The decision of more than 90 U.S. senators to press President Obama for Iraq-style sanctions on Iran flew in the face of what some observers warned could be the beginning of a stress test of the international support for pressuring Iran and another step [...]]]> Posted with the permission of Think Progress

The decision of more than 90 U.S. senators to press President Obama for Iraq-style sanctions on Iran flew in the face of what some observers warned could be the beginning of a stress test of the international support for pressuring Iran and another step closer to a potential war with the Islamic Republic.

But a Tuesday press release [PDF] from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) brings to mind eery parallels between the escalation of sanctions against Iran and the slow lead up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The press release read:

AIPAC applauds today’s bipartisan letter—signed by 92 U.S. Senators—to the administration urging it to sanction the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), or Bank Markazi. The letter, spearheaded by Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Mark Kirk (R-IL), notes that the CBI lies at the center of Iran’s strategy to circumvent international sanctions against its illicit nuclear program.

Sanctioning Bank Markazi might, as mentioned by the Wall Street Journal’s Jay Solomon, be interpreted as an act of war. But that doesn’t seem to bother AIPAC. Indeed, they’ve been down this sanctions road once before before the invasion of Iraq.

In June, Robert Dreyfuss interviewed former AIPAC senior Iran analyst Keith Weissman who offered details of how AIPAC and its allies in the Bush administration pushed the allegation that Saddam Hussein was in league with al Qaeda. More importantly, Weissman discusses AIPAC’s plans for ultimately bringing regime change in Iran. Dreyfuss writes:

Weissman says that Iran was alarmed at the possibility that the United States might engage in overt and covert efforts to instigate opposition inside Iran. He says that many in AIPAC, especially among its lay leadership and biggest donors, strongly backed regime change in Iran. “That was what Larry [Franklin] and his friends wanted,” he says. “It included lots of different parts, like broadcasts, giving money to groups that would conduct sabotage, it included bringing the Mojahedin[-e Khalgh], bringing them out of Iraq and letting them go back to Iran to carry out missions for the United States. Harold Rhode backed this…. There were all these guys, Michael Ledeen, ‘Next stop Tehran, next stop Damascus.’“

Indeed, as shown in the AIPAC press release, Iran is now the target of similar sanctions and bellicose rhetoric similar to those that targeted Iraq in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Sanctioning Iran’s central bank and imposing a de facto oil embargo on Iranian oil exports would appear to be pages torn from the playbook before the invasion of Iraq.

If the current evidence that AIPAC is supporting an oil embargo isn’t convincing, consider Weissman’s comments on the oil industry’s support of AIPAC, and a boycott of Iranian oil, in the late 1990s:

Even Prince Bandar ibn Sultan, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, and Adel al-Jubeir — then the Saudi embassy spokesman and currently the ambassador — welcomed AIPAC’s work in helping to support the BTC pipeline and isolating Iran, its Persian Gulf rival, economically. Remembers Weissman:

“Prince Bandar used to send us messages. I used to meet with Adel al-Jubeir a couple times a year. Adel used to joke that if we could force an American embargo on Iranian oil, he’d buy us all Mercedes! Because Saudi [Arabia] would have had the excess capacity to make up for Iran at that time.”

It would appear that AIPAC is now using the same escalating measures against Iran that were used before the invasion of Iraq.

AEI scholar Michael Rubin recently took to the blog of the neoconservative flagship Commentary and attacked Tehran Bureau, an excellent resource on all things Iran, for linking to what he called “fake biographies of conservatives,” which, he suggested, warranted a Congressional investigation. His reference was to profiles on the website Right [...]]]> and Ali Gharib

AEI scholar Michael Rubin recently took to the blog of the neoconservative flagship Commentary and attacked Tehran Bureau, an excellent resource on all things Iran, for linking to what he called “fake biographies of conservatives,” which, he suggested, warranted a Congressional investigation. His reference was to profiles on the website Right Web (RW), a project of the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive DC think tank.

