by Jim Lobe
It’s no secret that much of the foreign policy establishment here — most notably in recent memory, former CentCom commander Gen. David Petraeus (ret.) — consider the perception of unconditional U.S. support for Israel’s actions in the Middle East as contributing to anti-American sentiment throughout the region. This [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
It’s no secret that much of the foreign policy establishment here — most notably in recent memory, former CentCom commander Gen. David Petraeus (ret.) — consider the perception of unconditional U.S. support for Israel’s actions in the Middle East as contributing to anti-American sentiment throughout the region. This is not just at the popular level, but at the elite level as well. In a remarkable exchange with Foreign Policy CEO David Rothkopf, even former Israeli Amb. Michael Oren admitted this was a problem, noting, “As for arousing enmity, I have no doubt that America’s alliance with Israel fans Middle Eastern outrage.”
In addition to fueling anti-Americanism, it appears that Israeli actions may also promote anti-Semitism. At least that’s what I glean from a closer look at the monumental survey on global anti-Semitism released earlier this week, which both Marsha and I covered at the time. (Please note that the ADL does not agree with that conclusion. You will see below its response to that hypothesis.) Among many other questions, the survey, which, despite numerous complaints (see here, here, and here), contains an amazing wealth of material, asked its more than 53,000 respondents in 102 countries and the Occupied Territories several questions, the answers to which deserve broader attention. The questions included:
1) Do you have a favorable or unfavorable or unfavorable opinion of Israel?
2) Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Palestine?
3) Do actions taken by the State of Israel influence your opinions about Jews, or do they not influence your opinions about Jews? Respondents were given options of “major influence,” “minor influence,” or “do not influence.” They could also volunteer that they don’t know.
4) Would you say that the actions Israel takes generally give you a better opinion of Jews or a worse opinion of Jews? This question was asked only of those who in question 3 above said the actions of Israel influence their opinons of Jews.
Now, one of the great things about this interactive survey is that you can find out how respondents in each country and region answered these questions. (To get to specific answers, go to the global map, and press the “See More” caption just under the circle that provides the “index score.” After you press “See More,” you press “Choose a Subject” on the middle right side of the screen to see all the various topics covered by the survey. This post is based primarily on the “Attitudes Toward Israel and the Middle East” subject on that list.)
Now, at the global level — that is, for all 53,000-plus respondents — here are the results:
On question 1 about how they felt about Israel, 35% said they had a favorable opinion; 30% unfavorable, and 35% declined to rate.
On question 2, about Palestine, 36 percent were favorable; 25% unfavorable, and 38% didn’t rate.
On question 3 — whether actions by the State of Israel influenced respondents’ opinions about Jews — 16% said “major influence,” 19% “minor,” 42% said none; and 23% volunteered that they “didn’t know.”
And on question 4, for the 35% who said Israel’s actions did influence their opinions about Jews, 25% said they had a better opinion, but 57% said their opinion of Jews was worsened by Israel’s action, while another 17% volunteered that they didn’t know how they were influence.
Now, those are not insignificant numbers. According to the ADL, the 53,000-plus respondents represent nearly 4.2 billion people, which means the 35% who said that Israel’s actions influenced their opinions of Jews represent nearly 1.5 billion people. Fifty-seven percent of those 1.5 billion adults translates to 855 million people who, if we extrapolate from the survey’s methodology, are willing to tell pollsters outright that Israel’s actions make them see Jews in a more negative light; which is to say, make them anti-Jewish or more anti-Jewish than they already were.
Of course, as you might expect, this is most pronounced in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, the only area in which there is a strong and consistent correlation between anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiment, according to the ADL. Only nine percent of respondents there have a favourable opinion of Israel; 84% are unfavourable, while, conversely, 84% are favourable to Palestine; only 11% unfavorable. And 58% percent of respondents in the region said Israel’s actions exert either a major (46%) or minor (12%) influence on their view of Jews, which is significantly higher than any other region. Finally, of that 58%, nearly nine out of ten (89%) say that influence is negative.
