the way of any nuclear attack. Second, U.S. nuclear weapons were often deployed in forward locations and sometimes integrated into allied command structures. Third, the umbrella only got extended to countries with which the United States already had strong alliances.

Unfortunately, even in Gulf regimes that are friendly to America, all of these preconditions are weak or nonexistent (pdf) -- which does not bode well for Sen. Clinton’s proposal. In addition, Iran does not have the ability to project power globally like the Soviet Union did, making any direct threat to U.S. interests unlikely. I should also note that any Iranian nuclear weapon is still a long ways off, and attempting to deter the Iranians is premature at this point.

However, the idea is still worth exploring as a contingency plan, and new ways of establishing credibility and commitment might be possible -- for instance, extending a missile-defense "umbrella," even one that doesn't work very well yet. But although technical measures like these may be part of the solution to U.S. problems in the Middle East, they can't supplant a broader strategy that uses all the diplomatic, political, and economic levers at America's disposal.

Joseph Collins, a retired Army colonel, was a special assistant to former Pentagon No.2 Paul Wolfowitz and later made deputy assistant secretary for stability operations under former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Now at the National Defense University, he has penned a scathing assessment (pdf) of the Iraq war. Collins starts off with a bang:

Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the
status of a major war and a major debacle. [...] [D]espite impressive progress in security during the surge, the outcome of the war is in doubt.

He then goes on to indict "the President and the people who dominated the national security apparatus" for exhibiting an "imperious attitude" and "exerting power and pressure where diplomacy and bargaining might have had a better effect." Read the whole thing.

A study released today by the Rand Corporation finds that nearly 20 percent of military personnel returning from Afghanistan and Iraq have symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or major depression. For those interested in the math, that's some 300,000 soldiers. Only slightly more than half have sought treatment, telling researchers that they feared doing so would harm their careers. Here are some highlights from the first large-scale, nongovernmental assessment of the psychological and cognitive needs of military service members who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past six years:

• 19 percent of returning service members report that they experienced a possible traumatic brain injury while deployed
• 7 percent report both a probable brain injury and current PTSD or major depression
• The study estimates that about 320,000 service members may have experienced a traumatic brain injury during deployment, from mild concussions to severe penetrating head wounds. Yet, just 43 percent reported ever being evaluated by a physician for that injury
• Half of service members say they had a friend who was seriously wounded or killed
• 45 percent report that they saw dead or seriously injured non-combatants
• Over 10 percent say they were injured themselves and required hospitalization

The Rand study is highly focused on the monetary societal costs of PTSD and depression among returning service members. The study asserts that, in the 2 years after deployment, these injuries will cost the United States between $6,000 to more than $25,000 per case, or as much as $6.2 billion in total. Of course, an equally high cost is being borne by the families and loved ones of these soldiers. Sadly, it's unlikely anyone will ever be able to quantify that.

Dog bites man. A Commentary magazine blogger slams Jimmy Carter for meeting with Hamas leaders.

But there's more. Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) says it turned down a meeting request from Carter, whom the terrorist group accused of "carrying an American-Israeli agenda." (Funny, most of Carter's critics would say he's carrying water for the Palestinians.) Commentary's Eric Trager says the incident "should finally shatter Carter's credibility as a peacemaker." He explains:

While PIJ shares many of Hamas' militant features–including its coordination of terrorist activities, calls for Israel's destruction, and theocratic aims–PIJ lacks Hamas' social and political significance. It does not have the social welfare network on which Hamas has built its popularity, while PIJ's refusal to participate in the 2006 parliamentary elections points to its minimal public authority among Palestinians.

There are many valid reasons to meet with Hamas, most notably because no peace process can possibly succeed if the Islamist movement is outside the tent trying to blow it up. Carter is right about that, and many Israelis know it. But if it's true that the former U.S. president wanted to meet with the odious PIJ as well, then it shows he hasn't learned a whole lot about politics in his 83 years. To say the least.