by Jim Lobe
Along with AIPAC and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), one of the most active groups that have promoted a policy of confrontation with Iran has been United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), headed by a former Bush administration representative (under John Bolton) to the UN, Mark Wallace. According to a recent [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
Along with AIPAC and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), one of the most active groups that have promoted a policy of confrontation with Iran has been United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), headed by a former Bush administration representative (under John Bolton) to the UN, Mark Wallace. According to a recent story in the New York Times, UANI, which has specialized in mounting public campaigns against foreign companies allegedly violating US or other sanctions against Iran, recently benefited from an intervention by the Justice Department in a defamation suit against one of its targets, a Greek ship-owner, by asking the trial court to prevent the disclosure of the identity of its donors, as well as other internal UANI documents, arguing that such disclosure could jeopardize ongoing law-enforcement activities.
The intervention was highly unusual, according to some experts, as well as the trial judge himself, who nonetheless bowed to the government’s request.
The story piqued the interest of the intrepid LobeLog alumnus, Eli Clifton, who has uncovered some rather interesting facts about UANI in a piece he just published on Salon. The whole article is well worth reading, but its focus is the curious business relationship between Wallace and billionaire-philanthropist Thomas S. Kaplan, one of the world’s biggest investors in precious metals. As noted by Eli:
The nature of Kaplan’s ties to UANI aren’t entirely clear, but the links are apparent: Kaplan’s investment operations have shared several employees with UANI over the past six years, notably including UANI’s Wallace, who controls several mining ventures through the Tigris Financial Group with the billionaire. Together, the pair are betting big on investments in precious metals they say will retain or appreciate in value in an unstable economic and geopolitical environment. By Tigris’ own account, it stands to make money in the case of “political unrest in the Middle East” — exactly the kind of instability many experts think will become inevitable if naysayers of diplomacy with Iran have their way.
Wallace, according to UANI’s website, is CEO of the Tigris Financial Group, which happens to be controlled by Kaplan. Eli points out that both men have described the prospects for investors in silver, as bright, particularly given the possibility of global unrest, especially in the Middle East. He quotes a 2002 annual report for Kaplan’s Apex Silver Mines Ltd asking investors to consider “destabilization in the Middle East and Persian Gulf, tensions between India and Pakistan, the potential for nuclear confrontation with North Korea and Iran, […] religious extremism and terrorism on a global scale and hooliganism.” Similarly, in a 2011 prospectus for the Sunshine Silver Mine Corp. in Idaho, Tigris CEO Wallace noted that “investment demand for silver exposure remains strong” given “continued U.S. dollar weakness, ongoing economic uncertainty in Europe and political unrest in t he Middle East.”
Eli writes:
Though Kaplan isn’t listed anywhere on UANI’s public disclosures or on the gorup’s website, he acknowledged his connection to the anti-Iran group while receiving the French Legion of Honor insignia from French Ambassador Francois Delattre in April in New York.
“A friends’ comment that one day our kids might ask what our generation did when we knew what the Iranians’ intentions were prompted me to become part of something bigger,” he said, his words appearing only in a video recording of the event. “Hard to know what the outcome will be but I do know that as much as United Against Nuclear Iran may not have had Tomahawk missiles and aircraft carriers at its disposal, we’ve done more to bring Iran to heel than any other private sector initiative and most public ones.”
The published transcript of his remarks contained no mention of UANI or the comparison of the group’s work to advanced weaponry, presumably to be directed at Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Photo: Thomas S. Kaplan (Credit: YouTube/The Economist)
]]>The world economy would bear substantial costs if the United States took steps to significantly escalate the conflict with Iran over its controversial nuclear programme, according to the findings of a Federation of American Scientists’ (FAS) special report released here Friday.
Based on consulations with a group of nine bipartisan [...]]]>
The world economy would bear substantial costs if the United States took steps to significantly escalate the conflict with Iran over its controversial nuclear programme, according to the findings of a Federation of American Scientists’ (FAS) special report released here Friday.
Based on consulations with a group of nine bipartisan economic and national security experts, the findings showed the effects of U.S. escalatory action against Iran could range from 64 billion to 1.7 trillion dollars in losses for the world economy over the initial three-month term.
The least likely scenario of de-escalation, which would require U.S. unilateral steps showing it was willing to make concessions to resolve the standoff, would result in an estimated global economic benefit of 60 billion dollars.
“The study’s findings suggest that there are potential costs to any number of U.S.-led actions and, in general, the more severe the action, the greater the possible costs,” Mark Jansson, FAS’s special projects director, told IPS.
“That being said, even among experts, there is tremendous uncertainty about what might happen at the higher end of the escalation ladder,” added Jansson, the second author of the report after Charles P. Blair, an FAS senior fellow on state and non-state threats.
The six plausible scenarios of U.S.-led actions against Iran included isolation and a Gulf blockade, which would include U.S. moves to “curtail any exports of refined oil products, natural gas, energy equipment and services”, the banning of the Iranian energy sector worldwide (incurring an estimated global economic cost of 325 billion dollars), and a comprehensive bombing campaign that would also target Iran’s ability to retaliate (incurring an estimated global economic cost of 1.082 trillion dollars).
The report is explicit in not endorsing any particular policy recommendation, although others are not so reticent.
United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI) and the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) are leading hardline Washington-based advocacy groups arguing for sweeping economic measures against Iran.
“The White House must build on this momentum, intensifying economic warfare in an effort to shake the Islamic Republic to its core,” wrote FDD executive director Mark Dubowitz in June.
Paul Sullivan, an economics professor specialising in Middle East security at Georgetown University, told IPS that, “The fact that the hardest core of the neoconservative ‘strategists’ have not thought through the costs of escalating conflict with Iran is proof of their group intellectual inadequacy.
“The main effects to the U.S. if there is escalation is through the price of oil and increased military and other national security costs,” said Sullivan, who evaluated the scenarios as an expert but could not comment on the specific figures due to Chatham House Rules.
“If there is an attack on Iran, with the expected counterattacks the price of oil could quite easily go to 250 dollars or higher. This could push the U.S. right back into a recession,” he said.
