Today, the right-wing Heritage Foundation announced that it would be hosting a special screening of Clarion’s latest film, “Iranium,” on February 1. The event will include an appearance and comments by none other than arch-neoconservative Richard Perle. Perle, whose nickname is “The Prince of Darkness,” is widely seen as playing an important role in shaping post-9/11 Bush administration foreign policy from his perch at the Defense Policy Board.
Perle’s institutional affiliations are a useful guide for anyone seeking to understand the intellectual underpinnings of the Bush administration’s (first term) foreign policy or diagram the web of neoconservative institutions in Washington, D.C. Perle is currently a fellow at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute; a letter signatory for the Project for the New American Century; a member of the National Security Advisory Council at Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy; a member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and Committee on the Present Danger; and a board member of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and the Hudson Institute.
Perle’s role in the Clarion Fund’s film screening would indicate that the organization is deeply embedded in the neoconservative movement. Given Perle’s track record for pushing the U.S. into aggressive wars of choice, this affiliation should be looked at closely as the Fund rolls out its latest documentary, which claims to document the “threat to international stability” presented by Iran’s nuclear program.
When not teaming up with one of the chief boosters of the Iraq war, Clarion has been adding Center for Security Policy founder Frank Gaffney to its board. Gaffney was recently deemed too hot to touch by the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Sarah Posner spoke with Suhail Khan, a Muslim member of the American Conservative Union Board, the group which sponsors CPAC. Khan told Posner:
“Frank has been frozen out of CPAC by his own hand, because of his antics. We need people who are credible on national security . . . but because of Frank’s just completely irresponsible assertions over the years, the organizers have decided to keep him out.” That, Khan added, is similar reaction to current and former members of Congress, including Bobby Jindal, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), and the late Henry Hyde, who distanced themselves from Gaffney.
The conservative shunning of Gaffney, said Khan, is not “because of any pressure from Muslim activists but because they didn’t want to be associated with a crazy bigot.”
CPAC is a major event for Republicans—a veritable Woodstock, of sorts, for conservatives, and, as I wrote last year, an event with no shortage of Islamophobic rhetoric. Gaffney being “frozen out” is a major blow for his credentials within the conservative movement.
But for Clarion, linking up with the arch-neoconservative Richard Perle, and a counter-Jihadi so extreme that his Islamophobia was too much for CPAC, shows that the organization and its films are well outside of the mainstream. In the past, Clarion has succeeded in getting its projects promoted in mainstream media venues such as CNN and Fox News. It will interesting to watch and see if an organization that has now publicly acknowledged its extreme neoconservative and Islamophobic leanings can get the same type of traction with “Iranium.”
While Clarion remains a fairly small organization (despite its $18 million distribution of “Obsession” DVDs before the 2008 presidential election), the links between ultra-orthodox Aish HaTorah, neoconservative extraordinaire Richard Perle and Islamophobe Frank Gaffney should raise questions. Perhaps most importantly, are these new connections for neoconservatives like Richard Perle? Or is this simply a rare public acknowledgment of the relationship between ultra-orthodox Israelis, Islamophobes, and neoconservatives?
]]>Jim Lobe and I wrote an IPS article last week challenging the right-wing talking points that the WikiLeaks cables were a nail in the coffin for those in the Obama administration who believe, as does the military’s top leadership, that linkage is an important concept if the U.S. is going to contain Iran and withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq.
Basically, the “linkage” argument holds that continued irresolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict hinders America’s ability to achieve its national security goals in the region, both by serving as a driver of extremism and a source of anti-American sentiment. Critics of the argument contend that the significance of the conflict has been vastly overblown, and that “the Palestinian issue” is simply an excuse used by violent extremists and lacking genuine salience among Arabs, despite what they may say in public.
Duss reviews the many WikiLeaks cables in which Arab diplomats endorse the concept of linkage and the countless op-eds from Iran hawks claiming that WikiLeaks shows that Arab leaders don’t care about Palestinians or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
He writes:
All of this would seem to demonstrate the bankruptcy of the linkage argument. In reality, what it demonstrates is the willingness of some analysts to ignore evidence.
