Ori Nir, at Americans for Peace Now, has a good analysis of Maj. Gen. Yaakov Amidror, who is apparently Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s new national security adviser. Replacing another ultra-hawk, Uzi Arad, Amidror seems to be a big-time hawk on [...]]]> It’s hard to know for sure, but he certainly doesn’t keep pleasant company.

Ori Nir, at Americans for Peace Now, has a good analysis of Maj. Gen. Yaakov Amidror, who is apparently Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s new national security adviser. Replacing another ultra-hawk, Uzi Arad, Amidror seems to be a big-time hawk on Palestinian issues. But what about Iran?

In Israel, Noam Sheizaf has been addressing this question with a deft touch — there is a split right now in the Israeli security establishment. Sheizaf long ago exploded Jeffrey Goldberg‘s notion of a “consensus,” but the combination of upheaval both in the region and in Bibi’s cabinet are forcing constant re-evaluation.

I saw Amidror speak in December at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ conference on Iran. The hard-line neocon think tank put the aged and bearded reservist general on its ‘bomb Iran’ panel, moderated by FDD honcho Cliff May. The panel featured Goldberg, the disingenuous Reuel Marc Gerecht, and Ken Pollack, the lone dissenter from the notion that a military strike in Iran could achieve any of its ostensible aims. As you can imagine, the panel was a lot of laughs (literally: the transcript lists 28 breaks for “LAUGHTER”).

At the FDD conference, Amidror’s stance on Iran basically boiled down to this: ‘Attacking Iran is a last resort that we will almost definitely have to use, so we are getting ready.’ Here’s his key comments, with my emphasis:

I believe that attacking Iran is a very bad situation, but there is something worse, that Iran will have a nuclear capability.

But we are not running to attack Iran. We want to postpone it as much as possible because we want to give the world, the Americans, everyone who is ready to help, to stop Iran without using military forces.

So it – it is not just an option. We prepare all of this very thoroughly, investing a lot of it, but we are not running to use it and we hope that someone will find another solution.

If you ask me as an expert for assessment that what I did 25 years, what is my assessment, my assessment is it is almost impossible to stop Iran without military force, but we should not run to use it before we be sure 100 percent and more that there is no other alternative.

It seems that, while Amidror pays lip service to the “last resort” of an attack, he is already gearing up to do it.

Amidror seems to have a ridiculously flawed understanding of the concept of “deterrence.” He thinks the Lebanon War in 2006 was a good example of Israel establishing such a deterrence. But, you know, that’s kind of funny, because deterrence is only a useful concept until force is unleashed — Damocles kept his head, after all. Nonetheless, here’s Amidror:

Deterrence includes two elements: the first is the determination to use your capability and the second is to have this capability. I think it was very important that Israel made the decision to go to war and sustained the war for more than a month, despite extensive Hizballah rocket attacks across northern Israel.

The determination of Israel’s government to respond and to retaliate is a very important factor in restoring deterrence. …As a small country, we cannot allow ourselves the luxury of reacting proportionally. Israel’s military action sent a very important message to the people around us.

I wonder what the Israeli hawks and neocon allies would say if you asked them today: “Why are you so worried about the Muslim Brotherhood?” Don’t they remember Lebanon 2006? (I’m sure that they would answer with something akin to the five-year-version of the Ledeen Doctrine.)

Nir has a primer on Amidror’s politics:

Amidror is associated with the ultra-right national-religions party “The Jewish Home.” In 2008, he headed a commission tasked with composing the party’s list for the general elections. The party, which is dominated by former National Religious Party (NRP) politicians, supports a “greater Israel” ideology and is considered the most authentic political representative of the ideological messianic settlers in the West Bank.

He adds that Amidror’s most recent opinion article is headlined: “Security is Preferable to Peace,” as if one has nothing to do with the other.

All of this is no surprise: Amidror is a such a close ally of the religious settler movement that he spoke at a 2006 event supporting one such settlement, Beit El, and its chief accomplishment: the Arutz Sheva conspiracy website. Also speaking at the event was then-Arutz Sheva personality Alex Traiman, a Beit El resident. Traiman wrote and directed Clarion Fund‘s latest propaganda film, “Iranium,” which aims to raise public support for attacking Iran.

