Iran has, for years, created controversy over its process of uranium enrichment, allegedly as an attempt to develop nuclear weapons. Over the past decade it has been a lightning rod of criticism, while being diplomatically, commercially and financially marginalized.  The dangers of the situation are clear.  If Iran acquires nuclear weapons, it weakens an already fragile non-proliferation regime, threatens to spark a regional arms race, upsets delicate geopolitical relationships and endangers global security by facilitating international terrorism by proxy or by jihadi elements. The Canadian government broke off diplomatic ties with Iran in early September. One of the justifications for this move was Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program.  So, it seems as if Canada has jumped into the Iran debate and taken a clear side.

Part of the problem with the development of nuclear weapons is that it reduces the effectiveness of the international Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. So, what exactly does the treaty do?  It broke substantial ground when it entered into force in 1970.  The five nuclear-weapons states of the era – coincidentally, the same five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – had three simple objectives in mind when they signed and ratified the treaty. Reducing and eliminating the spread of nuclear weapons, the eventual disarmament of countries that already had weapons, and the peaceful use of nuclear energy technology.  Since then 180 other countries have signed or acceded onto the NPT, including Iran.  Notable exceptions include India, Pakistan and Israel, all of which have never agreed to the treaty’s limitations and so developed their own nuclear arsenals. And North Korea, which abandoned the treaty in 2003 after contravening it by building its own nuclear weapons.

In the case of Iran, news of a clandestine nuclear program was leaked to the world in 2002 by an exiled dissident group based in Iraq, the Mujahedin e-Khalq. Interestingly, the same group that was delisted by the US State Department as a foreign terrorist organization in late September, a major political coup for the collective Iranian opposition.  Since 2002, the United States verified several such claims over the years. With satellite photography and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a body set up by the United Nations in part to fulfill the mandate of the NPT, it has conducted multiple investigations and filed several reports on Iran’s nuclear program.  After highly enriched weapons-grade uranium was discovered in 2003 and two years of European diplomatic efforts achieved little progress, the IAEA found Iran in noncompliance with its commitments under the NPT in 2005.  This was reported to the UN Security Council in 2006 and marked the beginning of international pressure on Iran as the UNSC passed the first of many resolutions and sanctions.

Under the pressure of four rounds of comprehensive UN sanctions and tougher US-European measures, the Iranian economy has begun to show signs of strain.  Oil exports are down to 800,000 barrels per day – a low not seen since the Iran-Iraq war ended – from a high of 2.3 million just one year ago. Revenues have sunk dramatically as a result.  Unemployment is estimated to be at 20% and inflation 25%.  While the Iranian currency (rial) has lost two-thirds of its value relative to the dollar in the past year, it lost 30% of its remaining value in the past week due to speculation and government mismanagement.  International sanctions have effectively frozen Iran out of global financial institutions and banking mechanisms, making it prohibitively expensive for the country to borrow from abroad to finance a growing debt, subsidize traditional industries, pay public sector wages or import goods.

The Iranian government claims that it has a legal right as a signatory to the NPT to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.  Because uranium enrichment is part of its civilian nuclear energy program, the country sees no problem developing nuclear power to meet the country’s growing energy demands and to supply it with reactors useful for research and medical isotopes.  Furthermore, Iran claims that it “has constantly complied with its obligations under the NPT and the Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency”.  While these are reasonable claims, they do not stand up to serious scrutiny.

First of all, Iran has a long history of non-cooperation with the IAEA dating back at least 10 years and has been consistently criticized in reports developed by the organization.  Second, Iran has been found in contempt of four cumulative rounds of UNSC resolutions explicitly demanding a halt in uranium enrichment activities.  As a result, it has been targeted with the most punitive sanctions by the international community.  Third, the Iranian government supports Islamic terrorist organizations and repressive regimes while espousing a fundamentalist interpretation of Shiite Islam, qualities that would be strengthened by the possession of a nuclear bomb in their weaponry.  Finally, Iran has made its intention to eliminate Israel no secret, a task which would be greatly facilitated by the destructive potential offered by nuclear weapons.

The consequences of an empowered and emboldened nuclear Iran are serious.  Because of the risks and dangers posed by nuclear weapons technology, it is up to the Iranian government to convince the rest of the world of its benign intentions.  The fact that Iran continues to lob rhetorical grenades at its political enemies, especially to excoriate American imperialism and demonize Israeli existence, does not create any goodwill in its direction among those countries that can positively contribute to Iran’s success and rehabilitation in the international community.  On this note, war remains a very real possibility in the region, and this is in large part because of Iran’s refusal to desist from continuing with its nuclear program.  Its flagrant disregard for the IAEA and international law also undermines the long-term effectiveness of the NPT by weakening the collective ethos of non-proliferation that it represents.  The Iranian government is testing the limits of the NPT by behaving defiantly.  Whether and in what form the NPT survives the Iranian challenge will depend largely on how the international community reacts.

The latest round of nuclear talks between Iran and the West has once again failed to deliver concrete results, resolutions (of even the most minimally binding nature) or serious agreement of any kind; besides of course, agreeing to reschedule previously scheduled meetings for a future-but-as-of-yet-undefined date in time.  The West in this case refers to the P5+1, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) plus Germany (or the EU3+3, named after another Iranian negotiating bloc in the mid-2000s).

This patently predictable turn of events, this lack of progress on a potentially globally destabilizing hot-button political issue, has not surprised a single analyst or political expert on Iranian nuclear affairs.  Western-Iranian nuclear negotiations have become almost as endlessly protracted and hopelessly intractable as Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations; to paraphrase the Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz, these nuclear negotiations have become the only continuation of politics by other means.

A decade without progress

Timelines are wonderful organizing tools for demonstrating any political issue’s historical significance and why it matters today.  Though Iran’s nuclear program ostensibly has its roots in the 1950s with the Shah of Iran and the United States’ Cold War-inspired Atoms for Peace program, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear program lay largely passive and uncontroversial until the early 2000s.  In August 2002, an Iranian dissident group publicized information that Iran was secretly constructing two nuclear facilities, an underground uranium enrichment facility in Natanz and a heavy water facility in Arak. Since then the International Atomic Energy Agency has released several critical reports on Iran’s nuclear work and Western powers have begun to heed these developments more closely.  As knowledge of subsequent clandestine facilities has emerged, Iran’s combative stance towards the West in general and many of its neighbours in the region in particular (Israel and Saudi Arabia, along with the Gulf States) has pushed the West towards confrontation with Iran over these nuclear and geopolitical issues.

