*This week’s must read is “Obama’s Counterproductive New Iran Sanctions: How Washington is Sliding [...]]]>
*This week’s must read is “Obama’s Counterproductive New Iran Sanctions: How Washington is Sliding Toward Regime Change”. Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institution writes:
The Obama administration’s new sanctions signal the demise of the paradigm that had guided U.S. Iran policymaking since the 1979 revolution: the combination of pressure and persuasion. Moreover, the decision to outlaw contact with Iran’s central bank puts the United States’ tactics and its long-standing objective — a negotiated end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions — fundamentally at odds. Indeed, the United States cannot hope to bargain with a country whose economy it is trying to disrupt and destroy. As severe sanctions devastate Iran’s economy, Tehran will surely be encouraged to double down on its quest for the ultimate deterrent. So, the White House’s embrace of open-ended pressure means that it has backed itself into a policy of regime change, something Washington has little ability to influence.
Also check out “Forgetting Iraq, Republicans Thirst For War Against Iran”, by John Tirman.
Mainstream Media and Pundits:
Washington Post: Using the “military option” against Iran and Mitt Romney get a plug from the WaPo’s hawk-in-chief, Jennifer Rubin. Perhaps more zealously than any other prominent media figure, Rubin has been agitating for war with Iran. Even before the most crippling Iran sanctions that have ever been implemented are in full swing, she is recommending that congress prepare for war while the administration educates the public about why it’s necessary. The more Obama gives to the Iran hawks, the more they demand:
The administration and the president specifically also need to begin a period of public education to explain why it is imperative that Iran not get nuclear weapons and why it is both advantageous (because of our military resources) and essential (because of our position as leader of the free world and guarantor of the West’s security) to do the job, if it becomes necessary, rather than let Israel do the heavy lifting. The duty to educate and prepare the American people is critical and in and of itself will enhance the credibility of a military option.
Wall Street Journal: Even while acknowledging that Iran’s threats to close the Strait of Hormuz are desperate “bluster”, the hawkish WSJ editorial board urges the U.S. to act in ways which would likely be interpreted as provocation by the Iranians:
Meantime, the best response to Iran’s threats would be to send an American aircraft carrier back through the Strait of Hormuz as soon as possible, with flags waving and guns at the ready.
Past and Present U.S. Officials:
Victoria Nuland: Yesterday, during the daily press briefing, State Department spokesperson Nuland (the wife of neoconservative Iraq war hawk Robert Kagan) said getting multilateral support for the U.S.’s latest sanctions against Iran “will be an important next step in the global effort to tighten the noose on their regime.” From the beginning the Obama administration has rejected adopting regime change as its official Iran policy, opting for sanctions and some limited diplomacy instead, so was this comment a Freudian slip from Nuland or does it signal something bigger? Nuland’s curious comments bring Maloney’s argument to mind.
Mark Kirk: The AIPAC-favorite senator who coauthored the amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act imposing sanctions against Iran’s Central Bank wants the President to implement them no matter what. Obama said he would treat the provisions as “non-binding” if they interfered with his “constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations”, but Kirk said that wasn’t as important as crippling Iran’s economy. The push to sanction Iran’s Central Bank has been ongoing since 2008, but it reached its climax in the summer with heavy lobbying from AIPAC and hawkish members of congress. In October Kirk told a radio show that he had no problem with “taking food out of the mouths” of ordinary Iranians to take down their government, which sounds a lot like collective punishment. Kirk’s pressure on Obama is backed by the likes of prominent neoconservative analyst, Michael Rubin, and Commentary’s editor, Jonathan Tobin, both of whom opined about Obama’s non-binding comment this week.
Mitt Romney: According to former AIPAC-staffer M. J. Rosenberg, Romney’s hawkish stance on Iran (echoed this week at his Iowa Caucus speech) is the result of his many neoconservative advisers:
Fifteen of the 22 worked on foreign policy for the George W. Bush administration and six were members of the original neoconservative group, Project for the New American Century, that famously called on President Clinton in 1998 to begin “implementing a strategy for removing Saddam’s regime from power.” Its rationale: Saddam was producing weapons of mass destruction.