As tensions rise over the decades-long dispute over Iran’s controversial nuclear programme, analysts are increasingly examining a range of costs associated with escalating the so-far cold conflict between the U.S. and Iran.
The Iran Project Report released in September showed that the cost of Iranian retaliation would be “felt over the longer term” by the U.S. and could result in a regional war.
“In addition to the financial costs of conducting military attacks against Iran, which would be significant…there would likely be near-term costs associated with Iranian retaliation, through both direct and surrogate asymmetrical attacks,” according to the report, which was endorsed by a long list of high-level, bipartisan national security advisers.
The Iran Project report’s findings support the notion that greater escalatory action will result in greater costs – shown in financial terms by the FAS findings: “A dynamic of escalation, action, and counteraction could produce serious unintended consequences that would significantly increase all of these costs and lead, potentially, to all-out regional war,” notes the report.
An Oct. 19 event on the economic and military considerations of war with Iran at the Center for the National Interest (CNI) offered similar assessments.
“You could lose eight million barrels a day of production, and it would not come back quickly,” said J. Robinson West, who has also held senior positions in the White House, the Energy Department, and the Pentagon under various Republican administrations. “We believe the price of oil will go above 200 dollars a barrel.”
On Oct. 20, the New York Times reported that the U.S. and Iran had “agreed in principle for the first time” to direct negotiations.
But Tehran and Washington did have “limited bilateral talks” in 2009 “when the Iranian leadership saw a potential in the newly elected Obama administration to address some of Iran’s bottom lines regarding the country’s right to enrichment,” Farideh Farhi, an independent scholar and affiliate graduate faculty at the University of Hawai’i, told IPS.
On Wednesday, President Obama denied the Times report but did not dismiss the notion of one-on-one talks. In fact, he strongly suggested that the U.S. would seriously engage if the Iranians proved their sincerity.
“If Iran is serious about wanting to resolve this, they’ll be in a position to resolve it,” he said during his first press conference following his successful presidential re-election campaign.
“The situation is different now insofar as the Iranian leadership is much more sceptical of Obama’s words regarding his desire to resolve the nuclear issue instead of going for the Islamic regime’s jugular after a show of desire for talks,” said Farhi.
“To be sure, there will always be hardline naysayers in Tehran no matter what. A similar situation exists in the U.S.. But if the past is any guide, Tehran will come around and abandon its current resistance to bilateral talks if it sees a potential for breakthrough,” she said.
]]>The US and EU are touting Iran’s currency woes as proof that sanctions are working, though it’s not clear to what end. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Western powers “are working on new coordinated measures intended to accelerate the recent plunge of Iran’s currency and drain its foreign-exchange reserves”:
The first [...]]]>
The US and EU are touting Iran’s currency woes as proof that sanctions are working, though it’s not clear to what end. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Western powers “are working on new coordinated measures intended to accelerate the recent plunge of Iran’s currency and drain its foreign-exchange reserves”:
The first salvos in this stepped-up sanctions campaign are expected at a meeting of EU foreign ministers on Oct. 15, including a ban on Iranian natural-gas exports and tighter restrictions on transactions with Tehran’s central bank, European officials said.
The U.S. and EU are also considering imposing a de facto trade embargo early next year by moving to block all export and import transactions through Iran’s banking system ….
To that end, U.S. lawmakers are drafting legislation that would require the White House to block all international dealings with Iran’s central bank, while also seeking to enforce a ban on all outside insuring of Iranian companies.
David Cohen, who coordinates the US’s Iran sanctions policy from within the Treasury, outlined the US’s stance in a speech before a British think tank. Reuters reports:
[David] Cohen, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, added in remarks on a visit to Britain’s Chatham House think-tank that Iran had the ability to “relieve the pressure its people are feeling” by resolving concerns over its nuclear work.
“What in particular has sparked the most recent precipitous decline in the rial, I’m not in a position to say on a granular basis,” he said, adding however that over the past year it had fallen substantially.
The Washington Post also reported that EU officials are “even more blunt” over the intentions behind the sanctions:
One senior European official said the goal of the tightened sanctions was to “bring the Iranian economy to its knees,” and to “make it in a way that really hurts the regime more than the population. That is very difficult.”
But US officials are also attempting to downplay the negative effects of the sanctions by blaming the regime. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said yesterday that “[t]he Iranian state has horribly mismanaged all aspects of their internal situation.” Cohen told the Chatham House audience that the unrest in Iran “is undoubtedly in significant part due to the Iranian government’s own mismanagement of its economy and it is in part due to the effect of sanctions. The Iranian leadership has within its capacity the ability to relieve the pressure its people are feeling.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered the following qualifier:
“They have made their own government decisions– having nothing to do with the sanctions– that have had an impact on the economic conditions inside of the country,”" Mrs. Clinton said. “Of course, the sanctions have had an impact as well, but those could be remedied in short order if the Iranian government were willing to work with. . .the international community in a sincere manner.”
Meanwhile the hawkish advocacy group United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI) is urging the US to increase sanctions to leverage the resulting unrest towards regime change:
The Obama administration, the European Union and others should impose an economic blockade on the Iranian regime. The regime is beginning to experience social and political unrest at an 80% devaluation of its currency, and significantly further devaluation will force Tehran to choose between having a nuclear weapon or a functioning economy. A blockade would even bring about the possibility of the failure of this illicit regime.
An economic blockade would mean that any business, firm, or entity that does work in Iran would be barred from receiving U.S. government contracts, accessing U.S. capital markets, entering into commercial partnerships with U.S. entities, or otherwise doing business in the U.S. or with U.S. entities. It is time for the U.S. and others to use all available economic leverage against the regime.
According to EU officials, this is the position Congress is now mulling over, since Iran is still able to move its energy exports on East Asian markets like South Korea’s:
“You could see a move for a total embargo,” said a senior European official involved in the sanctions debate. “This could fall in line with what Congress is thinking.”
Lobe Log publishes Hawks on Iran every Friday. Our posts highlight militaristic commentary and confrontational policy recommendations about Iran from a variety of sources including news articles, think tanks and pundits.