As of 2007, the United Nations Security Council has imposed a series of sanctions on Iran demanding that it cease its uranium enrichment activities, targeting Iran’s leadership personnel, its banking and financial industries, its military-industrial complex, and most importantly, its energy export and shipping capabilities.  These sanctions have recently begun to bite as Iran acknowledges that its oil exports have fallen by 20-30%, from 2.2 million to 1.54-1.76 million barrels of oil per day.  After little progress in 2011 on the Western-Iranian nuclear negotiating front, the first half of 2012 has already seen two damning International Atomic Energy Agency reports in February and May, both of which accuse Iran of essentially failing to provide nuclear inspectors with the access and cooperation needed to conclude on its nuclear program’s non-military, civilian dimensions.

A false hope?

The latest flurry of diplomatic activity between the P5+1 and Iran has also seen no breakthroughs, first in Istanbul in April, then in Baghdad in May and most recently in Moscow in June.  The positive attitudes and constructive dialogues that supposedly permeated these meetings resulted in no movement whatsoever on the Iranian delegation’s part towards complying with Western demands that it freeze uranium enrichment and open its nuclear program for inspections.  Due to this embarrassing lack of progress, these nuclear talks have been effectively shelved until further notice, pending Western talks in Istanbul on July 4.  One can only wonder what these countries will disagree to agree on next – or how long it will take them to even do that.

While some actors have aided and abetted Iran’s intransigent negotiating position (Russia is a close strategic partner while China is a primary energy-importer), much of the international community has been mobilized in line with the mainstream position and against Iran’s recalcitrant defiance of the West.  Impatience with Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons program has even led many countries to push for more action more quickly.  A war of words between Iran and Israel has seen top-level Israeli politicians, intellectuals and military brass openly debate the costs and benefits of a preventive strike on Iran aimed at destroying its nuclear capabilities.  The Saudis have long been wary of a nuclear-armed Iran, as their foreign minister is quoted as saying that negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program are a “waste of time” and should concentrate instead on time-limited talks.  Iran’s historical conflicts with Iraq, its territorial disputes with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, its involvement in the ongoing Syrian civil war as well as its support for the anti-Israel militant groups Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza have all placed Iran in a dangerously precarious, extremely sensitive geopolitical situation.

A complex and tangled web

Ultimately, the fate of these long-stalled nuclear talks rests on Iran’s side of the bargaining table.  As Iran calls for a loosening of the crippling sanctions that have been imposed on it by the United Nations and several key countries before it accedes to any of the West’s demands, negotiations have all but ground to a halt, crawling forward ever-so-agonizingly-slowly.  Meanwhile, outside factors prevent a simple resolution to this ongoing political stalemate.  The presidential election season in the United States has clearly increased the domestic political incentive for American presidential candidates to ‘talk tough’ on Iran while a bolstered governing coalition in Israel amplifies the pressure on Iran to take the threat of a preventive strike seriously.  At the same time, the Arab Spring’s political fallout in the Middle East continues to send ripple waves through the established regional order, with Syria being the latest staging ground for proxy wars between Iran and its detractors over the past 15 months.  All of these potential conflict points could tip the scales of war towards their breaking points, which means that Iran-watchers better strap in their seatbelts and brace themselves for a non-stop, always bumpy ride.

Iran.  The country is without a doubt one of the most geopolitically sensitive states in the international system.  It is also one of the most challenging and chimerical countries for its immediate neighbours, the region’s rising powers, the world’s great powers and the international community as a whole to fathom.  Just this past weekend (April 14, 2012), the first nuclear talks between the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council – China, France, Russia, the U.K., the U.S. – and Germany) and Iran in 15 months took place. During the past decade, subsequent rounds of these talks have led to little or no progress.  The most recent talks in Istanbul have been hailed by the Americans, Europeans and Iranians as ‘constructive and useful’, although nothing of substance was actually achieved at these negotiations.  If the universally positive atmosphere emanating from Istanbul lasts for another month, the real negotiations on Iranian uranium enrichment and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections will begin in earnest on May 23 in Baghdad.

This tenuous breakthrough in Western-Iranian relations is as fragile as it is unexpected.  The West is understandably uneasy with Iran; as a Shiite Islamic fundamentalist theocracy, it is unique in the world and wholly alien to the Westphalian conception of secular politics and sovereign statehood.  Already at odds with traditional Western norms of international order and ideology, Iranians are also wary of foreign interference in their internal affairs after centuries of colonial adventurism and imperial domination from abroad.  The damage done to Iranian-American relations after the 444-day hostage crisis following the 1979 Islamic Revolution certainly did nothing to alter the situation.  As it exists today, Iran is naturally poised to play a role as a regional power at least on par with that of Egypt or Turkey.  All three dwarf their immediate neighbours in size, population, military might, strategic location, systems of alliances, and so on.  This enables them to effectively craft their own spheres of geopolitical influence, and Iran has done an exceptionally good job of manipulating Middle Eastern politics to its advantage.

Take the conflict with Israel as an example.  Opposition to Zionism and any peacemaking or normalization of relations with Israel has been a hallmark of the Iranian regime’s domestic national identity and coloured its foreign policy priorities since the Ayatollahs assumed power in 1979.  This policy has been championed with a renewed urgency since the end of the Cold War in 1991 and the beginning of the Madrid to Oslo Palestinian-Israeli peace process, a fact which has arguably derailed Middle Eastern peace talks for nearly twenty years.  Iranian supreme leaders Khomeini and Khamenei have both prophesied Israel’s impending demise before, but fast forward to the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005 and the increasingly anti-Israeli genocidal rhetoric coupled with his by now infamous habit of flamboyantly denying the Holocaust and it is easy to see why Israeli security interests would be threatened.  Israel has for its part loudly beaten the drums of a preventative war with Iran if nuclear negotiations with Western countries fail to disarm its potential nuclear arsenal, but Iran has done nothing to assuage Israeli fears or alleviate international concerns about its nuclear program.

