by Derek Davison

A former senior analyst for Mossad, Yossi Alpher, told an audience in Washington Thursday that Israel sees the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) as an “urgent” national security concern, but the context of his talk at the Wilson Center implied that the extremist Sunni group does not top any Israeli list of threats. In fact, Alpher seemed to suggest at times that the actions of IS, particularly in Iraq, may ultimately benefit Israel’s regional posture, particularly with respect to Iran. He also called the American decision to intervene against IS “perplexing.”

Iran, unsurprisingly, topped Alpher’s list of “urgent” Israeli security threats, but he downplayed the prospect of a nuclear deal being struck by the Nov. 24 deadline for the negotiations and focused instead on the “hegemonic threat” Iran allegedly poses. Indeed, the former director of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies was mainly concerned with an Iran strengthened by close alliances with Iraq and Syria as well as Hezbollah in Lebanon and now potentially expanding its reach into Yemen, whose Houthi rebels have made major military gains in recent weeks.

Alpher identified the threat of extremist/terrorist organizations as Israel’s second-most urgent threat, but within that category he placed Hamas and Hezbollah ahead of IS. He allowed that IS “threatens to reach very close” to Israel, particularly if it manages to make inroads in Jordan, where polls indicate that a significant minority of the population does not see IS as a terrorist group, and where there has been vocal opposition to King Abdullah’s support for the US-led anti-IS coalition. Indeed, Alpher suggested that Israel should try to defuse current tensions over the Temple Mount, which have caused Abdullah to suffer politically at home, in order to forestall an increase of IS sympathy within Jordan.

Several of Alpher’s later remarks seemed to suggest that the activities of IS in Syria (at least those that have targeted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad) and in Iraq may actually pay dividends for Israel. If the primary threat to Israel’s security is, as Alpher claims, Iran, and not just Iran’s nuclear program but also its regional hegemonic aspirations, then any movement that opposes Assad—a long-time Iranian ally—and that threatens the stability and unity of Iraq—whose predominantly Shia government has also developed close ties with Tehran—is actually doing Israel a service. It apparently doesn’t matter if that group might also someday pose a threat to Israel. It’s in this context that Alpher described America’s decision to intervene against IS as “perplexing.” He questioned the US commitment to keeping Iraq whole, noting that an independent Kurdistan would be “better for Israel,” and said that, as far as Syria’s civil war is concerned, “decentralization and ongoing warfare make more sense for Israel than a strong, Iran-backed Syria.”

The tone of Alpher’s remarks on IS echoed a number of recent comments from top Israeli government and military figures. Earlier this month, the IDF’s chief of staff, Lt. General Benny Gantz, told the Jerusalem Post that “the IDF has the wherewithal to defend itself against Islamic State,” and then went on to describe Hezbollah as Israel’s most immediate security concern. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon also told PBS’s Charlie Rose on Sunday that Israel is contributing intelligence to the anti-IS coalition, but suggested that it was doing so because it has “a very good relationship with many parties who participate in the coalition,” not because it perceives IS as a near-term threat to Israel. Finally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 29 made several references to IS, but only as a secondary threat to Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program or in conflating IS with Hamas and, really, every other Islamic extremist group in the world.

Alpher made pointed criticisms of the US-led effort against IS in an exchange with Wilson Center president and former House member, Jane Harman, who pushed back against his characterization of US “mistakes” in the region. He was particularly critical of the Obama administration’s handling of Egypt, arguing that it “made things worse” by failing to support the Mubarak regime in 2011 and trying instead to “embrace” the democratically elected (and now imprisoned) Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi, and then by failing to welcome the military coup that eventually put current President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in office.

Harman questioned whether a stronger show of American support for the increasingly authoritarian direction of Egypt’s politics would hinder any effort to counter the anti-Western narrative upon which much of IS’ support and recruitment is based. Alpher’s answer, and indeed a recurring theme in his remarks, was that the question of narratives and terrorist recruitment is irrelevant to an Israeli security framework that is focused only on the most immediate threats (or, as he put it, “on what will bring short-term stability”).

