Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas and the Global Jihad:

From a summary of a January, 2007 report from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, written by Dore Gold:

From the analysis that follows, new principles of Western policy become necessary that reflect the new realities of the Middle East:

*Iran is more determined than ever to achieve regional hegemony in the Middle East and is fueling regional instability across the entire area. It is a cardinal error for the West to believe that Iran can be turned into a status-quo power by addressing a series of political grievances that its leadership may voice (or by apologizing for Western colonial policies toward Iran in the past). Iran's role in the UN-sponsored "Six-Plus-Two" talks over Afghanistan in the late 1990s (with the U.S., Russia, and Afghanistan's neighbors) cannot be compared to its intended role in Iraq. In the Afghan case, Iran had an interest in the containment of a radical Sunni state under the Taliban, where Shiites were only a minority. In the Iraqi, case in contrast, Iran is threatening to dominate a Shiite-majority country. In any case, after 2001, Iran's limited contacts with the West did not prevent its leadership from sheltering elements of al-Qaeda.

*The primary threat to the Sunni Arab states now clearly comes from Iran. The residual Arab-Israeli conflict is not their utmost concern. Indeed, Israel and the Sunni Arabs may have many common threat perceptions. The resulting coincidence of their security interests may not be sufficient to produce any diplomatic breakthroughs in the peace process, where wide gaps remain between Israel and the Palestinians on all the core issues, but it might warrant low level discussions between Israel and its neighbors about how to address the threats that they face.

*There is no short-term diplomatic option for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As long as the present wave of radical Islam continues and successfully dominates Palestinian politics, it is extremely unlikely that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations will produce any long-lasting agreements. Further Israeli unilateral pullbacks, in the absence of a Palestinian negotiating partner, are likely to strengthen the grip of radical Islam on Palestinian society and vindicate the success of radical Islam across the region as well. This is precisely what happened with the Gaza Disengagement in August 2005.

*The stabilization of the Middle East requires the neutralization of any of the components of the current radical Islamic wave. In this sense, it doesn't matter if Sunni or Shiite organizations are defeated, for the failure of any one of the elements in the present wave will weaken the other elements as well. The defeat of Hamas among the Palestinians or Hizballah in Lebanon would constitute an enormous setback for Iran. Today, Ahmadinejad's Iran is the main source of regional instability across the Middle East, both directly and indirectly, through proxy organizations that it supports.

*Israel has a continuing need for defensible borders. With the rise of both Sunni and Shiite terrorist capabilities around Israel, the Middle East has become a more dangerous region. Deterrence of these organizations may be very difficult to achieve. Under such conditions, were Israel pressured to concede the Jordan Valley, for example, it would likely expose itself to a steep increase in infiltration to the strategic West Bank, including weapons and volunteers, and thus face the same experience it had with the Philadelphi corridor after the Gaza pullout. At the same time, the vacuum such a move created would increasingly attract global jihadi groups to Jordan, thereby undermining the stability of the Hashemite kingdom, and ultimately the region as a whole.