Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/as-inauguration-day-draws-near-obamas-foreign-policy-challenges-grow Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript The Mumbai terror attacks and this month's Gaza conflict have highlighted the many foreign policy issues President-elect Barack Obama will face as soon as he takes office. Columnists discuss how the president-elect and his team may prioritize the problems. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. RAY SUAREZ: Middle East troubles will be only one item of the international agenda confronting President-elect Obama when he takes office next month.We get the perspectives of foreign affairs columnists on the Obama administration's international inbox: Trudy Rubin of the Philadelphia Inquirer; Arnaud de Borchgrave of the Washington Times and United Press International; and David Corn, Washington bureau chief of Mother Jones magazine.Trudy, is President-elect Obama implicated in the international conversation on this crisis even though his swearing-in is weeks away and he's insisted there's only one president at a time, and it's George Bush? TRUDY RUBIN, The Philadelphia Inquirer: I think there's no way that he isn't implicated. He has said that he would like to focus on the Israel-Palestinian issue from day one. I don't think it was the number-one priority, but I think that he would have had and probably still will have his team looking at it from the beginning.And this will make it harder for him to move on any peace process restarting, perhaps expanding a peace process. There already was a sort of peace process going on between Israel and Syria that was being mediated by Turkey. That has now been frozen, even though Israeli Prime Minister Olmert was there last week.And I think he will find it harder to get started with a broader peace process and may find himself in the middle of a continuing crisis on this issue from the day he takes office. RAY SUAREZ: Arnaud de Borchgrave, does a president-elect have to be particularly careful at a moment like this, where he's got no legal power, but still the eyes of the world are on him? ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE, The Washington Times: The eyes of the world are on him, and we have not only the Gaza crisis right now, but we have one in Afghanistan. We have one in Pakistan and India. I mean, there are many things coming down the hill very, very quickly.And it's clear that he has to remain on top of these right up until he takes over and be ready to take immediate action.It seems to me that what's happening now, which is not being mentioned at all, is that we have two client movements of Iran — namely Hezbollah and Hamas — that Israel is very anxious to attack them and, at the same time, send a message to Tehran.You remember two years ago the image of "Israel the invincible" took a very bad blow, and it became "Israel the vincible." And now they've restored that image of invincibility, but at the same time these are messages it seems to me to Iran and a warning that they may very well be next because of the bomb that they're working on, the nuclear weapons that they're working on.