• The Washington Post: Jennifer Rubin blogs that White House Middle East Adviser (and Middle East Quarterly board member) Dennis Ross’s appearance at the J Street conference today “was an odd assignment, given that J Street, in concert with the pro-Iranian-regime NIAC had conspired to try to prevent his appointment.” She observes, “The applause greeting him was slight, almost imperceptible.” (I attended Ross’s speech and remember Ross receiving a polite reception from the crowd.) She adds, “on Iran’s nuclear program, he gave the Obama-approved squishy line, saying we are determined to try to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.”

• RealClearPolitics: Hawkish senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) on RealClearPolitics’s State of the Union blog. “The president should reverse the terrible decision he made in 2009 to not support the demonstrators in Tehran,” said McCain, in response to a question about the Obama administration holding off criticism of Libya out of concern that Americans there might be taken hostage. “Stand up for democracy in Iran and tell those people that we are with them,” he continued, “And that should be true not only throughout the Arab countries but as far as China and other parts of the world as well.”

• The Wall Street Journal: The Journal’s editorial board elaborates on “Why Tehran’s thugs will be harder to depose than Hosni Mubarak” and observes that the U.S. has less leverage over Iran’s leadership because “Tehran scorns the West.” Or, “To put it another way, pro-American dictatorships have more moral scruples.” The WSJ calls for Washington to impose greater isolation and pressure on Iran, and warns, “Yet many policy makers and pundits in the West still want to engage the regime as if it were merely another thuggish status quo power, rather than the greatest threat to world order.”

• Commentary: Commentary Executive Editor Jonathan Tobin warns against complacency after the news that Stuxnet had done massive damage to the Iranian nuclear program. “Somehow, despite the sanctions and the ban on selling nuclear equipment to Iran, the damaged centrifuges were replaced almost as quickly as they were taken offline,” he says.  “At best, it has delayed them a bit, but the IAEA evidence makes it clear that the Khamenei/ Ahmadinejad regime’s commitment to their goal of a nuke is such that cyberattacks won’t be enough to derail them,” he continues. Tobin goes on to lash out at the Obama administration for wasting time and effort in “engagement” with Iran and concludes, “[I]f the IAEA evidence is correct, then the optimistic forecasts about Tehran’s prospects must be thrown out and replaced with an evaluation that puts the need for either serious sanctions or the use of force back on Washington’s front burner.”

• The Washington Post: Jennifer Rubin blogs on her “Right Turn” blog—a blog which is supposed to cover the “conservative movement and the Republican party” but disproportionately focuses on Iran and Israel—that sanctions against Iran have failed and that it’s time to reexamine the military option. “Neither the administration’s touted sanctions nor a computer virus has slowed the Iranian regime’s quest for nuclear weapons. For all the chest-puffing by the Obama team, sanctions have in fact not ‘worked,’” she writes. She consulted the American Enterprise Institute’s John Bolton, a former UN ambassador, who told her, “U.S. policy should be regime change in Iran, with both overt and covert assistance to opposition groups willing to accept it.”  Bolton goes on to warn, “[A]n Iranian crash program could produce a nuclear weapon in one year. That means there are still only two options: Let Iran get nuclear weapons or use preemptive military force.”

• The Heritage Foundation: The Heritage Foundation’s Ted R. Bromund and James Philips make their against a U.S. policy of containment against Iran, preferring the “military option.” Their argument appears to defy the historical pattern of containment against the Soviet Union and China, asserting, “A serious containment policy will require the U.S. to maintain a credible threat of force against Iran. This will be even more difficult if Iran goes nuclear because the U.S. will have lost credibility.” Bromund and Philips say, “The U.S. therefore cannot rule out military action to stop the development of Iran’s nuclear program. If the U.S. fails to present a convincing threat of military action and thus effectively acquiesces in the Iranian program, it will encourage the Iranian regime to believe that it can continue to advance without fear.” The authors prefer this strategy over the “repetitious, content-free, and ill-informed mantra of containment.”