If Right Web sounds familiar to our readers, that’s because we often link to RW profiles. In fact, though he never mentioned it, the two Tehran Bureau articles with RW links Rubin mentioned were written by us (one by Ali on his own; the other co-authored). We’ve also both contributed to RW’s illuminating features section (that’s called disclosure, kids). Needless to say, we think RW is a useful website and a valuable resource.

Rubin, obviously, does not share our view. In his post, he wrote:

Someone at [PBS's] Frontline website has been substituting fake biographies of conservatives written by an organization called Right Web for legitimate institutional biographies.

That someone, of course, is us. Rubin‘s feigned ignorance of our work is comical. He’s raised his objections of our coverage in person before at an AEI event, asserting to Ali that he was not an “Iran hawk,” and, while researching an article last November, Ali e-mailed Rubin with an interview request to which he replied:

Ali, the more you link to Right Web, the less you have credibility as a journalist.  I’ll pass.

Rubin appears to have been waging a private jihad against RW for some time. In his initial Commentary post, Rubin cited a 2009 correspondence with RW’s director, Michael Flynn (Rubin refers to him as the “editor”). The actual correspondence, which RW reprinted on its website, demonstrates that Rubin mischaracterized Flynn’s response to an inquiry. (The e-mails contained this lovely rebuttal to Rubin‘s objection to being called an ‘Iran hawk’: “In our humble opinion, suggesting assassinating a country’s leader is tantamount to attacking that country.”)

RW rightly called Rubin‘s attacks “smears” against the website. The profiles are all fully sourced and based on publicly available news clips. And they were hardly “substitut(ed)” for “legitimate institutional biographies.” In a letter to the editors of Commentary (which Flynn reproduced in an article on Right Web after Commentary failed to respond to his queries), Flynn wrote that RW profiles

do not attempt to be comprehensive, nor do they try to mislead readers into thinking that they are somehow “official” biographies. At the top of each profile we state, “Right Web neither represents nor endorses any of the individuals or groups profiled on this site.”

Again, that statement is at the top of every single RW profile.

A few days after Rubin‘s attack, Tehran Bureau appended an editor’s note to the two pieces Rubin mentioned. Part of the note read:

After reviewing the matter, we find that the biographies on the Right Web site are not at all fake or fabricated, and seem to be well-sourced.

Rubin, predictably, threw a hissy fit in a second Commentary post:

That the editors at PBS Frontline are unable to differentiate between assertions of opinion on hard-left blogs and fact-checked news sources suggests an unfortunate lack of judgment and professionalism and an organization undeserving of tax-payer subsidy.

By way of an example, Rubin attempts to deconstruct the RW page for the Office of Special Plans (OSP), a short-lived and controversial outfit in George W. Bush’s Defense Department that was widely criticized as a nexus of neoconservative ideologues who selectively spread intelligence to the White House and the press in order to build a case for war against Iraq.

Rubin attacks the integrity of Robert Dreyfuss, a veteran national-security reporter for the The Nation whose work is cited in the RW profile of OSP. Rubin, as he always does, dredged up Dreyfuss’ past work for controversial conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche’s magazine. That bit is true, but Dreyfuss long, long ago disassociated himself from the LaRouchie scene, and has since distinguished himself as an excellent reporter on U.S. foreign policy.

Rubin goes on to attack a retired air force officer and whistle blower; impugns the credibility of legendary investigative reporter Sy Hersh (because of one admittedly bizarre speech); and cites a Pentagon Inspector General report that he claims exonerated OSP and officials involved therein. The IG report actually states that the OSP was not directly involved in the intel scandals that provoked the investigation, but rather had become a generic term to refer to the work of the Office of the then-Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, led by Douglas Feith, whose intel work the IG characterized as “inappropriate” and misleading. Rubin, of course, does not mention these rather important and relevant findings, which are, however, mentioned in Feith’s RW profile).

