Starting with Iraq, the administration had hoped that after overthrowing the regime of Saddam Hussein a democratic Iraq would serve as a model for the rest of the Arab Middle East to follow. Indeed, Iraq has become a model, but again not in any way the administration hoped or anticipated.

The civil war in Iraq -- which is not officially recognized as one -- is gradually ripping the country apart. A well-defined schism is surely taking shape, separating the country's Shiite and Sunni communities who are engaged in a never-ending cycle of revenge, kidnapping and killings and counter-killings. Last week they took to bombing each other's mosques, destroying in the process the Golden Mosque in Samara, one of Iraq's central religious symbols and holiest sites for Shiite Muslims. A similar attack last year destroyed the dome. Not to mention the Kurds who have already distanced themselves from Baghdad.

The civil war in Iraq is being mirrored in the Palestinian territories, while Lebanon sits on the verge of falling into the trap and re-igniting its internal conflict.

"We have long dreamed of an independent Palestinian state," a Palestinian American from Jerusalem told United Press International. "Well, we now have two states for the price of one," she added sarcastically.

The new reality in the Middle East after a week of heavy fighting between opposing Palestinian factions in the Palestinian territories is that the Islamist Hamas movement is now the new master of Gaza after routing out supporters of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his secular Fatah militants. This represents a major victory for both Syria and Iran, who support, finance and supply weapons and logistics to Hamas.

The new reality in the Middle East is that Hamas' victory comes about as the result of years of misguided U.S. and Israeli foreign policies. The Bush administration elected to ignore the Palestinian-Israeli dispute until it was a day late and a dollar short. And Israel's decision not to deal with Abbas' predecessor, Yasser Arafat, untrustworthy as he may have been to the Israelis, has contributed to the current morass in the Palestinian territories.

Despite his many shortcomings, at least Arafat was, to a certain degree, able to control the situation in the PA far better than Abbas. The current Palestinian president lacks the street smarts of his predecessor.

The new reality in the Middle East is that there now exists a radical, militant "Hamasistan" sitting on Israel's southern border, where more than 1.5 million people are trapped in some of the worst socio-economic conditions found anywhere on the planet today. It may have become a cliche, but it's worth repeating: deteriorating conditions in Gaza have turned the Strip into the perfect breeding ground for al-Qaida recruits.

The new reality in the Middle East is that the Palestinians have wasted yet another opportunity to achieve statehood and to join the world community.

In Lebanon, the new reality is that the Syrian-backed opposition is only one car bomb away from obtaining the majority of seats in parliament.

The assassination of Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel last November, followed by the killing last week of Walid Eido, a Beirut member of parliament, a former judge, and a member of the anti-Syrian coalition, brings the pro-government alliance led by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora dangerously close to losing the majority.

Siniora's government, which includes supporters of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who was assassinated in a similar manner, though with a far more powerful bomb, on Feb. 14, 2005, enjoys the support of the United States -- support that makes it a target of America's enemies in the region.

"Syria has instituted a systematic decapitation of Lebanon," Sajjan M. Gohel, director of international security with the London-based Asia-Pacific Foundation, told UPI.

And while Siniora's government struggles in more than one way to stay alive and maintain its majority, fighting in the north of the country between the Lebanese army and a group calling itself Fatah al-Islam is edging Lebanon ever closer to the abyss. More than 60 Lebanese soldiers have lost their lives in the fighting around the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared. A slew of explosions over the past few months targeting haphazardly both Christian and Muslim areas have added to the tension. Then again, perhaps those explosions were not so random.

Four years after U.S. troops first entered Iraq, hoping to bring about change to the Middle East, the region is undergoing some of its most radical changes. Those changes, however, are far from what Washington had wished for. These changes are also far from what the majority of the people of the region had wished for; military interventions, dictatorships, corruption, theocratic regimes, Islamic extremism, terrorism and al-Qaida and the Taliban.

earlier related report
Commentary: Mideast's wheel of misfortune By Arnaud De Borchgrave, UPI Editor at Large
Washington, June 18 (UPI) -- The law of unintended consequences continues to throw up more consequences that were not intended. Israel is now boxed in between three pro-Iran entities (Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas) and two pro-al-Qaida terrorist groups -- Hezbollah, which is dominant in Lebanon to the north, and Hamas, which now controls Gaza, the size of Washington, to the south.

Both are sworn enemies of the Jewish state. Hamas, a radical offshoot of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, first rose to prominence during the first intifada against Israeli occupation that erupted in 1987. Like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas also runs welfare services for the poor, which in Gaza is almost the entire population of 1.5 million. In 2006, Hamas startled the world and frightened Israel by winning legislative elections and seizing control of the Palestinian Authority and its ministries. It refuses to deal with Israel and shares the conviction of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Israel's demise is preordained.