The emphasis on the short-term is one of the defining features of Netanyahu’s term in office, particularly in his dealings with the Palestinians, but also in Israel’s broader security posture, and it may well cause greater problems for Israel in the long-term.

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by Bernard Chazelle

In matters of battle, there are certain things we’ve come to expect. The pairwise nature of combat, for example. From the playing fields of Eton to the morne plaine of Waterloo, sports and war alike feature two rival sides with an attitude. They come in pairs. One day, Federer shows Nadal how it’s done; the next day, Bush takes on Saddam. Threesomes are uncommon. George Foreman didn’t climb into the ring to tussle with Ali and Frazier. Though no friend of Hitler or Stalin, FDR knew better than to declare war on both of them. Nor did he try to resurrect the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact so more panzer divisions could be in Normandy to greet the GIs. As far as we know, Eisenhower didn’t drop free weaponry for the Nazis to use before the Battle of the Bulge. And Nazi is what they were: not Nazoo, Noozi, or NZ depending on whom you asked. The enemy had a name we all agreed upon. Certain things about combat we’ve come to expect.

Well, expect no more. In the Middle East, the old battle script is quaint. ISIS is our new enemy. Or perhaps it is ISIL, or IS, or Daesh, or the Caliphate, or something. The point is, we have an enemy that “we need to fight there so we won’t have to fight it here.” It seems a pity because we share so much. They hate Bashar al-Assad and so do we. They can’t stand the Persian ayatollahs and neither can we. They have it in for al-Qaeda in Syria and who doesn’t? They draw their spiritual inspiration from our oldest ally in the region, Saudi Arabia, a corrupt theocracy known for its black gooey stuff and religious fanaticism. In the same month ISIS beheaded James Foley, our Saudi associates carried out 19 public beheadings, including a man accused of witchcraft. Our kind of friends.

The US-Saudi axis is key to understanding the rise of ISIS. Despite its public reticence, Riyadh supported the war in Iraq in 2003. Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait was still fresh in Saudi memory, so letting Bush finish his dad’s job was fine by the House of Saud. They had another reason to be appreciative. A recent Wikileaks document reveals how cuddly King Abdullah feels about Iran: “[The US should] cut off the head of the snake.” The invasion, it was hoped, would lock Iraq into the Saudi orbit and build a firewall to keep the heretic Shias at bay. Alas, the neocon dream turned into a Saudi nightmare, as Bush’s fiasco pushed Iraq right into the arms of Iran and raised the specter of a Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus axis. The Saudis freaked out and launched Operation “Down with the Shias.”

A catastrophic de-Ba’athification policy had created the ideal terrain for a sectarian war in Iraq. The once-dominant Sunnis had trouble adjusting to their new status as an oppressed minority. Formerly mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad were ethnically cleansed and Shia leaders redoubled their efforts to give the Sunnis something to be mad about. Riyadh couldn’t take the fight to Tehran, so a Sunni-Shia war was the next best thing. Perhaps only the geniuses in Washington believed this could end well, but the Gulf states foresaw a Shia crescent descending upon the region and decided it was time to panic. The sectarian war was on.

Israel had two reasons to go along with the anti-Shia pushback. One was that a nuclear Iran would threaten its regional hegemony. After Iran’s victory in the US-Iraq war, the urge for Israel to defang the ayatollahs had become irresistible. The other factor at play was Iran’s Lebanese client, Hezbollah, which fought the IDF to a stalemate in 2006 and caused Israel to question its deterrent capacity. (The case of Hamas is more complicated because its two patrons, Iran and Qatar, are at loggerheads over Syria). Israel’s will is America’s command, so to see Washington sing from the same hymnal was no surprise. But the US also had its own reasons to join in the anti-Iran chorus.

