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Fortunately, blind luck has provided something of a safety net for the blunders of American policy-making. The Bush intoxication with democracy in inhospitable places led to the elevation of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the 900-pound gorilla in the Arab world for 80 years, but it mismanaged its mandate, overstepping both the bounds of the new constitution and the toleration of the Egyptian army — which intervened, as it had under Nasser, Sadat and others in 1952, and threw the Brotherhood out. Then the Saudis, frustrated by the American failure to deter Iran from developing nuclear arms, cut the oil price in half, taking the Russian currency down with it. The bungled American effort to defeat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in last month’s election enabled him to strengthen his party at the expense of his radical pro-settler allies, weakening the hard-liners and giving him an enhanced mandate to make a settlement with the Palestinians and attack the Iranian nuclear facilities.

This has providentially occurred as Egypt and Saudi Arabia have assembled an Arab joint force with the Gulf states, and the cooperation of Jordan, Morocco, Sudan, Turkey and Pakistan — an unprecedented span of Muslim powers — to defeat Iran in Yemen. Meanwhile, to the extent that the latest extension in the Iran nuclear talks may lead anywhere, it is because of the Israeli ability to attack the Iranian nuclear program, the Saudi-Egyptian creation of an Arab joint force to counter-attack in Yemen, and the Saudi determination to reduce oil prices and impoverish Iran. Israel has also armed itself with the carrot of agreement to a Palestinian state, as long as the Arab powers, alarmed as they are by Iran, enable the Palestinians finally to accept statehood with the right of return of Palestinians displaced at the creation of Israel in 1948 to the new Palestinian entity — and not, as has been demanded up to now, to Israel, where their numbers would drown the Jewish state. Western policy has failed, but in the Middle East, treacherous quagmire though it has always been, the bellicosity of Iran may facilitate pan-Arab cooperation and Israeli-Palestinian progress at last.