• The Washington Post: Jennifer Rubin blogs that the Obama administration has been distracted by the new federal budget and is failing to support pro-democracy protesters in Iran. “There is no call for regime change and there is no indication we are planning any increased assistance for the opposition,” she says. Rubin repeats House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s (R-FL) call for tightening sanctions, and concludes, “Perhaps some oversight hearings are in order. The chairwoman and her committee should probe whether besides tweeting in Farsi the administration is offering anything more than lip service to the protesters.”

• National Review Online: Michael Barone opines, “[M]ost of us would probably prefer to have seen a victory of people power in Tehran or Pyongyang than in Cairo… Mubarak’s Egypt was an ally of the United States, at least somewhat helpful in our own efforts in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East, and a nation at peace, albeit a cold peace, with Israel.” He continues, “In contrast, the mullah regime in Iran is developing nuclear weapons to threaten Israel and other American allies within missile range.” He goes on to blame the Obama administration for the failure of June 2009 protests in Tehran to bring about regime change: “The people of Iran did take to the streets in opposition to the mullahs’ election-rigging in June 2009. But Barack Obama and his administration gave a cold shoulder to this green movement, and there was no regime change.”

None of this should come as much of a surprise since her trip, as she admitted last week, is paid for by the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), a hawkish Bill Kristol front group.

First, Rubin takes retired Mossad head Efraim Halevy to task for suggesting that a nuclear Iran would still find itself at a military disadvantage against Israel, let alone Saudi Arabia or the United States.

She writes:

What is distressing is to hear a former head of Mossad caution that we really shouldn’t talk about doing everything to deprive Iran of a nuclear weapon. (Halevy has made a post-Mossad career of feeding the narrative that Iran is much to do about nothing.) We shouldn’t imagine, Halevy says, that Israel and the U.S. would be at a disadvantage when Iran goes nuclear because Israel has always checked Iran. In fact, he says obtaining a nuclear weapon would be a bigger problem for Iran, citing how isolated North Korea is. Umm. But isn’t a tiny, impoverished North Korea holding the world hostage?

It would be interesting to hear how Rubin sees North Korea “holding the world hostage.” Yes, the DPRK continues to pose a challenge for South Korea, Japan, China, Russia, and the U.S. and the ongoing reports of famines and humanitarian disasters within North Korea are distressing. But it’s a real stretch to describe North Korea as “holding the world hostage.” By most objective measurements, North Korea has found itself cut off from the international community and, despite having a nuclear weapon, still finds itself dependent on China for fuel and food aid. It stretches the realm of the believable to suggest that the “hermit kingdom” is holding anyone, except perhaps its own citizenry, hostage.

Second, Rubin performs some rhetorical jujitsu to show that, regardless of how long it might take Iran to develop a nuclear weapon, the international community should support the same hawkish policies.

Rubin unloads on Halevy and the Center for American Progress’s Brian Katulis for suggesting that Iran is actually suffering under international sanctions, and that it is far from holding the entire Middle East hostage.

She writes:

In the Halevy-Katulis universe we are winning the battle against Iran. Oh, Syria and Turkey are linked at the hip; an Iran surrogate now rules Lebanon; an Iran surrogate wages war on Israel from Gaza; the Iranian regime terrorizes its own people; and Iran, while slowed by espionage, is still close to becoming a nuclear-armed Islamic revolutionary state. How do they manage a world view that is so divorced from recent events? Most shocking, Halevy declared that Israel would not “die” if Iran got the nuclear bomb.

With this, Rubin could take no more and challenged Halevy about his statements that an Iranian nuclear weapon might not spell the end of Israel, and that the time frame is less important than those like Rubin might suggest.

Afterward, I asked Halevy whether, as he asserted, we had 3-5 years before Iran became a nuclear power. Following the departure of the most recent Mossad chief both the British and the Israeli governments hastened to reaffirm that the time frame was not so long. His answer was shocking: “What difference does it make?” I pressed on, asking whether a longer time framework didn’t promote a lackadasical attitude toward checking the nuclear threat. He insisted the facts — the amount of time we have to prevent Iran from going nuclear — really weren’t essential.