On to Western Europe, where 46% of respondents said they have a favorable opinion of Israel, 26% unfavorable, and 28% declined to answer. Remarkably, sentiment about Palestine was very similar: 48% favorable; 24% unfavorable; 28% declined to answer. On the question of whether actions taken by Israel influenced respondents’ views about Jews, a not insignificant total of 40% said they did, 18% in a major way, 22% in a minor way, and 52% of respondents said Israeli behavior had no influence on their opinion of Jews. Of that 40% who said they were influenced, however, 64% said it affected their opinions of Jews for the worse, while only 16% said they had a more positive view. These findings must surely be of concern to Bibi Netanyahu who, of course, knows very well that Western Europe is Israel’s biggest trading partner by far and that the Boycott Divest Sanctions (BDS) movement appears to be gaining momentum.
In Eastern Europe — despite the fact that the ADL survey found it to be the second-most anti-Semitic region after MENA — more than six in ten respondents (61%) said they had a favorable opinion of the country, compared to only 46% who said the same about Palestine. Just over a third of respondents (34%) said Israeli actions influenced their opinions about Jews (14% major influence, 23% minor). Of that 34%, 55% said Israeli actions gave them a worse opinion of Jews; 21% said Israeli actions gave them a better opinion.
Sixty-one percent of respondents in the Americas, which is treated by ADL as one region, also hold a favorable opinion of Israel (73% in the U.S.), while only 40% have a similar view of Palestine (45% in the U.S.). Only one in four respondents (16% in the U.S.) said they believed Israeli actions influenced their opinion of Jews, equally split between major and minor. Of those, 35% said Israeli actions gave them a better opinion of Jews, while 45% said they gave them a worse opinion. In the U.S. those percentages were roughly reversed — 46% better versus 36% worse. In fact, the U.S. was just about the only country outside of sub-Saharan Africa where Israel’s actions gave respondents a better impression of Jews than a worse one. In Canada, for example, of the 21% of respondents who said Israel’s behavior influenced their opinion of Jews, 69% said they were affected negatively. Even in Oceania (Australia and New Zealand), where two-thirds of respondents reported having a favorable opinion of Israel (and 60%, remarkably, a favorable opinion of Palestine), of the 23% of respondents who said Israeli actions influenced their opinions about Jews, 71% said those opinions were affected negatively.
In Asia (which included Caucasian states like Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, as well as India, China and Japan), opinions about both Israel and Palestine were roughly evenly split — 26% favorable, 30% unfavorable and 28% favorable, 25% unfavorable, respectively. About one third of respondents (34%) said Israeli actions influenced their opinions about Jews (13% major, 21% minor). Of those, 54% said their attitudes were affected negatively; 27% positively.
Finally, in sub-Saharan Africa, Israel was viewed favorably by 52% of respondents, unfavorably by 22%, while only 27% felt positively about Palestine compared to 39% who had an unfavorable impression. A total of 35% of respondents reported that Israel’s actions influenced their views about Jews, evenly split between major and minor. Of that percentage, slightly more respondents said Israeli actions gave them a better impression (44%) than a worse one (42%).
So it’s quite clear that MENA is very much the outlier (although, given its proximity to Israel, it’s quite a pertinent one) on the question of to what extent Israeli actions contribute to negative views of Jews in general. But of those respondents who say that Israel’s behavior influences their views of Jews, pretty solid majorities in Western Europe (64%), Eastern Europe (55%), Asia (54%) and Oceania (71%) — and a plurality in the Americas (45%) — assert that their impression of Jews is more negative. It is difficult, therefore, to escape the conclusion of some correlation between Israeli actions and the rise or intensification of anti-Semitism as a result in key regions beyond MENA. ADL, however, as you can see below, rejects this notion.
Now, of course, many of the respondents who said Israeli actions gave them a negative impression of Jews were already anti-Semitic (as defined by the ADL Index), in which case the cause and effect are very difficult to disentangle. In addition, it’s worth noting that the vast majority of respondents have no personal connection to Israeli actions and depend on other sources, notably mass media, for their understanding of those actions. On the other hand, however, it seems safe to say that Israel’s actions — at least as reported by those same mass media — do not help the cause of eliminating anti-Semitism around the world, and especially in its own neighborhood where, in fact, Israeli actions have been felt most directly.
I asked ADL to comment on these observations, and their director of international affairs, Michael Salberg, was kind enough to send me the following reaction, which should also be taken into consideration.
