While the rhetoric between Iran and its enemies has reached new heights - with Iran's defense minister reportedly threatening the use of "hidden capabilities which are kept for rainy days" in response to a foreign attack - the diplomatic front is also busier than ever. A great deal of expectation is placed on the meeting between United States President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu next Monday, just as a great deal of attention is focused on Israel's preparations to strike the Iranian nuclear program.
Yet while Israel is one of the noisiest participants in the stand-off, it is by far not the only important player to watch. From a long rostrum of powers with heavy stakes (Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and China immediately come to mind), Russia seems to be driving a particularly hard bargain with the US and its allies. Though not
much is known about these secret negotiations, what seems apparent is that the fates of Iran and Syria are intricately linked.
To be sure, the exchange of high-ranking American and Israeli officials has grown into a "parade" over the last month, to borrow the description of the Jerusalem Post. According to reports in the Israeli press, some kind of a grand bargain on Iran is shaping up between the two allies, to be concluded - ideally - during the visit of Netanyahu and the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, to Washington in about a week. (The influential Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, is currently there; the formal occasion for the upcoming visit of Peres and Netanyahu is the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.)
Despite last week's report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to which Iran's uranium enrichment has expanded significantly, [1] and despite the urgency which Israeli officials have sounded, there is increased talk about postponing the strike against the Islamic Republic until after the American elections in November. To be more precise, there are increased indications of massive American pressure on Israel to desist from attacking for now. "For the Americans, the upcoming summit reportedly has only one main aim: Receiving a Netanyahu pledge that Israel will not be striking Iran in the near future," writes the Israeli news site Ynet. [2]
