Pierre Atlas (“Mideast momentum builds,” June 11) has declared an Obama Spring in the Middle East. President Barack Obama can now pursue the position of “honest broker,” according to Atlas, between Israel and a peace-loving Palestinian state.

In 1978, President Jimmy Carter was the honest broker producing the Camp David accords. The result was the invasion of the U.S. embassy in Iran in 1979 and the assassination of Anwar Sadat in Egypt in 1981.

President Bill Clinton tried his hand at honest broker in the Oslo accords in 1993. The result was increasing terrorist acts against U.S. citizens in foreign lands, culminating in 9/11.

If the Obama administration truly wanted to be a broker for peace, the condition for a Palestinian state would be twofold: first, removal of Iran’s occupation force in Lebanon (Hezbollah) and its thousands of missiles pointed at Israel; second, the closing of all tunnels between Egypt and Gaza by which arms are deployed to Hamas and U.S. naval presence off the coast of Gaza able to interdict weapons that are shipped by Iran. But of course such aggressive measures would not be applauded in Madrid, Rome, Paris and Frankfurt.

Gary L. Shaw

Indianapolis