Another factor complicating American and Israeli relations with Iran is the so-called Arab Spring.  As the domino-effects of revolutionary upheavals in key Arab states permeate throughout North Africa and the Middle East, geostrategic relationships of power are shifting in similarly revolutionary ways.  Since Ben Ali fled Tunisia in a panic and Mubarak stepped down from the Egyptian leadership over a year ago, the Arab World has witnessed unprecedented institutional pressures.  Libya has inaugurated a new chapter in its history with the elimination of Qaddafi while Yemen has initiated a transitional period of governmental change without Saleh in power.  Some Arab monarchies like Morocco and Jordan have ushered in constitutional reforms and allowed for modest political democratization while oil-rich Gulf sheikhdoms spend their way to security.

But the most delicate power play of all is materializing in Syria, where the Assad government is a critical component of the Tehran-Damascus-Beirut-Gaza link.  The Palestinian militant resistance group Hamas has even pulled its headquarters out of Syria’s capital, evidently finding it no longer defensible given its vocal support for popular revolutions elsewhere in the Arab world.  Despite repeated rounds of sanctions and diplomacy from the Arab League and the United Nations, including Kofi Annan’s latest 6-point plan and the inbound monitors meant to stabilize a days-old and already faltering ceasefire, conflict between the Syrian opposition movement based in Turkey and the Damascus-based Assad government will persist because the fundamental issues at the core of it remain unresolved.

Clearly, Iran’s unfaltering support for Assad in this regard is rooted in its strategic interest in the Syrian government’s survival.  Aside from support among Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon – which is not representative of the majority of public opinion in either of those countries – Assad’s Syria is Iran’s only lever of influence in the Arab Middle East and represents one of its closest strategic allies in the never-ending hostility against Israel.  The irony is that while Iran originally praised the Arab masses for ousting secular autocrats and facilitating Islamist competition in Tunisian and Egyptian elections, the regime has found itself in an extremely awkward position in Syria by taking the exact opposite approach.

This pragmatic reality has pitted Iran’s interests diametrically opposed to Turkey’s in the Syrian theatre of conflict.  As Turkey shelters tens of thousands of Syrian refugees and protects the military defectors of the Free Syrian Army, Iran has found it doubly awkward to attend the latest round of talks on its nuclear program in Istanbul – the very same city that hosted the ‘Friends of Syria’ conferences attended by dozens of countries’ representatives in support of the opposition Syrian National Council and aimed at ultimately dislodging Syrian President Assad from power.  Iran almost cancelled these talks completely less than two weeks before they were set to begin because of Turkey’s outspoken role in criticizing the Syrian government’s brutality and aiding the opposition’s efforts.  All this merely indicates the unpredictable and counterintuitive nature of the Arab Spring on the Middle East’s balance of power.

One final observation: the next round of nuclear talks will take place in May in Baghdad, an interesting venue given Iraq’s relative isolation from the region for the past two decades.  The recent Arab League Summit hosted by Baghdad in late March was widely seen as a key step for Iraq along the arduous path towards renewed integration into Arab affairs and largely focused on the ongoing crisis in neighbouring Syria.  Given the long-simmering fears of Iranian influence over Iraq, especially with a Shiite-led government in a Shiite-majority country, even the locale for these talks could be explosive.  Only time will tell if the Iranian government will genuinely compromise with Western powers over its nuclear ambitions, but the P5+1 countries will need to accommodate Iran’s legitimate national interests in terms of energy and security as well.  One thing is for sure, though: the Iranian enigma continues to confound and beguile policymakers and pundit machines alike.

“Most of the violations we see happen at the local level.”  Liliya Shibanova, director of the independent election-observer group Golos (Voice), led the charge within Russia condemning the parliamentary elections of December 4, 2011 as anything but free and fair.

In the days and weeks following the vote, mass protests the likes of which Russia has not seen since the fall of the Soviet Union materialized in no fewer than 60 cities across the country, from Vladivostok in the East to St. Petersburg in the West.

At least 50,000 police and riot troops were deployed in Moscow alone ahead of one “For Fair Elections” rally on December 10, of which several such rallies – some bigger, some smaller – followed.

Turnout for this particular rally ranged from a government-sanctioned figure of 25,000 (meaning 2 riot police for every 1 protestor) to what protest organizers have pegged as high as 150,000.  These events are organized by a coalition of opposition parties and activists to protest ballot stuffing and vote rigging in Russia.

Popular dissatisfaction with what many perceive to be a growing tendency towards autocratic rule and endemic corruption in Russia – combined with the parliamentary election’s actual results – could boil over after presidential elections scheduled for March 4, 2012.

These elections saw the dominant United Russia party’s percentage of the popular vote fall from 64% to 50%.  Numbers like these would still be grossly inflated when considering the rampant reports of voter fraud by independent elections monitors both within and outside of Russia, but the numbers would still grant Vladimir Putin a solid majority in parliament with 238 seats in the 450-member legislative body, or 53% of them.

Gennady Zyukanov’s Communist party is the second-largest,and is clearly Putin’s favoured political partner among the parties, jumping from 12% to 19% in support since the 2007 parliamentary elections and carrying 92 seats in all.

Ever since assuming power in 2000, Putin has engineered his way to ever-increasing power over the domestic political environment and control of key officials at all levels of government, military and security services, media networks and propaganda, state-owned enterprises, and so on.

After handing the reins of the presidency in 2008 to his self-appointed successor, Dmitry Medvedev, and orchestrating the machinations of political life in Russia behind the scenes as prime minister (a post created by Putin and for Putin to circumvent constitutional limits on consecutive presidential terms), the former KGB officer announced his intention to run for a third term as president on September 24, 2011.

Although plotting a ‘constitutional’ return to power since 2008, this September pronouncement marked the official beginning of Putin’s return to the presidency and a decade of increasingly authoritarian rule.

Perhaps even more scandalous than Putin’s inevitable transition from prime minister to president is the manner in which the electoral process itself is already skewed in his favour.

News coverage routinely parades Putin’s accomplishments over the past 12 years and fosters a personality cult around him while simultaneously slandering his presidential opponents in the process, all of whom have struggled to top 10% in recent opinion polls (as opposed to Putin, who comfortably maintains 50–60% approval ratings).