Based on our experience in dealing with the very difficult question of overlap between expressions of anti-Israel sentiment and anti-Semitism, we know that often, though not in every case, the two can be closely connected. This is especially so in the Middle East, but also in European society and elsewhere.
Our pollsters have concluded there is no clear evidence in the data that anti-Israel feelings are causing anti-Jewish sentiment, or vice-versa. There are countries where anti-Israel sentiment is much more prevalent than anti-Jewish sentiment. And there are other countries where anti-Jewish sentiment is much more prevalent than anti-Israel attitudes.
In MENA there are high levels of both anti-Israel sentiment and anti-Jewish sentiment. But in other regions, things are more complicated and regression analysis does not show a strong correlation between Israel’s unfavorable rating and anti-Semitic attitudes.
It is true that people who say the actions of the State of Israel influence their opinions of Jews tend to have higher Index Scores than people who say the actions of Israel do not affect their opinion of Jews. However, in every region but MENA, the vast majority of people, 60 percent or more, say that the actions of Israel have no impact on their opinions of Jews or they don’t know:
To reinforce this point, only 35% of respondents worldwide are unfavorable toward Israel, and of those only half, 51 percent, say that the actions of Israel affect their opinions of Jews. So the worldwide Index Score of 26% is higher than the percentage who are unfavorable towards Israel and say Israel’s actions affect their opinion of Jews. We are reluctant to use or describe the data as support for links between attitudes towards Israel and anti-Semitism outside MENA. Even within MENA, ascribing cause and effect was beyond the scope of the survey.
In any event, as I noted above, this is a very rich survey of international opinion that is well worth exploring in the varying levels of detail which it offers.
]]>The Gaza Strip, bordering the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt and the State of Israel, is 25 miles long. At its narrowest point it is less than 4 miles wide, and at its maximum width, it’s 7.5 miles wide — a total area of 141 square miles. With a population of 1.7 million [...]]]>
The Gaza Strip, bordering the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt and the State of Israel, is 25 miles long. At its narrowest point it is less than 4 miles wide, and at its maximum width, it’s 7.5 miles wide — a total area of 141 square miles. With a population of 1.7 million people, Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on earth.
Iran, whose borders include the Arabian Sea to the south, Iraq to the east, Pakistan and Afghanistan to the west, and the Caspian Sea and post-Soviet Muslim states of Central Asia to the north, has a total land mass of 636,000 square miles — about the same as Alaska or Mexico — and a population of 70 million. Yet Foreign Policy CEO and editor at large David Rothkopf recently quoted an Israeli “source close to the discussions” who claimed that an Israeli surgical strike Iranian on enrichment facilities conducted by air, utilizing bombers and drone support “might take only ‘a couple of hours’ in the best case and only would involve a ‘day or two’ overall.”
Is it possible that Israeli efforts to crush Gaza — a small fraction of the size of Iran and adjacent to Israel — are being viewed by some in Israel as a foreshadowing of an Israeli war with Iran, and that success in Gaza seems to be a necessary, even a sufficient prerequisite to a military strike on the Islamic Republic itself?
In the six days between Nov. 14 and Nov. 19, Israel’s Defense Forces (IDF) reported that Israel had launched 1,350 strikes against “terror sites” in Gaza. As this is being written, not only is there dwindling hope of a truce, which Israel denied was in the works, but Amos Harel and Avi Isaacharoff point out that “No one thinks a truce would last forever.” A bus bombing took place today, a grim reminder that before there were rockets being launched from Gaza, suicide bombings were Palestinian militants’ response to targeted assassinations.
Israeli President Shimon Peres is holding Iran responsible for the violence in Gaza, despite Iranian assertions that Gaza does not need Iranian arms. Also in Israeli headlines are Iranian promises to rearm Gaza, replacing the rockets used thus far and those destroyed in Israeli strikes, and Iranian calls for neighboring Muslim states to come to the aid of Gaza. The claim that Gaza is little more than a front base for Iran, implying that Gazans have no grievances or goals of their own, is not new. Fox News considers it “conventional wisdom.” And yet, efforts to reach a negotiated agreement that will halt, if not end, the violence in Gaza do not include Iran at all, but rather are directed at Egypt, whose new president, Mohammed Morsi, has more than his share of challenges to deal with.