John Bolton, Mark Wallace & Kristen Silverberg, Wall Street Journal: This week members of the
Lobe Log publishes Hawks on Iran every Friday. Our posts highlight militaristic commentary and confrontational policy recommendations about Iran from a variety of sources including news articles, think tanks and pundits.
John Bolton, Mark Wallace & Kristen Silverberg, Wall Street Journal: This week members of the hawkish American Enterprise Institute and United Against Nuclear Iran were given the stage by the Wall Street Journal to advocate for further isolating Iran by barring it from the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund. Curiously, the authors begin by claiming that “Many believe that only military force will stop Iran” without indicating who that “many” may be. In fact, Israeli officials are divided about the merits of attacking Iran. Meanwhile, hawks in the US who advocate for striking Iran are outnumbered by high-level current and former Western officials who maintain that diplomacy is the best tool for dealing with Iran. Facts aside, the authors argue that their recommendation, which is “one step short of force”, should be implemented because
Iran’s continued participation in the U.N. and the IMF affords it international legitimacy and platforms to advance its agenda—gutting economic sanctions, among them—and undermines important Western foreign-policy interests.
Michael Oren, Wall Street Journal: Israel’s ambassador to the US argues for imposing more “crippling sanctions” and a “credible military threat” against Iran:
At the same time, the president has affirmed Israel’s right “to defend itself, by itself, against any threat,” and “to make its own decision about what is required to meet its security needs.” Historically, Israel has exercised that right only after exhausting all reasonable diplomatic means. But as the repeated attempts to negotiate with Iran have demonstrated, neither diplomacy nor sanctions has removed the threat.
A combination of truly crippling sanctions and a credible military threat—a threat that the ayatollahs still do not believe today—may yet convince Iran to relinquish its nuclear dreams. But time is dwindling and, with each passing day, the lives of eight million Israelis grow increasingly imperiled. The window that opened 20 years ago is now almost shut.
Read a response to Oren’s article by British diplomat and former IAEA representative Peter Jenkins, here.
David Feith, Wall Street Journal: An assistant editorial features editor at the Journal tells Americans that their government is “misleading” them about Iran and implies that the US should align its “red line” on Iran (a nuclear weapon) with Israel’s line (nuclear weapon capability) while questioning the President’s resolve to attack Iran:
Would this president, so dedicated to multilateralism (except where targeting al Qaeda is concerned), launch a major military campaign against Iran even without Russian and Chinese support at the U.N.? Do Iran’s leaders think he would? Or have they noticed that American officials often repeat the “all-options-on-the-table” mantra as mere throat clearing before they list all the reasons why attacking Iran is a terrifying prospect?
Those reasons are plain to see. An attack could lead to a major loss of life, to regional war, to Iranians rallying around their regime, to global economic pain. And it could fail.
But the question that counts is whether these risks outweigh the risks of a nuclear-capable Iran. That’s a hard question for any democratic government and its citizens to grapple with. The Obama administration’s rhetorical snow job only makes it harder.
Feith’s line of reasoning will only seem curious to those who are unfamiliar with the Journal’s regularly hawkish editorial board pieces about Iran.
Mark Dubowitz, Foreign Policy: The executive director of the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who recently advocated for waging “economic warfare” against Iran (read a response here), warns institutions and individuals against doing business with Iran:
Would-be sanctions busters beware: Any and all profits derived from Iran’s lucrative energy sector are now officially illegal unless you have received a waiver from the Obama administration. Congress and the White House recently closed significant loopholes in Iran’s energy, finance, shipping, insurance, and nonproliferation-related sanctions. The bottom line: Anyone doing business with Iran is putting themselves and their businesses at risk.
While Dubowitz refers to himself as “humble” in his article, he is a self-styled Iran sanctions “expert” who has reportedly done much to shape the US’s Iran policy. Yet, after years of enthusiastically calling for crippling sanctions against Iran, Dubowitz still expresses doubts:
]]>In the end, the success of the sanctions depends not on the sanctions busters, who may have little material impact on Iran’s ability to extend its economic day of reckoning, but rather on the one question that has yet to be answered about sanctions’ efficacy: whether the regime’s economic expiration date — when Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s cash hoard falls low enough to set off a massive economic panic — occurs before it has developed the capability to cross the threshold to a nuclear weapon.
Lobe Log publishes Hawks on Iran every Friday. Our posts highlight militaristic commentary and confrontational policy recommendations about Iran from a variety of sources including news articles, think tanks and pundits.
Michael Singh (WINEP), Washington Post: The managing director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (aka [...]]]>
Lobe Log publishes Hawks on Iran every Friday. Our posts highlight militaristic commentary and confrontational policy recommendations about Iran from a variety of sources including news articles, think tanks and pundits.
Michael Singh (WINEP), Washington Post: The managing director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (aka the Washington Institute or WINEP), a think tank that was created by the American Public Israel Affairs Committee (AIPAC), calls for imposing more pressure on Iran while bolstering the military option:
Like any good pugilist, Washington should follow the heavy blow of oil sanctions with further unrelenting pressure.
…
Finally, Washington should bolster the credibility of its military threat. Recent steps to strengthen its force posture in the Persian Gulf are a good start. They should be accompanied by more serious statements about U.S. willingness to employ force and an end to statements exaggerating the downsides of military action.
Former top CIA middle east analyst Paul Pillar responds in the National Interest:
If the oil sanctions aren’t enough, what other pressure does Singh say should be used? One is “bolder” efforts, whatever that means, to oust the Assad regime in Syria, and regardless of whatever implications that may have for escalation of that conflict. Another is an ill-defined reference to “cultivating Iranians outside the narrow circle around” the supreme leader or “providing support to dissidents” in Iran. No mention is made of how to get around the inherently counterproductive aspect of outside efforts to manipulate internal Iranian politics, or how one more indication that regime change is the ultimate Western objective is supposed to make the current regime more interested in making concessions. Finally, Singh calls for more military saber rattling—as if the threat of a military attack is supposed to make the Iranians less, rather than more, interested in a nuclear deterrent to protect themselves from such attacks. That makes as much sense as pushing yet again on the “pull” door.