Added to that is the pervasive anti-American tone and Cold War-style rhetoric at the heart of Putin’s campaign, where opposition candidates are portrayed as nothing more than lackeys of the United States and Russia’s societal ills are blamed on the American desire to “weaken Russia and push it back into the chaos that followed the Soviet collapse.”

Putin has even used foreign policy issues as political leverage for the domestic elections by insinuating that the U.S.-led ballistic missile shield in Eastern Europe is an attempt to make vassals, not partners, out of the Russians.

The foreign policy card, in fact, is being played by Putin in many ways to signal his unabashed certainty in victory at the polls on March 4.  Apart from the ballistic missile row with the United States, Russia has been flexing its foreign policy muscles in Europe, Asia and the Middle East in a way that is almost never seen in countries unsure of their next governing party – in other words, in multiparty democracies with competitive, free and fair elections.

Cold spells in Eastern Europe and sanctions on Iranian energy exports to Europe have increased demand (and consequently, price) for Russian oil and gas to Europe, a reality readily exploited by Russia as their pipeline networks stand poised to transport these supplies from their vast reserves to the European states that need them most.

Russia continues to jockey for power with China in the Central Asian republics while ramping up operations on the Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline, a conduit that increases Russia’s leverage with energy-hungry East Asian states as state-run corporations manipulate the flow of oil in an easterly or westerly direction to maximize raw profits.

And in the Middle East, Russia stymies Western progress on nuclear negotiations with Iran and vetoes any prospect of Arab League-United Nations intervention in a brutal Syrian crackdown.

These foreign policy adventures are undertaken with a bravado that reinforces the impression that Putin will easily win the presidency and carry the policies of the past 12 years forward into the next 12.  It is precisely this air of smugness on the part of Putin and the United Russia party that betrays any sense of democratic governance in Russia.

Dissent manifests itself in many ways, with online activism rising in intensity as activist bloggers and social media sites express their frustration with the current system.

Already, some of the 200,000 cameras installed in 90,000 polling stations across the country to monitor the March 4 elections have been hacked in distributed denial of service attacks.

If this is any indication of the population’s growing discontent with Putin’s authoritarian style, expect this election to be the catalyst for an ever-more broad-based, ever-more technologically-savvy opposition politics in Russia.

What is the difference between a government’s domestic and foreign policies?  From a public policy point of view, the foreign ministry is just another department in the bureaucracy of government.  In this sense, foreign policy is comparable to housing policy, environmental policy, transportation policy, and so on, all of which are traditionally thought of as domestic policies.  From an international relations perspective, on the other hand, foreign policy is a murky realm in which countries interact with one another and issues of sovereignty, legality and morality arise that tend not to happen with domestic policies (where one sovereign power usually monopolizes authority). 

International relations theories, as unfortunate but as necessary as it is, are laden with meta-theoretical, philosophical and methodological assumptions that would bore most readers to tears and prevent 9 out of 10 of them from finishing this short article.  Therefore, in the interest of readership and feedback, the qualifying remarks that would normally slow the reader down are removed at this point.  Instead, some of the interesting tensions, contradictions and observations within the nexus of domestic and foreign policies are made in as brief and parsimonious a manner as possible.

Foreign policies in democracies are different from those in dictatorships.  They face different pressures, react to different stimuli and assume different qualities altogether (although some process analysts and systems theorists would discount this fact since the state is just a conceptual ‘black box’ to them).  Consider one of the rationales for the democratic peace thesis (DPT), which is derived from Immanuel Kant’s 1795 essay “Perpetual Peace” and states that war between countries is much less likely when their citizens – the ones that would become soldiers in any such war – are tasked with deciding whether to engage in it or not. 

The DPT hypothesizes that wars between democratic states should not exist, but the evidence shows that democracies declare war on dictatorships just as often as these dictators do on each other.  Non-democracies do not cycle through foreign ministers or foreign policy priorities as quickly as the democratic governments do, they do not debate the costs and benefits of such policies openly in their societies and no logical justification is needed since propaganda is used to gain the public’s support.  Finally, they seldom worry about courting enough favourable public opinion to become re-elected, which is a convenient segue into the effects of elections on foreign policies.

A passing glance at the 2012 presidential elections in the United States is proof enough of this fact.  How many Republican contenders have attacked the incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama for his (mis)handling of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, or for the Iranian nuclear problem and its effects on the US-Israeli relationship?  Elections are like referendums on ruling parties; it is normal to debate these complex foreign policy issues – and a whole host of domestic policy concerns – before elections, exactly when they are most vulnerable to shifts in policy direction.  Needless to say, dictatorships lack these intense and often divisive policy debates, and often follow suboptimal policy pathways as a result.

What is fascinating about this overlap between foreign policy practices and electoral competition is the way that national destinies seem to hinge at times on the outcomes of these seminal moments.  Jimmy Carter infamously lost the 1980 elections for president of the United States because of the hostage crisis in Iran and Ronald Reagan’s skillful exploitation of the Carter Administration’s failure to deal with it.  The 1988 federal election in Canada was perceived at the time as a referendum on Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s negotiations with the United States and Mexico on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA); Mulroney won and NAFTA became a reality.  In another example, elections in Israel in 1996 were directly affected by the Arab-Israeli conflict: Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995 by a Jewish extremist for making peace overtures to the Palestinians while Palestinian militants initiated a spate of bombings in the early months of 1996 to derail peace talks in their own way.

All these examples demonstrate the extent to which foreign policies and domestic politics are interconnected.  It is foolish to try and place them in separate categories as theoretically distinguishable public policies when in practice they intersect in so many ways and in so many places.  In some places they seem to operate independently of one another, like in Russia, for example.  With elections there set to take place in less than two weeks, Russia confidently flexes its foreign policy muscles in oil and gas markets in Europe and Asia as it defends Iranian and Syrian intransigence in the United Nations Security Council, all while mass protests in major cities have complicated Vladimir Putin’s inevitable return to the presidency and 12 more years of power in Russia.  What seems to be an anomaly can be understood with the argument that the Russian foreign policy establishment is overcompensating for the doubt being expressed by the citizenry within Russia by acting aggressively and exploitatively abroad.

