No one listens to U.S., Israel [View All]

ATHENS - At the end of November, more than a hundred officials and specialists concerned with security in the Middle East were invited to Athens to "solve the security puzzle in the eastern Mediterranean and the broader Middle East," a test which, needless to say, they failed.

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The striking thing in Athens, on this occasion, was the total lack of concern displayed for Iran's threat, real or imaginary, by everyone else in the conference room. The general discussion proceeded on formulating an initiative to stop the fighting between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza, and on the bleak future of Israeli-Palestinian relations, neither seeming a subject of Israeli or American interest. The latter's warnings about Iran were greeted with audience indifference and trips to get coffee. No one even bothered to argue.

A recently published Israeli assessment of American opinion, written by a former intelligence official now with a think tank in the United States, said the same thing about American public attitudes. He told his readers in Israel that the American public today is obsessed with Iraq. It wants a not-wholly-disastrous way to get out. It has no interest whatever in Iran. It feels no threat from Iran. If President Bush were to initiate military action against Iran, the report said, he would be impeached.

I can't speak for the truth of the last comment as I am not currently in the United States. But it certainly seems true that American and Israeli officials, and journalists, for that matter, are whipping a dead horse when they go on and on about Iran. To promote another war of choice in the Near East seems madness to ordinary Americans - not to speak of ordinary, or official, Europeans. In 2003, attacking Iraq had, in the Western public mind, some vague connection with 9/11. After that mistake, nobody is interested in being afraid of Iran.

Korea Herald