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Just as Israel fingers Iran as its sole threat to regional dominance, the US knows that only China and Russia can imperil its position as world hegemon. China is a lost cause. The containment fantasies behind the much-touted “Pivot to Asia” died at birth and will not be revived. Last month, with little fanfare, China dethroned the US as the world’s largest economy, one of several reasons the Middle Kingdom is out of America’s hegemonic range. Russia is a different story. It is a midsize economic power. Yet it remains the biggest country in the world, its second nuclear power, and a necessary component of any “world order.” Ukraine and Syria are the current battlegrounds for the containment of Russia. King Abdullah can decapitate witches all he wants, he’s our best-friend-forever. But Vladimir Putin cannot just be a recalcitrant leader with legitimate concerns about the encirclement of his country by NATO forces. Hillary needs to assure us that he is the new Hitler, a comparison of exquisite vulgarity given Russian history. (Now, it is true that Putin illegally invaded Crimea with the overwhelming support of the locals—quite unlike our own illegal invasions, which tend to piss off the natives.)

It is common knowledge in foreign policy circles that the US is not in the Middle East for the oil but for its control. Europe relies on Russia for a third of its gas supply and is more than open to American attempts to reduce its dependency on Gazprom. With US blessing, Qatar lobbied hard to get its North Field gas reserve, the largest in the world, pipelined to Turkey and Europe while bypassing Russia. Assad, a Russia client, balked, and negotiated with Iran a passage for the latter’s South Pars gasfield in the Persian Gulf (adjacent to the North Field). An Iran-Iraq-Syria route would be a Gulf state nightmare and an American headache. It would also dash Ankara’s hopes of playing gatekeeper to European energy needs. The US-Saudi axis could put up with Assad’s murderous policies, but a pipeline from Iran, now that was going too far! Saudi Arabia dispatched its Intelligence chief, Prince Bandar, to Moscow to read Putin the riot act: Stop your support of Assad or expect a nasty Chechen surprise at the Sochi Olympics. Fluent in mafioso language, Putin became furious and made it clear to the sandbox princeling that he didn’t take orders from a terrorist-coddling camel herder. Moscow would stick with Assad and stick it to the sheiks.

With no Syria policy to speak of, Washington pivoted to Ukraine, only to show the world what Western impotence really looks like. Taking their cue from Obama, the leaders of Britain and France threatened the new Hitler with sanctions so painful he’d soon be begging on his knees for mercy: no camembert and pudding for him! Of course, Russia was still welcome to park its oligarchs’ money in London, get its assault ships from Paris (now on hold), and buy its usual $100 billion worth of goods from Berlin every year. But no dessert—that’ll teach him! To be fair, Obama’s Russia policy could have been worse: we could be at war with Moscow. By any other measure, it has been an unmitigated disaster. Putin will soon have achieved all of his objectives in Ukraine, a fact that President Poroshenko all but conceded recently by granting autonomy to the pro-Russia Donbass rebels. Victoria “Fuck the EU” Nuland can go back to handing out cookies in Kiev: her darling Yatsenyuk has resigned as prime minister and Washington’s plans are in tatters.

Consider the blowback: Moscow and Beijing signed a draft currency swap agreement to bypass the dollar in bilateral payments; the BRICS countries set up their own $100 billion development bank to counter the dominance of the IMF and the World Bank; Putin and the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, agreed to a game-changing $400 billion gas deal after years of stalled negotiations. Nothing like Western sanctimony backed by sanctions to make Russia and China find love. Meanwhile, with its economy mired in quasi-perpetual recession, the West has turned Teddy Roosevelt’s adage on its head: Speak loudly and carry a small stick.