One of the arguments that’s being advanced in Israel for a full-scale, no holds barred assault against Islamic militants in Gaza (not all of whom are under the control of Hamas), is that subduing Gaza once and for all would not only eliminate the physical and psychological threats from rockets launched against Israeli towns and cities, but would render Hamas incapable of retaliating as a local surrogate on Iran’s behalf were Israel to militarily attack Iranian nuclear facilities.
Salman Masalha has suggested in a Haaretz op ed that “one could view the attack on Gaza as part of a new plan, a master plan that turns its eyes east to Iran’s nuclear program,” with Gaza the first phase of an attack on Iran that will be followed by another war against Hezbollah in Lebanon:
…the current operation can be called “the little southern Iranian operation,” since it’s designed to paralyze Iran’s southern wing. The next operation will be “the little northern Iranian operation “: It will try to destroy Iran’s Lebanon wing.
In this way, we reach Netanyahu’s red line, the stage of a decision on “the big Iranian operation” – when Israel is free of the missile threat from the wings. That’s apparently the plan of the Netanyahu-Barak duo.
Such promises by Israeli politicians to once and for all remove the threat to Israeli lives and property emanating from Gaza have been made before — such as when Operation Cast Lead was launched — yet in each showdown, Hamas appears to have gained strength and determination, emerging better armed and posing an even greater threat to Israeli civilians during the next confrontation. As a New York Times editorial notes:
Israel’s last major military campaign in Gaza was a three-week blitz in 2008-09 that killed as many as 1,400 Palestinians, and it was widely condemned internationally. It did not solve the problem. Hamas remains in control in Gaza and has amassed even more missiles.
Nonetheless, another argument is that Israel’s military forces, in demonstrating that they can conduct targeted assassinations in Gaza and in the words of one Israeli politician, “bomb them back to the Middle Ages,” will demonstrate that Israel can do the same thing in Iran. Amir Oren, writing in Haaretz, predicts that Israel may try to use its show of strength in Gaza to pave the way for a strike again Iran:
In theory, a force which is able to strike against Ahmed Jabari would be able to pinpoint the location of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And a force that destroyed Fajr rockets would be able to reach their bigger siblings, the Shihabs, as well as Iran’s nuclear installations. So as not to leave a shred of doubt, the IDF Spokesman emphasized that “the Gaza Strip has become Iran’s frontline base.” At first glance, Operation Pillar of Defense seems to be aimed at the Palestinian arena, but in reality it is geared toward Iranian hostility against Israel.
Even in theory, such inferences that victory in Gaza would mean triumph over Tehran strain credulity. Iran has at least seven known nuclear research sites. Esfahan; Bushehr; Arak; Natanz; Parchin; Lashkar Abad and Darkhovin, some of which are located in or near large cities whose size is many times that of the entire Gaza Strip. The metropolitan area of Isfahan, where Iran’s Nuclear Technology and Research Center (NTRC) is located, spans an area of 41,000 square miles. The site of Isfahan’s Uranium Conversion Facility (UCF) alone spans 150 acres. Not surprisingly, Isfahan’s nuclear facilities — 962 air miles from Jerusalem — are protected by anti-aircraft missile systems. While the weaponry brought to bear would be far greater in impact than in Gaza, so would the scale of destruction.
The danger, according to Amir Oren, is that Israel’s political leadership — buoyed by strong performances from the intelligence services and military in Gaza — might try to extrapolate from this operation and transpose it to other places. In other words, whether Operation Pillar of Defense succeeds or not in crushing Gaza into abject submission, the outcome will nonetheless point to escalation with Iran. If Gaza is “flattened,” as Gilad Sharon, son of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has recommended, the victorious Israeli outcry could be “Yes, we can!” and their sights would be set on Iran. And if Gaza militants somehow manage to keep reaching Israel with rockets, the frustrated war cry from Israel’s leadership may be “Yes, we must.”
In either case, an Israeli assault on Iran in the wake of Gaza may indeed be lurching toward the inevitable, and the US could easily find itself drawn into the disastrous debacle that would follow.
- Dr. Marsha B. Cohen is an independent scholar, news analyst, writer and lecturer in Miami, FL specializing in Israeli-Iranian relations. An Adjunct Professor of International Relations at Florida International University for over a decade, she now writes and lectures in a variety of venues on the role of religion in politics and world affairs.