This overlap between domestic and foreign policies is neither good nor bad, it just is.  The lesson to take away from this set of examples is that they are inseparable, administered by the same government and therefore coordinated in some way – even when coalition politics hand one party the leadership post and another party the foreign ministry, that coalition still binds the government together within a tacit regime structure.  Learning how to detect these points of overlap can be analytically very interesting, but knowing how to use them to one’s advantage by exploiting them effectively is something else entirely.

Abstract:

The recent intensification of enmity between Iran and Israel has been the focus of political analysts, pundits, practitioners, and critics alike.  As Iranian-Israeli relations have progressively worsened over the past few decades, this wide-ranging conflict has come to encompass countries of all kinds: traditional-great powers and peripheral-minor states.  This conflict has become so polarizing in part because it evokes issues of geopolitical security, strategic energy resources, nuclear weapons proliferation, identity politics, human rights and the global ‘War on Terror,’ among others.  By utilizing two of the most prominent International Relations theories, Waltzian Structural Realism (WSR) and Wendtian Social Constructivism (WSC), this paper seeks to simultaneously explain and understand the 30-year period of Iranian-Israeli friendship and cooperation from 1948 – 1979 as well as the subsequent 30 years of hostility and conflict from 1979 – 2010.  The most likely projection for the future relationship between these two countries remains one of continued conflict, discord and hostility.

This major research paper was originally published at the University of Windsor in April 2011 as part of the Master of Arts in Political Science program.  It is now a featured essay at e-ir.info.  To read the paper in its entirety, click here: http://www.e-ir.info/2012/02/08/the-enigma-of-iranian-is%E2%80%8Braeli-relations/

What is Palestinian reconciliation and why is it important?  This domestic Palestinian political issue, like many things Palestinian, has far-reaching ramifications for the Arab World and the larger Middle East.  The Palestinian national movement has been divided for decades between left-wing secular nationalists like Fatah (now led by Mahmoud Abbas but previously led by the iconic Yasser Arafat) and right-wing Islamic militants like Hamas (led by Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza and by Khaled Meshaal in exile).  Although Hamas was always excluded from the Fatah-dominated Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) for its failure to sign onto the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, the two publicly broke ranks after elections in 2006 and Hamas’ seizure of the Gaza Strip in 2007.  With Hamas governing the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority (PA) administering the West Bank’s 2.5 million, these two mini-states have failed to reconcile their ideologically opposed worldviews, political positions and approaches toward Israel despite repeated attempts over the past 5 years.  As Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations ebb and flow, the Arab Spring overturns entrenched regimes in the surrounding Middle East and the PA pushes for statehood in the United Nations (UN), the need for Palestinian unity, solidarity and reconciliation has never seemed more urgent.

Because of their dominant positions in the Palestinian Territories, Hamas and Fatah naturally overshadow the many other Palestinian factions jockeying for political representation within the national movement.  Last Thursday, December 22, Hamas agreed in principle to join the PLO after fresh elections are held in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem – with participation from refugees all over the world – in order to restore unity and improve representation in the Palestinian leadership.  Along with Hamas’ recently declared intention to shift from violent attacks on Israel to renewed dialogue with the PA, this latest round of Egyptian-brokered talks could actually be more successful than previous ones.  Both Hamas and Fatah seem to have realized that in the wake of the uprisings sweeping across neighbouring Arab states, the benefits of cooperation may finally outweigh the costs of compromise.  The sheer barbarity of Bashar al-Assad’s brutal crackdown and imminent demise of his minority regime has forced Hamas to begin the process of relocating their headquarters-in-exile, and the Fatah-led PA has failed to achieve any tangible results in peace talks with Israel or lobbying in the UN for statehood, so the two parties have engaged once again.  Nevertheless, serious obstacles remain in their way.

To begin with, Hamas remains classified as a terrorist organization, has never renounced violence and refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist, facts which are all diametrically opposed to Fatah’s PLO and the internationally recognized PA.  Hamas also continues to collaborate with Hezbollah, Syria and Iran in rejecting any negotiations with the ‘Zionist entity’ that is Israel – although the unrest on the Arab street in the past year has begun to change this reality.  This fact means that international donors will refuse to continue to fund the PA and Israel will reject any dialogue with the Palestinians if Hamas joins the PLO without agreeing to abide by its past agreements with Israel, amending its charter, denouncing terror, and so on.  But there are other problems: Gaza and the West Bank remain geographically separated, bad blood still lingers from the near-civil war of 2007, millions of refugees live beyond Palestinian borders, corruption continues to run rampant through the bureaucracy, and Hamas’ Islamist political ideology clashes in a fundamental way with Fatah’s secular state-building project.

No country is an island, of course, and foreign interference is inevitable in a case like Palestine’s.  Israel and Hamas remain at loggerheads over issues like recognition, negotiations and nonaggression, so any reconciliation between Hamas and the PLO will be greeted with extreme caution by Israel.  Syrian and Iranian influence over Hamas has also waned as Hamas gradually redeploys its resources outside of Damascus and shifts away from Tehran’s orbit.  The military regime in Egypt has warmed to Hamas as well and has always been congenial to Palestinians in general, hosting reconciliation talks and providing ideological support to Palestinian independence as the Muslim Brotherhood looks poised to dominate Egypt’s postelection political landscape.  As other regional powers aim to influence Palestinian destiny, like the revolution-supporting Turkey and the revolution-suppressing Saudi Arabia, the very identity of the Palestinian political body also remains fluid and malleable.  

Palestinian reconciliation itself remains a distant possibility with major opportunities and several potential pitfalls for the time being.  Much more significant is the electoral process, which will be judged by its legitimacy, fairness and equality for the voting population.  Without meeting several benchmarks for democratic participation and representation, the whole project of Palestinian reconciliation is in doubt.  The dysfunctional nature of Palestinian politics for the past few years has failed to produce long-term results for the Palestinian residents of the Territories and refugees alike, modest improvements in the West Bank’s economic infrastructure notwithstanding.  What is required is a vision for Palestinian unity, a roadmap for sovereign statehood, and a viable basis for its peaceful international relations.  As long as this is lacking from the present Palestinian picture, doubts will remain regarding its future.

