They expect a President Obama to have a dialogue, on a presidential level, with Iran. And you know what? More than half of them are fine with it. Let Obama try this dialogue, they say. Problem is, they also believe that the chances to stop Iran’s nuclear program diplomatically are not great, and that it is John McCain, not Obama, who’s more capable of doing such thing without the use of force. And what if all efforts fails? Obama is very unlikely to act forcefully against Iran, McCain is more likely to do such thing - but still not very likely.

Three days before the US election, and Israelis have different expectations from the two candidates. The Israel Factor panel of experts - a group of eight former officials and scholars who’ve been ranking the presidential race for the last two years – was asked to answer a difficult question: what do they expect from the next president?

For all new Rosner’s Domain readers:
More explanation about The Israel Factor here.
More about the panelists here.
Previous surveys of The Israel Factor here)

The table is self explanatory. The question is on the left, and then the answers - each member of the panel was ranking the candidates separately, the number is the average. The closer to 1 we get - the more unlikely the scenario, the closer to 5 we get, the more likely the scenario.

Here’s the table, followed by a couple of remarks:

expectations from next president

(You can also see the table here in Word format)

And now to some commentary:

1. Were you convinced by promises to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem? Our experts definitely weren’t. Not that it’s the most important question we’ve asked them. What it means is that the panel does see a difference between campaign rhetoric, and between the realities of governing. Another example: the panel does not believe that a President Obama will leave Iraq within a year. No way.
2. Some of the answers the panel has given can be somewhat contradictory. For example: the experts believe that the next president (more Obama but also McCain) will actively support an Israeli-Syrian peace process. However, the panel also believes that the next president (more McCain but also Obama) will stay committed to a democratic Lebanon. This means that if the Syrians are really after Lebanon - as many observers still suspect - American support for the Israeli-Syrian track might dwindle, and American dialogue with Syria (more Obama than McCain) will get nowhere.
3. I already wrote a more extensive post about the next president and the Middle East peace envoy. But note this: the panel does not believe that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is going to be a top priority for either president (as can be expected, more so for Obama than for McCain). However, it believes that both candidates will appoint an envoy.
4. The panel believes that McCain will be a friendlier president to Israel (define “friend”), but it also believes that Obama will be a friend. Even more interesting: the panel believes there’s a good chance that Obama will be better for Israel (define “better”) than Bush. But it does not expect Obama (or McCain) to be better than Clinton was. This essentially means that the panel now believes Clinton was the best possible. That’s interesting because when we asked the panel, exactly two years ago, about Clinton, Bush and the next president, it said it didn’t expect the next one to be as good as Clinton OR Bush (Read the post from two years ago here).
5. What the questions regarding Iran tell us is essentially this: the panel does not see an American president stopping Iran. Neither by diplomacy, nor by force. This leaves Israel with two options: go it alone, or live with the Iranian bomb.
6. The panel does subscribe to the notion that Obama is more likely to pressure Israel to evacuate settlements (3 for Obama, 1.5 to McCain). But here’s another layer: for each question, we also asked our panel members to say whether they think the scenario presented in the question is good or bad for Israel. On this one, a minority said “good” - they would welcome such pressure - the majority said “bad”. Interestingly, there’s no difference in assessment between the two groups: both agree that Obama is likely to “encourage” Israel to evacuate settlements.

Tomorrow in the Israel Factor: Which candidate to be the next Secretary of State is best for Israel?