ABSTRACT
It should be recalled, and was almost forgotten, that the Iraq War has always been viewed in hard-core neoconservative thinking as a stepping stone to a much more ambitious vision of regional restructuring that included Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and possibly Saudi Arabia and Egypt. This way of thinking on a regional scale made its initial appearance in 1996 by way of a notorious study entitled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” authored by a tightly knit group led by Richard Perle, working under the auspices of the right-wing Israeli think tank The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. The perspective developed in the report rested on repudiating any pretension by Israel of a willingness to negotiate a political compromise with Palestinian aspirations by way of the “the peace process” then associated with the Oslo Framework of Principles agreed upon in 1993.
