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Morsi's Blackmail, Iran's Threats, And Turkey's Fears Play Out In Gaza
by Spengler
In which David Goldman proposes another possible reason why Hamas allowed the rocketing of Israel just now. A taste:
UPDATE: The protection racket seems to have worked with the ceasefire. Mohammed Morsi has emerged as the hero of the hour--for persuading his Muslim Brotherhood comrades to stop firing rockets at Israel. Morsi is now a legitimate player, Hamas achieves de facto recognition (and can claim victory for assaulting Israel with impunity), and Israel's security is impaired. This is the first poisoned fruit of Obama's re-election.

A couple of nights ago I ran into Dan Senor, a prominent Romney campaign foreign policy advisor, at CNBC's studio, before my interview on the U.S. economy. Host Larry Kudlow asked Senor, now a director of the Foreign Policy Initiative, how Israel could negotiate with a Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, given that Hamas is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Senor replied,

The Egyptian economy is in devastating shape. The last thing the Egyptian government wants -- even a Muslim Brotherhood led government -- is a war on its border. The West has considerable leverage on Egypt.

Senor got it backwards, I believe: Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi encouraged Hamas to attack Israel as part of a protection racket, directed at Saudi Arabia as well as the West. In return for putting out a fire he helped to start, Morsi wants the West and the Gulf States to bail out his crumbling economy. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States (with the exception of Qatar's radical ruler) consider the Muslim Brotherhood a subversive organization and a mortal threat to their regimes and sent Morsi away empty-handed after his mid-August visit to Riyadh. Morsi is hoping that Gaza will shake money loose. "Nice little country you've got here. It would be a shame if something were to happen to it."
Posted by: trailing wife 2012-11-25
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=356765