There’s a reason Romanian Foreign Minister Titus Corlatean publicly called on US President Barack Obama to take the reins of the faltering diplomatic process between Israel and the Palestinians. In an interview, he delivered a heavy hint to Washington, reflecting the prevailing view among senior diplomatic echelons in Israel and the world that the US initiative is hanging on by a thread.

The Romanian minister hinted that this process is not the personal business of Secretary of State John Kerry. Despite Obama’s efforts to stay out of the quagmire, failure will stain the person sitting in the White House, too. The Nobel laureate cannot hide behind the apron strings of an official, senior as he may be.

Before he decides to trundle out the tired excuse that “The US wants peace as much as the two sides,” Obama would do well to glance at a memo that Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser in the Jimmy Carter administration, placed on the president’s desk in July 1978, at the height of the peace process between Israel and Egypt.

Brzezinski warned Carter that if the United States takes a public stand and then disavows it, US Mideast policy will be left in “shambles.”