Let’s hope that the time frame really is longer. Let’s hope we have some breathing space to help promote regime change. But one should be suspicious of those for whom the facts are irrelevant.

(Why exactly is she suggesting that her readers “be suspicious” of Katulis and Halevy? Given Rubin’s penchant for applying labels—she famously described a group of respected foreign policy experts as “Israel bashers” and charged that American Jews have a “sick addiction” to the Democratic party—it would be useful to know what, exactly, Rubin suspects Katulis and Halevy of doing.)

With the New York Times’ recent expose on Stuxnet, many pundits celebrated that through sanctions, Stuxnet, various forms of espionage, and targeted killings, etc, the West appeared to have bought itself some precious time to develop both an engagement and containment strategy for dealing with Iran. Now, says Rubin, the extra time has “promot[ed] a lackadaisical attitude.” Would she have preferred if the Iranian nuclear program hadn’t been pushed back?

More importantly, Rubin’s portrayal of Iran as running roughshod across the Middle East is as factually inaccurate as her understanding of North Korea’s influence in Northeast Asia. None of the relationships between Iran and Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria, and Turkey are new or have been strengthened by Tehran’s nuclear program. Indeed, if Iran’s leaders were to look to North Korea for a lesson on the consequences of pursuing nuclear weapons, they might conclude that the international isolation that occurs from such an endeavor is not worth the potential benefits.

• The Washington Times: American Enterprise Institute fellow and former UN ambassador John Bolton denounces the EU and White House’s commitment to P5+1 negotiations with Iran, writing, “There is not, and has not been from the outset of these tortuous negotiations, even the slightest chance Iran will renounce its 20-year goal of deliverable nuclear weapons.” Bolton goes on to argue, “…the Tehran regime has systematically used the talks to buy time to overcome the many scientific and technological obstacles to achieving its objective.”

• The Washington Post: Jennifer Rubin, writing on her Right Turn blog, opines on the retirement of Stuart Levey from his position as Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. Rubin uses this event as an opportunity to review the state of Iran sanctions, writing, “One sanctions expert reminds me that sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran have still not been issued, and no foreign, non-Iranian bank has been sanctioned for its involvement with Iran.” Rubin concludes, “…[n]ow we see that sanctions critics were right all along. Even the best sanctions efforts innovatively implemented have failed to meet our objectives. We need to change the regime, not the rulers’ hearts and minds.”

But perhaps Rubin’s most egregious language, which would seem to fall well outside of the accepted tone of The Washington Post, has been saved for those individuals and groups that she deems to be enemies of Israel for daring to suggest that Israel should cease settlement construction in the Occupied Territories.

The Washington Note’s Steve Clemons has issued a public call to the Post’s editorial page editor, Fred Hiatt, and Post Chairman Donald Graham, to address Rubin’s recent post in which she wrote:

The usual crowd of Israel bashers has sent the president a letter urging him to go along with a U.N. resolution condemning Israel for its settlements.

Clemons, along with a host of prominent foreign policy analysts, issued a letter urging the the Obama administration to support a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction in the Occupied Territory.

He responded to her smear:

I believe that she and I have a serious disagreement about what Israel’s interests are — and I believe that the Netanyahu wing of the Israeli political establishment regularly places short term interests over long to mid-term interests. But I don’t call those who support Netanyahu Israel-bashers even though I believe that as patriotic as they may be as Israelis or as pro-Israel as they may be as Americans they are harming Israel’s interests. That could be a constructive debate — something where both sides could learn something, perhaps.

Calling someone as Israel-basher is akin to calling them an anti-Semite or a bigot, and that can’t go without response. I’m a strong believer in Israel and want a healthy and constructive relationship between Israel and the United States. I have traveled to Israel, have met people from nearly every political party in the Knesset, and love the place and people.

But Rubin, it would appear, took Clemons’ post as a personal challenge and used the exact same term in a post this morning in which she characterized a group of congressmen who endorsed General David Petraeus’s concept of “linkage” as “Israel-bashing.”