A detailed examination of another Romney-adviser, Walid Phares, can be found here.
Rick Santorum: The Republican presidential hopeful said this week that if he was elected, he would go to war with Iran over its disputed nuclear program:
]]>And finally, I would be working openly with the state of Israel and I would be saying to the Iranians, you either open up those facilities, you begin to dismantle them and make them available to inspectors or we will degrade those facilities through air strikes – and make it very public that we are doing that.
It’s the holidays and unfortunately not all the hawks took a break from agitating [...]]]>
It’s the holidays and unfortunately not all the hawks took a break from agitating for confrontation with Iran. Here’s to giving all we’ve got in the New Year to working for peaceful means of conflict resolution.
*This week’s essential reading is “Hawks who learned Nothing” in Salon. Matthew Duss of the Center for American Progress reminds us that many of the same people who pushed for war with Iraq are calling for escalation with Iran.
Mainstream Media and Pundits:
Wall Street Journal: The hawkish editorial board says yet again that war is the answer (emphasis is mine):
The Hormuz threat is another opportunity to set boundaries on Iran’s rogue behavior. Washington, along with London, Paris and Riyadh, should say plainly that any attempt to close or disrupt traffic through the strait would be considered an act of war that would be met with a military response…
The article ends by echoing Bush-era preemptive war rhetoric:
Would the U.S. dare resist Iranian aggression if it meant putting American forces at risk of a nuclear reprisal? Better to act now to stop Iran before we have to answer that terrible question.
The WSJ’s logic with respect to Iran’s behavior is curious. Iran is accused of being irrational and having a “tantrum” but it’s unlikely that it would close the Strait or threaten to do so without feeling seriously threatened itself. It’s worth keeping in mind that Iran has had more than 30 years to block this vital supply route and has never done so.
Washington Post: Jennifer Rubin (who almost always quotes the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies when writing about Iran) does three things in this blog post. First she criticizes Leon Panetta for making “a mess of things” by expressing U.S. reservations about going to war with Iran. Then she asserts that there is only two options with Iran: punitive sanctions or war. Finally she repeats an argument regularly touted by pro-Israel hawks: the U.S. needs to save Israel from itself by preemptively going to war with Iran:
Ironic, isn’t it, that Obama should find himself in the same predicament as his predecessor: Preemptively strike a rogue regime or run the risk of regional and global catastrophe? There is one big difference, however. In Obama’s case, the Israelis will act if we don’t. And the margin for error, the degree of risk Israel is willing to incur, is much smaller than for us. Its existence and the entire Zioinist concept of a safe refuge for Jews is at stake.
Rubin also says “it’s impossible to know with certainty what the Iranians are up to” and yet she continues to make the case for confrontation. Like Iran’s authoritarian adjudicators, Rubin seems to be using guilty until proven innocent logic.
New York Times: John Vinocur’s alarmist article suggests war with Iran is just on the horizon. He quotes the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’s Mark Dubowitz who provides a quickly approaching deadline for sanctions (which he’s been aggressively pushing for) even though all success stories took years to bear results. Moreover, while analysts and Israeli officials doubt Israel’s strike capability and Israeli officials say an Iranian nuclear weapon does not pose an existential threat, Vinocur still suggests that Israel would go to war with Iran alone (by going over Iraq’s unsecured airspace!):
By some time next June, said Mr. Dubowitz, “If there’s no impact on Iranian oil revenue, then you’re at the end of the sanctions road.”
That’s 2012 ticking. The volume changes over the weekend.
With the end of 2011, the United States no longer holds responsibility for policing Iraqi airspace. Iraq has no replacement aircraft for now, and the shortest route for long-range Israeli F15Is to attack Iran’s nuclear sites will be wide open to them beginning Sunday.