We probably should not take the purveyors of such advice at their word. Surely at least some of them, including probably Singh, are smart enough to understand the basics of Sanctions 101. Their objective evidently is not success at the negotiating table but instead the indefinite perpetuation of the Iranian nuclear issue for other reasons or the checking off of a box on a pre-war checklist.
Lee Smith (FDD), Tablet Magazine: Hawks on Iran regular Lee Smith of the neoconservative-dominated Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) quotes retired Army Gen. John Keane (see biographical note below) before undermining repeated warnings from high-level defense and administration officials that a military strike would only set back Iran’s alleged nuclear aspirations by a few years:
In contrast, the Obama Administration has pulled out of Iraq and will soon pull out of Afghanistan. Yet the White House continues to repeat the trope that the program can, at best, be delayed a few years. Just as politics informed the Bush White House’s insistence on the delay-not-destroy mantra, politics of a different sort are informing this White House: This administration is conducting a public diplomacy campaign with the purpose of undermining the capability of a U.S. attack because the administration has no intention of striking.
Note: Keane has close ties with U.S. neoconservatives and was one of the main architects of George W. Bush’s surge in Iraq. In 2006, Gen. George Casey and the chief of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. John Abizaid recommended reducing troop levels in Iraq, but Keane and his neoconservative allies started looking for someone that would support escalation instead–ultimately General David Petraeus. As documented by Bob Woodward in the War Within, Keane ignored the chain of command while heavily promoting Petraeus. He also helped persuade Bush to reject the Iraq Study Group’s findings and recommendations by aggressively pushing an alternative strategy he wrote with Frederick Kagan at the American Enterprise Institute called “Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq.” That report led to the military buildup that followed.
Lee also uses Keane’s words to repeat his call for a ramped up military option:
…long before the United States decides to attack Iran, we need to communicate our seriousness to the regime. “There is only one guy you need to convince here to voluntarily give up the nuclear program and that is the Supreme Leader Khameini,” Jack Keane argues. “He must know we are dead serious about a military strike, as a last resort, and this is not just about the nuclear facilities—their military will be decapitated. This is the U.S. military. Believe me, we will destroy you.”
United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI): The neoconservative-aligned Iran sanctions-enforcement organization ramps up its pressure campaign against the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), the financial messaging system used to arrange international money transfers, aimed at further crippling Iran’s economy:
Said UANI CEO, Ambassador Mark D. Wallace:
Now is the time for a full banking blockade against the Iranian regime, and SWIFT needs to play its part. SWIFT made the right decision in February to deny access to Iran’s Central Bank and some other institutions, but it has thus far failed to cut off all Iranian banks and entities. SWIFT should immediately sever its ties with all Iranian banks, particularly the ten that have been sanctioned by the U.S. government but still maintain SWIFT access.
Every day that SWIFT permits these illegitimate banks to have continued access to its network is a day the Iranian regime will continue to circumvent international sanctions. As the world weans itself off of Iranian crude, there is not a need to maintain conduits for energy related payments, but a need for an international banking embargo against Iran.
Clifford D. May (FDD), Scripps Howard: The president of the FDD repeats colleague Mark Dubowitz’s recommendation of blacklisting the entire Iranian energy sector as a “zone of primary proliferation concern” and reiterates his own call for U.S.-assisted/backed regime change:
[President Obama] should announce his support for legislation introduced by Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), Rep. Robert Dold (R-Ill.) and Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) that would blacklist the entire Iranian energy sector as a “zone of primary proliferation concern.”
…
Such a speech should be followed by other measures in support of Iranians willing to take the risks necessary to replace a regime that has failed domestically, a regime that has been at war with the U.S. since it seized our embassy in 1979; a regime that four years later instructed Hezbollah to suicide-bomb the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut; a regime that has facilitated the killings of hundreds of Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan; a regime that plotted to blow up a restaurant in Washington, D.C., just last year.
Alan Dershowitz, Times of Israel: The pro-Israel Harvard Law Professor who “met for 45 minutes one-on-one with US President Barack Obama to discuss Iran” criticizes the J-Street lobbying group for “undercutting American policy toward Iran” by not pushing the military option on Iran:
]]>Dershowitz said that by “explicitly undercutting Obama on Iran,” it actually “makes it more likely that Israel will have to go alone. As George Washington said a long time ago, the best way to preserve peace is to be ready for war, and that’s been the Obama policy.” For J Street to undercut it and misrepresent prominent Israelis’ positions on it, he said, “takes it out of the pro-Israel camp. I don’t think it’s debatable that J Street is pro-Israel. It is not.”
