Israel and the Gulf States may not agree about issues regarding the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and how to deal with Arab terrorism — but everyone in the region worries about how to stop Iran from creating a nuclear weapon.

Iran has declined to respond to questions from the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency about its nuclear program’s “possible military dimensions.” IAEA chief Yukiya Amano warned on Friday, “We cannot provide assurance that all [nuclear] material [in Iran] is for peaceful purposes… What’s needed now is action,” he added.

Israeli Intelligence and Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz responded with deep concern to the IAEA statement.

“Iran’s refusal to disclose its nuclear past casts a heavy shadow over the future,” Steinitz said bluntly. “Amano’s grave words indicate, in fact, Iran’s first violation of the interim nuclear agreement [of last November.] Signing a final agreement under these conditions would be a reckless act that world powers must avoid.

The prospect of achieving any concrete progress towards that goal by the November 24 deadline for a diplomatic deal is dim at best in any case.

“Failure to conclude a solid agreement that prevents nuclear proliferation could have serious consequences, not only in our region, but far beyond,” commented Answar Gargash, United Arab Emirates minister of state for foreign affairs over the weekend. “We must consider it crucial that any future agreement with Iran on the nuclear file be air-tight.”

Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has said the same for years, noted Defense News, quoting his oft-repeated warning, “No deal is better than a bad deal.”

Emily Landau, senior research fellow and head of the Arms Control and Regional Security Program at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv is equally direct.

On October 29, Landau told Defense News, “Now is the time to apply massive pressure. I hope at some point the international community will wake up to the fact that Iran has absolutely no interest in getting a good deal.”

U.S. officials don’t seem to be getting the message, however.

Even when a former American diplomat who has dealt with Iran in the past is the one delivering the news.

Dennis Ross led State Department talks with Iran under former President George H.W. Bush. He has urged the West to resist giving in to Iranian pressure for concessions in order to ensure that some deal is closed.

“It’s no accident that hardly anyone involved inthe Iranian nuclear negotiations has expressed optimism about meeting the November 24 deadline,” Ross wrote in an analysis for the Oct. 16 edition of Foreign Affairs. He listed numerous concessions already won by Iran in talks with the West, simply by holding out and continuing with negotiations, despite numerous ongoing violations.

Whether the Obama administration will hold firm and put the brakes on the current bleed taking place on the sanctions formerly imposed on Iran is anyone’s guess. But unless international powers reassert their authority and put the economic bite back into the sanctions that were already approved by the United Nations and their individual governments, it will soon be too late to do very much at all.

Secretary of State John Kerry, after meeting with Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas in London, said that “a final status agreement [between the Israelis and the Palestinians] is important in enhancing regional security and stability throughout the Middle East” (‘Kerry pledges to peace talks during Abbas meeting,’ Breitbart, September 9, 2013).

“Secretary Kerry’s statement is utter nonsense. If the history of recent years — and indeed of the entire 65-year long period of the Arab war on Israel — has made one thing clear, it is that the lack of a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians is manifestly not the cause of the Middle East’s conflicts, violence and bloodshed.

In fact, it is totally unrelated and irrelevant to the present violence and conflict in Syria, Egypt, Libya, Iraq and Yemen. If Israel didn’t exist, the same problems between and within Arab countries would still exist.

Consider: The Syrian regime of Bashar Assad has killed approximately one hundred thousand people in a war with Sunni Islamist rebels, who have also slaughtered tens of thousands. Massive instability and brutal violence is afflicting Egypt. Yemen has been wracked by internal conflict and thousands have been killed. Libya has become a jungle of jihadist warriors since the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi. In Iraq, over 5,000 people have been slaughtered in virtually daily suicide bombings just this year. Thousands of Christians have been murdered and many dozens of churches destroyed in Egypt, Syria and elsewhere. Not one of these conflicts has anything to do with the Israeli/Palestinian Arab issue.

Historically, the war waged by Arabs on Israel has had little to do with the numerous other conflagrations besetting the region.

In the 1950s, it had no bearing on the Algerian war.

In the 1960s, it had no bearing on the Egyptian invasion of Yemen, or the bloody emergence of the Ba’athist dictatorship in Iraq, or the Aden (now Yemen) Emergency in which hundreds were killed in violence.

In the 1970s, it had nothing to do with the Libyan-Chad war.

In the 1980s, it had nothing to do with the Iran-Iraq war, in which over a million people were killed.

In the 1990s, it had nothing to do with Iraq’s invasion and annexation of Kuwait — though Saddam Hussein absurdly linked them.

(A personal note: I was among heads of American Jewish organizations flown to Qatar in the late 1990s by the Emir of Qatar, who pleaded with us to urge the U.S. Congress to protect Qatar from a feared Saudi Arabia/United Arab Emirates invasion. This feared conflict — in which Arabs appealed to pro-Israel Jews for help — had nothing to do with Israel).

Why is the Obama Administration continuing to repeat false, ridiculous and discredited ideas invented by Israel’s vicious enemies?

