Daniel Pipes--one of the foremost experts in this country on the Middle East--is always worth listening to, in part because he has had an uncanny abiliity to forecast events with judgments that go against the popular grain. (He was warning of a 9/11-type attack years ago.)
In this interview last week, Pipes explains why (1) he's pessimistic about the Middle East peace agreement/ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (he estimates that 80% of Palestinians--including Mahmoud Abbas--have a goal of destroying Israel); (2) he doesn't think Israel currently has the capacity to take out Iran's nuclear facilities; (3) he "would not be shocked" if the United States eventually destroyed those facilities; and (4) is "sympathetic" to the idea that the US troops in Iraq should be withdrawn from Sunni areas, potentially to western enclaves, so as not to be drawn into the vortex of civil war.