But, despite the overwhelming evidence in the cables, hawkish groups such as the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) have shown a shocking willingness to misrepresent and twist the words of Arab leaders and the Foreign Service Officers who wrote the cables.
Duss concludes:
It is of course true that hostility toward Israel and its U.S. patron will not simply dissipate upon the end of Israel’s occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state — the completeness of that de-occupation, and the contours of that state, matter greatly. There are also problems and pathologies in the Middle East that have nothing to do with Israelis or Palestinians. Securing a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will, however, make addressing some of those problems easier, by sealing up one well of resentment from which demagogues and extremists have for decades drawn freely and profitably.
Indeed, the WikiLeaks cables provide abundant evidence that Arab leaders collectively agree that containing Iran–and in the process weakening Hezbollah and Hamas–requires removing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the lightening rod for anti-West, anti-Israel and anti-U.S. sentiments in the Middle East.
]]>… Iran and its proxies are not the [...]]]>
… Iran and its proxies are not the only threat to regional stability or to Israel’s long-term security. The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and between Israel and Arab neighbors is a source of tension and an obstacle to prosperity and opportunity for all the people of the region. It denies the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people and it poses a threat to Israel’s future security. It is at odds also with the interests of the United States.
This notion tracks, nearly verbatim, with statements by diplomats from the UAE, Egypt, Jordan and Qatar, according to WikiLeaks cables. While this type of reasoning seems well grounded in facts, hawkish pundits, like Jennifer Rubin and David Frum; right wing think-tanks, like the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (see their Friday report); and Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu continue to deny the existence of ‘linkage.’
]]>From here, JINSA goes on to seriously distort the messages consistently delivered [...]]]>
From here, JINSA goes on to seriously distort the messages consistently delivered by Gulf Arab leaders in the WikiLeaks cables — focusing on hostile rhetoric against Iran and ignoring any messages from regional autocrats arguing for ‘linkage,’ pushing instead for ‘reverse linkage.’
JINSA’s report reads:
…WikiLeaks showed that the Administration deliberately miscast the centrality of Palestine in Middle East politics. The President said ending the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was the necessary precursor to bringing the Arabs into a coalition to oppose Iran, but the Arabs – led by Saudi Arabia in no uncertain terms – pleaded with the Administration to tackle Iran first and Iran only.
While some cables indeed focused on Iran and not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, many of the diplomatic communiqués dealt directly with the latter issue. JINSA, however, strapped on blinders when it came to the repeated endorsements of linkage between resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and containing Iran.
Jim Lobe and I highlighted the numerous endorsements of linkage by Arab leaders in our IPS article earlier this week. Just one example of this endorsement was provided by the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan — one of the more Iran-hawkish of the Arab leaders — in a December 9, 2009, meeting with the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman in which Zayed:
Emphasized the strategic importance of creating a Palestinian State (i.e., resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) as the way to create genuine Middle Eastern unity on the question of Iran’s nuclear program and regional ambitions.
But such selective interpretation of facts is becoming commonplace by those who challenge the concept of linkage and push ‘reverse linkage.’
This argument is frequently cast as “the road to peace runs through Baghdad”—as discussed by Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan in their 2002 article in the Weekly Standard. Now, as argued by Jennifer Rubin, among others, the argument has been tweaked to make the case that “the road to Middle East peace runs through Tehran.”
But the invasion of Iraq didn’t bring Israel closer to peace with its neighbors. The 2006 Lebanon War, the 2007 Hamas takeover of Gaza and the winter 2008-2009 Gaza War all occurred after Saddam Hussein had been removed from power.
Now JINSA is cherry-picking the words of Arab leaders and misrepresenting them as saying “Iran first and Iran only.” Such a blatant overlooking of the broader facts doesn’t make for good politics and it doesn’t help JINSA’s credibility.
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