Fox News: This panel discussing the Strait of Hormuz situation features Charles Krauthammer (who made last week’s posting) and Chuck Lane of the Washington Post. Their basic argument: impose a crippling embargo and more sanctions on Iran and go to war with it if it reacts by doing one of the only things it can do. Interestingly, Krauthammer admits that the Iranian government is reacting rather than acting unprovoked and is “weak”:
It’s doing it because the Obama administration is on the verge of imposing very serious sanctions on Iran which will essentially shut down at least gradually its oil exports and the Europeans are considering a boycott. That will really hurt the Iranian economy. The regime is already a weak one and worries about that, so it’s threatening.
Daily Beast/Commentary: Matthew Kroenig, the Georgetown Assistant Professor who wrote a poorly argued warmongering piece in Foreign Affairs (see responses here, here and here) finds fame with Eli Lake and Evelyn Gordon.
Past and Present U.S. Officials:
John Yoo: In case you missed it, the George W. Bush administration official who authored the infamous “torture memos” invokes Iraq war logic while pushing for war with Iran in the National Review. Writes Jim Lobe:
…his “case” for attacking Iran strikes me as extremely weak unless you believe, as his aggressive nationalist and neo-conservative colleagues do, that Washington can really do just about anything it likes and should, in any event, not be bound by silly concepts or institutions like international law or the UN Charter. Hence, his argument for ignoring the UN Security Council:
Just as national governments claim a monopoly on the use of force within their borders and in exchange offer police protection, the U.N. asks nations to give up their right to go to war and in exchange offers to police the world. But the U.N. has no armed forces of its own, has a crippled decision-making system, and lacks political legitimacy. It is contrary to both American national interests and global welfare because it subjects any intervention, no matter how justified or beneficial, to the approval of authoritarian nations.
John Bolton: George W. Bush’s UN ambassador is a favorite of Fox News and journalists soliciting a bellicose view from a former official. This week Bolton told Fox’s Jon Scott that the U.S. would crush Iran if it blocked the Strait of Hormuz while making some questionable claims:
Bolton: I’ve had many conversations with military officials here in this country over the years and it’s not bluster and it’s not boast, it’s a fact that if the Iranians tried to block the Straits of Hormuz [sic] it would be a matter of 2 or 3 days before the Straits [sic] were reopened. And the damage caused to Iran would not just be to its navy which would be on the bottom of the sea, but to a lot of land-based air and air defense mechanisms.
Scott: But if I’m in the Pentagon or if I’m advising the President and I’m presented with two scenarios, one, try to go after those hardened nuclear facilities that we know exist but that are very deep underground or potentially take out their navy in one swoop and maybe some anti-aircraft and military facilities along with it, I think I’d opt for option two.
Bolton: Well I’d opt for both options but I think it’s important to understand that those nuclear facilities that we know of at Natanz and Isfahan and Arak are not so deeply buried that they’re not very vulnerable, certainly to us, but even vulnerable to the Israelis as well and that really is what I think is most acute in Iran’s thoughts.
A check-in with Iran analyst Patrick Disney clarifies some misleading statements made by both Scott and Bolton. First, the Isfahan and Arak facilities are actually above ground. Second, Bolton seems to be exaggerating Israel’s strike capability. According to Disney:
Natanz is buried about 75 feet underground, but (as Matthew Kroenig said this week) could be destroyed with bunker buster bombs known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator which is capable of busting through 200 feet of concrete. So the US could destroy Natanz, but there’s a real doubt about Israel’s ability to destroy it alone, even with the bunker buster bombs that the Obama administration sent in 2009.
Disney also points out Kroenig’s problematic logic in his attack Iran piece:
]]>Kroenig said multiple times this week that one of the red lines the US should have is any move by Iran to install advanced centrifuges (whether IR-2, IR-4 or some other variant) in the Fordow facility — something that strikes me as a very low standard for triggering military action. Iran already is operating advanced centrifuges at Natanz. Iran is already operating first-generation centrifuges at Fordow. It’s unclear why the introduction of advanced centrifuges into the Fordow facility would pose such a threat as to trigger military action. Not to mention…it’s kind of bizarre to say we should attack AFTER Iran puts next-generation centrifuges into Fordow, since one of the reasons we’d be concerned about them doing so is because the facility is invulnerable to attack.
