Toward a New Balance of Power in the Middle East
Abstract
The roundtable on the Middle East that the National Committee on American Foreign Policy held last March reflected the perception that a new political configuration was taking place in the region in response to the challenge leveled by President Ahmadinejad of Iran in his repeated assertions that Israel should be thrust into the sea and in Iran's apparent imperial ambition and drive to obtain the nuclear capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction. Based on the wide-ranging discussions that ensued in the March 2008 roundtable as well as subsequent deliberations focused on determining the parameters of what may turn out to be the geostrategic transformation of the region, the National Committee on American Foreign Policy formulated the policy recommendations set forth below. Grand Strategy Preventing Iran from producing nuclear weapons and thwarting its imperial ambitions must be the overarching U.S. foreign policy objective in the Middle East. Toward that end it is in the interest of the United States to play a leading role in forming a coalition of countries in the region and beyond that can and will act in unison in thwarting aggression in the Persian Gulf region; prevent Iran or any country or a combination