JERUSALEM—While the rest of the world overwhelmingly favored Barack Obama over John McCain during the presidential election last year, Israel was one of the few exceptions.

Now we see why.

The day after Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States, the first world leader he telephoned was Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whose pathetically weak and corrupt “leadership” in the West Bank is sustained only by the powerful presence of the Israel Defense Forces.

Yet, even though most Palestinians, including those living in the West Bank, now reject Abbas’s legitimacy as president, Western leaders do not, as was clearly evident when the new president made his first diplomatic phone call.

Of course, the Bush administration also clung to the false hope that Mahmoud Abbas could help bring peace and stability to the war-torn region. In his visit to Ramallah last year, President Bush spoke as if Fatah was a refreshing peace-seeking alternative to Hamas, even though Mahmoud Abbas, only a month earlier, had adamantly maintained his refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist as a nation-state.

Still, though, President Bush has been perceived throughout the Arab and Western worlds as being decidedly pro-Israel. Changing this perception is clearly at the top of President Obama’s foreign-policy agenda.

Take the recent war in Gaza, for example. Before the inauguration, President Obama was tight-lipped about Israel’s response to the constant rocket attack coming from Hamas. President Bush, meanwhile, had offered strong support for Israel’s actions in Gaza. He pinned the blamed for civilian casualties in Gaza squarely on Hamas.

When the new president finally weighed in, he positioned himself in the middle of a dispute where there is fault on both sides. “Just as the terror of rocket fire aimed at innocent Israelis is intolerable, so too is a future without hope for the Palestinians,” the president said. “As part of a lasting ceasefire, Gaza’s border crossings should be open to allow the flow of aid and commerce …” (emphasis mine throughout).

Obama’s selection of former Sen. George Mitchell as special envoy for Middle East peace reflects this same moral-equivalence blindness. Mitchell’s credentials include his appointment as a special envoy mediating the Northern Ireland peace process between 1995 and 2000—a process that led to the ira/Sinn Fein terrorists achieving political power, a triumph for the tactics of terror.

Mitchell is no stranger to the Middle East peace process either, having dabbled in it twice before. In 2000-01, he led a six-month fact-finding mission to examine the cause of Palestinian violence. In this venture, he “won a reputation for evenhandedness,” according to the Los Angeles Times—in effect placing equal blame on the victims and the perpetrators of the violence. The resultant Mitchell report called for step-by-step, reciprocal moves by both parties—a tried and failed formula for peace in the Middle East.

To this point, the Obama administration has chosen not to pursue a diplomatic relationship with Hamas. But when it comes to Hamas’s overlords in Tehran, that is an altogether different matter.

The new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, has strongly advocated negotiating with Iran. “We look forward to engaging in vigorous diplomacy that includes direct diplomacy with Iran,” Rice said on Monday in the UN chambers. Speaking of national security being advanced through cooperation with other nations, Rice said “there is no more important forum for that effective cooperation than the United Nations.”

The UN also happens to be a primary vehicle for the vilification and weakening of Israel by Muslim nations—one of the reasons the Bush administration saw the futility of it. A greater U.S. participation in the UN will only provide further legitimacy for the Israel-bashing that goes on there.

The new secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has also spoken on the new administration’s softer approach to Iran. “Diplomacy will be the vanguard of our foreign policy,” Clinton said in her Congressional Confirmation Hearing on January 13. “[O]ur task will be to try to figure out the appropriate and effective pressure that will perhaps lead to us dissuading Iran from going forward.” This is what the U.S.—and the UN—has in actual fact been trying to do for years, to no avail.

For his part, President Obama backed up his inauguration speech promise to the Muslim world that he would “seek a new way forward” by choosing to give his first formal interview as U.S. president to an Arab television station. His message in his interview with the Dubai-based Al Arabiya on Monday sent much the same message as his inauguration speech: that the Muslim world—including Iran—can expect a friendlier, softer approach.

“The Iranian people are a great people,” President Obama said during the interview. He then added this gentle slap on the wrist of their leaders:

Iran has acted in ways that’s not conducive to peace and prosperity in the region: their threats against Israel; their pursuit of a nuclear weapon which could potentially set off an arms race in the region that would make everybody less safe; their support of terrorist organizations in the past—none of these things have been helpful.

In the past? As Amir Taheri quipped at the New York Post, Tehran was running guns to Hezbollah and Hamas even as the president spoke!

Compare the president’s conciliatory tone with the straightforward assessment President Bush gave during his Middle East tour in January 2008. Iran, the former president said,

undermines Lebanese hopes for peace by arming and aiding the terrorist group Hezbollah. It subverts the hopes for peace in other parts of the region by funding terrorist groups like Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad. It sends arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan and Shiite militias in Iraq. It intimidates its neighbors with ballistic missiles … and it defies the United Nations and destabilizes the region by refusing to be open and transparent about its nuclear programs and ambitions. …Iran’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere.

Though President Bush lacked the will to confront that threat directly, his simple acknowledgment of the threat is now viewed by his successor as being overly harsh and aggressive.

“[A]ll too often the United States starts by dictating,” President Obama said during the interview, using harsher language to rebuke his predecessor than he did when criticizing the Iranian president.

Iran’s response to President Obama’s olive branch offer was predictable. Rather than show any sign of contrition or appreciation for the president’s remarks, the Iranian president upped his demands, calling on the new U.S. administration to show proof of its claims of “change.” He demanded an across-the-board apology from the U.S. and a complete drawdown of U.S. military forces around the world.

On Wednesday, speaking of “crimes” committed by the U.S. against the Iranians during the past 60 years, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated, “Those who speak of change must apologize to the Iranian people.” He went on to demand an end to America’s “expansionist policies” and a halt to Washington’s support of “the Zionists, outlaws and criminals.”

Such demands may be dismissed as posturing—and, indeed, posturing it is. But it is the weakness that Tehran perceives in U.S. policy that is giving it this confidence. It certainly doesn’t put the U.S. in a prime position for negotiations. It is the very threat of force that actually makes diplomacy effective. In the absence of such a credible threat, diplomacy is just empty words at best—dangerous appeasement at worst.

Tehran is eying the opportunity provided by a more flexible U.S. administration with relish.

And with the pressure lifting off Iran, Israel is bound to become increasingly isolated in its opposition to Tehran—and desperate.

These developments perfectly align with what God long ago prophesied in His inspired Word. Based on these sure words, for years now, we have been predicting the collision course the United States and Israel are currently on. And with the anticipated rightward swing in Israel’s upcoming election, what little carryover is left to the U.S.-Israeli alliance is about to disappear.

This will lead to Israel’s desperate turn to the German-led European Union for help, which will lead to the prophesied clash between the German-led European Union and Iranian-led Islamic extremism. For much more about these prophecies, read The King of the South.