No two countries mirror their unfounded hatred for one another more publicly, outrageously, and frankly, entertainingly, than Iran and Israel do.  Most geopolitical archrivals are at least immediate neighbours, like North and South Korea, Pakistan and India, or even the former Yugoslav republics.  Iran and Israel share no territorial borders and so have no land-related grievances.  Even a quick glance at a world map will demonstrate that they are separated by at least two other countries in any direction.  Iran and Israel have never formally gone to war, their militaries have never openly engaged each other, and yet the level of sheer animosity between the two defies even ordinary rivalries.  A war of words has erupted in the Iranian-Israeli relationship that creates drama and stokes tensions.  What’s going on?

In one sense, the media is to blame.  Not directly, but the surplus of reporters and reporting, information’s ease of access and the insatiable appetite among news consumers worldwide all combine to feed this frenzy of speculative journalism and incendiary rhetoric on both sides of the conflict.  Any regular reader of world news – and especially media junkies – will recognize the Iranian-Israeli drama as one of the most frequently recurring stories, often accompanied by detailed maps, timelines and graphs all designed to lure in the reader.  Adam Klein demonstrates the bias and demonization of Iran and Israel in their respective media outlets in a 2009 article in Communication, Culture and Critique.  Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency (a state-run entity, to be clear) often refers to Israel as a ‘savage regime,’ ‘Zionist oppressors’ and ‘general enemies of Islam,’ while Israel’s Yediot Aharonot (that country’s most widely read daily newspaper) lampoons Iran’s President on the regular and casts him as the ‘chief supporter of Islamic terror’ and an ‘immediate threat to the Jewish State.’[1]  Any impartial or ignorant reader of these comments can see that they are oversimplifications and exaggerations, but both countries nevertheless engage in propaganda warfare and fuel much of the tension emanating from the Middle East.

What are the Iranian and Israeli claims for conflict?  Iran routinely mentions three interrelated concerns: Palestinian injustices, Israeli occupations and Western colonialisms.  Let’s look at each of these a little more closely.  The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is indeed a festering wound in the region and involves serious structural inequalities and power asymmetries, but it remains one that can only be solved between Palestinians and Israelis.  In September 2010, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad criticized the Palestinian Authority for renewing direct peace talks with Israel, insisted that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had no authority to negotiate on behalf of all Palestinians, and advocated armed resistance in lieu of negotiations.  In a rare rebuke, Palestinian spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh responded that Ahmadinejad “does not represent the Iranian people” and “is not entitled to talk about Palestine, or the President of Palestine.”[2]  When the internationally recognized representatives of the Palestinian people reject Iran’s influence, their credibility on the issue suffers as a result.

The second issue, Israeli occupation, is also a cause for serious concern where it applies in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.  However, Iran claims that the entire land of Israel is under occupation, a claim that it shares with the Palestinian militant group Hamas (and other radical Islamist groups) and that contravenes hundreds of United Nations resolutions and declarations, numerous articles of international law and the sovereignty of the state of Israel, all of which affirm the basic right of Israel to exist within the borders of June 4, 1967.  Even the Gaza Strip has been evacuated of all Jewish residents since 2005 in the midst of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, though Israel retains tight control over its borders since the Hamas coup of 2007 for security reasons.  In addition, Israel’s relinquishment of the Golan Heights to Syria has always been conditional on a peace treaty along the lines of Egyptian-Israeli peace and the return of the Sinai Peninsula in 1979.  In short, peace negotiations are the best method for the road to less the way to Israel’s occupation the path to peace with Israel

Iran’s third gripe, Western colonialism, is clearly an overblown charge.  This notion stems from Europe’s 19^th and 20^th century-old habit of conquering less advanced civilizations, subduing their populations and extracting their resources for one goal: the power and profit of the homeland.  By considering Israeli Jews as European colonizers, Iran diminishes the impact of the Holocaust (which Ahmadinejad habitually denies in any case) and falsely asserts that Israel owes some unpublicized allegiance to a master-state on the European continent.  There is simply no evidence to support this outrageous claim, yet it is resorted to by Iranian firebrands over and over again.  Another interpretation of this claim lies in Iran’s self-identification as the leader of the resistance against Western expansionism and influence in the Middle East, in which case Israel would be the West’s outpost in the region.  In this case, Iran places itself within an inter-civilizational struggle reminiscent of a Huntingtonian world, or even within a realist’s tumultuous game of power politics in which great powers vie for survival, power and influence.  Again, take a look at a map: can a country the size of Israel really threaten one the size of Iran?

As for Israel’s major claims for continued conflict against Iran, they can also be grouped into three broad categories: nuclear ambitions, genocidal intentions and regional conflagrations.  Iran clearly has a nuclear program; about this, nobody disagrees.  The real issue is the nature of that program, with much of the international community fearing its use as an offensive military weapon and Iran asserting its right to peacefully develop nuclear energy and medical isotopes.  A much-hyped report coming out of the International Atomic Energy Agency in November 2011 provided more evidence than ever before that Iran is indeed flouting the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and pursuing nuclear weapons.  Not only would this challenge the existing balance of power in the region based on conventional arms, it could spur a nuclear-arms race among regional rivals Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others.  Israel has knocked out threatening nuclear sites in other hostile states before: in Iraq in 1981 and in Syria in 2007.  But nuclear weapons themselves are not what frighten Israelis.

Iran’s genocidal intentions – mainly attributable to Ahmadinejad, but found in the ramblings of the Iranian Ayatollahs as well – are what Israelis fear will guide the nuclear threat to their doorstep.  Aside from his ridiculous denial of the Holocaust, a politically motivated ploy to rile Israeli feathers, this controversial claim of genocide has its roots in another one of Ahmadinejad’s fiery speeches.  In June 2006, depending on your linguistic preferences, the president of Iran either called for Israel to be ‘wiped off the map’ or to ‘vanish from the pages of time.’[3]  This inflammatory quote gets much of the attention, but it only warrants further thought because of the context within which it is perceived.  Whether deliberate or not, this language stirs up memories of Jewish genocide in the Holocaust – denied, of course, by Ahmadinejad – and gives Iran’s nuclear program a uniquely sinister character.  Even the Soviet-American nuclear standoff during the Cold War never witnessed such outlandish rhetoric.  It is the combination of these first two claims – nuclear ambitions and genocidal intentions – that troubles Israelis.