So let’s see: Yaakov Amidror is in bed with the uber-hawks at FDD and with the religious settlers at Clarion who are all pushing hard (in concert) for an attack on Iran, and he thinks that a good deterrence policy is to attack. This does not bode well. I’ll toss this to Sheizaf for his informed thoughts…

Right now, of course, it is Egypt’s moment. Many people’s elation over the [...]]]> I’m going abroad for a long overdue vacation soon, and my blogging might slow down for at least the next week, so I wanted to deposit some thoughts on the stories dominating the headlines right now, and some others that are not.

Right now, of course, it is Egypt’s moment. Many people’s elation over the past ten days has given way to guarded optimism that a relatively peaceful transition to a new government can be made. This will likely be a volatile, months-long process — at least — and the implications will be wide-ranging. We’ll, of course, be covering all of it, or as much of it as we can.

For good things to check out elsewhere, there are far too many places to list comprehensively. For starters, I’d point to Inter Press Service, the wire that hosts this blog. On the homepage, you’ll find articles by a host of correspondents on the ground in Egypt and all over the world, including LobeLog contributors like Emad Mekay, the IPS correspondent in Cairo who has been filing dispatches for us here (some by phone).

Listing other sources of news and analysis would take too much time, so I’ll just say you can follow us on Twitter (@LobeLog), where you can keep track of what I’m reading and, sometimes, thinking. Of course, I am still glued to Al Jazeera English. Other than that, I’ve been dashing off thoughts on Egypt and its ripples on my personal blog and occasionally on Mondoweiss.

The latter has been a damned good source of info on all things related to Egypt’s aftershocks in both the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, perhaps more importantly to those of us who live here, the discourse in the U.S. If the U.S.’s strategic m.o. in the region is not under serious review, then, Houston, we have a problem.

Some rumblings of change have become perfectly clear from closely watching U.S. neoconservatives. The movement is split among itself, and cracks are forming between them and their usual allies in Israel’s Likud party. All about Earthquake Egypt.

But the movement remains strong and, most curiously, focused on Iran. This they still share with Israel’s Likud prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu. The general just appointed as IDF chief-of-staff has asserted Israel’s “moral right to act [against Iran]” and focused on the Iranian threat. Blogger Noam Sheizaf doesn’t know if the general falls in the attack camp or the “skeptics” camp; it’s “unclear.”

On the other hand, where neocons in the U.S. come down on Iran seems very clear. As Egypt unfolds all around them, they are out hawking “Iranium.”

Much more to come, I’m sure. And, of course, my vacation doesn’t mean that you won’t be getting Eli’s usual great reporting and analysis, as well as that of our long list of guest contributors.

Noam Sheizaf’s analysis is very helpful. Noam’s most recent post, reproduced below, was originally published on +972–an invaluable resource for any readers interested in Israeli politics and Israeli-Palestinian issues.

Following the storm: Netanyahu is at the mercy of Lieberman

By Noam Sheizaf

Ehud Barak has ended his days as an independent politician, the peace process is officially over, and the fate of Netanyahu’s government is now at the hands of Israel Beitenu’s leader, Avigdor Lieberman. A few notes following the political earthquake at the Knesset today

1.    Ehud Barak. The former leader of Labor effectively joined the Likud today. He did register a new party called Atzmaut (Hebrew for “independence”) but nobody seriously thinks that Barak and the four backbenchers who left Labor with him would run on their own in the next elections. Barak is not a good campaigner, and even if he was, his public image is in an all-time low. Most pundits estimate that Barak already has a promise from Netnayhu to continue serving as Defense Minister if the Likud wins elections again. Whether or not it’s true, this is the end of the road for Ehud Barak as an independent politician; from now on, his political fate is at the hands of Netanyahu.

