The U.S. is trying to play the role of an objective outsider seeking peace in the Middle East while only a few hundred miles away, the same U.S. government might soon be dropping bombs. U.N. economic sanctions were imposed on Iraq, and weapons inspectors were sent into Iraq, only after Iraq had attacked Kuwait and was defeated. The current confrontation is not between Iraq and the United States, but between Iraq and the United Nations. Saddam Hussein has tried hard to turn it into an Iraq-U.S. confrontation in order to cause division among the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and to weaken the Gulf War coalition. Military action against Iraq will not help the U.S. under the U.N. mandate and may unsettle public opinion in some Arab states, but it will not scuttle Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
Nobody wants to have a military confrontation with Iraq.
The Arab countries don't want it. The U.N. doesn't want it. The Americans don't want it. However, if Iraq returns to a policy of confrontation with weapons inspectors, the United States will have no alternative but forceful action against Iraq as a measure of last resort to force it to comply with U.N. Security Council resolutions. Such military intervention may alienate a number of Arab nations, but it would be seen within the context of Iraq s greater threat to the stability of the region.