]]>When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the U.N. General Assembly last month that Iran’s nuclear programme was unlikely to breach his “red line” for presumed military action until next spring or summer, many observers here looked forward to some relief from the nearly incessant drumbeat for war by U.S. [...]]]>
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the U.N. General Assembly last month that Iran’s nuclear programme was unlikely to breach his “red line” for presumed military action until next spring or summer, many observers here looked forward to some relief from the nearly incessant drumbeat for war by U.S. neo-conservatives and other hawks.
But even as the Barack Obama administration and its Western European allies prepare a new round of sanctions to add to what already is perhaps the harshest sanctions regime imposed against a U.N. member state, the war drums keep beating.
Earlier this week, Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham said he is working on a new Congressional resolution he hopes to pass in any lame-duck session after the Nov. 6 elections that would promise Israel U.S. support, including military assistance, if it attacks Iran.
And after the new Congress convenes in January, he suggested he would push yet another resolution that would give the president – whether the incumbent, Obama, or his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney – broad authority to take military action if sanctions don’t curb Iran’s nuclear programme.
“The 30,000-foot view of Iran is very bipartisan,” he told the Capitol Hill newspaper, ‘Roll Call’.
“This regime is crazy, they’re up to no good, they are a cancer spreading in the Mideast. …Almost all of the Democrats and Republicans buy into the idea that we can’t give them a nuclear capability,” he said.
While Graham, who succeeded last month in pushing through the Senate – by a 90-1 margin – a resolution ruling out “containment” as an option for dealing with a nuclear weapons-capable Iran, disclosed his new plans, the CEO of the influential foreignpolicy.com website published an article in which he claimed that the U.S. and Israel were actively considering a joint “surgical strike” against Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities.
Citing an unnamed source “close to the discussions”, David Rothkopf, a well-connected former national security official under President Bill Clinton, claimed that such a strike “might take only ‘a couple of hours’ in the best case and only would involve a ‘day or two’ overall,” using primarily bombers and drones.
Such an attack, according to “advocates for this approach” cited by Rothkopf, could set back Iran’s nuclear programme “many years, and doing so “without civilian casualties”.
In an echo of the extravagant claims by neo-conservatives that preceded the attack on Iraq, one “advocate” told Rothkopf such an attack would have “transformative outcome: saving Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, reanimating the peace process, securing the Gulf, sending an unequivocal message to Russia and China, and assuring American ascendancy in the region for a decade to come.”
Rothkopf’s article spurred a flurry of speculation about his source – at least one keen observer pointed to Israeli Amb. Michael Oren, a long-time personal friend who has kept up his own drumbeat against Iran on the op-ed pages of U.S. newspapers.
It also caused consternation among most informed analysts, if only because of the Obama administration’s not-so-thinly-veiled opposition to any military strike in the short- to medium term and the Pentagon’s preference, if it were ordered to attack, for a broad offensive likely to stretch over many weeks.
“The idea that the American military would agree to any quick single strike seems fantastical to me,” said Jon Wolfsthal, a non-proliferation expert who served in the Obama White House until earlier this year. “Should we decide to go, I believe U.S. military planners will – rightly – want to go big and start with air defence and communication suppression. This means many hundreds of strikes and a lot of casualties.”
Meanwhile, the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), a think tank that has issued a succession of hawkish reports by a special task force on Iran since 2008, released a new study here Thursday on the potential economic costs – as measured by the likely increases in the price of oil – of a “nuclear Iran”.
The 47-page report, “”, appeared intended to counter warnings by other experts that an Israeli or U.S. attack on Iran would send oil prices skyward – as high as three times the current price depending on the actual disruption in oil traffic – with disastrous effects on the global economy.
“In the public debate during the last year, a recurring concern has been the economic risks posed by the available means for preventing a nuclear Iran, whether tough sanctions or military action,” it began. “Such risks are a legitimate concern.”
“…Inaction, too, exposes the United States to economic risks,” the task force, which includes a number of neo-conservative former officials of the George W. Bush administration, noted.
