The Conference of the Year: Annapolis Conference

The conference is extraordinary in all aspects.

The attendee list is eye-popping, the absentee list is extraordinary short: Iran (and its part of Hamas). Moreover, the accross the board dismissal of its chance of success, a topic on which Mr Khamenei and the US media seem to strangely agree, has downplayed expectations in such a way that the absentees now seems to be shouldering all the downsides of the event (if the event succeeds they are left with nothing), while the attendees are left with the potential upsides (if the event fails well everybody had expected it). But the real significance of the conference is to be found in the implications of the attendees list. Let me flesh out the ones that are most obvious (feel free to add the ones that are missing).
1) Syria is making its first public steps outside its alliance with Iran. While Khamenei and Ahmadinejad sing in unison calling it a waste of time, Syria will be in Annapolis.
2) Saudi Arabia's FM presence within meters of the Israeli PM, for the purpose of discussing arab-israeli peace, blasts away all taboos about contacts with Israel. In that sense the meeting amounts to a historic ice-breaker, a game changer.
3) When media reports and pictures of the event hit the frontpages on the 28th, Iran will be left pondering whether it is not truly isolated. China is telling Iran to obey the UN, Russia tells them to forgive enrichment, the US-UK-FR are crystal clear about what they think of Iran's nuclear programme, Israel-Saudi Arabia and all major Sunni States find themselves weirdly aligned in their suspiscion of an Iran's nuclear ambition...surprise surprise all these sceptics will be at Annapolis.
4) As Bradley Burston writes, the secret weapon og the conference is the weakness of the protagonists. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/928139.html
5) Bush has picked up a strategic objective for 2008 that will be the key vector of the Administration Middle Policy in 2008: Middle East Peace process. The republicans are gonna love him for revamping their image in this crucial electioneering year. And as all america watchers know well the republicans are less dependent on the Israeli lobby than the democrats.