Failure to strengthen voices of moderation in Middle East

Watching the news from Lebanon, it's poignant to read the title of a new memoir by Jordan's former foreign minister, Marwan Muasher -- "The Arab Center: The Promise of Moderation." The daily headlines tell us that centrist Arabs such as Muasher are becoming an endangered species.

The center is under siege in Lebanon and across the Middle East as the region becomes more polarized between Iranian-backed extremists and U.S.-backed forces. Iran's proxies strike at will -- seizing control of Beirut neighborhoods in a naked show of defiance; lobbing missiles into Israel from Gaza to disrupt peace talks; creating havoc in southern Iraq and Baghdad. And then, with the cunning that makes Iran such a difficult adversary, Tehran's friends retreat -- striking deals that tilt each time a bit more in favor of the radicals. It's a familiar pattern: Iran unsheathes the sword, bloodies the moderates enough to show its power, and then puts the sword back in the sheath.

Muasher's book raises what may be the most damning criticism of the Bush administration's Middle East policy -- that it has unwittingly undercut the very people the United States wanted most to help. In Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and even Jordan, moderate voices in the center are weaker now than they were when Bush took office.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice puts a hopeful gloss on this process of confrontation by seeing it as part of a "realignment" in the Middle East that is clarifying the choices between radicals and moderates. Certainly, the Saudis, Egyptians and Jordanians now see the threat posed by Iran. But has this growing polarization produced positive changes in the region? Has it contained Iranian influence? The mess in Lebanon says no.

Odd as it sounds, I fear that the Bush administration is making the same mistake as hard-liners in the region. It doesn't know when to compromise. It accumulates lots of chips through its military power, but it never plays them at the bargaining table.

Bush could have had a broad dialogue with Iran about regional stability in 2003; nope, the administration wasn't ready. The U.S.-Iranian diplomatic option arose again in March 2006, when Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, offered to send his top adviser, Ali Larijani, to Baghdad for talks about stabilizing Iraq; nope, the administration got cold feet, even though it had invited just such an initiative. Meanwhile, Syria has been signaling for more than a year that it wants U.S. help in negotiating a peace deal with Israel; nope, the administration doesn't trust Syria. So it has fallen to the Israelis to take up the Syrian peace feelers the U.S. is afraid to touch.

And now Lebanon: For months, it has been obvious that the political logjam in Beirut could not be broken without creative American maneuvers. Lebanon needs a strong state, backed by a strong army, but the administration hasn't been able to close the deals -- as on a new president -- that could begin to make this a reality.

The most moving part of Muasher's book is his description of becoming Jordan's first ambassador to Israel after the 1994 peace treaty. He didn't want to do it. It meant exposing himself and his family to Arab scorn. But he wondered: "Would you be able to live with yourself, knowing that you chickened out of a difficult assignment, even this one?" So he went to Tel Aviv and transcended the taboo against dealing with the "other."

Americans will have to learn how to deal with the "other," too, if we are going to get out of the Middle East mess. Iran thinks it's on a roll now, and Tehran's allies are so cocky that it's too late for this administration to make much progress. So it will fall to the next administration to relearn the delicate, sometimes devious skills of diplomacy that can rebuild the Arab center.

© 2008, Washington Post Writers Group