Indeed, both of these concerns should be taken seriously as the hawkish Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) takes over as the new Chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
A review of her statements from the past year would indicate that the Obama administration’s policy of sanctions, while keeping the door open for negotiations, will be challenged by Ros-Lehtinen.
In a December 14, 2009 op-ed in the LA Times, Ros-Lehtinen wrote:
The regime in Tehran knows only hardball, and nothing less than overwhelming and crippling sanctions could produce a reversal of its threatening programs and policies.
[…]
But these sanctions must be coupled with action on all fronts. The U.S. must also specifically reject Iran’s claim to an inalienable right to produce nuclear fuel.
And, as The Cable’s Josh Rogin cautions, Ros-Lehtinen could cause significant problems for the Obama administration’s foreign policy if, as expected, she pushes the administration to punish Russian and Chinese companies doing business with Iran. She is expected to lead a congressional effort to demand more information about the U.S.-Saudi arms deal, which was widely seen by realists as an Obama administration plan to form a long-term containment and deterrence strategy against a nuclear armed Iran.
In this same article, Rogin quotes from a previously unreported letter obtained by The Cable. In it, Ros-Lehtinen and then House Foreign Affairs chair Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA) demanded answers to their questions about the arms deal from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
They wrote:
We are writing to raise concerns and pose a number of strategic questions about the impact such sales would have on the national security interests of the United States and our allies.
It’s fair to ask how Ros-Lehtinen will view the Obama administration’s endorsement of “linkage”—a concept which is accepted at the highest levels of the U.S. military, that resolving the Arab-Palestinian conflict will forward the United States’ broader strategic interests in the region.
So far it appears likely she will oppose the Obama administration’s efforts to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on settlements, having been a vocal critic of the administration’s strained relationship with Israeli leadership.
Lynch concludes:h
]]>I’m gritting my teeth in anticipation of the next Congress becoming a platform for Iran war hawks, hyping the issue even further in anticipation of the 2012 elections… look for another round of sanctions and some kind of Iranian Liberation Act on the horizon, regardless of how things are actually going for U.S. diplomatic efforts. A GOP-controlled Congress may not go for the big $60 billion arms sale to the Saudis, what with that whole “sharia” thing.
While pundits have suggested that the deal might signify a shift in the Obama administration’s posture from preventing Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon to deterring and containing a nuclear armed Iran, Walt, a [...]]]>
While pundits have suggested that the deal might signify a shift in the Obama administration’s posture from preventing Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon to deterring and containing a nuclear armed Iran, Walt, a dyed-in-the-wool realist, questions whether the arms sale might be counter-productive and create further incentives for Iran to acquire a nuclear deterrent.
Walt writes:
[I]f our primary goal is to discourage Iran from developing nuclear weapons, then might this new initiative be counter-productive? Doesn’t it just give Iran an even bigger incentive to get a nuclear deterrent of its own? Think about it: if you had a bad relationship with the world’s most powerful country, if you knew (or just suspected) that it was still backing anti-government forces in your country, if its president kept telling people that “all options were still on the table,” and if that same powerful country were now about to sell billions of dollars of weapons to your neighbors, wouldn’t you think seriously about obtaining some way to enhance your own security? And that’s hard to do with purely conventional means, because your economy is a lot smaller and is already constrained by economic sanctions. Hmmm….so what are your other options?
He concludes:
]]>And I’m all for maintaining a favorable balance of power in the Gulf. But if we are still hoping to convince Iran that it would be better off without some sort of nuclear weapons capability (even if only of a “latent” sort), this move strikes me as a step in the wrong direction.