Weekly Reads/Watch:
News: U.S. Iran Hawks in Congress in Some DisarrayNews: [...]]]>
Weekly Reads/Watch:
- News: U.S. Iran Hawks in Congress in Some Disarray
News: Iran nuclear talks: negotiators cite progress ahead of Baghdad meeting
News: U.N. nuclear agency to push Iran on military site access
News: U.S. Ambassador to Israel Speaks of Military Option for Iran
News: Iran sanctions bill coming to Senate floor again
News: Clinton: We don’t want the Iranians to say “We’ll get back to you”
News: Iranian Dissident Group Seeks to Shed Terrorist Label
News: Top U.S. think tank warns against Israeli, American strike on Iran
News: Ex-Israeli spy chief Meir Dagan headlines motley group pressing for tougher sanctions against Iran
Opinion: For Iran ‘Breakthrough,’ Coalition Cannot Break Down
Opinion: Spinning Up For Baghdad
Opinion: Sticks now, carrots later
Report: Iran’s Threat to the Strait of Hormuz
Report: How to Defuse Iran’s Nuclear Threat
Watch: Inside Iran’s inner circle
UANI, Wall Street Journal: You can argue that sanctions aid diplomacy, certainly, that’s the broken record we’ve been hearing for years. But the reverse argument–that sanctions can lead to war or fail to prevent it while harming the sanctioned country’s population–is equally valid or more so when we consider the case of Iraq. Enter United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI), a private sanctions-enforcement group that strives to market itself as bipartisan but includes several prominent Iran hawks and neoconservatives on its advisory board. It believes Iran is led by “radical rulers seeking nuclear weapons” and “threatening the world”, so surely they would agree that a seriously threatened Iran might fight for its life in aggressive ways when being strangled? Yet there’s no acknowledgement of that in a WSJ op-ed penned by a number of well-known hawks from UANI urging “liked-minded nations” to “immediately…deliver a potentially decisive economic blow to the regime” by “passing the most robust sanctions against Iran in history.” They are not convinced that this extremely confrontational approach will bring about positive results, but say it’s a final step that needs to be taken before war:
… it’s common sense that before undertaking military action against a country, we should first try to dissuade it from its current course by applying decisive economic pressure. Doing so will show the regime that the world is serious and committed, willing to do whatever it takes to stop Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Dan Shapiro/Shmuel Bar, New York Times: At a time when hopes are high for any kind of diplomatic progress with Iran and the West, Dan Shapiro, the U.S.’s ambassador to Israel, reminded the world that the military option is not only on the table, “necessary planning” has also been done “to ensure that it’s ready.” That wasn’t adequate for Shmuel Bar, director of studies at the Institute for Policy and Strategy in Herzilya, also quoted in the NYT piece:
“Saying it is not enough,” Mr. Bar said. What would have more significant effect, he said, is to show actual preparations for a military option by, for example, increasing deployment in the Persian Gulf.
“What actually the U.S. administration is doing is blowing hot and cold,” said Mr. Bar, who previously worked as an intelligence officer in the Israel Defense Force and in the prime minister’s bureau. “Actions do speak louder than words. The actions say the U.S. has a very strong aversion to any kind of military action.”
Mr. Bar pointed to a recent post on the Web site of the Iranian supreme leader that he described as “an analysis of why the U.S. cannot and will not go to war.”
“That is their candid evaluation of the situation,” he said. “When the Iranians see this, they say the Americans are doing everything they can to prevent Israel from attacking.”
Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post: Never one to be shy about her militant support for Israel, the Washington Post blogger paints a picture of the people who are pushing for hawkish measures against Iran in Washington (be sure to read Jim Lobe’s report for context) and reinforces her hawkish views at the same time. First is a quote from a regular source on her blog, Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who warns against the potential easing of crippling sanctions during negotiations:
As eager, however, as President Obama is for a deal that will get Iran off the front pages — and all but eliminate the possibility of an Israeli strike ahead of the November election — he cannot take the political risk of offering too much relief for too few concessions. Once sanctions start to unravel, the fear of U.S. penalties that held them together will become difficult to reestablish, and the multilateral sanctions regime — the centerpiece of the president’s Iran strategy — will be gone. This may also persuade the Israelis that the time for diplomacy has passed, and only military action can stop Iran’s development of nuclear weapons.
She then gratefully reminds us that Congress is pushing confrontational measures against Iran in spite of the “wimpy” U.S. President. (Thanks to Israel lobby organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee):
Precisely because Congress feels Iran is engaged in a rope-a-dope game and/or Obama will make a foolhardy deal that fails to halt the Iranian nuclear weapons program, efforts are underway to craft maximalist sanctions in advance of May 23. The House passed such a bill by a lopsided vote of 410-11.
But the problem is that some people want to prevent bills that bring the U.S. closer to war with Iran from being passed:
The Senate is a different matter. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) who says he is in favor of sanctions could have put the House bill on the floor and given it an up or down vote. Instead he opted for a watered down version of the bill. He entertained language from isolationist Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) that would specifically state the bill was not an authorization for use of force. He then proceeded to shut Republicans out of the process.
A senior GOP congressional aide with close knowledge of Iran sanctions legislation told me, “Neither Leader Reid nor Chairman [Sen. Tim] Johnson’s staff ever agreed to a single meeting with Sen. [Mark] Kirk’s office to address the senator’s proposed amendment. E-mails and phone calls went unreturned for weeks. The first time Democrats ever discussed the Iran bill with Republicans was last night when Reid’s office dropped off the manager’s amendment he negotiated with himself.” The Democrats characterized the Republicans as refusing to move forward; Republicans explain they are not about to pass toothless sanctions bill that would be buried in the conference committee.
Elliott Abrams, Council on Foreign Relations: The well-known neoconservative and former key mideast advisor to George W. Bush worries that France’s new President may waiver from the confrontational path on Iran set by by former President Nicolas Sarkozy:
It is difficult to exaggerate how significant a softening of France’s hard line would be. France has been tougher than Russia and China of course, but has also stiffened the position of the “EU 3″ by being tougher than Germany and the UK. More important, it has at many junctures been tougher than the United States, sharply asking the difficult questions, highlighting logical deficiencies in arguments, and slicing through wishful thinking. If France is now to abandon this stance and simply agree with the UK, Germany, and the United States, the negotiations with Iran are more likely than ever to produce an unsatisfactory result that will be labelled adequate by its proponents.
Lindsey Graham, Fox News: Among the U.S.’s top Republican Hawks, the South Carolina senator flouted the “time is running out” card to Fox News viewers and publicly contradicted U.S. intelligence assessments showing that Iran has NOT made a decision to build a nuclear weapon. He also declared that President Obama must be more confrontational with Iran:
]]>“So President Obama, if you are listening out there, please convince the Iranians that all options really are on the table,” Graham said.
…
“The only way they will stop marching toward a nuclear weapon is if they believe the regime’ life is at stake and their livelihood being at risk, and that means a strike by the United States,” the senator added.He said it’s time to tell the Iranians, “No negotiations. . . . You are not going to get to enrich uranium any more, period.”
