In his column today, David Brooks offers the following explanation for the Bush administration’s push for the peace process:

It took a trip to the region for me to finally understand that this peace process is unlike any other. Itʼs not really about Israel and the Palestinians; itʼs about Iran. … The main point is to organize the anti-Iranians around some vehicle and then reshape the strategic correlation of forces in the region.

I’ve seen this theory before, and there is surely some truth to it. Most everything going on in the Middle East today is happening against the backdrop of the Iranian project to acquire a nuclear weapon, bolster its allies and proxies, and make American involvement in the region as costly as possible.

But I’m skeptical that the matter is as tidy as Brooks presents it. Why build an anti-Iranian coalition on the foundation of the peace process, when there is scarcely an issue in the region that is more fraught with ill will, opportunism, and failure? If the peace process is the vehicle, as Brooks describes it, it’s one hell of a jalopy to use for a road trip. And why link an anti-Iranian front to the peace process in the first place, when they have nothing to do with each other? All that accomplishes is the promotion of an idea that the array of Middle East tyrants loves to invoke — the claim that Israel is the source of all the problems in the region. Why should America be giving credence to this cynical and unhelpful superstition?

Brooks’s theory also puts the U.S. in the position of rewarding the Arabs for supporting us in doing something that they already desperately want us to do — put Iran in its place — as if right now we need them more than they need us. Why can’t the anti-Iranians be organized around the vehicle of being, well, anti-Iran? At least that way the failure of the peace process would not be able to be so easily used to disrupt the unity of a Sunni coalition.

Brooks would have Condi playing a sucker’s game. I think she is, but for a different reason — namely that she actually believes in what she’s doing, or at least that she has bought into the European and Arab hobgoblin in which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the key to success in the region. Neither scenario is confidence-inspiring.