CHARLIE ROSE: But also you know that the Israelis have said that’s not acceptable, ’67 borders are not acceptable, shared Jerusalem as a capital is unacceptable. The Prime Minister has said that.

WILLIAM HAGUE: If they want as I believe they do want long term security for their country then they will have to embrace those things, arrive at a settlement around those parameters. And I think it’s vital for Israel that they do so.

Look, the Arab Spring brings many benefits. It has many — it’s a hugely positive thing for the world on the whole but I don’t think Israel would want the democratic politics of Egypt, in Libya, in Tunisia, to come in the years to come a bidding war among different parties about who can become more hostile to Israel because the Palestinian issue is not being settled. That is a danger for Israel.

Also they affect Iran, their nuclear program is a major threat to peace in the region and the world. And to focus on facing up to that threat also requires making the agreement with the Palestinians. It is vital for Israel’s security that they do so.

Hague thus joins the highest levels of the U.S. military in arguing that solving the Israel-Palestine conflict is central to progressing on other heated issues in the Middle East, such as Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions. A secure and independent Palestine would not only remove one of Iran’s main rallying causes, but also undermine the impression that Washington permits Israel to behave with impunity in the region, leading to a less polarized and therefore more stable environment.

Hague’s words will likely be received negatively by neoconservatives who propagate reverse linkage, the argument that pressuring Israel to make peace should be postponed until the U.S. has dealt with Iran’s nuclear program and other potential challenges to Israel’s military dominance of the region.

Lieberman doesn’t appear too concerned about testing U.S.-China relations and calls for the U.S. to sanction Chinese companies that do business in Iran.

[Aggressive enforcement of sanctions] means American penalties against companies that continue to invest in Iran’s energy sector or sell refined petroleum to Iran—including Chinese companies.

Lieberman effectively shelves any hope for diplomatic outreach with Tehran– a contradiction of his stated support for the Obama administration’s Iran-policy.

Finally, we must also acknowledge the possibility that the current leaders of Iran are incapable of compromise on the nuclear program, no matter how much pressure is put on them, because opposition to America and the West is so integral to their very identity. If this is the case, our best hope to resolve this confrontation is not for the regime to change its behavior, but for the regime itself to be changed. In this respect, let us hope and pray that what has happened in Egypt will provide renewed inspiration and direction to the millions of Iranians who yearn for freedom.

And he is adament about keeping the “military option” on the table.

I also agree with President Obama that the use of military force is not the “ideal way” to stop the Iranian nuclear program. But if a nuclear Iran is as unacceptable as we all say it is, we must be prepared to do whatever is necessary to prevent the unacceptable.

Lieberman concludes his remarks by managing to work a “reverse-linkage” argument into a reference to one of Theodor Herzl’s most famous Zionist slogans. He suggests that the path to peace for Israel and its neighbors is for Islamist and authoritarian leaders to be overthrown in favor of democratic and peaceful governments.

On the other hand, we must acknowledge that freedom’s range has spread remarkably in our time and we must have the vision to see the world as it can be. This is the alternative future we must also summon the imagination to envision for the Middle East, and the political will to help bring into being:

A Middle East in which a democratic Egypt and a democratic Iran assume their central positions as peaceful, prosperous regional powers and the modern heirs to two of the world’s great civilizations.

A Middle East in which Islamist extremism no longer inspires violence or loyalty, but joins other failed and inhumane ideologies among history’s losers.

And a Middle East in which Israel and its Arab and Persian neighbors live in peace with each other as fellow democracies that respect the human rights of their citizens—in a region where the notion of going to war against each other becomes as unthinkable and absurd as it is today in Europe among nations who fought each other for centuries.

I know this vision may seem like a naïve dream. But I also know, as a great man once said, if we will it, it is no dream!

Establishing a Palestinian state, an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, or ending the siege on Gaza don’t play prominently in Lieberman’s peace plan.

• The Washington Post: Senior Council on Foreign Relations fellow and former George W. Bush policy adviser Michael Gerson writes that after the midterm election, Obama may choose to focus his efforts on foreign policy. He warns that Obama will make little headway in bringing peace in the Middle East because “Palestinian leaders are divided – unable to deliver on the agreements they are too weak to make in the first place. Israelis feel relatively safe behind security walls, uninclined toward risky compromise and concerned mainly about Iran,” echoing the reverse linkage argument frequently employed by hawks in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Gerson concludes that threat of military force against Iran is unlikely because, “When a president threatens force, he also loses control. And Barack Obama seems to be a man who values control.”  As for the Tea Party movement,  Gerson says it represents a “Jacksonian ascendancy” on Capitol Hill and “will urge more forceful policies against Cuba, Iran and Venezuela – along with Russia and China.”

• Time: Tony Karon discusses Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pressure onVice President Joe Biden to get tough with Iran. “The only way to ensure that Iran will not go nuclear is to create a credible threat of military action against it if it doesn’t cease its race for a nuclear weapon,” Netanyahu reportedly told Biden. Karon writes that the Obama administration would have neither a legal basis nor international support in initiating a war with Iran. But the real challenge for the Obama administration, says Karon, may lie in the charges voiced by Republicans that Obama is “soft on Tehran” whenever any attempt at engagement with Iran is pursued. “That will certainly suit the Israeli leadership, who not only want to see a more confrontational U.S. position on Iran, but who also came into office insisting that Iran’s nuclear program, rather than peace with the Palestinians, should be Washington’s priority in the Middle East.”