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From 10,000 feet, the geopolitics of the Middle East shows a semblance of coherence: a Washington-Riyadh petrodollar axis aligned against a rising Shia crescent backed by Russia, the whole thing played against the backdrop of a race for global dominance combined with blind US support for Israel. The neat rationality of this narrative is an illusion. A closer look reveals a world of Jabberwocky absurdity. While, in March 2011, Saudi troops rolled into Bahrain to repress the Arab Spring aspirations of its people, the Gulf states cunningly seized the zeitgeist of liberation to hijack the peaceful anti-Assad movement. Naturally, the one point of agreement between Bashar and the sheiks was that peace was not an option. Qatar and Saudi Arabia may not be on speaking terms but they found common ground in funding, training, and arming the Syria rebels.

Not the Free Syrian Army, mind you, that hapless bunch of weekend warriors who look ferocious only in the feverish minds of Hillary Clinton and John McCain, but the only two groups in Syria capable of fighting Assad: ISIS and the local al-Qaeda branch (Jabhat al-Nusra). As Steve Clemons reported in the Atlantic, Qatar took the latter under its wing and Saudi Arabia took care of ISIS. There you had two of our closest allies in the Arab world funding the newest branches of the 9/11 franchise. McCain’s reaction to CNN in Jan. 2014? “Thank God for the Saudis and Prince Bandar!” When it became clear last spring that the Faustian deal had turned sour and ISIS had the Saudis in its crosshairs, Bandar was fired (McCain was not). ISIS is self-funded at this point—smuggling oil at discount rates along the Turkish border is its principal source of revenue—so cracking down on private financing from the Gulf is largely moot at this point.

The civil war in Syria gave the West a chance to recover its delusional optimism from the early days of the Iraq war. While Obama has repeatedly called the end of the Assad regime a certainty, even a sober analyst like Juan Cole predicted in January of last year that Iranian influence would wither and Assad would be gone by 2014. What happened is the exact opposite. Iran is in the driver’s seat and Assad has never been stronger. The only forces posing a credible threat to ISIS are Assad’s army, Hezbollah, Iran, and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Washington opposes all four of them. Think of FDR preparing for D-Day and refusing help from Britain, Canada, and the French Résistance. Obama is precisely where ISIS wants him to be: fighting the Islamic State while denying himself any chance of success. With ISIS firmly ensconced in urban areas, airstrikes will do little besides boosting recruitment for the group. The Islamic State publicly welcomed the US decision to arm the “moderate” rebels, confident that the weapons will eventually be theirs. In fact, thanks to the cracker jack squads of US-trained Iraqi forces, ISIS is already in possession of a whole arsenal of American weaponry.

Most experts agree that, unlike bin Laden’s organization, ISIS has chosen to focus its ire on the near-enemy and not on the West. Obama is intent on proving them wrong. His policy, such as it is, will help Assad stay in power (so much for regime change) and create a new generation of Western jihadists coming home as fully-trained terrorists. The US president must have in mind a repeat of the 2007 Sunni Awakening which put an end to al-Qaeda in Iraq. This is sure to fail for three reasons: first, the US no longer has 150,000 troops on the ground; second, scared of ISIS as they are, the Iraqi Sunnis are even more afraid of the Shia militias out for revenge; third, ISIS is mostly based in Syria (hence the US airstrikes on Raqqa, in blatant violation of the sort of international law that matters only when Putin breaks it). As for the brilliant idea of training the Iraqi army, words fail. The US has been doing just that for the last 10 years at a cost of $25 billion, and we all know how effective that was. Last June, a mere 800 ISIS fighters defeated 30,000 US-trained soldiers and took over Mosul, making off with millions of dollars worth of American military equipment. No problem, says Washington: more training will do the trick. As has been said, doing the same thing and expecting different results is a definition of insanity.

