The mid-term election has made Barack Obama weaker at home and abroad, writes Graham Usher The outcome of last week's US Congressional elections wasn't decided by the failure or otherwise of Barack Obama's foreign policy. It was decided by an electorate angered by a tanked economy and by a president's failure to deliver the thing he most promised: change. The verdict was damning. In the biggest Congressional defeat in 50 years, Obama's Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans and had their majority sliced in the Senate. Obama retains his prerogative over foreign policy but is now a lesser president abroad, says Bruce Stokes, analyst with the Washington-based German Marshall Fund. "American elections are largely driven by domestic concerns but their outcomes have global ramifications." What does that mean for one of Obama's so far fruitless labours: to revive a meaningful Middle East peace process? Israel and the Palestinians expect Obama to continue efforts to restart negotiations, stopped in September after Israel refused to extend a partial moratorium on settlement construction in the occupied West Bank. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was in the US this week, addressing North American Jewish organisations. He met Vice-President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He didn't meet Obama, away on a tour of Asia. There would have been little point had he done so. Having already spurned an array of political and military incentives -- and denied the president even a small pre-election victory -- few believe Netanyahu will grant Obama what he most craves: a slight extension of the moratorium to provide cover for a Palestinian return to talks. On the contrary, Netanyahu's arrival in New York coincided with the news that Israel plans to build 1,300 new homes in Jewish settlements in occupied East Jerusalem. The US said it was "deeply disappointed". The West Bank Palestinian Authority said "there will be no return to negotiations while Israel pursues settlement activities." Netanyahu shrugged his shoulders. Instead, he harped on a theme he knows resonates more loudly with the new Congress than either settlements or the dim prospect of a Middle East peace: Iran. "The greatest danger facing Israel and the world is the prospect of a nuclear armed Iran," he told the Jewish Federations of North America on 8 November. "If the international community, led by the US, hopes to stop Iran's nuclear programme without resorting to military action, it will have to convince Iran that it is prepared to take such action. Containment will not work against Iran." Netanyahu's belligerency was echoed by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. On 8 November he told the Financial Times that should Iran get near nuclear weapon capability, the US should "neuter" the Iranian government, "sink their navy, destroy their air force and deliver a decisive blow to the Revolutionary Guard". Obama has reportedly told Israel the US is ready to use force to prevent Iran going nuclear: it is its "foremost national security priority", says his Middle East advisor Dennis Ross. But most commentators see this as a sop to stop Israel going-it- alone with a strike. Obama surely knows any Israeli-led dash to war would wreck the international coalition he has built around curbing Tehran through sanctions and diplomacy. It would also squander what little popular credit he has left in the region. Faced with the prospect of new, pugnacious Likud-like Republican House, it's no surprise the Palestinians' reflex was to draw closer to a president who, while weakened, seems at least attentive to their concerns. In the run-up to the mid-term polls Palestinian and Arab leaders spoke of "alternatives" to moribund negotiations such as seeking a US blueprint for ending the conflict or United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. But such independence faded with the scale of Obama's defeat. "We emphasised that our first option is for President Obama to succeed in halting settlement activity... so negotiations can resume on final status issues and immediately on the issue of borders," said chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Ereikat on 4 November. There were no "timelines" for other "options", he added. Other Palestinian diplomats have said there is no point taking anything to the UN without US support. And support is not there. "There can be no substitute for direct face-to-face negotiations leading to two states," said Biden after meeting Netanyahu on 7 November. Obama, Clinton and all other senior US officials have told the Palestinians the same thing. But what happens after Obama's latest efforts run into a wall? There are two scenarios, say observers. One is that of the Israeli government. This says Obama is now so reduced he dare not risk a fight with Congress or even his own party over Israel if he wants to run again for the presidency in 2012. By this reading he will be even less aggressive towards Netanyahu over the next two years than he was in the first two. The Palestinian and Arab hope is that, tethered by Congress at home, Obama will become audacious abroad. They base this on historical analogies that both presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush were more assertive in foreign policy after suffering mid-term Congressional defeats. But the analogies don't hold. Clinton and Bush were active in their second terms as presidents. If Obama wants a second term, Israel is probably right: he cannot enter a fight with a Congress that is as bipartisanship in its support for Tel Aviv as it is united in its animus to Tehran. Obama will be "less ambitious abroad", predicts Charles Kupchan, a foreign policy specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations. "And that's because during periods when Democrats and Republicans can't agree on policy, the default position is to do less".
