With assassination suspects possibly still on U.S. soil, the Dubai assassins have dragged America into row over fake passports, says Times Online in London.

With police investigations already underway in Australia, Ireland, and Germany, the Obama administration is going to deal with this. WashPost and NYT are still playing the story inside, appropriate  in light of the fact that there has been no official U.S. reaction, but that’s not going to last long.

For the Obama administration, this is where the rhetoric of the president’s Cairo address meets the realities of Middle East decisionmaking. Of course, Israel has the right to defend itself, and of course the U.S. assassinates al-Qaeda leaders every day. But the leaders and the publics of Arab countries (like the United Arab Emirates, where the hit took place) that are open to peace with Israel (and some of whom want U.S. help to deter Iran) are not going to be satisfied by the talking points that go over well in Washington and on cable TV.

The pro-American autocracies in the Middle East (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan) are especially helped by Israeli tactics. Vulnerable to accusations of being soft on Israel, they will posture about not allowing Israeli intelligence to operate on Arab soil with impunity. Democratic forces in the Arab world are undermined by Israeli’s assertion of its right to attack its foes anywhere. By enabling undemocratic Arab regimes to pander to public opinion without actually sharing power, Israeli actions actually force Obama to subordinate his goal of reaching out to the Muslim world to his consistent defense of Israel.

That’s fine with Israeli public opinion and it will probably go over well in the United States where cultural sympathies for the Jewish state run deep. But Jewish Israelis comprise less than 3 percent of the public in the Middle East. To the vast majority of the democratically inclined people in the Middle East, Obama will be seen as indulging the lawlessness that he denounces when Arabs engage in it.