Mainstream Media and Pundits:
Washington Post: Neoconservative media spokesman Charles Krauthammer (who [...]]]>
Mainstream Media and Pundits:
Washington Post: Neoconservative media spokesman Charles Krauthammer (who argued that the U.S. had no option but to use “military force” against Iran during the middle of the Iraq War) likens the Obama Administration’s Iran policy to “appeasement”:
Obama imagined that his silver tongue and exquisite sensitivity to Islam would persuade the mullahs to give up their weapons program. Amazingly, they resisted his charms, choosing instead to become a nuclear power. The negotiations did nothing but confer legitimacy on the regime at its point of maximum vulnerability (and savagery), as well as give it time for further uranium enrichment and bomb development.
Matt Duss of the Center for American Progress explains why Krauthammer’s argument is absurd:
One can disagree with the Obama administration’s two track approach of engagement and pressure. But to describe that approach — which includes the adoption of some of the most stringent multilateral sanctions ever, successfully supporting the appointment of a special UN human rights monitor for Iran, and unprecedented defense cooperation with regional allies — as “appeasement” is to declare oneself desperately in need of a dictionary.
Even Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak disagrees with Krauthammer!
CNN: Pro-Israel Senate hawk Mark Kirk is called a “leader” by David Frum, the Iraq war-pusher who coined the infamous “axis of evil” phrase for George W. Bush. Frum applauds the Kirk-Menendez amendment to the defense authorization bill which includes sanctions against Iran’s Central Bank. The bill was approved by a 100-0 Senate vote after months of lobbying. Frum is a talented writer who knows how to sway public perception. By ending this piece with the argument that strangling sanctions are preferable to war or “nuclear terror”, he is making it seem like there are no other available options. In other words, the second to worst-case scenario is actually the best scenario. Here’s how he does it:
The utmost irony here is that detractors in the administration and in the foreign policy establishment criticize Menendez-Kirk as a form of confrontation with Iran. In reality, Menendez-Kirk is the last and best chance for regional peace: the last best hope to avoid the horrible choice of either using force to stop Iran — or acquiescing as Iran gains the power to wage nuclear terror against its neighbors and the world.
Notable analysts and former officials beg to differ, most recently evidenced by this.
Foreign Affairs: According to Matthew Kroenig, an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University, going to war with Iran is the “Is the Least Bad Option”. Harvard’s Stephen Walt thoroughly debunks Kroenig’s appallingly bad analysis here.
Wall Street Journal: Emanuele Ottolenghi of the uber-hawkish Foundation for the Defense of Democracies argues that the U.S. should wage war on Iran because Iranians are more likely to welcome foreign invasion than they they are to oppose it. Ottolenghi makes unsubstantiated assumptions such as the claim that Iran’s non-Persians would ally with their invaders over their nation. He doesn’t discuss how an attack should be carried out, or what kind of resources would be needed to maintain any supposed successes. He also ignores the financial costs for the U.S.’s economy and most importantly, the human costs for Iran, the U.S. and its allies:
American policy makers should factor in the possibility that a U.S. attack will actually accelerate regime change, not hinder it. And given that it would come on the heels of the destruction of Iran’s nuclear military program—an undeniable strategic gain—the Obama administration and its allies should have a second look.
Past and Present U.S. Officials:
Washington Times: Retired Navy Adm. James “Ace” Lyons advocates three positions on Iran. First, the U.S. should make “regime change in Iran the official policy of the United States Government.” Second, the U.S. should wage war on Iran. Third, the U.S. should delist the anti-Iranian cult, the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK) from its foreign terrorist organizations list.
This week Lyons advocated the first two positions while endorsing strangling sanctions against Iran. He also said the U.S. should support the Syrian opposition–not because massive human rights abuses are being committed against them–but because the overthrow of the Syrian government would eliminate a key Iranian ally.
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