The third and final Israeli cause for concern is similar to Iran’s: the potential for the breakout of conflict in the region.  Nuclear arms races aside, a rising Iran has always threatened Arab dominance of the Islamic world.  Especially through its proxies in the region, Iran has the potential to destabilize domestic governments in Palestine through Hamas, in Lebanon through Hezbollah (the only armed paramilitary group in Lebanon as well as the kingmaker in its current coalition government) and in Syria through its support for the embattled dictator Bashar al-Assad.  As the United States pulls its combat troops out of Iraq at the end of 2011, Iran also lies poised to manipulate the sympathetic, Shiite-led government of that country as well.  Finally, Iranian influence has always worried the monarchies of the Arabian Gulf, spurring them to band together in a collective security organization that has kept a watchful eye on the Persian Gulf ever since.  Recent protests in Bahrain became a contest of wills between Iran and the Gulf Arabs, and Iran has threatened many times to close the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for any US, pan-Arab or Israeli strike on its sovereignty, an act that would immediately shut down 40% of all seaborne oil exports to Asia, Europe and the US.  Israel’s government must obviously weigh all these potential costs against the intended benefits of military action against Iran.

Recent events seem to have elevated these tensions to new heights.  Kidnappings in Iran and assassinations abroad have begun to emerge, computer viruses and Internet censors damage flows of information and technology, proxy wars between terrorist networks and Israel continue to rage, and several mysterious explosions in recent months at Iranian military and nuclear installations all beg to be explained: are they all simply coincidental or is there intentional sabotage going on behind the scenes?  It is not so important what the answer is because the hostility and animosity, while irrational and not traceable to any legitimate historical grievance between these two countries, exists nonetheless.  What is important to realize though is that the media cannot help but filter these actions and events through its own discriminatory lenses, so consult multiple sources to triangulate your information and make up your own mind based on as many objectively supported pieces of information as you can.

When Mohammad Bouazizi set himself on fire in the provincial Tunisian city of Sidi Bouzid on December 28, 2010, to protest his inability as a fruit vendor to obtain a simple license to sell his wares at the local market from the government, nobody could have predicted the chain of events that has since led to revolutions in Tunisia and the wider Arab World.  Only ten days after Bouazizi died from his self-inflicted wounds on January 4, 2011, anti-regime protests forced the Tunisian President of 23 years, Zine el-Abidine ben-Ali, to flee the country with his family and inner circle.  By January 14, 2011, the Tunisian case had set the trend for the rest of the region, with popular pressure forcing the Egyptian President of 30 years, Hosni Mubarak, to hand power over to the much-respected military and retire to the resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh on February 11, 2011, only 18 days after massive demonstrations began!  In both of these cases, the Tunisian and Egyptian governments and militaries refused to crack down violently on protestors, and the message that peaceful revolution was possible spread to neighbouring Arab states.  But how did these revolutions succeed in the first place, and how have they managed to inspire populist uprisings elsewhere without any central planning or organization?

Without the modern media in the form of privately-owned newspapers, satellite television stations, smartphone-enabled citizen journalism, Internet-based blogging sites, and social media networks, these modern revolutions would have been impossible.  Take, for example, the fact that Al Jazeera – the Qatari-based satellite TV network with journalists reporting on the ground in practically every Arab state undergoing some type of civil unrest – was temporarily banned from Egyptian households by Mubarak’s supporters, their government-issued accreditation was revoked by the ruling al-Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain, and they have had reporters harassed and a cameraman even killed by pro-regime forces in Libya.  While these state-sponsored acts targeted Al Jazeera directly, they represent an attack by the region’s fundamentally unrepresentative and increasingly threatened authoritarian regimes on all democratically-motivated and transnationally-oriented revolutionary movements in the Middle East.  In other words, as the principles of democracy, transparency, accountability, empowerment, and social justice are championed locally by the international media, the traditional autocrats inimical to these modern qualities react with gradually more erratic, barbaric and unacceptable measures.

Ever since the apparent successes of Tunisia and Egypt, similar anti-government revolutionary movements have taken place in Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, and Bahrain, each with varying degrees of effectiveness in achieving their goals.  Part of the problem is that state-owned media networks often compete directly with the private and international media to feed the public their version of reality.  When government-run media stations lose control of the dominant narrative, they cut off access to foreign news sources by blocking satellite signals, revoking licences, disconnecting service providers, censoring the Internet, shutting down offices and physically deporting journalistic staff.  Until the very last days of Mubarak’s rule in Egypt, local media virtually ignored the millions of people protesting in central Cairo’s Tahrir Square.  Throughout Muammar Qaddafi’s struggle to militarily defeat the rebellion in Libya and Bashar al-Assad’s repressive crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in Syria, for instance, ordinary citizens consuming local radio, newspaper and television broadcasts are bombarded by government lies, propaganda and misinformation on a daily basis.

Even more interestingly, local media networks controlled by national governments can construct diametrically-opposed realities on stories of international significance.  The regional tug-of-war pitting Saudi Arabia and Iran against each other with Bahrain in the middle demonstrates this effect perfectly.  Bahrain is a majority-Shiite but Sunni-led Gulf state in which the Shiite opposition’s popular demands for better treatment in employment, housing and infrastructure have been received by the al-Khalifa ruling family with heavy-handed crackdowns.  Under the guise of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a regional security alliance, friendly Sunni monarchies responded to the King of Bahrain’s request for assistance by dispatching their militaries to the Bahraini capital of Manama and forcefully pacifying the protesters.  This is where fact and fiction collide: while the Sunni and Saudi-owned al-Arabiya satellite television station reported this event as a cooperative military intervention necessary for territorial integrity and regional stability, the Shiite and Iranian-owned al-Alam (Arabic) station decried it as an imperial military invasion that interfered in Bahrain’s sovereign affairs.  However events unfold in Bahrain, the point is that without truly independent media, governments are still able to create and control the narratives.