This week saw the furthering of draconian legislation against Iran that may end up benefiting U.S. adversaries more than hurting Iran’s government. On Wednesday the House of Representatives passed the Iran Threat Reductions Act (H.R. 1905) and President Obama is expected to sign into law sanctions against Iran’s Central Bank (Bank Markazi) as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. H.R. 1905 includes measures that effectively bar U.S. officials from speaking to Iranian officials with some exceptions. While quoting an exchange between State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland and Matthew Lee of the Associated Press, Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin said Lee was essentially “pressing Nuland to admit that the administration is being bullied into accepting Iran sanctions law it doesn’t want”. Philip Weiss accordingly informs us that the main pusher of harsh Iran measures in congress are elements of the “Israel Lobby”:
AIPAC led the charge. AIPAC rolled the amendment out 3 weeks ago, and then led a letter-writing campaign to US Senators on the amendment, known as Kirk-Menendez (in part for the Senator from AIPAC, Mark Kirk of Illinois).
The National Iranian American Council, which advocates a mixture of diplomacy and targeted measures against Iran’s government, issued a strong statement against what it considers to be counter-productive legislation. According to policy director, Jamal Abdi:
These measures will not achieve anything but punish ordinary people, raise gas prices, and bring the U.S. and Iran closer to war…It will continue to squeeze Iranians and Iranian Americans from both sides, between the repression of the Iranian regime and the reckless sanctions policies of the United States.
Abdi wrote today that Obama’s initial resistance to the measures proved too weak against lobbying that’s targeting his upcoming presidential campaign:
But the administration’s public pushback also played into a political narrative being advanced by neoconservative groups like the American Enterprise Institute and the Emergency Committee to Save Israel, who say Obama is unwilling to confront Iran and is not a “true friend” of Israel. Ahead of a re-election in which Obama has few national security and foreign policy liabilities, it is an attack that the Obama campaign may fear is sticking. It may be no coincidence that the sanctions the president is being pressured to take in order to disprove this perception are ones that could raise gas prices in the US, and drive Europe and the global economy into recession. It is the economy, not foreign policy, where President Obama is most vulnerable.
USA*Engage, a broad coalition of businesses and trade associations, also issued a statement opposing the Iran Threat Reductions Act, arguing that it would work against the administration’s efforts to build an effective multilateral coalition on Iran:
…The H.R. 1905 vote and others like it only send mixed signals to those nations that have joined with the United States to press Iran to change course. Votes like these may satisfy domestic political considerations, but they actually weaken American leadership and have the potential to unravel the calibrated, multilateral consensus that has been achieved.
Nuland said Thursday that the administration was studying how to apply sanctions targeting Iran’s Central Bank “while causing minimum disruption for friends and allies of the U.S.” This begs the question of how that’s possible when enforcement requires U.S. punishment of foreign banks that do business with Bank Markazi. While Asian allies are scrambling for ways to cope with the U.S.-led initiatives, China and Russia are reportedly looking forward to exploiting them for their own benefit. (Meanwhile China and Iran are gaining in Iraq.)
Fears have long been raised about the economic repercussions of targeting Iran’s Central Bank and its oil exports. Iran could respond by blockading the world’s most important oil-shipping route, the Strait of Hormuz. Yesterday a discussion on National Public Radio also highlighted how Iran could actually gain from higher oil prices caused by a reduction in global supply:
“There is absolutely a risk that in fact the price of oil would go up, which would mean that Iran would in fact have more money to fuel its nuclear ambitions, not less,” Wendy Sherman, a State Department undersecretary, testified before a Senate committee earlier this month.
Saudi Arabia is a key player in preventing that consequence and they still haven’t commented on an Iranian claim that the Saudis would not boost production to offset the effect of decreased Iranian exports. Despite tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia that have dominated headlines, the countries held talks in Riyadh this week. Motivated by self-interest, Saudi Arabia also reportedly aligned with Iran in October by cutting oil output by 4% so prices didn’t fall below $100 a barrel.
Time will tell how the Saudis act this time, but so far Iran says it’s “not concerned“, Obama continues to be criticized by neoconservatives despite submitting to their pressure, and China and Russia seem to be basking in their good fortune. The only groups applauding the moves are hawkish organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, United Against Nuclear Iran and Israel, which on Sunday renewed calls for “paralyzing” sanctions on Iran.
Is anyone else scratching their head?
]]>Others have [...]]]>
Others have also described Ross as more skeptical [than Mitchell] about the chances of peace, based on his decades-long experience with trying to bring together the parties.
I don’t want to get all new-agey, but if you think something is difficult or impossible to do, the chances of being able to do it are greatly diminished from the get-go.
So why does this Ross guy keep getting jobs that he doesn’t think are possible? I picked up Ross’ book off of my shelf here in D.C., and it amazed me how many times he says you cannot make any kind of deal with the Iranians. Then, Obama put him in charge of making a deal with the Iranians. Ross, we now learn, doubts that a peace deal can be reached in Israel-Palestine, and Obama gives him a job making peace in Israel-Palestine.
On the Middle Eastern conflict, Ross’s credentials for the job are impeccable. After all, he’s been involved in decades — decades! — of failed peace processes. Ross has worked at the Washington Institute (WINEP), an AIPAC-formed think tank, and also chaired the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), an Israeli organization dedicated to “ensur(ing) the thriving of the Jewish People and the Jewish civilization.” (The organization seems to oppose intermarriage with racist-sounding statements like “cultural collectivity cannot survive in the long term without primary biological foundations of family and children.”)
Ross was thought responsible for crafting Obama’s presidential campaign AIPAC speech — yes, the one with the line about an “undivided” Jerusalem that would spike a peace deal if implemented. Ross later reiterated the notion of an undivided Jerusalem as a “fact” in an interview with the Jerusalem Post.
Ross was recently in the news following a secret but not-so-secret visit to the Middle East, which was fleshed out on Politico by Laura Rozen. Rozen was the reporter who carried a rather shocking anonymous allegation about Ross:
“[Ross] seems to be far more sensitive to [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s coalition politics than to U.S. interests,” one U.S. official told POLITICO Saturday. “And he doesn’t seem to understand that this has become bigger than Jerusalem but is rather about the credibility of this administration.”
In an update, Rozen carried NSC CoS Denis McDonough’s defense of Ross:
“The assertion is as false as it is offensive,” McDonough said Sunday by e-mail. ”Whoever said it has no idea what they are talking about. Dennis Ross’s many decades of service speak volumes about his commitment to this country and to our vital interests, and he is a critical part of the president’s team.”