Rubin criticizes our piece in Tehran Bureau for asserting that Pentagon analyst Harold Rhode “worked in the” OSP, an assertion we actually never made. We wrote that he had been “involved with” OSP’s work, as has been widely reported and as one would expect given his very close and long-standing ties with Richard Perle who helped Feith get his job. (Feith’s son, David, currently an assistant editorial features editor at — surprise! — the Wall Street Journal, helped Perle and David Frum research their 2003 neo-conservative classic, An End to Evil when he was still in high school, according to the book’s acknowledgments.

Does it sound like Rubin is doing more than looking out for the integrity of news sources that receive federal assistance? It should: He’s actually defending his career. What Rubin omits, and as his actual institutional biography and RW page demonstrate, is that he in fact worked in the Defense Department at the time. He was closely associated with other ideological neoconservatives involved with OSP who have been blamed for misleading Americans on the Iraqi threat (WMD’s and Al Qaeda ties) and worked as a political adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority. The latter was the U.S. occupation government in the early days of Iraq, at the time when the U.S. mismanaged the situation there and missed — or selectively didn’t report to the U.S. public — the rising signs of the deadly impending sectarian violence and eventual civil war. With a track record like that, perhaps one can’t blame Rubin for highly selective disclosure (‘Heckuva job, Rubin‘).

Lastly, Rubin takes a shot at RW director Michael Flynn’s CV:

Let’s hope that the editors of PBS Frontline never fact-check the editor of Right Web’s claim that he has published in the Washington Post because neither LEXIS-NEXIS nor WashingtonPost.com seem to have any record of any such article.

That’s funny: We’re not even ‘scholars’ at any institution (let alone under the tutelage of Danielle Pletka), and yet, through cunning research skills, we were able to quickly search the Post‘s website and turned up an abstract of Flynn’s 2005 article. (If Rubin wants to read the whole thing without paying, he can find a copy here — or get a new research assistant.)

Not only did Michael Rubin’s government service coincide with the run-up to and botched execution of the Iraq occupation, and not only does his research acumen leave something to be desired, but he’s also proven himself a less than stellar military analyst. When he was still vigorously boosting Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi, Rubin was a early, vociferous and persistent critic of Gen. David Petraeus’s attempts to co-opt the Sunni insurgency. What Rubin denounced as “appeasement” — as opposed to the now-discredited “deBaathification” pushed by Chalabi and his neoconservative allies at Rubin’s and Perle’s American Enterprise Institute — turns out to have salvaged the war. Over his opposition, the Petraeus-led table-turning made the general a hero among Rubin’s ideological comrades.

His attacks on Tehran Bureau, Right Web and us are only the latest chapters of a less-than-sparkling career in punditry for Michael Rubin. Despite calling for a Congressional investigation into PBS’s linking to Right Web profiles and an end to PBS’s federal funding, Rubin fails to show how any of the profiles are “fake” or “conspiracy-riddled.”

Rubin’s blog posts attacking our articles and RW are indicative of the sensitivity that he must feel, along, we would imagine, with many of his colleagues, over RW’s well-sourced and factual descriptions of neoconservatives’ (including Rubin’s) and other militarists’ careers in both the public and private sectors.

Michael Rubin‘s own career suggests misjudgment after misjudgment. And yet, he’s calling for a Congressional investigation into a news outlet based on their sources. If Rubin were to better explain and own up to some of his dubious contributions to U.S. foreign policy over the last decade — as outlined in his RW profile — instead of sweeping them under the rug, his criticisms might hold more weight.

WASHINGTON, Dec 15, 2010 (IPS) – The Barack Obama administration is preparing a new batch of sanctions against Iran to be announced next [...]]]> Our IPS colleague Barbara Slavin has a story on the U.S.’s push for a new sanctions despite the upcoming negotiations (as part of the P5+1) with Iran next month in Turkey:

WASHINGTON, Dec 15, 2010 (IPS) – The Barack Obama administration is preparing a new batch of sanctions against Iran to be announced next week in advance of nuclear talks in Turkey.