2.    Binyamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu is seen by some as the day’s winner, but in fact, all he did was cut his losses. Netanyahu needed Labor in his government to balance its rightwing elements and most notably, Avigdor Lieberman’s Israel Beitenu. Recently, the PM reached the conclusion that Labor won’t last in his coalition much longer, so he decided to keep a minimum of loyal supporters and not lose the entire party. Instead of the 13 seats Labor held (out of which 8-9 were loyal to the coalition), Netanyahu was left with five. Not enough to match Lieberman’s 15, but still, better than nothing.

Netanyahu will enjoy a more stable coalition now. Together with Barak and his 5 Knesset Members, he has 66 MKs behind him, and four more members of the radical rightwing Ihud Leumi party that could be made part of the government in case of political troubles. As long as Lieberman and his 15 votes are with him, Netanyahu is safe.

3.    Avigdor Lieberman is now the strongest politician in Israel. He holds what was the traditional position of the Orthodox parties: The block between the coalition and the opposition. Lieberman knows that, and he will make Netanyahu’s life miserable. Eventually, he might even bring the government down in a maneuver that should have more Likud votes go his way in the next elections. Polls have him approaching 20 seats, but Lieberman wants more. The wild card is the General Prosecutor’s decision whether to press charges against Lieberman, expected to be given in a few weeks. Lieberman, it seems, has already launched his counter-attack, claiming in a weekend interview to Yedioth Ahronoth that he is the victim of political persecution. Even if Lieberman is forced to resign, the fate of the government would remain in his hands.

4.    Labor might split again, with some members deserting to Meretz or forming a new political party. Anyway, Kadima will continue to be the strong center-left force in the Knesset, with one or two more parties to its left.

5.    The peace process is dead. In case anyone had any doubts, the day’s events made it clear that from now on, this government won’t be able to take even the tiniest step towards a peace settlement with the Palestinians. Netanyahu has used his political credit: The slightest indication that he is willing to consider concessions, and the rightwing elements in his party would have the government fall. The PM has no room to maneuver.

To renew direct negotiations the Kadima-Left block would need to come closer to 60 seats in the next elections (it has 50 now). It could happen if international pressure on Israel continues, and if the Obama Administration reveals Netanyahu’s refusal to negotiate in good faith with the Palestinians. This type of pressure could be effective, much in the way the confrontation with George Bush’s administration hurt PM Yitzhak Shamir in 1992’s elections and paved the way to Oslo.

Both of his parents were teachers and union loyalists, inculcating their son with left-leaning liberal politics [...]]]> Jewish Journal’s Danielle Berrin’s profile of Jeffrey Goldberg is well worth a read for those who want to do a little armchair psychology on Goldberg. It provides no shortage of material for analyzing his views with nuggets like this:

Both of his parents were teachers and union loyalists, inculcating their son with left-leaning liberal politics but not much in the way of a religious education. Instead, Goldberg forged his Jewish identity in response to some schoolyard anti-Semitism whose traumas left him longing for the so-called muscle Judaism represented by Zionism.

Jim has written an excellent blog post on the role of humiliation in forming the neocon psyche which, when read in the context of the description of Goldberg’s “Jewish identity,” offers some insights into how Goldberg may have gained his hawkish instincts.

But the points from Berrin’s article which deserve special attention regard Goldberg’s role in the hyping of an Iraq-al-Qaeda link in a 2002 New Yorker article and accusations that he is “peddling Israeli propaganda.”

Berrin writes of the response to Goldberg’s September Atlantic cover story (I blogged about it here) on the likelihood of an Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear program (my emphasis):

The story has been both widely praised and reviled. Critics accused Goldberg of warmongering, framing the piece as a question of who would invade Iran — Israel or the U.S.? — rather than challenging the sense of another Middle East incursion. Charges that he was, yet again, prepping America for war stem back to a 2002 piece he wrote for The New Yorker, in which he claimed to have found evidence linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda. The piece was widely interpreted as an endorsement for the Iraq war, which, on some level, Goldberg regrets. He now admits having been wrong about Hussein’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction “like everybody else” but maintains the dignity of the story. “I will never regret taking a stand against a genocidal fascist,” he said. “Do I regret the atrocious manner in which the Bush administration prosecuted the war, and its aftermath? Of course.” Citing a report conducted by the Institute for Defense Analyses, he defends his claim connecting Hussein to al-Qaeda.