• Politico: Laura Rozen reports on Dennis Ross‘, a top Obama adviser on Iran and the peace process, presentation to an AIPAC conference earlier this week. Ross addressed the administration’s efforts to pressure Iran, prioritize sanctions and conduct the “creative and persistent” diplomacy needed to “change the behavior of a government insistent on threatening its neighbors, supporting terrorism, and pursuing a nuclear program in violation of its international obligations.” He warned: “[S]hould Iran continue its defiance, despite its growing isolation and the damage to its economy, its leaders should listen carefully to President Obama who has said many times, ‘we are determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.’”

• Weekly Standard: Gabriel Schoenfeld points to a study from the Israeli Begin-Sadat Center that examines various polls conducted over the past few years, and concludes that U.S. public opinion is moving toward confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program. With the U.S. elections coming up, Schoenfeld notes the data shows “a gap between the wisdom of the American people and the wisdom of our elites.” Pointing out that Iran has not been much of a campaign issue, he alludes to the non-interventionism of some Tea Party candidates: “[I]t is unclear what the new crowd of candidates that will likely be elected next week thinks we should do about Iran or much else across the oceans. But at the very least their views probably will not be any worse than those of the goofballs they replace.”

• Pajamas Media: Martin Kramer, a fellow at WINEP and the Adelson-funded Shalem Center in Israel, states in a long Q&A on Iran that the Persian Gulf is “as crucial to American security as Lake Michigan.” He says that “the world has to ask itself if it can tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran deliberately creating uncertainty, instability, and doubt surrounding the great reservoir of the world’s energy.” Kramer argues for reverse linkage, including the premise that Israel maintains a military occupation in East Jerusalem and the West Bank to deter Iranian attacks.

Peres makes the compelling argument that the U.S. has given much to Israel and that Israel should do what it can to help the U.S. in  pursuing American strategic objectives in the region.

The Jerusalem Post reports [my emphasis]:

Speaking of how Israel can give back to the US, he said that just “as the US is trying to understand the security needs of Israel, we Israelis ourselves must understand the security needs of the US.” He continued, “We cannot give back to the United States what the US is giving us, but in our own small way, we can be of help.”

The Post’s summary of Peres’ comments, delivered at the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, continues [my emphasis again]:

Connecting two of the largest issues on the Israeli – and American – agenda, the president said Israel could be of help to the US by enabling an “anti-Iran coalition in the Middle East, and the contribution will not be by declaration, but if we stop the secondary conflict between us and the Palestinians,” in order to allow the US to focus on the Iranian threat.

While Peres doesn’t specify what, exactly, an “anti-Iran coalition” should do — military strikes? sanctions? diplomatic outreach? — he explicitly endorses the idea that bringing an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will make it easier for the U.S. and Israel to pursue multilateral initiatives with Arab allies.

• Foreign Policy: David Rothkopf charges that Roger Cohen’s recent New York Times op-ed totally disregards the threat posed by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Instead, Rothkopf endorses Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren’s New York Times op-ed demanding Palestinian recognition of Israel’s identity as a Jewish state. “As unproductive as the Israeli stance on settlements has been, the Palestinian stance on the nature of the Israeli state, and its ability to continue operations as conceived and sanctioned by the United Nations nearly six and a half decades into its modern existence is just as unconstructive and indefensible,” writes Rothkopf. He concludes with a variation of the debunked reverse-linkage argument, arguing that “[Ahmadinejad’s] grandstanding and inflaming crowds on Israel’s borders with the language of obliteration is not just rhetoric. It is part of a systematic and thus far effective effort to exacerbate dangers and, not secondarily, to prolong the misery of the Palestinian people whose right to a free, independent state created in their own image is, of course, every bit as great as that of the Israelis.”

• The Washington Times: Eli Lake writes that Ahmadinejad’s visit to Lebanon adds pressure to Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to withdraw his support of a UN investigation to determine who killed his father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. “I think it’s clear that Ahmadinejad’s visit is intended to show support for Hezbollah at a time when it’s facing the prospect of indictments in the murder of Hariri and is engaged in a campaign to undermine and derail the tribunal,” said Ash Jain, a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Lake’s article went to print before it was known whether Ahmadinejad would travel to the Israeli border—he did not—but he writes that such a visit “would signal Iran’s proxies were on Israel’s border.”

• FrumForum: Brad Schaeffer, an energy derivatives broker writing for the blog of neoconservative pundit David Frum, lines up three scenarios (best, mid,and worst case) on what could happen to oil prices should Israel attack Iran’s nuclear installations. Best-case results in only a small, temporary spike in prices and the Iranian leadership uses the strike to turn the “military lemon into PR lemonade” by playing “victim” without retaliation. A mid-level escalation would result in small to medium spikes, for a more sustained period, and attacks against Western forces. Worst case would mean an all out war (and closing the Strait of Hormuz) and the doubling of oil prices from their current levels.

• Time: Tony Karon describes Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s trip to Lebanon as emblematic of a U.S. policy failure in the region. The visit makes clear three difficult realities the U.S. is facing: “First, Iran is not nearly as isolated as Washington would like; secondly, the Bush Administration efforts to vanquish Tehran and its allies have failed; and, finally, the balance of forces in the region today prompts even U.S.-allied Arab regimes to engage pragmatically with a greatly expanded Iranian regional role.” Ahmadinejad met with Lebanon’s Christian president and Saudi-backed Sunni prime minister, notes Karon, and “he also appears to be placing a heavy stress on Lebanese unity and the need to avoid division” — rather than focus solely on Iran’s Hezbollah beneficiaries.