The report provides a variety of possible scenarios and estimates the probabilities of each. It stressed that a “nuclear Iran” – which went undefined in the report but which one task force staffer described as the point at which Tehran’s neighbours, notably Saudi Arabia and Israel, were persuaded that it either had a weapon or its acquisition was imminent – would “significantly alter the geopolitical and strategic landscape of the Middle East, raising the likelihood of instability, terrorism, or conflict that could interrupt the region’s oil exports”.
“It’s hard to imagine Iran with a nuclear umbrella as behaving more responsibly than they do today,” said Amb. Dennis Ross, a task force member who served as President Barack Obama’s top Iran adviser until late last year.
And while Washington would probably try to persuade Saudi Arabia not to go nuclear itself, that would prove unavailing, according to Ross, who quoted King Abdullah as telling him, “If they (the Iranians) get it, we get it.”
“Our analysis indicates that the expectation of instability and conflict that a nuclear Iran could generate in global energy markets could roughly increase the price of oil by between 10 and 25 percent,” according to the report.
If actual hostilities broke out between a nuclear Iran and Saudi Arabia or Israel, the price could far higher, particularly in the event of a nuclear exchange, the report found. It rated the chances of an Iran-Israel and an Iran-Saudi nuclear exchange at 20 percent and 15 percent, respectively, within three years of the perception that Iran had become a nuclear state.
Whether these latest efforts by hawks to maintain the momentum toward confrontation with Iran will succeed remains to be seen.
While both presidential candidates have stressed that they are determined to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear status, the emphasis for now should be placed on sanctions and that a military attack should only be considered as a last resort.
At the same time, a war-weary U.S. public shows little enthusiasm for the kind of resolution sought by Graham in support of an Israeli attack on Iran.
In a survey of more than 700 respondents concluded by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), a week ago, 29 percent said Washington should discourage Israel from taking such action, while 53 percent said the U.S. should stay neutral. Only 12 percent said the U.S. should encourage Israel to strike.
]]>- Foreign Policy: David Rothkopf charges that Roger Cohen’s recent New York Times op-ed totally disregards the threat posed by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Instead, Rothkopf endorses Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren’s New York Times op-ed demanding Palestinian recognition of Israel’s identity as a Jewish state. “As unproductive as the Israeli stance on settlements has been, the Palestinian stance on the nature of the Israeli state, and its ability to continue operations as conceived and sanctioned by the United Nations nearly six and a half decades into its modern existence is just as unconstructive and indefensible,” writes Rothkopf. He concludes with a variation of the debunked reverse-linkage argument, arguing that “[Ahmadinejad’s] grandstanding and inflaming crowds on Israel’s borders with the language of obliteration is not just rhetoric. It is part of a systematic and thus far effective effort to exacerbate dangers and, not secondarily, to prolong the misery of the Palestinian people whose right to a free, independent state created in their own image is, of course, every bit as great as that of the Israelis.”
- The Washington Times: Eli Lake writes that Ahmadinejad’s visit to Lebanon adds pressure to Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to withdraw his support of a UN investigation to determine who killed his father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. “I think it’s clear that Ahmadinejad’s visit is intended to show support for Hezbollah at a time when it’s facing the prospect of indictments in the murder of Hariri and is engaged in a campaign to undermine and derail the tribunal,” said Ash Jain, a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Lake’s article went to print before it was known whether Ahmadinejad would travel to the Israeli border—he did not—but he writes that such a visit “would signal Iran’s proxies were on Israel’s border.”
- FrumForum: Brad Schaeffer, an energy derivatives broker writing for the blog of neoconservative pundit David Frum, lines up three scenarios (best, mid,and worst case) on what could happen to oil prices should Israel attack Iran’s nuclear installations. Best-case results in only a small, temporary spike in prices and the Iranian leadership uses the strike to turn the “military lemon into PR lemonade” by playing “victim” without retaliation. A mid-level escalation would result in small to medium spikes, for a more sustained period, and attacks against Western forces. Worst case would mean an all out war (and closing the Strait of Hormuz) and the doubling of oil prices from their current levels.
- Time: Tony Karon describes Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s trip to Lebanon as emblematic of a U.S. policy failure in the region. The visit makes clear three difficult realities the U.S. is facing: “First, Iran is not nearly as isolated as Washington would like; secondly, the Bush Administration efforts to vanquish Tehran and its allies have failed; and, finally, the balance of forces in the region today prompts even U.S.-allied Arab regimes to engage pragmatically with a greatly expanded Iranian regional role.” Ahmadinejad met with Lebanon’s Christian president and Saudi-backed Sunni prime minister, notes Karon, and “he also appears to be placing a heavy stress on Lebanese unity and the need to avoid division” — rather than focus solely on Iran’s Hezbollah beneficiaries.
