''We believe it can be done within a year and that is our objective'' (US Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, September 2010).
Very few have tried to look at the connection between President Obamas' Iran Deal and his approach towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many try to explain it by simply stating that he was against Israel from the start and his initiatives were doomed to fail, in a time when the entire Middle East was in flames. What if I tell you that it was all a setup from the beginning?As I look at what happened between the years 2010-2014 regarding Obama and the famous 'peace process' negotiations, I feel that there is much more to it than we would like to think. To me, it seems that in one of the biggest political stunts in last decades, Obama has misled the entire world. Especially appealing to American Jewish liberals and Israeli media, Obama used the Palestinian issue (and his advisors) as a distraction in order to take away their attention from his agreement with Iran. This is the story of how it went through.Although many believe that Obama has taken his own new approach reaching to Iran, it was in his excellent article where Dr. Michael Doran revealed that a plan to strengthen relations with Iran has already been written in 2006. Dr. Doran explained about the final report of the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan congressional commission co-chaired by former Secretary James Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton. Published in December 2006, the report urged President Bush to take four major steps; most significant was the call to launch a diplomatic engagement with Iran and Syria.Obama, wise enough not to go and meet Assad himself, sent his friend John Kerry, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to go and meet Assad in February 2009. Main goal was to replace American presence in the Middle East with a coalition of Arab states including Syria and Turkey (where Obama gave his first speech after being elected). Another main goal was to reach a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and the Arab world. In his Cairo speech, Obama explained that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the main sources of tension between the U.S. and the Arab world (Which is of course a claim that is 100% not true. The cause of tension is Radical Islam who chants 'Death to America').Negotiations between Israel and Syria failed as Assad started to butcher his own people in 2011, but Obama was just getting started. In 2010, he launched a special initiative run by Secretary Hillary Clinton and Special envoy George Mitchell, aimed to reach an agreement for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Again, this is all a part of his view that conflict with the Israelis has caused the Arab world to grow suspicious towards America, one that has been shared with many previous presidents and secretaries. Obama also claimed and got a positive response for a total Israeli freeze of the settlements, all to no avail. The Palestinians just would not want to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and relinquish the right of return (which aims to destroy Israel).Now we have reached a crucial moment in the historic timeline. For Obama, after failing with Turkey, after being humiliated by Syrian leader's actions, after not gaining anything from Israeli freeze of the settlements, was beginning to understand that his strategy failed. His main goal always remained Iran but back then, Israeli PM Netanyahu was getting the upper hand. With several hits on Iranian scientists, the launch of cyber warfare through 'Stuxnet' virus and his speech at the UN in September 2012 with the famous '90%' threat to Iran, Israel was gaining momentum. All of this came in total contradiction to what Obama was trying to reach: Obama was trying to set Iran as a force maintained to 'stabilize' the Middle East, but things were getting tougher by the moment. Obama needed a distraction.But not a simple distraction. Obama needed a distraction that would take away the entire international point of view out of Iran. A distraction that would help him pressure Israel and present Netanyahu as a 'refusenik' of Peace. A distraction that would perfectly balance between his ambitions, his local Jewish liberals supporters, and the never-in-favor-of-Netanyahu Israeli media. So he came up, yet again, with the famous 'peace process'.What followed next was one of the biggest political stunts in the history of Israeli-American relationship. As soon as Obama focused his eye on making a deal with Iran, American pressure on the Palestinian issue grew stronger. John Kerry began by saying in the summer of 2013 that 'we are in a new moment of possibility', a statement made by President Obama just 3 years earlier.Are we seriously to believe that Obama gave actual chances for a process that only failed two years before? After Israel's most right wing Prime Minister over the last 20 years, Benjamin Netanyahu, froze the settlements but the Palestinians never made even one concession? I do not think so. I believe that after failing the first time, Obama used Kerry's Enthusiasm, alongside many liberal Jews who wanted to see an end to the conflict, in order to secretly begin his way to sign a deal.It was not long afterwards that we heard about his request from the Israelis to 'stop assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists'. Later that year, after the (not surprising) collapse of Kerry's initiative (after the audacious request from Israel to release more terrorists, while not requesting anything from the Palestinians), Obama placed the blame on the Israeli side. According to several news reports, special convoy Martin Indyk said that 'Netanyahu did not move more than one inch', a statement which came in consistence with reports of Obamas' thinking that 'more than any other factor, Israel’s drumbeat of settlement announcements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem poisoned the atmosphere'.After succeeding in moving the eye of the world from Tehran and forcing Israel to stop neutralizing the Iranian nuclear plan, Obama proceeded. In October 2014, he sent a secret letter to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, describing the 'shared interest' of Iran and The US in fighting ISIS. From then on, it went like a rollercoaster. Israeli PM suffered from a bad image in the eyes of the world, as a 'panicker' who would not want to settle on the Palestinian issue while Obama presented the Iran Deal to the entire world, totally winning the international public opinion.Arab leaders have often used the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to distract their people from their own problems. This issue has been almost traditionally believed by US foreign policy makers to be one of the core issues causing a tension between the US and the Arab world, but never before used by American president as a distraction. International media bought it, as well as several Jewish liberals, Democrat Senators and mainstream Israeli media.But it is not too late. After Obama there will be a new president. So from now on both Israelis, Europeans and Americans opposing the deal must understand: no more distractions. No more criticizing Israel over its actions against Hamas (another proxy of Iran, certainly used by them to create another distraction). From now on, there is one thing and only thing only. From now on, it is stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons and nothing else. No more distractive 'peace initiatives'.''It has taken a lot of time to reach this new moment of possibility, in the pursuit of an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict'' (Secretary John Kerry, July 2013)