Speaking of insane, ISIS surely fits the bill. Yet there is a logic to the madness. The undeniable lunacy of the Islamic State is not a collective pathology of which the US can easily wash its hands. Until Bush came along, jihadists controlled a few musty caves in Tora Bora, not large swathes of Iraqi, Syrian, Libyan, and Nigerian territory. The self-proclaimed Caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was imprisoned by the US at Iraq’s Camp Bucca, usually not a fate conducive to mental balance. More to the point, Iraq has been in a continuous state of war since 1980. All of the last four American presidents have bombed the country. The Bush family alone started two wars against Iraq. Bill Clinton imposed grotesque sanctions that condemned half a million Iraqi children to a premature death, a price that his State Secretary assured us on “60 Minutes” was worth it. And we call ourselves surprised when the world’s largest PTSD ward extends its tentacles across Iraq and Syria through suicide, mass rape, and crucifixion. We stare into the abyss we’ve created and wonder why it stares back at us.

Obama’s policy is based on a contradiction. We hear that ISIS is such a global danger that the war America ended three years ago needs to be refought; yet how bad can it be if it requires neither ground troops nor the forces that could actually defeat it? Electoral politics is at work and it is no surprise that Obama’s call for war came in the wake of much-publicized beheadings of American journalists. His anti-ISIS partners form a “coalition of the unwilling” that cannot even agree on the enemy: one hears reports of US-funded Syria rebels signing non-aggression pacts with ISIS in order to focus on Assad. Obama’s war is a tragic American farce.

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What should be done? The prevailing confusion over ISIS gives Obama a unique opportunity to break new ground. The first step is to re-engage Iran by concluding the current nuclear talks with the lifting of all sanctions. Times are changing. The Gulf states will eventually fade as a quirk of history but Iran will always be one of the world’s major countries. Nothing would do more for regional peace than to dissolve the noxious US-Saudi axis and bring Iran back in from the cold. The second step is to defuse the new Cold War with Russia. Putin is authoritarian, an oligarch’s friend, and—his real crime in Western eyes—an Asianizer. Oddly enough, the new Hitler is not nearly as autocratic as Yeltsin, the former drunken darling of the West who shelled Russia’s parliament with tanks in 1993 and started the war in Chechnya the following year. If one could do business with Yeltsin so one can with Putin. Obama knows this better than anyone, having had his bacon saved by the man right after the Ghouta chemical attacks last year. The US had its 15 minutes of unipolarity. A failure to engage with Russia and Iran will only hasten its decline.

Except for its new Western recruits crossing the long Turkish border into Syria, everybody hates ISIS. Defusing the Sunni-Shia tension and ending the antiquated proxy conflicts between the US and Russia would reshuffle the deck so dramatically that ISIS would find its local support dwindling. The alternative is to wait for ISIS to burn itself out, which is the current, unspoken American strategy. This will prolong Assad’s murderous rule as well as invigorate the new dictatorship in Egypt, which thrives on regional chaos.

In the Middle East, nothing is what it seems. Saudi Arabia has a defense budget four times as big as Israel’s, yet it couldn’t defeat Andorra if it tried. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel calls ISIS “a threat to the civilized world,” conveniently forgetting that the group didn’t exist until we intervened. After 150,000 deaths in Syria, the US suddenly makes a U-turn and aligns its interests with the Butcher of Damascus. Try to make sense of this timeline if you can: in 2009, Assad and Kerry have an intimate dinner with their wives in a Damascus restaurant, a touching moment captured in pictures broadcast all over the web; in 2013, Kerry compares his former dinner companion to Adolf Hitler; in 2014, all is forgiven and the US throws its lot with Assad against ISIS.

It would be a mistake to dismiss this theater of the absurd as the work of leaders who can’t think straight. The one nonnegotiable constraint is that self-determination is an option that the US and Europe have categorically ruled out for the region. If the consequences are spelled in the language of terror and civil war, so be it. We’ll put out the fires when we have to. Experts will be wheeled in to explain in somber tones why the situation is so dire it requires the dispatch of our newest, shiniest fire trucks. Very serious essayists (not this one obviously) will address the optimal positioning of the water hoses and the training of the new firemen. Only grumpy contrarians will ask why there are so many damn fires in this town. And the show will go on, with its stream of beheadings and airstrikes. Until, one day, the Chinese inform us that we might as well stop piling the corpses because the world has moved on and no one is paying attention any more.