Two Iran experts in Washington who are usually well briefed about U.S. Iran policy said more Iranian officials would be designated as abusers of human rights on top of eight sanctioned earlier this year. That would deny them the right to travel to the U.S. and freeze any assets they might hold in this country.

Gary Samore, White House coordinator on non-proliferation, told a neoconservative organisation, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, last week that the U.S. would “maintain and even increase pressure” against Iran so long as negotiations produced no progress on curbing Iran’s nuclear programme.

Asked by IPS if that meant new punishments before a meeting expected in January in Istanbul, Samore said, “I think it would be an important message to send to take additional measures.”

At the FDD conference, Samore made an off-the-cuff comment that seemed a bit strange. The Nation‘s Robert Dreyfuss picked up on it:

Weirdly enough, Samore’s speech followed a panel discussion by ultra-hardliners about the “kinetic option,” i.e., a military attack on Iran, and Samore said that he “agreed with a great deal of what was said, probably more than I can publicly admit to.” That’s unsettling, to say the least, and afterwards I asked Samore about it in the hallway outside. He refused to clarify what he meant—but it seemed obvious.

The FDD conference was heavily focused on ratcheting-up sanctions — it seemed a point of broad agreement among all participants.

Yet the question remains: Why now? Why push for new sanctions in the next month right before the U.S. returns to the table with Iran? Why just ahead of what one hopes will lead to a confidence-building deal?

The two-track path pursued by the administration — pressure and engagement — shouldn’t mean that the United States can’t pull back on one (pressure) for just a month in the hope that a small piece of the other (engagement) can work out in good faith.

Let’s get caught up with [...]]]> Does the selection of Iran’s nuclear czar as its new (interim) foreign minister say anything about nuclear negotiations between Iran and the West? We don’t really know, and given that the next round of talks is only a month away, we might not know until news breaks from Istanbul.

Let’s get caught up with Iran: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sacked Manoucher Mottaki — widely seen as a political figure — on Monday in a surprise move. The outgoing FM, who had long been known to be at odds with Ahmadinejad, was quickly replaced in the interim by the now-former head of Iran’s nuclear agency, Ali Akbar Salehi. Salehi, who was partly educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is known as a technocrat.

Laura Rozen at Politico does Iranian “Kremlinology” with analysis from experts in D.C.. Trita Parsi told Rozen:

“The fact that Salehi, a longtime hand in the nuclear program, replaces [Mottaki] may indicate the nuclearization of Iranian foreign policy,” Iranian analyst Trita Parsi said. “While Mottaki was never central to the nuclear program, the person replacing him and taking over the entire foreign policy machine is a person that for decades has been instrumental to the program.”

“This may indicate, if not renewed seriousness on the part of the Iranians, at least a recognition that the parties recognize that they are close to crunch time and they are fielding their best players as a result,” he said.

I reached out to Iran expert and University of Hawaii professor Farideh Farhi, an expert on Iran’s byzantine politics, who told me both the sacking and the new hire remain a mystery to her. She emphasized that the appointment is an interim one, so Ahmadinejad could have simply put off a more controversial pick that would have aroused opposition in the Majles, or Iranian parliament. We don’t yet know, however, what the pick means for Ahmadinejad’s relationship with the Supreme Leader. Farhi (the links are mine):

Some people are speculating that it may have something to do with [this month's Iran-P5+1 talks in] Geneva and the portrayal of success by the negotiating team inside Iran, giving Ahamdinejad the confidence to do this. One other analyst in Tehran suggested that the presidential advisor [Esfandiar Rahim] Mashaie’s visit this week to Jordan and King Abdullah’s positive response to Ahamdinejad’s personal letter might have given Ahmadinejad motivation to do this. There is indeed a possibility that Ahmadinejad sacked Mottaki the same way he sacked Ali Larijani as nuclear negotiator, without prior approval from [Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei. If this is the case then it bespeaks a confident Ahmadinejad since, as I mentioned above, it was merely a month or so ago that Khamenei supported Mottaki by name. If indeed Ahmadinejad did this without Khamenei’s prior approval, it means the game is not yet over.