For the two North African Arab states which precipitated the so-called Arab Spring, it is worth pausing for a moment and reflecting on why the ruling families refrained from turning their powerful security, military and paramilitary forces on their own people in the way that other Arab dictators have done.  Although Egypt and Tunisia represent more homogeneous societies than those in Libya, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East, popular discontent remains a constant feature of the region.  What these demonstrators have recognized and capitalized upon is the power of the media to mobilize the message of the revolution and deliver it to the rest of the world instantaneously.  Whereas mere decades ago the government could control the message, massacre its own population and continue on with business as usual, international public opinion pressures these regimes to substantially modify their behaviour.  Not only are these individual Arab revolutions national in nature, they collectively represent a much broader media revolution in international politics.  Power is rapidly diffusing from governments to populations, aided by transnational networks and encouraged by international awareness.  If these changes usher in more democratic and representative governments, the long-suppressed peoples of the Middle East may finally be able to determine their own destinies and participate in creating a more modern world.

While much of the international media’s limited attention span has focused almost exclusively on the popular uprisings in the Middle East and the pro-democracy protests on the Arab street, another longstanding problem in the region has been overshadowed and overlooked.  With roots going arguably as far back as the First World War, the nearly century-long conflict between Palestinians and Israelis has typically dominated the discourse on security and stability in the Middle East.  Recent developments on the Palestinian-Israeli front have made it increasingly likely that a fresh wave of conflict is likely to erupt in the near future, an eventuality that needs to be considered seriously and addressed responsibly if needless bloodshed is to be spared and a long-sought peace is to be achieved.

What follows is a brief analysis of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, along with its main actors and central issues.   The purpose of this exposition is to inform and educate, not to persuade or proselytize.  Naturally, a piece of this length will neglect some salient aspects of the conflict, but a brief introduction to the topic is necessarily truncated.  While recognizing that human beings are fallible creatures whose written works are naturally hampered by their uniquely subjective perspectives, this article still strives to be as objective, unbiased and neutral as possible.  With those caveats in mind, the problem of peace between Palestinians and Israelis can be explored and the possibilities for progress between these two intransigent protagonists can be examined.

Perhaps it is best to begin in the present day and with the main actors on the Palestinian side.  As it stands, the Palestinians are largely divided between two opposing camps: Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Fatah in the West Bank.  While dozens of peripheral players are involved, these two are paramount.  Hamas won legislative elections in the Palestinian Territories in 2006, but international donors withdrew funding for the Palestinian Authority (the government) because of Hamas’ refusal to renounce violence and recognize Israel.  In a bloody 5-day civil war the following year, Hamas seized Gaza and expelled Fatah forces to the West Bank where they remain today.  Hamas and other Islamic radical movements in Gaza adhere to a religious fundamentalist worldview while Fatah and other secular nationalist groups in the West Bank have adopted a more Western-friendly policy orientation.  Since 2007, Fatah has regained control of the Palestinian Authority and wavered between engaging in peace talks with Israel and reconciliation talks with Hamas but to no avail on either front.

Divisions in Israeli society are no less pronounced than with the Palestinians.  While Israel is a thriving democracy, the most recent configuration in its steady stream of coalition governments can explain much of its recent behaviour.  In 2009, the Likud Party returned to power after a decade in the opposition by courting right-wing political parties.  With its hawkish, messianic and jingoistic worldview, the settler movement has found ample support on the ideological right of the Israeli political spectrum.  When the Israeli government is dependent on courting favour from pro-settler political parties for its survival, peace overtures to the Palestinians become increasingly complex and convoluted.  Israel has been forced to choose either domestic political stability or progress in peace talks with Palestinians.  Palestinians, for their part, have elevated the issue of settlements to one of primary importance in setting preconditions for further talks, an equally detrimental move towards peace which neglects other critical issues like borders, refugees, Jerusalem, water rights, economic arrangements, and so on.

In addition, the role of external actors cannot realistically be ignored.  The United States, the principal benefactor for both the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government, exercises influence for better or worse disproportionate to its direct involvement in the conflict.  Other great powers like Great Britain, France and Russia, and international organizations like the United Nations, the European Union and the Quartet on the Middle East, have also weighed in on the conflict’s dynamics with pomp and circumstance unheard of in any other ongoing conflict anywhere else in the world.  Even regional powers have begun to play bigger and more relevant roles, with Egypt being central ever since it signed the first Arab-Israeli peace treaty in 1979, Turkey maintaining elite-level military and diplomatic ties, and Iran cultivating ever more strategic relationships with fellow rejectionists Hamas, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Syrian state.  While these actors fall outside the scope of this brief overview, they are nevertheless extremely important since any sustainable peace process needs their involvement.

With President Obama coming to office in January 2009, renewed emphasis was placed on resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.  Although the Palestinian Authority and Israel began talks shortly thereafter aimed at establishing a viable Palestinian state living in peaceful coexistence beside a secure Israel, both sides made excruciatingly little progress.  The Israeli government remains unable to compromise on the conflicting demands of Palestinian negotiators and Jewish settlers, and Hamas continues to use violence against Israeli civilians and delay reconciliation with Fatah, both of which remain inimical to the faltering peace process.  Problems internal to the political processes of both actors are unavoidable issues that will only increase in difficulty and complexity as time goes on, whether it be among Palestinians living under the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank or Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip, or even among Israelis living within the state’s June 1967 borders or in East Jerusalem and the settlements in the West Bank.  The sooner this problem is resolved, the better.

Recent events have only served to heighten tension and mistrust between Palestinians and Israelis.  A Palestinian terrorist’s cold-blooded murder of a Jewish family in the West Bank settlement of Itamar, increased rocket and mortar salvos from Gaza landing in southern Israeli cities accompanied by retaliatory missile strikes by the Israeli Air Force, and an explosive device detonated at a busy bus stop in Jerusalem that killed at least one person and injured dozens more.  These localized events have only added more intensity to the increasingly globalized diplomatic contest that Palestinians have been waging for international recognition.  With several Latin American countries recognizing Palestinian statehood in the past few months, and President Obama expressing his hopes to the United Nations in September of 2010 that an independent Palestine would emerge in a year’s time, the political pressure is building for concerted diplomatic action.  By September of 2011, political and economic institutions gradually assembled by the Palestinian Authority over the past few years with the help of international donors will be complete, and an opportunity for international legitimacy of the Palestinian cause will present itself.  Unfortunately, peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis show no signs of resuming.  If Palestinians achieve international recognition without a simultaneous reconciliation with Hamas and resolution of the conflict with Israel, the consequences may not be self-determination and statehood, but a resumption of conflict with a high probability of violence, bloodshed, and possibly all-out war.