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Source: http://mosaicmagazine.com/supplemental/2014/09/what-now-for-the-united-states/
How America Can Help Stabilize the Middle East
(Mosaic) Michael Doran - American leaders need to repudiate, once and for all, the notion that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the central strategic question in the Middle East. The core threats to American national security in the Middle East today are the rise of the Islamic State (IS), the advance of the Iranian nuclear program, and the spread of Iranian influence throughout the region. They are almost entirely disconnected from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the effort to liberate Amerli, the Turkmen city in Iraq that was under siege by IS, while American planes attacked IS from the air, it was the Shiite militiamen - trained in Iran - who actually took physical control of the city, reportedly under the watchful eye of Qassem Suleimani, the commander of Tehran's Quds Force. Has the U.S. become the air arm of Iranian proxies? The writer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, is a former deputy assistant secretary of defense and a former senior director of the National Security Council.