It sounds like, once again, with Iran and the U.S. inching closer together, uncertainty will hang over the proceedings. If the U.S. comes through on hints, a confidence-building measure could be in the works, so the U.S. will likely be busy no matter what.

“Between now and January,” wrote Robert Dreyfuss on his Nation blog, “the United States is going to have to engage in some spirited, behind-the-scenes talks with Iran to make the negotiations work.” Dreyfuss noted, and focused on, that amid all the the action in Tehran, the U.S. seems to be ready to offer up a fuel swap agreement that, for the meantime, would allow centrifuges to keep spinning in Iran. It’s just the sort of “first step” deal, as Rozen noted, that Salehi hammered out with the Brazilians and Turks in the run-up to the last round of U.S. led UN Security Council sanctions.

Julian Border, at the Guardian, has a good piece covering the optimistic take on Salehi. Just after he pulls a few WikiLeaks docs to show several takes of Western diplomats on Salehi — he speaks good English and is a preferred interlocutor, but seems to not wield much influence in the halls of power — Border summed up the ever-ambiguous “Western diplomat” reaction:

Western diplomats, however, are generally cheered by the appointment because it might mean that their contacts with the foreign ministry will now have more substance. During the prolonged sparring between Mottaki and Ahmadinejad, the ministry increasingly became an empty shell, bypassed over major decisions, and irrelevant on the nuclear dossier.

Rozen, again, has a great observation, via Suzanne Maloney from the Brookings Institution, that Salehi is subject to an EU travel ban. Earlier, it had been reported that Salehi was named in the UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution, but apparently this was not right (though the agency which he formerly headed was). Had the UNSC bit turned out to be true, my reaction was that the move could be a provocation. Given that it’s only an EU ban and, as Rozen points out, it gets waived for higher-ups in foreign governments, I don’t really think so.

As I said, could it mean something for nuclear negotiations? Looks like we’ll have to wait for next month’s talks to find out.

Late-breaking: Inside Iran‘s Arash Aramesh has the take of a recent Iranian diplomatic defector. It’s worth checking out for the opinions of someone who was very recently, indeed, on the inside.

Starting in 2008, we began writing about the films produced and distributed by the mysterious Clarion Fund, as well as questioning the money trail. [...]]]> Salon’s Justin Elliott has new evidence indicating who funded the Clarion Fund’s 2008 distribution of 28-million DVDs of the Islamophobic documentary, Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.

Starting in 2008, we began writing about the films produced and distributed by the mysterious Clarion Fund, as well as questioning the money trail. A new page on their RadicalIslam.org website offers a revealing insight into the organization’s web of connections in the Islamophobia and neoconservative echo chamber.

The Clarion’s website “About Page” lists the organization’s Advisory Board, composed of some of the most high-profile and established propagators of Islamophobic rhetoric.

It includes:

• Frank Gaffney- A prominent neoconservative who has helped found the Center for Security Policy and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Gaffney is an outspoken advocate of battling  “Islamofascism,” which he says is in a “death struggle with us” and is directly or indirectly supported by China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Syria, and Venezuela.

• Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser- Founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) and narrator of the Clarion Fund’s Third Jihad documentary. (Back in 2008, I wrote about the similarities between the Third Jihad and the anti-Semitic trope, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.)

• Clare M. Lopez- A  Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Policy and Executive Director of the Iran Policy Committee. (Our reporting on the Iran Policy Committee can be found here and here.) The Iran Policy Committee has pushed for greater U.S. engagement with Mujahedin-e Khalq, a group designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

• Daniel Pipes- The Director of Middle East Forum and a well known propagator of Islmophobic rhetoric. Pipes has defended the Dutch anti-Muslim politician Geert Wilders, who has been attacked for his inflammatory comments that include referring to Mohammed as a “devil” and demanding that Dutch Muslims “tear out half of the Koran if they wish to stay in the Netherlands.” Pipes called Wilders “a charismatic, savvy, principled and outspoken leader who has rapidly become the most dynamic force in the Netherlands.”

