The prospect of a Middle East conflagration has prompted an airlift of senior American officials to Israel to warn of the devastating consequences that an Israeli attack on Iran might have. Indeed, the Obama administration’s main challenge these days is not peacemaking, but regional conflict management and preemption. The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon Panetta, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, have already gone through Israel, with Vice President Joe Biden and a high-level delegation of the State Department and the National Security Council due in Jerusalem this week.

But preventing war will not be easy, because US President Barack Obama’s mystique has worn off in the Arab world. The expectation that he would allow the Arabs, particularly the Syrians and the Palestinians, to recover their land without resorting to arms has proven to be unrealistic, by the president’s own admission. Nor has he been able to rein in Iran’s relentless drive for regional hegemony, or convince it to abandon its quest for nuclear arms.