It is often said that Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. But they have a lot of company in that endeavor. Several opportunities to create a moderate Palestinian state were treated with what diplomats call benign neglect by both Israel and the Bush administration.

In March 2002, when Saudi Arabia got the entire Arab world of 22 nation states to agree to normal diplomatic and economic relations with Israel in return for a Palestinian state east of the pre-1967 war borders, there was nary a diplomatic peep out of either Washington or Jerusalem. President George W. Bush's road map for a Palestinian state was published and promptly ignored -- by both the United States and Israel. A liberated democratic Iraq, it was thought, would prove contagious throughout the Middle East.

Now the chances for a Palestinian settlement remain stuck at minus zero. Extremists have displaced pragmatists. Moderation doesn't pay in today's Middle East; violence does. And the Bush administration's campaign for democratic reform in the region has petered out.

Hamas-controlled Gaza is under a tight Israeli blockade. Israel also controls its power and water supplies. But Hamas has all the automatic weapons, RPGs, rockets and ammo it needs, presumably smuggled in and captured from the defeated Fatah militia. Hamas also collected arms supplied by the United States to the PA's Presidential Guard.

Now relegated to seven towns in the West Bank, what's left of a much-weakened Fatah-dominated government is in no position to bargain with Israel over the return of what was once Palestinian territory. A U.N. map published earlier this month showed 40 percent of the West Bank occupied by Jewish settlements and their numerous interconnecting roads. Under tight military control, these are forbidden to Palestinian traffic.

Before flying to Washington to confer with Bush and congressional leaders, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel was now prepared to hand over to the Fatah government in the West Bank $562 million in withheld tax and customs duties. He thought this would help Fatah turn the West Bank into a Palestinian model of good government. But to make this possible, Olmert would have to relinquish most of the territory to the Palestinians. With his single-digit approval ratings, Olmert cannot afford bold initiatives. And Hamas is still present throughout the West Bank.

In Iraq's Anbar province, the United States is arming Sunnis to fight al-Qaida's jihadi fighters while Iran's clandestine services are also supplying some Sunni groups, presumably to sabotage American peacemaking efforts in that same province. So the United States and Iran are each arming both Shiite and Sunni, a recipe for a future civil war pitting Iranian proxies against Saudi and Jordanian surrogates. The current surge then becomes irrelevant. Unencumbered by time constraints, Iran is confident its Shiite allies will prevail.

But for the U.S. Congress, the spotlight is clearly on "surge" operations in Baghdad where measurable progress has to be registered by September and reported to Bush and Capitol Hill by overall commander Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker -- or Democrats will ratchet up the pressure to throttle funding. Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the ground forces commander, wasn't too helpful when he admitted 60 percent of Baghdad is still insecure, ranging from "a high level of violence" to "no control."

So far, Operation Iraqi Freedom has inadvertently dealt winning hands to Iran. The Maliki government in Baghdad and the mullahs in Tehran have woven a web of mutual interests below the U.S. radar screen. Iraqi ministers are regular travelers to Tehran (via Amman and Beirut) to confer with their Iranian opposite numbers. After U.S. troops leave, Iraq will still have a 900-mile porous frontier with the region's now dominant power.

In January, millions of Iraqis and hundreds of thousands of Iranians journey to Karbala and Najaf for the religious observance of Ashura, where they march, chant and flagellate themselves to mourn the seventh century killing of their revered martyr, Imam Hussein, the grandson of Prophet Mohammad. Weeding out Iranian agents among the pilgrims is impossible.

The five Iranian "diplomats" captured by U.S. forces in Irbil last January were Revolutionary Guard operatives. Their computer hard drives also shed light on the extent of Iran's clandestine operations from Mosul to Basra and from Kut near the Iranian border to desert villages near the Jordanian border. Iranian agents have also recruited from the ranks of Iraq's security services.

The pro-Iran SCIRI (the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq) is the largest Shiite party in Iraq and a member of the coalition government as the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq. Its armed wing, the Badr Brigade, is made up of 12,000 Shiite militia, many of whom were trained in Iran by the Revolutionary Guards before the U.S. invasion. Moqtada Sadr's pro-Iran, anti-U.S. Mahdi Army was ordered to stash its weapons and lie low pending the end of Petraeus' Baghdad surge.

Iran's radical assets in Iraq are biding their time. Benchmarks and timelines are not part of their vocabulary. Iranian parliamentarians are not threatening funding cuts for the mullahs' Iraqi operations -- or for their nuclear ambitions.

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