While I haven’t seen many critics attack Goldberg for “taking a stand against a genocidal fascist,” I have seen a fair number of criticisms of Goldberg’s reporting. His critics assign him considerable responsibility for having given mainstream acceptance to the false narrative that Saddam Hussein had WMDs and was forming ties with al-Qaeda.

Investigative journalist Ken Silverstein wrote in 2006:

In urging war on Iraq, Goldberg took highly dubious assertions — for example, that Saddam was an irrational madman in control of vast quantities of WMDs and that Iraq and Al Qaeda were deeply in bed together — and essentially asserted them as fact. From these unproven allegations, he demonstrated that an invasion of Iraq was the only rational policy.

While Goldberg had plenty of company in being mistaken about the WMD’s and al-Qaeda ties, “everybody else” was not wrong — just the power players in DC As Michael Massing chronicles in his excellent 2004 New York Review of Books article “Now They Tell Us,” dissent was all around. Knight Ridder reporters questioned the premise for the war, but their newspapers were not read in DC. Rereading Massing’s take, Goldberg’s response is a lot like that of disgraced journalist Judith Miller.

Goldberg’s half apology, in which he defers blame to the “atrocious manner in which the Bush administration prosecuted the war,” closely mirrors the avoidance of responsibility displayed by neoconservatives like Richard Perle, David Frum, Kenneth Adelman, Michael Ledeen, Frank Gaffney, Michael Rubin, James Woolsey, Eliot Cohen and Danielle Pletka when they publicly decried the Bush administration’s execution of the war to Vanity Fair‘s David Rose in late 2006. The fact that the war was, in large part, engineered by these very neoconservatives (or colleagues who, quite-literally, worked down the hall) was conveniently overlooked.

Goldberg still stands by his 2002 New Yorker article in which he depended on Mohammed Mansour Shahab, a prisoner in a Kurdish town in northern Iraq, as his source to confirm the Saddam Hussein-al-Qada link. But, as reported by The Guardian‘s Jason Burke, Shahab is a liar and very little of his story which established the al-Qaeda link for Goldberg holds up to closer scrutiny.

In contrast, liberal interventionists (and Goldberg likes to portray himself as one) have offered more thoughtful apologies for their involvement in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq. The editors of the The New Republic issued an apology in which they said “The New Republic deeply regrets its early support for this war” and in may 2004, The editors of The New York Times issued an apology in which the editors took responsibility for, among several failures, depending on “Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on ‘regime change’ in Iraq,” as trusted sources. The information provided by these sources was often misleading and, at times, completely wrong, and the Times admirably took responsibility for not fulfilling basic reportorial duties of double checking their stories.

Goldberg played an important role in convincing the U.S. public that invading Iraq was necessary and well-grounded in factual data about what turned out to be Saddam’s nonexistent ties to Al Qaeda and pursuit of chemical and biological weapons. That Goldberg “maintains the dignity of the story” — a story which served to disseminate falsehoods and brought the U.S. into a preemptive war which resulted in the deaths of over 4,000 Americans and, according to the Iraq Body Count project, 98,585 to 107,594 confirmed civilian casualties — raises questions about Goldberg’s own (to borrow the term) integrity as a journalist. It certainly should make readers of his recent cover story on Iran ask themselves if Goldberg is reporting based on facts or finding facts to conform to his ideologically driven narrative. (Noam Sheizaf, an Israeli blogger, has written about how Goldberg, instead of cherry-picking intelligence, seems to have cherry-picked interview subjects.)

Berrin also touches upon that very question but then lets Goldberg off the hook.

She writes:

But the more insidious critique came when others denounced him for peddling Israeli propaganda, charging him with a deep, subconscious bias. As if somehow his Jewishness makes him unfit to write fairly about Israel.