—Bernard Chazelle is Eugene Higgins Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University. He is currently on sabbatical at the College de France in Paris and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the author of the book, “The Discrepancy Method,” an investigation into the power of randomness in computing, his current research focuses on “natural algorithms” and the algorithmic complexity of living matter. He has written extensively about politics and music.

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by Mitchell Plitnick

Once again, in his speech Wednesday at the United Nations, President Obama revealed the reduced importance of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on his agenda. He also revealed just how out of touch his entire country is with respect to reality.

The Israel-Palestine conflict was the last specific global issue mentioned by Obama in his address to the UN General Assembly, and his wording was straight out of the playbook. It was also only mentioned briefly and without any hint that the United States would be taking any action at all on the issue.

Here’s what he said:

Leadership will also be necessary to address the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. As bleak as the landscape appears, America will never give up the pursuit of peace. The situation in Iraq, Syria and Libya should cure anyone of the illusion that this conflict is the main source of problems in the region; for far too long, it has been used in part as a way to distract people from problems at home. And the violence engulfing the region today has made too many Israelis ready to abandon the hard work of peace. But let’s be clear: the status quo in the West Bank and Gaza is not sustainable. We cannot afford to turn away from this effort – not when rockets are fired at innocent Israelis, or the lives of so many Palestinian children are taken from us in Gaza. So long as I am President, we will stand up for the principle that Israelis, Palestinians, the region, and the world will be more just with two states living side by side, in peace and security.

Could this have been any emptier? Just last month, Israel and Hamas were engaged in the biggest uptick in violence since the Second Intifada was in full swing.

The message from Obama comes through, though: We’re no longer interested in forcing the parties to the table. The subtext behind that is a US surrender to the stubbornness of the far-right wing government running Israel these days. The US will stop pressuring Israel for talks, and indeed, it already has. The question this raises, of course, is how the Obama administration will respond when and if the Palestinian Authority makes good on its repeated threats to bring this issue to the UN and the International Criminal Court.

In such a case, Obama will undoubtedly condemn the Palestinians’ “unilateral action”—de facto US policy dictates that when the Palestinians take action, it is to be condemned, but when Israel does the same thing, it is, at worst, “unhelpful.” Yet the real question for the Palestinians is whether the United States will have any other response outside of some pro forma public statement. Obama’s hands-off approach seems to imply that it will not, though Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would be unwise to count on that.

But there’s another piece of this statement worth examining. Obama said, as he has many times, that the situation is unsustainable. He also notes that one myth that has long been held by many has been exposed as false by recent events: the notion that Palestine is the key source of instability in the region.

Obama is correct about the exposed old myth, but he merely spouts another in its place. Of course the occupation will not remain the same as it is today. It has changed some of its characteristics, almost always to the detriment of the Palestinians, many times since 1967. But the essence of the matter, the relationship between an occupying power and an occupied people locked in a conflict over land, rights, narratives, nationalism and competing claims of justice, has endured quite well over those years.

The Israeli right-wing was long aware, and often stated, that their subjugation of the Palestinians was not the main cause of instability in the region. Of course, there was a time when there was a much stronger argument for that myth. When the many Arab regimes, throughout most of the 20th century, were comfortably entrenched in power, things were pretty stable, as they often are under dictatorships that maintain their control. Under those circumstances, the cry of “Free Palestine” was heard much more loudly, as it was the only one the dictators would permit. Due to many factors (especially the US invasion of Iraq), that stability was shattered and, as one would expect, much of the Arab world, while not forgetting the Palestinians, demonstrated a focus on the miserable conditions they themselves were living in, and conflicts within their own countries. Thus, the myth was exposed.

