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The Relationship Between the U.S., Israel, and Iran

The Prime Minister of Israel recently criticized the Obama administration because he felt the U.S. was behaving too softly towards Iran and particularly its nuclear programs. As a result, he felt that the U.S. has no right to stop Israel from taking its own actions towards Iran. Apparently, he seems willing to enforce more pressure on the U.S. to take more decisive actions towards Iran. Although the U.S. determined that Iran had halted its nuclear program years ago, there have been evidence suggesting otherwise. Suggestions have been made as to how to handle the Iran situation, such as limiting its stockpile of uranium, but President Obama has not yet said a word about preventing Iran from being able to produce nuclear weapons.

Traditionally, both the U.S. and Israel have had poor relationships with Iran, with current conflict primarily over Iran’s nuclear development.  The U.S. has given a substantial amount of foreign aid to Israel due to Israel’s key position in a contest region of the world. Israel depends on the U.S.’s military and political strength to reign influence on other parts of the world. One can say that this political bond formed due to their shared antagonism against several Middle Eastern countries, including Iran. This related to the Strong Triadic Closure discussed in class, as because of the edges that the U.S. and Israel connected to Iran of strong negativity, a new edge between the U.S. and Israel naturally formed.

Looking at the graph, we now have a triadic closure with 2 positive edges and 1 negative edge, making it balanced. This makes it rather difficult for any edge to change. From the article, one can get the sense that the U.S. is more receptive to trying to make amends to Iran, but pressure from Israel (a country less fond of Iran) would force the U.S. to literally choose between whether to maintain their relationship with Israel or Iran. If the U.S. and Israel both had the same intensity of animosity towards Iran, they’d be little tension between the two, but as soon as one country had the sense they weren’t acting in unison with the other, problems emerged. Thus, moving away from a balanced triangle is rather difficult. If the U.S. decides to reconcile with Iran, that would jeopardize their relationship with Iran, making another balanced triangle with 1 positive edge and 2 negative edges, exactly what they started with. This is particularly unfortunate, since if the world sticks with the status quo, it may be risking with a breakout in nuclear capability.

– Max1993

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/12/world/middleeast/united-states-and-israel-engage-in-public-spat-over-iran-policy.html?pagewanted=all

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