But the new Forward article, as MJ Rosenberg points out, backs up the notion that Ross was extremely concerned with “advocat[ing]” for Israel. The source is none other than Israel-advocate extraordinaire Abe Foxman (who doesn’t negotiate on behalf of the U.S. government):
“Dennis is the closest thing you’ll find to a melitz yosher, as far as Israel is concerned,” said the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, Abraham Foxman, who used the ancient Hebrew term for ‘advocate.’”
Do you get the feeling that Ross advocated for Iran? Or, as the Forward article put it (with my strikethrough), has “strong ties to Israel” Iran? Guttman writes that Ross is considered to have a “reputation of being pro-Israeli.” As for Iran? Not quite: Ross’s Iran experience seems to boil down to heading United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), a group that pushes for harsher, broad-based sanctions against Iran (despite a stated goal to not hurt ordinary Iranians) and that has criticized Obama’s policy of engagement. Ross left the gig, as with JPPI, when he took the job with the administration.
The group also launched an error-filled fear-mongering video (while Ross was still there; he appears in the video) and a campaign to get New York hotels to refuse to host Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he comes to town each year for the U.N. General Assembly, which hardly lays the groundwork for good diplomacy.
Oh, and about the Iran engagement designed by Ross: The administration’s approach has been questioned by several leading Iran experts. “It is unlikely that the resources and dedication needed for success was given to a policy that the administration expected to fail,” National Iranian American Council (NIAC) president Trita Parsi observed. In December, Ross publicly defended the administration against charges that engagement was less than sincere from the U.S. side. But it is Ross himself who has apparently long held a pessimistic outlook on engagement.
Ross’s 2007 book, “Statecraft: And How to Restore America’s Standing in the World“, is fascinating in light of where Ross has come from, and where he’s taken Iran policy. I was struck at a five-page section of the first chapter called “Neoconservatism vs. Neoliberalism,” in which Ross writes, “[Neoconservatism's] current standard-bearers — such as Richard Perle, David Frum, William Kristol, and Robert Kagan — are serious thinkers with a clear worldview,” (with my links).
Later, in several long sections about the run-up to George W. Bush’s Iraq war, Ross notes that Paul Wolfowitz was highly focused on Iraq before and after 9/11. He also mentions “political difficulties” in the push for war: “Once [Bush] realized there might be a domestic problem in acting against Iraq, his administration focused a great deal of energy and effort on mobilizing domestic support for military action.”
But Ross never acknowledges that some of his neoconservative “serious thinkers” — such as Kristol and his Weekly Standard magazine — were involved in the concerted campaign to mislead Americans in an effort to push the war… just as the same figures are pushing for an attack on Iran. Frum, who does seem capable of serious thinking, was the author of the “axis of evil” phrasing of Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address. The moniker included both Iraq and Iran, despite the fact that the latter was, until the speech, considered a potential ally in the fight against Al Qaeda. (Marsha Cohen chronicled an Israeli effort to squash the alliance, culminating in Frum’s contribution to the Bush speech.)
Ross never mentions that neocon Douglas Feith, a political appointee in the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans (OSP), was responsible for cherry-picking intelligence about Iraq within the administration, and whose office was feeding cooked information to the public via Scooter Libby in Vice President Dick Cheney‘s office. Through Libby, the distorted information made its way into the hands of the Standard and sympathetic journalists like ideologue Judith Miller at the New York Times. In August of 2003, Jim Lobe wrote (with my links):
[K]ey personnel who worked in both NESA [the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia bureau] and OSP were part of a broader network of neo-conservative ideologues and activists who worked with other Bush political appointees scattered around the national-security bureaucracy to move the country to war, according to retired Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski, who was assigned to NESA from May 2002 through February 2003. …
Other appointees who worked with… both offices included Michael Rubin, a Middle East specialist previously with the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI); David Schenker, previously with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP); Michael Makovsky; an expert on neo-con icon Winston Churchill and the younger brother of David Makovsky, a senior WINEP fellow and former executive editor of pro-Likud ‘Jerusalem Post’; and Chris Lehman, the brother of the John Lehman, a prominent neo-conservative who served as secretary of the navy under Ronald Reagan, according to Kwiatkowski.
Ross has personal experience with many OSP veterans, working with them at WINEP and signing hawkish reports on Iran authored by them.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Ross was a member of a task force that delivered a hawkish report apparently co-authored by two veterans of OSP, Rubin and Michael Makovsky. (Ross reportedly recused himself as the presidential campaign came into full swing.) Lobe, noting Ross’s curious involvement, called the report a “roadmap to war with Iran,” and added, a year later, that the group that put out the report was accelerating the plan, calling for a military build-up and a naval blockade against Iran.
After taking his position within the Obama administration, Ross released a book, co-authored with David Makovsky, that was skeptical of the notion that engagement could work. Nathan Guttman, in a review of the book for the Forward, wrote:
The success of diplomatic engagement, according to Ross, is not guaranteed and could be unlikely. Still, he and Makovsky believe that negotiations will serve a purpose even if results are not satisfying. “By not trying, the U.S. and its refusal to talk become the issue,” said Makovsky in a June 1 interview with the Forward. “What we are saying is that if the U.S. chooses engagement, even if it fails, every other option will be more legitimate.”
The attitude of Ross and Makovsky seems closer to that of the Israeli government then to that of the Obama administration.
OSP, Feith, the Makovsky brothers, and Rubin are not listed in the index of “Statecraft,” nor have they appeared in the many sections that I’ve read in full.
In his book, Ross does have many revealing passages about concepts that have been worked into the Obama administration’s Iran policy. One such ploy, which has not been acknowledged or revealed publicly, is using Israel as the crazy ‘bad cop’ — a potentially dangerous game. Ross also writes that international pressure (through sanctions) must be made in order to cause Iran “pain.” Only then, thinks Ross, can concessions such as “economic, technological and security benefits” from the U.S. be offered:
Orchestrating this combination of sticks and carrots requires at this point some obviously adverse consequences for the Iranians first.