Col. Pat Lang has written two informative blog posts about the arms sale. In the first, Lang reminds his readers that the sale is a commercial transaction, not foreign aid. And on attempts to put the arms sale in the context of the “Iranian threat,” Lang quips, “The Iranian threat? [...]]]>
Col. Pat Lang has written two informative blog posts about the arms sale. In the first, Lang reminds his readers that the sale is a commercial transaction, not foreign aid. And on attempts to put the arms sale in the context of the “Iranian threat,” Lang quips, “The Iranian threat? Oh, yes, of course… Somehow I think this has much to do with ‘commissions’ passed around in the royal family/courtier crowd. 5% of 90 billion plus will go a long way.”
In his second post, Lang addresses the codependent U.S.-Saudi relationship.
The US and SA align themselves more or less on parallel courses in the ME because the two countries have quite a few parallel interests, even though in many ways their philosophies are at odds. The same thing is true of Pakistan and the US, as well as quite a few other places.
And, we need the money.
***
The $60 billion arms deal between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia—which, if completed, would be the largest single foreign arms deal in history—has drawn its fair share of media attention.
The sale includes 70 upgraded F-15s, 70 Apaches, 72 Black Hawk helicopters and 36 Little Bird helicopters. By all accounts, this would significantly boost Saudi Arabia’s ability to defend itself against a conventional, land-based attack and would give the kingdom considerable power projection beyond its borders.
David Rothkopf, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, offered his analysis of what the arms sale means for Washington’s Iran policy.
On his Foreign Policy blog, Rothkopf writes:
This deal is the latest example of behavior suggesting that the nuclearization of Iran is all over but for the bomb building in the eyes of U.S. and regional strategists. As soon as it became clear that the United States and its allies would play along with Iranian stalling games, and as it appeared less and less likely to all concerned that the Obama administration would actually take military action to stop the Iranian program, the mindset shifted.
And
Of course, the result [of the arms deal] is a much closer relationship between the U.S. and the Saudis which has significant implications for other U.S. relationships in the region, e.g. with Israel. And certainly much of our future planning with regard to Iraq and Afghanistan is likely to be oriented toward maintaining the kind of presence that will enable us to use posts there as part of the larger Iran containment strategy.
Rothkopf warns the containment and deterrence policy could result in a conventional or even nuclear arms race, noting the irony that the U.S. “seems on the verge of okaying the biggest arms deal in American history to the country that provided fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers, much of the critical funding for al Qaeda and was home to Osama bin Laden.” Rothkopf believes the Obama administration’s policy on Iran’s nuclear program has shifted and is now focused on containment and balancing against a increasingly powerful Tehran. He also argues that an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would only postpone Tehran’s construction of a nuclear weapon.
This analysis fits with Washington’s long-standing policy of deterrence and containment. Arms sales to Taiwan and South Korea could be seen in the much the same light.
Conversely the authors of the Contentions blog, hosted by the neoconservative Commentary Magazine, see the shift to containment as a death-blow to their attempts to urge the U.S. or Israel into a military confrontation with Iran.
J.E. Dyer writes that while news outlets are covering the arms sale as a sign of Washington shifting to a containment strategy with Iran, the sale is really no such thing.
Dyer concludes the analysts have it all wrong and are focusing on the wrong upcoming war:
]]>Western analysts tend to miss the fact that Iran’s moves against Israel constitute a plan to effectively occupy territory that the Arab nations consider theirs to fight for. The concerns on both sides are more than ethnic and historical: they involve competing eschatological ideas.
The resurgence of Turkey, erstwhile Ottoman ruler, only accelerates the sense of powerful regional rivals polishing up their designs on the Levant. The Saudis’ military shopping list doesn’t match their defensive requirements against Iran, but if the strategic driver is a race to Jerusalem, it contains exactly what they need. Congress should take a critical look at the numbers involved – and the U.S. should take one at our disjointed and increasingly passive approach to the region.