Rubin, who repeatedly tries to challenge conventional wisdom that the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict damages U.S. strategic interests in the Middle East, wrote:

…[A] group of the worst of the Israel-bashing congressmen sent a letter last May to Obama parroting back the general’s gaffe.

Back in May, these congressmen wrote to Obama, urging him to “continue [his] strong efforts to bring U.S. leadership to bear in moving the parties toward a negotiated two-state solution.”

They began their letter:

As steadfast advocates of the unbreakable U.S. commitment to the security of Israel, we write in support of your strong commitment to a Middle East peace process that results in Israel and a Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security.

Hardly the language of “Israel-bashing” except, perhaps, in the peculiar world of Jennifer Rubin’s Right Turn blog at The Washington Post.

Rubin’s proclivity towards smearing her opponents as Israel-bashing belies the fundamental weakness of the hawkish, Israeli right-wing — a position she consistently advocates from her perch at The Washington Post. While she can’t be blamed for continuing the abrasive tone that she perfected on Commentary’s Contentions blog, Clemons is right in pointing out that Rubin’s character attacks are beneath The Washington Post and should be called to the attention of the Post’s editors and chairman.

The only problem with her outrage is that HSBC implied no such thing.

HSBC responded to Rubin in a restrained–given the charges that Rubin was laying against them–and cogent statement.

HSBC offers no opinion on the lives of artists in any country. This is not a topic that’s germane to an ad campaign for a global bank. The ad needs to be considered in the context of our “Unlocking the World’s Potential” campaign. As with our prior “Values” campaign, this campaign intentionally makes no judgment. The intent is only to emphasize surprising facts based on geographic diversity, as a way to facilitate a conversation about the world’s potential. Other surprising facts featured in this campaign: Holland earns more exporting soy than Japan; USA has more Spanish language newspaper readers than Latin America.

Rubin does have some dirt: she lists some recent letters citing HSBC by a pair of members of Congress, and quotes a September 24 cease and desist order from a U.S. regulator imposing more rigid risk management systems on the bank. HSBC tells Rubin it “continue(s) to follow the letter and spirit of laws, regulations and sanctions related to Iran, in all jurisdictions.”

“It is not clear precisely what business activity HSBC continues to conduct in Iran,” Rubin admits high up in her piece. She concludes by making an unsubstantiated claim that HSBC is “continuing to do business with a murderous regime.”

As Ali pointed out last week, neoconservative responses to the ad—it was first tweeted by the Emergency Committee for Israel’s Noah Pollak—are “intellectually dishonest, utterly lacking in empathy, short-sighted, sloppy and hypocritical.” Rubin’s response manages to incorporate all of these elements in her hard-charging—yet factually challenged–response.

HSBC did not imply that women in Iran are “better situated” than American women. Rubin’s willingness to distort the text of the ad shows a total lack of empathy for the challenges that Iranian female filmmakers have overcome to hold an astonishing 25% of the film-making market. And her inability to celebrate the accomplishments of female filmmakers in Iran shows a striking short-sightedness, sloppiness and hypocrisy considering her supposed concern for the conditions faced by women in Iran.

But then again, perhaps her concern for human rights is overshadowed by a deeply irrational hatred and fear of everything — and anyone — Iranian.

Rubin turns to former American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spokesperson Josh Block, now a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, who validates her stance:

It defies logic and common decency that HSBC would engage in this outrageous pro-Iran, anti-American propaganda at a time when the regime in Tehran is the leading human rights violator and state sponsor of terror in the world.

So the cycle begins again. The ad (which HSBC has now pulled) was not “anti-American.” Given the apparent truth of the statistics reported, it was not propaganda. Nor was the ad defending Iran’s human rights violators. Rubin, Block and Pollak’s argument are sticking to a script that necessitates a mindset of intellectual dishonesty, a lack of empathy, short-sightedness, sloppiness and hypocrisy. These aren’t the limited faults with Rubin, Block and Pollak’s argument.  They are the foundation of it.

*Ali Gharib contributed to this post