In fact, Goldberg’s most salient critics don’t attack “his Jewishness” as a bias, but rather his seeming ideological bent in support of aggressive military actions against the enemies of Israel. Connected to this, but not the sole source of the charge, is Goldberg’s service in the Israel Defense Force, where he was a corporal and guarded Palestinian prisoners during the first intifada. A more apt example of criticisms, however, might be Goldberg’s apologia for the Israeli right-wing at every turn, such as his whitewashing of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocidal rhetoric against Iran, or how he masks Bibi’s intransigence on an issue — settlements — which Goldberg himself claims to take a liberal stand against.

More importantly, Goldberg’s history of pushing for preemptive wars in the Middle East should give readers pause when he makes the case for an Israeli or U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. When viewed in that context, the title of Berrin’s piece could be downright sinister–”Journalist Goldberg changing the world one story at a time.”

Jennifer Rubin of Commentary has implicitly made this argument, noting that, faced with a U.S. or Israeli attack or an Iranian bomb, a U.S. [...]]]> We’ve written about the hypothesis that all the fuss about Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear program is a means to encourage the United States to undertake such an attack in Israel’s stead.

Jennifer Rubin of Commentary has implicitly made this argument, noting that, faced with a U.S. or Israeli attack or an Iranian bomb, a U.S. attack on Iran is the “best of the disagreeable options.” Bret Stephens, in the Wall Street Journal, has made it explicitly.

Former U.S. diplomat Chas Freeman also mentioned this tactic in his latest speech at the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations:

[Neocons] insist that the U.S. must risk regional or even global catastrophe by launching our own war with Iran. Otherwise, Israel will drag us into an even more catastrophic one.

Israeli blogger Noam Sheizaf, reflecting on Jeffery Goldberg‘s Atlantic article on the likelihood of an Israeli attack, has even pointed out that the idea of attacking Iran is not a hotly debated topic in Israel itself. The upshot is that Goldberg cherry-picked the people he spoke to in order to convey the idea to the U.S. that Israel is serious about attacking.

Eli addressed this issue in his own initial reaction to Goldberg’s Atlantic story:

Of course to make this threat work, hawks need to convince the White House and the U.S. public that the Israelis just might be foolhardy enough to attack unilaterally.

And, indeed, far-right Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is doing a lot of convincing these days. Haaretz has picked up a Reuters report about how Lieberman has initiated the creation of a ‘day after’ contingency plan that, from Reuters‘s description, could prescribe how to either deal with a nuclear Iran or how to deal with the fallout from an Israeli attack on an Iranian nuclear installations.

Haaretz (with my emphasis):

In a sign the government is examining a full range of options, Lieberman, the most hawkish member of Netanyahu’s coalition, has ordered ministry strategists to draft a paper on “what to do if we wake up and discover the Iranians have a nuclear weapon”, said the senior Israeli political source, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter. [...]

Israel is widely assumed to have the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal. Its aircraft bombed Iraq’s atomic reactor in 1981 and launched a similar sortie against Syria in 2007.

But many independent experts believe Israeli forces could not take on Iran alone. The Iranians have dug in, dispersed and prepared to defend many of their nuclear facilities.

Even were its warplanes to manage a successful sneak attack, Israel would almost certainly suffer retaliatory Iranian missile salvoes worse than the short-range rocket attacks of Lebanese and Palestinian guerrillas in the 2006 and 2009 border wars.

There would be a wider diplomatic reckoning: World powers are in no rush to see another regional conflagration, especially while sanctions are still being pursued against an Iranian nuclear programme which Tehran says is peaceful.

The planning department of Israel’s Foreign Ministry is one of several units guiding government strategy. Chief among these are the National Security Council and an inner cabinet made up of Netanyahu and six other top ministers, including Lieberman. Netanyahu’s office declined comment on the Lieberman initiative. A senior Israeli official said: “The government’s position is that all attempts have to be made to prevent Iran from going nuclear.”

Israel’s government has voiced cautious confidence in sanctions. But it also believes Tehran could have a nuclear warhead as soon as 2012-2014, an assessment shared by some in the West.

Israeli defence officials have placed a priority on improving the national missile shield and bolstering a network of civilian bomb shelters – a posture that may herald resilience in the face of an eventual nuclear-armed Iran or a bracing for reprisals should Israel strike Iran first.