SEISMOLOGIZE THE PLACE

Ya'alon: Good chance of internal revolution in Iran (Amos Harel, 05/07/2003, Ha'aretz)

Lieutenant General Moshe Ya'alon, the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, sees the recent developments in the Palestinian Authority as "an authentic internal development, and the battle has not yet been decided." Ya'alon points to PA Chairman Yasser Arafat, and not the Islamist extremists, as the greatest threat to the new government of Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), who was appointed last month as the PA's first prime minister.

[Y]a'alon does not think the conflict with the Palestinians is unresolvable. "I don't see things pessimistically. We are at the height of a regional earthquake that stems from America's national security strategy, which has identified targets to deal with in the fields of the war on terror, unconventional weapons and irresponsible regimes.

"If they manage to stabilize a regime with a democratic flavor in Iraq, this will have an effect far beyond Iraq. In neighboring Iran, the internal struggle is at its height. The people voted for reform, but the conservatives still hold the loci of power. Will there be an internal change there? The developments in Iraq could certainly accelerate this process. The Iranians are ripe to get rid of the mullahs."

Nevertheless, he maintained a cautious and skeptical approach: The new Palestinian government, he said, so far does not herald an end to terror, while Syria's promises to the U.S. are far from being carried out.

As per yesterday's discussion: realists have a tendency always to favor the status quo. No matter how awful it is, they'll have developed a way to live with it and have achieved a certain comfort level ("Better the devil we know"). Idealists, on the other hand, are destabilizers.

As conservatives, we tend to favor stability (even retrogression), especially here at home. But who would look at the Middle East, circa 2001, and want it to stay the way it was? Posted by Orrin Judd at May 6, 2003 10:52 PM