Jun 19, 2025 10:00:07 am

IN THE MIDDLE EAST GOES THROUGH BAGHDAD, I MEAN TEHRAN: 

A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (commonly known as the “Clean Break” report) is a policy document that was prepared in 1996 by a study group led by Richard Perle for Benjamin Netanyahu, the then prime minister of Israel. The report explained a new approach to solving Israel’s security problems in the Middle East with an emphasis on “Western values.” It has since been criticized for advocating an aggressive new policy including the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and the containment of Syria by engaging in proxy warfare and highlighting its possession of “weapons of mass destruction”. 

The content of the report is organized into an introduction followed by six sections. The report interleaves within its main commentary text a series of “key passages of a possible speech:” While there are those who will counsel continuity, Israel has the opportunity to make a clean break; it can forge a peace process and strategy based on an entirely new intellectual foundation, one that restores strategic initiative and provides the nation the room to engage every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism, the starting point of which must be economic reform. 

The introduction specifically proposes three new policies: Rather than pursuing a “comprehensive peace” with the entire Arab world, Israel should work jointly with Jordan and Turkey to “contain, destabilize, and roll-back” those entities that are threats to all three.

Changing the nature of relations with the Palestinians, specifically reserving the right of “hot pursuit” anywhere within Palestinian territory as well as attempting to promote alternatives to Arafat’s leadership.

Changing relations with the United States stressing self-reliance and strategic cooperation.

“This can only be done if Israel takes serious steps to terminate aid, which prevents economic reform.”

“A New Approach to Peace” While the previous government, and many abroad, may emphasize land for peace—which placed Israel in the position of cultural, economic, political, diplomatic, and military retreat—the new government can promote Western values and traditions. Such an approach, which will be well received in the United States, includes peace for peace, peace through strength and self reliance: the balance of power. 

“Securing the Northern Border” Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An effective approach, and one with which American can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon, including by:

Ian Buruma wrote in August 2003 in The New York Times that: Douglas Feith and Richard Perle advised Netanyahu, who was prime minister in 1996, to make “a clean break” from the Oslo accords with the Palestinians. They also argued that Israeli security would be served best by regime change in surrounding countries. Despite the current mess in Iraq, this is still a commonplace in Washington. In Paul Wolfowitz’s words, “The road to peace in the Middle East goes through Baghdad.” It has indeed become an article of faith (literally in some cases) in Washington that American and Israeli interests are identical, but this was not always so, and “Jewish interests” are not the main reason for it now.

Buruma continues: What we see, then, is not a Jewish conspiracy, but a peculiar alliance of evangelical Christians, foreign-policy hard-liners, lobbyists for the Israeli government and neoconservatives, a number of whom happen to be Jewish. But the Jews among them—Perle, Wolfowitz, William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, et al.—are more likely to speak about freedom and democracy than about Halakha (Jewish law). What unites this alliance of convenience is a shared vision of American destiny and the conviction that American force and a tough Israeli line on the Arabs are the best ways to make the United States strong, Israel safe and the world a better place. -Wiki – How’s that going?

Updated Jun 19, 2025 12:44:03 pm