It is not in the national interests of the United States for American officials to go around the world falsely stating that the “Arab-Israeli conflict” (which is actually, purely and simply, an Arab war on Israel’s very existence) is the core of the Middle East’s problems and that solving it is the key to regional stability. Not only is it not the core, it isn’t even a factor.

First, it is nonsense.

Second, obtaining an Israeli/Palestinian peace agreement, even if one could, would not solve other regional problems, which are rooted in the region’s ideological and religious pathologies.

Third, the mis-focus on the Israeli/Palestinian divide skews American priorities — as it is doing right now. How can Secretary Kerry make such an absurd statement when Syria is exploding and the region is wracked by violence and instability due to nothing connected to Israel or the Palestinians?

The alleged Israeli/Palestinian “peace process” has become an obsessive fetish which squanders American resources, credibility and standing. Why should the U.S. talk up a bogus peace process that is not going to deliver? Why should it accept the blame for the inevitable failure?

President Obama should publicly repudiate Secretary Kerry’s ludicrous statement.

Morton A. Klein is the National President of the Zionist Organization of American (ZOA).

Gulf states supporting Syria rebels in the civil war against Syrian President Bassar al-Assad have sent them 400 tons of arms, opposition sources told Reuters Sunday.

Most of the shipments contained ammunition for anti-=-aircraft machine guns and shoulder-fired weapons. The ammunition and arms cross into northern Syria form Turkey.

The movement of weapons for rebels reportedly has increased sharply since last week’s reports of the large-scale use of chemical weapons in Syria, where both Assad and rebels accuse each other of using chemical warfare.

United States diplomatic missions in Israel reopened Monday after a day-long closure due to what was deemed a credible Al-Qaeda threat, but the State Department extended the closure of 19 other diplomatic missions in the Middle East through Aug. 10 “out of an abundance of caution.”

“This is not an indication of a new threat stream, merely an indication of our commitment to exercise caution and take appropriate steps to protect our employees including local employees and visitors to our facilities,” said the statement issued by State Dept. spokesman Jen Psaki.

Diplomatic posts in Abu Dhabi, Amman, Cairo, Riyadh, Dhahran, Jeddah, Doha, Dubai, Kuwait, Manama, Muscat, Sanaa, Tripoli, Antananarivo, Bujumbura, Djibouti, Khartoum, Kigali, and Port Louis will remain closed this week.

The U.S. State Department on Aug. 3 issued a global travel alert for American citizens. The alert warned of possible terror attacks by al Qaeda operatives and affiliated terror groups from Sunday through the end of August.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, in an interview Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” said the electronic chatter among terror suspects about a possible attack was “very reminiscent of what we saw pre-9/11.”

Iran is ending it s first contingent of approximately 4,000 Hezbollah terrorist organization fighters, all of them Shi’ite Muslims, to fight with the Assad regime days after the Obama administration announced it will arm rebels, mainly Sunni Muslims who have been aided by the Sunni Muslim Al Qaeda’s proxy, Al Nusra.

American arms to rebels in Syrians have to pass through Jordan or Turkey. Add to this anti-Syrian and anti-Iran alliance the Sunni kingdom in Saudi Arabia, which would like nothing more to see the Iranian regime collapse, along with its threat to build a nuclear bomb and its ambition to dominate a pan-Islam state throughout the Middle East.

Ditto for the Gulf States.

Iran has thrown down the gauntlet by its sending Hezbollah troops to help Syrian President Bashar Assad. Both countries are dependent on each other.

A victory by Assad is unthinkable. It would totally destroy American’s image of a world power.

If the rebels can overcome Hezbollah and Assad’s army, Iran would be severely weakened, if not decimated.

Until then, Israel faces increasing instability in Lebanon, dominated by pro-Syrian and Hezbollah, and in Syria.

The Obama administration’s decision to take sides  in the Syrian Civil War sucks up Jordan and Turkey as totally dependent on success for the United States, and Israel can only pray that the instability does not turn the Golan Heights into an active war zone.

Once the Al Qaeda-linked terrorists get their hands on weapons, they always can be turned on Israel in the future, the exact same threat that Israel faces against Hezbollah.

Everyone is turning against everyone, and the best outcome for Israel in the Sunni-Shi’ite war is that both sides lose.

The United States also might wish for the same. It is backing the Sunni Muslims, whose terrorists carried out the 9/11 attacks.

The Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt has broken off with Syria. Hamas, headquartered in Syrian only two years ago, now is accused by Assad as training rebels to attack his regime with Kassam rockets.

One interesting sidebar to this proxy war is the Palestinian Authority.  Does anyone remember  that the PA-Israeli issue is supposed to be the heart of all of the problems in the Middle East?

The Gulf Cooperation Council took the lead against Hezbollah Tuesday and unanimously declared it a terrorist organization, a designation that the European Union is considering.

“All GCC countries are convinced that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization,” Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Ghanim bin Fadl Al-Buainain told reporters in Jeddah.

“There is no difference of opinion among the GCC countries on considering Hezbollah a terrorist organization, especially after its involvement in the Syrian conflict.”

The GCC foreign and finance ministers met in Jeddah to discuss Gulf security, “continued Iranian threats, especially the busting of Iranian spy rings” in of GCC countries.