A Smart Power Breakthrough, But At What Cost?

The UK's Guardian newspaper is reporting that a major Obama foreign policy breakthrough in getting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks back underway is imminent. The price: a much tougher U.S. stance against Iran.

Barack Obama is close to brokering an Israeli-Palestinian deal that will allow him to announce a resumption of the long-stalled Middle East peace talks before the end of next month, according to US, Israeli, Palestinian and European officials.

Key to bringing Israel on board is a promise by the US to adopt a much tougher line with Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons programme. The US, along with Britain and France, is planning to push the United Nations security council to expand sanctions to include Iran's oil and gas industry, a move that could cripple its economy.

In return, the Israeli government will be expected to agree to a partial freeze on the construction of settlements in the Middle East. In the words of one official close to the negotiations: "The message is: Iran is an existential threat to Israel; settlements are not."

Details of the breakthrough deal will be hammered out tomorrow in London, where the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is due to hold talks with the US special envoy, George Mitchell. Netanyahu met Gordon Brown today in Downing Street, where the two discussed both settlements and the Iranian nuclear programme.

Although the negotiations are being held in private, they have reached such an advanced stage that both France and Russia have approached the US offering to host a peace conference.

Obama has pencilled in the announcement of his breakthrough for either a meeting of world leaders at the UN general assembly in New York in the week beginning 23 September or the G20 summit in Pittsburgh on 24-25 September.

The president, who plans to make his announcement flanked by Netanyahu and the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas – plus the leaders of as many Arab states as he can muster – hopes that a final peace agreement can be negotiated within two years, a timetable viewed as unrealistic by Middle East analysts.

It's that "much tougher line" with Iran that is the problem. That could mean all kinds of things, but most certainly the minimum will be the President announcing next month that one one hand, a peace deal is back on the table, and on the other, major new sanctions will be leveled against Iran.

Hell, I can see Obama announcing both at the UN world leaders' meeting next month. We're about to find out what kind of true cost having Hillary as SecState is going to be from this. It's good that the Middle East peace initiative is moving forwards, but it looks like the path goes steamrolling right over Tehran.

Israel got something for this deal. Something big. Keep an eye on this story.