Obama choice dims hopes in Mideast for change

Barack Obama on Monday nominated Hillary Clinton to be his "tough," "smart" secretary of state and his former foe vowed to give her all to steer America through a perfect storm of global crises.

Obama's choice of Clinton gladdens Israel, but does not overjoy Arabs and Iranians keen for a new start after eight years of perceived U.S. policy calamities.

Clinton talked tougher than Obama when they were vying to be Democratic presidential candidate, decrying her rival's "naive" call for direct talks with foes such as Iran, Syria and North Korea and vowing to "obliterate" Iran if it attacked Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert congratulated Clinton on her appointment.

"Senator Clinton is a friend of Israel and the Jewish people and I am sure that in her new role she will continue to further the special relations between our two countries," he said.

Israelis are warier about Obama's pick as national security adviser, retired Marine General James Jones, whom many Israeli security officials saw as particularly critical of their policies in the occupied West Bank.

Palestinians, who saw U.S. policy tilt even further towards Israel under outgoing President George W. Bush, acknowledged the future secretary of state's grasp of the issues that her husband Bill Clinton grappled with during two terms in the White House.

Obama and Clinton are inheriting a distinctly gloomy outlook for progress towards settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Washington's Arab allies are not expecting a new dawn.

Syrian reaction

In Saudi Arabia, pessimism about Clinton's pro-Israeli fervor is tempered by her hard line on Iran, whose rise as a regional Shiite power, unwittingly assisted by Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has alarmed the Sunni-ruled kingdom.

"Her hawkishness on Iran would be welcome and a break from Obama's dovish instincts," said Saudi political analyst Khaled al-Dakhil. "It seems she'll be a powerful secretary of state.

I don't think the Syrians and Iranians will like it."

Syria is eager for the United States to kick-start stalled peace talks with Israel, but a diplomat in contact with Syrian officials said they were cautious about prospects for detente.

"They recognize that she was much tougher on Syria than Obama during the campaign, and that Obama himself may maintain a tough line with Syria," the diplomat said.

Some in Syria anticipate that Clinton will at least outperform her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice.

The Iranian challenge

Iran, which has defied world efforts to curb its nuclear goals, poses a huge diplomatic challenge and, some analysts argue, as big an opportunity to the Obama-Clinton team.

Yet after nearly 30 years of undiluted hostility between the two countries, reaching a new accommodation will be hard.

Mohammad Marandi, head of North American Studies at Tehran University, said he believed U.S. policy would perforce have to take account of a shifting balance of power in the region.

"The United States is in a much weaker position to bully people in the region," he argued. "A new administration will have the opportunity to behave more rationally to ease tension."

But Obama's nominations, including Clinton and an equally pro-Israeli Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff, were hardly encouraging for Tehran, Marandi said.

"The change we were hearing about has not materialized. The fact that neocons are pleased with the choice (of Clinton) is very revealing. The Clinton administration was not very progressive at all."