Weekly Reads/Watch:

- News: Israeli elections likely to postpone any deliberations on Iran strike
- News: Israel Formally Receives Fourth Nuclear-Capable Sub
- News: Iran Embargo Impossible to Meet as Ships Need Its Oil
- Opinion: Israeli Dissent May Create More Space for Iran Nuclear Deal
- Opinion: California Senator Takes a Stand for Political Solution in Iran
- Opinion: Iran: Ever-resilient but maybe more malleable
– Opinion: Election Year = No Iran Deal
- Opinion: Why Logic May Prevail on Iran
- Opinion: Dysfunctional Congress Threatens Iran Talks
- Video: Containment: A Viable Strategy for Iran?
- Research Publication: China and Iran: Economic, Political, and Military Relations

Jamie M. Fly/Robert Zarate, Weekly Standard: A common argument touted by hawks these days is that President Obama should seek regime change in Syria because Iran would be weakened from the loss of a major ally. The neoconservative-dominated Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) have led that call and this week FPI Executive Director Jamie M. Fly (an Iraq war hawk who has never been shy about his hopes for Iran) and Policy Director Robert Zarate, claimed that if Obama doesn’t forcefully intervene in Syria, scary Iran will be emboldened by the U.S.’s refusal to force change in other countries:

If the United States still can’t bring itself to stop the mortally wounded Assad regime (which lacksnuclear weapons) from murdering its own people and destabilizing its neighbors, then how likely is it to deal with much harder cases in the Middle East—like a nuclear-armed Iran that starts inflicting Syria-like mass atrocities on its own people or menacing its own neighbors? Indeed, not only Damascus and Tehran, but also America’s allies and partners throughout the world, are waiting and watching to see whether the Obama administration and Congress will truly side with the Syrian people and show resolve against Assad.

Unabashed hawk Jennifer Rubin, who regularly argues that the U.S. should wage war on Iran for Israel and often regurgitates commentary from FPI and FDD staffers, was quick to feature Fly and Zarate’s article at her Washington Post perch.

Max Boot, Commentary: The Council on Foreign Relations’ Max Boot allied with neoconservatives as an early supporter of the U.S.’s war on Iraq and has been a persistent agitator for war with Iran, even while acknowledging that strikes would not set back its alleged nuclear ambitions by much. Last week he accordingly disapproved of a New York Times article about Obama’s foreign policy for giving too much credit to the President despite what Boot considers to be serious failures. Obama was not only insufficiently militaristic with Iran writes Boot, he should also be criticized for trying to avoid an Israeli war on Iran:

There is also little or no mention in Bergen’s article…of Iran, where Obama opposed strong sanctions on the Central Bank that were ultimately passed by Congress, and where he has tried to pressure Israel not to strike while all but ruling out the use of American force against this dangerous nuclear program;

Michael Rubin, Commentary: Like Fly and Boot, the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Rubin (who was Pentagon adviser on Iran and Iraq during the first George W. Bush administration) advocates confrontational U.S. foreign policy particularly in the Middle East. While he has admitted during public forums that a military campaign on Iran should be avoided, he has no qualms about advocating Iranian “regime collapse” byway of U.S. “private decision-making” (whatever than means) and other methods:

Just as terrorism is a tactic, and it’s the ideology underlying its practitioners which should be the target of U.S. policy, the nuclear weapons are less of a problem than the regime which would wield them. The key to U.S. national security is simply regime collapse in Iran. How to hasten that collapse should be the guiding principle of U.S. policy.

• National Review Online: Foreign Policy Initiative Executive Director Jamie M. Fly opines that the possibility of the Muslim Brotherhood taking control in Egypt is concerning “but the solution is not for conservatives to cling to the supposed stability represented by Mubarak.” He argues that Mubarak’s presidency is “finished” and, “As long as chaos and uncertainty reign, the more likely it will be that extremist elements in the Muslim Brotherhood or elsewhere take advantage of the situation, just as the Islamists did during Iran’s drawn-out revolution in 1978–79.”

• The New York Times: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a fellow at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, writes that she knows the Muslim Brotherhood from her experience in a 2002 political campaign, on behalf of the conservative party, in the Netherlands. She repeats the oft-used Islamophobic meme that the Brotherhood, “argue[s] for taqiyyah, a strategy to collaborate with your enemies until the time is ripe to defeat them or convert them to Islam.” Hirsi Ali warns that secular democrats in Egypt must explain to the Egyptian people why a “Shariah-based government” would be a disaster but, “unlike the Iranians in 1979, the Egyptians have before them the example of a people who opted for Shariah — the Iranians — and have lived to regret it.” She concludes, “The 2009 ‘green movement’ in Iran was a not a ‘no’ to a strongman, but a ‘no’ to Shariah.” and “ElBaradei and his supporters must make clear that a Shariah-based regime is repressive at home and aggressive abroad.”

• The Weekly Standard: Thomas Donnelly, another fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, writes about the comparison of the fall of Hosni Mubarak with the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1979. He writes, “It is one thing to acknowledge that we cannot determine or dictate the outcome of the changes coming to the greater Middle East, quite another to act as though we don’t care enough to continue to exert a shaping influence,” calling on Obama to assert greater support for the protesters and to not cut the Pentagon budget. “In sum, at the moment when the movement to create a new order in the region is accelerating – and who can seriously think that the likelihood of violence is diminishing, will be self-regulating, or can be met only with ‘soft power?’ – the United States appears to be backing away,” says Donnelly.