But we need no shakeup like the Arab Awakening to see that the claim that the occupation is “unsustainable” is a myth. We really need only see that it has endured for more than 47 years, and when circumstances did threaten the status quo, Israel adapted its occupation to meet those circumstances. The most obvious example of that is the massive tightening of the occupation and even more massive expansion of settlements that constituted Israel’s response to the Oslo Accords.

Of course, it is a truism that any oppressive regime eventually meets its demise. That is clearly not what Obama means when he calls the occupation “unsustainable.” Rather, he means what so many others mean: Israel cannot continue to hold millions of Palestinians without rights. But, like so many other myths around Israel-Palestine, this one doesn’t bear scrutiny. Israel has done this for 47 years, and can do it for the foreseeable future. The demise of the occupation regime will come, as the demise of all regimes eventually come. But there is nothing particularly unsustainable about this one.

The Israeli right has become the Israeli mainstream, and they are busily coming up with ideas for how to sustain this occupation or, as Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman likes to put it, to “manage” the conflict. They recognize that the fear, ingrained in the thinking of many of the early Zionist philosophers of a Jewish Israel ruling over a majority of disenfranchised Muslim and Christian Arabs is unfounded. It turns out that contrary to the expectations of the early Zionist thinkers, Israelis can live with denying rights to Arabs, and the world is prepared to tolerate it, despite the clucking of tongues it evokes.

This issue can be traced back all the way to Theodor Herzl, and it was actively dealt with by Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and, most notably, by the person in charge of land acquisition for the Jewish National Fund both before and after the State of Israel was established, Yoseph Weitz. In modern times, this notion has been expressed as a “demographic time bomb,” most notably by Netanyahu’s predecessor, Ehud Olmert.

But there’s no reason to believe this is really a problem. After all, according to the February 2014 report of Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, there are about 6,119,000 Jews in Israel and the West Bank. Between the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, there are some 5,894,631 Palestinians, according to the CIA World Factbook. Given the different population growth rates, Palestinians will be a majority very soon, but the day that happens, what is going to change? On the ground, in day to day life, what will be different than the day before?

The answer, of course, is that nothing will change and the Israeli right wing understands this. The United States, on the other hand, does not appear to. More to the point, the many activists who believe that Jews going from 51% of the population to 49% of it will suddenly mean that Israel is an apartheid state, as both Olmert and another former Prime Minister, Ehud Barak warned, also do not understand that when that line is crossed nothing will change. Nothing will change when that so-called demographic time bomb goes off.

So, while right wing leaders like Naftali Bennett consider ways to continue to “manage” the Palestinians indefinitely, Obama and a great any others, in the United States, Israel, Europe and even some among the Palestinians, continue to engage in myth-making and wishful thinking.

If this conflict is ever to be resolved, the only path to it entails full acknowledgment of the realities, on the ground, in the international diplomatic sphere and in politics. Anyone who truly believes that the demographic counter clicking down to under 50% Jewish will somehow shock the Israeli people and their government into recognizing the injustice of the occupation is engaging in fantasy. Such demographic changes are gradual, and this cushions the change so it is not a shock. In 1960, Whites, who were always an overwhelming minority, made up less than 20% of the population of South Africa, and Jews are unlikely to ever be anywhere near that small a minority in Israel-Palestine.

This is only one of many myths that need to be abandoned for any kind of resolution to be possible. It’s no less important to dispel these fanciful notions than it is to counter the stereotypes of Palestinians that are so widely held in the United States, Israel and elsewhere (like “they just want to kill the Jews” for instance). One way we will know people are serious about taking on this vexing conflict is when we see them abandon false notions and recognize that Israel-Palestine can contribute to a better world simply by ending the injustice and violence. When that’s the motivation, and it is applied to both sides, we’ll be getting somewhere.

by Ellie Geranmayeh

The meeting between Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and British Prime Minister David Cameron on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly yesterday was an important moment for geopolitics, British-Iranian relations, and the growing European dialogue with Tehran. Such an encounter has not taken place since the 1979 revolution when Iran switched from a monarchy to an Islamic Republic. The timing of the event was critical given the turbulence in the Middle East, which poses security threats to Iran and Western countries. The meeting also underlines the shift that has been taking place in the United Kingdom’s policy on Iran, triggered by the progress made in the talks over Iran’s nuclear program under Rouhani’s administration and the escalating crises emerging from the group calling itself the Islamic State (ISIL or ISIS).