This view does not comport with the Obama plan for a simultaneous dual-track policy toward Iran — which holds that engagement and pressure should occur simultaneously — and serves to bolster critics who say that engagement has not been serious because meaningful concessions have not been offered. But it does hint at another tactic that Ross references at least twice in the book: the difference between “style” and “substance.” With regard to Iran, he presents this dichotomy in relation to public professions about the “military option” — a euphemism for launching a war. But publicly suppressing rhetoric is only used as a way to build international support for pressure — not also, as one might expect, a way to assuage the security fears of Iran.
But those aren’t the only ideas from the 2007 book that seem to have made their way into U.S. policy toward Iran. In “Statecraft,” Ross endorses the use of “more overt and inherently deniable alternatives to the use of force” for slowing Iran’s nuclear progress. In particular, he mentions the “fragility of centrifuges,” which is exactly what is being targeted by the Stuxnet virus, a powerful computer worm thought to be created by a state, likely Israel, and perhaps with help from the U.S., according to the latest revelations.
Some critics of this website complain that the level of attention given to neoconservatives is too great, but they should consider this: Look at Dennis Ross. He works extensively with this clique, and no doubt has the occasional drink or meeting with them. And, most importantly, he writes approvingly about neoconservatives, noting that their viewpoint affects political considerations of “any political leader.” Because of these neocon “considerations,” he writes, this is how we should view the Islamic Republic: “With Iran, there is a profound mistrust of the mullahs, and of their perceived deceit, their support for terror, and their enduring hostility to America and its friends in the Middle East. … No one will be keen to be portrayed as soft on the Iranian mullahs.”
This from the man that formulated a policy that has offered “adverse consequences” but so far no “carrots.” Ross’s predictions are a self-fulfilling prophecy — and since he gets the big appointments, he gets to fulfill them. Taking reviews of his book with Makovsky, the Bipartisan Policy Committee report, and “Statecraft” as a whole, I’m not at all surprised that little progress has been made with Iran.
But, at least, that was his first try. He’s a three-time-loser on Israeli-Palestinian peace-making. With Iran, I had to put the pieces together, whereas with the Israeli-Palestinian issue, his record is right there for all to see. Putting Ross in charge of peace-making between the two seems to perfectly fit Einstein’s definition of insanity.
]]>Because I got hung up in New York Wednesday morning, I hit rush hour traffic on the Beltway coming into DC, and arrived late for the opening session of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies‘s Washington Forum on “Countering the Iranian Threat.”
Nothing out of the ordinary during last night’s cocktail outing at the Ritz-Carlton, where in an adjacent conference area, two Barhraini gentlemen stood in white robes and head-dresses greeting people for an event sponsored by that government. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) event is your run-of-the-mill blue chip neoconservative conference at the high-endest of high-end Washington hotels.
As I looked closely at the final schedule, I was rather struck by the speakers’ list.
The New York Times‘s David Sanger — who just co-wrote a controversial story about Iran – will moderate a panel. Jeffry Goldberg, another mainstream journalist and no stranger to controversial stories on Iran, will be on a panel with perhaps the most strident advocate of immediate attacks on Iran, Reuel Marc Gerecht.
From officialdom, U.S. WMD czar and the former vice president of United Against a Nuclear Iran, Gary Samore, will address the crowd on Friday morning.
Naturally, the right wing of the foreign policy establishment is represented as well. Iran Policy Committee head Raymond Tanter, a tireless advocate of the Mojehedeen-e Khalq (MEK), was at the cocktail. And the Hudson Institute‘s I. Lewis Scooter Libby — formerly then-Vice President Dick Cheney‘s chief of staff who was convicted of lying to investigators in the PlameGate scandal — was in attendance for Thursday morning’s panels, as was Patrick Clawson of the AIPAC-formed Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Of course there is the FDD roster itself: Gerecht (who was seen chatting in the lobby on Thursday morning with neoconservative Washington Times journalist Eli Lake), Cliff May, Michael Ledeen, and all the others.
But what really piqued my interest was an FDD fundraiser scheduled for Thursday night at the home of an unnamed ambassador to the United States.
Here’s what the schedule has to say:
7:00 pm
Dinner at the residence of one
of Washington’s noteworthy Ambassadors
(Closed to Media)
(Minimum $5,000 gift required. Contribute here, or for more information on becoming a donor, please contact XXXXXXX)
FDD’s communications director, Judy Mayka, told me on Wednesday night that just which ambassador is hosting the $5,000 a plate fund-raiser is such a closely guarded secret that even she didn’t know. I’ll update as I find out more.
However, Thursday morning’s session featured Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL), who made the case for more robust U.S. assistance to Israel on missile defense. He received spontaneous mid-presentation applause — a rarity at these Washington panels.
Given the focus on Israel for FDD and many of its scholars — and the neoconservative movement from which they emerge — it’s not a stretch to put the early odds that Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren will play host to tonight’s big money FDD donors.
Otherwise, what I caught of the opening panel was rather unremarkable. Former Regean administration national security advisor Bud McFarlane spoke about impending threats and FDD’s unique ability to confront them:
We’re going, in the next two years, to face a threat from Iran, North Korea… We’re probably going to face a disruption of the oil supply…
Nobody else in Washington has the reach and the depth and the solutions that will get us out of this.
Mark Dubowitz, FDD’s executive director, ran down the group’s roster and sang their praises. He joked, as anti-anti-Semitism activist Irwin Cotler did on Thursday morning, about being a Canadian. Threats against Iran were not totally absent, but Dubowitz delivered them with a metaphor:
There’s no silver bullet for solving this problem, but there might be silver shrapnel.
Knowing some of the views of FDD staff and experts, some of the panel titles read like rhetorical questions:
- Sanctions: What’s Next?
Is enforcement enough?- Increasing Threats, Diminishing Options: Should the Military Option be Employed against Iran?
When does this become the only option?
Dubowitz confirmed the militarist bent of FDD when he closed out Wednesday night’s opening cocktail reception: “We’re not just a think tank. We like to think of ourselves as a ‘battle tank’.”
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