Speaking today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, in the format of a “conversation” with New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman, Secretary of State Tony Blinken offered his proposed solution to the [Mideast crisis]( https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-at-a-conversation-with-thomas-friedman/) that is totally divorced from reality. It’s a view of the region, and a world, in which there is no Global South, no BRICS, no Israeli genocide, no economic devastation, but rather pieces to be moved around a chessboard to effect a desired result—Iran’s isolation.
What’s good about the current situation, he said, is that “you now have something you didn’t have before, and that is Arab and Muslim countries even beyond the region that are prepared to have a relationship with Israel in terms of its integration, its normalization, its security, that they were never prepared to have before…to make the necessary commitments and guarantees, so that Israel is not only integrated but it can feel secure.” Blinken asserted that all these countries have a conviction that there must be a pathway to a Palestinian state. True enough, as this is required if there is going to be “genuine integration” (with Israel) and the “genuine security you need.”
Security for Israel appears to be the primary concern. Blinken is certain that if this approach of “integration with security with a Palestinian state” is adopted, “then all of a sudden you have a region that’s come together in ways that answer the most profound questions that Israel has tried to answer for years,” and has been its greatest security concern, Iran. And just like that, Iran will be “suddenly isolated along with its proxies and will have to make decisions about what it wants its future to be.” Which Arab nations are planning to isolate Iran? Its new partners in the expanded BRICS? Maybe Blinken forgot that this is the same Iran that just signed a comprehensive security accord with Russia.