• Dr. Harold Rhode- A foreign affairs specialist who worked in the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment. According to a Mother Jones  article by Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest, “Rhode worked with [Douglas Feith] to purge career Defense officials who weren’t sufficiently enthusiastic about the muscular anti-Iraq crusade that Paul D. Wolfowitz and Feith wanted.” “Rhode accosted and harangued a visiting senior Arab diplomat, telling him that there would be no ‘bartering in the bazaar anymore…. You’re going to have to sit up and pay attention when we say so.’”

• Ilan Sharon- The Executive Director of Minnesotans Against Terrorism. Clarion describes Sharon as, “A son of Jewish refugees from Libya and Egypt, Sharon lectures frequently on the issue of terrorism, the threat of Radical Islam, and the struggle for Peace in the Middle East. He aided in the production and distribution of Obsession, The Third Jihad, and Iranium.”

• Sarah Stern- The Founder and President of the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET). In September, 2008,  EMET’s spokesperson confirmed to IPS that the organization organized and oversaw the distribution of  Obsession DVDs.

The Clarion Fund’s advisory board represents a whose-who of the Islamophobia industry and the neoconservative far-right.

Clarion writes that their latest film, Iranium, will:

…[T]target influential U.S. interest groups and policy makers while remaining both straightforward and down-to-earth.  After viewing the film, the general public will be able to understand the critical nature of the threats and encourage a movement aimed at preventing the further advancement of the Iranian regime and its nuclear arsenal.

Given its list of advisers with their long history of propagating Islamophobic rhetoric and advocating for a militant U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, it remains to be seen how the Clarion Fund can present a balanced viewpoint on the complexities of U.S.-Iran relations.

He speculates while President George W. Bush’s [...]]]> A computer virus that appears aimed at Iranian nuclear facilities and other Iranian industrial installations is making headlines around the globe as the malware leaps borders and cybersystems. Robert Dreyfuss, The Nation‘s excellent progressive national security blogger, rounds up some reports in a post on the subject.

He speculates while President George W. Bush’s covert war against Iran was much discussed, the United States could be waging a similar effort under the radar screen. If this cyber-attack is a potential piece of that puzzle — it might working: the Iranians have been known to have technical problems at their centrifuge plants and have admitted the Bushehr reactor is under attack.

Dreyfuss writes:

Now, it appears, there is a serious computer worm affecting Ian’s nuclear industry, along with other Iranian industrial facilities. Called Stuxnet, the worm appears to be a case of outright industrial sabotage or cyber warfare, created and unleashed not by rogue hackers but by a state. According to the Seattle Times, the time stamp on the Stuxnet virus reveals that it was created in January 2010, meaning that if the United States is behind it, it’s Obama’s doing, not Bush’s.

If so, and if the United States is behind it, then Obama is already at war with Iran. Cyber warfare is no less war than bombs and paratroopers. Besides the United States, of course, Israel is high on the list of countries with both motive and capability. Iran’s PressTV, a government-owned news outlet, quotes various Western technology and cybersecurity experts saying that either the United States or Israel is behind Stuxnet.

The Times reports that Stuxnet is highly specific, aimed “solely at equipment made by Siemens that controls oil pipelines, electric utilities, nuclear facilities, and other large industrial sites.”

Kevin Hogan, the Senior Director of Security Response at Symantec, a virus-protection software company, told Reuters’ William Maclean that:

We cannot rule out the possibility (of a state being behind it). Largely based on the resources, organization and in-depth knowledge across several fields – including specific knowledge of installations in Iran – it would have to be a state or a non-state actor with access to those kinds of (state) systems.

With sixty percent of the world’s infected computers in Iran, there’s little question that someone – or some nation – with great resources directed this attack against Iranian facilities. It remains to be seen just who.