Diplomatic relations between the countries were officially cut in 2011 after a crowd of Iranians stormed the British embassy in Tehran following the announcement of British sanctions on Iran. The current warming of relations comes at a time when traditional alliances and geopolitical landscapes in the region are changing. Both sides agreed to hold the Sept. 24 meeting at heads of state-level rather than the lower foreign ministerial rank. In doing so, the UK sent a strong though symbolic gesture from a Western country to the Iranian supreme leader that it is seriously open to changing its relations with the Islamic Republic in the pursuit of British interests.

1st meeting b/w UK & Iran heads of state in 35 years: 1 hour of constructive & pragmatic dialogue, new outlook #UNGA pic.twitter.com/Ax9cf72rup

— Hassan Rouhani (@HassanRouhani) September 24, 2014

While Iran and the UK have been moving toward restoring diplomatic relations since the resumption of nuclear-focused negotiations under Rouhani last year, this week’s meeting was spurred by serious British deliberations over incorporating Iran into the UK’s anti-ISIS strategy (even if most of the coordination with Iran may ultimately be done privately). In the absence of engagement, and with or without the downfall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, more Western countries are recognizing that they can only effectively combat ISIS in Syria through a coordinated effort with Iran. This type of operation cannot be managed solely with the West’s traditional regional allies—notably the Gulf States, Turkey and Egypt—who have little leverage over Assad.

Cameron this week also met with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, perhaps signaling a desire by the British PM to be more active on the global scene and raise the UK’s leadership profile in tackling security threats. While France is calling on Europe to step up its military response to ISIS, the UK is still working out what its role will be as part of the international coalition. Cameron’s outreach has probably come too late to be considered a real “game-changer” on the international stage given the amount of back-channel talks now taking place between Iran and the US on both the nuclear issue and ISIS. Nevertheless the British parliament will assemble this Friday to explore how and if the UK will increase its military response against ISIS; the meeting with Rouhani will no doubt be a strong feature in the discussions.

The UK’s former foreign secretary, Jack Straw, wrote yesterday that the West must take a leap of faith in settling a final nuclear deal with Iran, describing Iran as “fundamental to securing stability in Syria, northern Iraq and the Lebanon.” The position of the P5+1 (France, UK, US, Russia, China and Germany) countries, currently in talks over a final deal on Iran’s nuclear program, has been that the regional and nuclear dossiers must be kept separate. Although the UK has stuck to this line, Cameron outlined in his General Assembly speech yesterday that “Iran’s leaders could help in defeating the threat from ISIL.”

Yet there should be no illusions about the extent to which Iran and Western countries could work together against the Islamic State. While tactical coordination is currently possible, cooperation is improbable, not least because of domestic politics. The Rouhani-Cameron meeting occurred before Cameron’s speech at the UN, during which he cited “severe disagreements” with Iran, including “Iran’s support for terrorist organizations, its nuclear program, and its treatment of its people.” Although Cameron emphasized potential cooperation between the two countries in the same speech, the backlash to his remarks was immediate.

“Prime Minister David Cameron’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly represented a continuation of the self-centered view of [London's] government that has a history of turmoil in our area,” said Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Marzieh Afkham yesterday, referencing the UK’s history of colonialism in the Middle East.

Iranian hardliners also seized upon the comments. “There is no expectation from Cameron and the Prime Minister of England to do anything other than speak and act against Iran,” said Seyyed Hossein Naghavi, the spokesperson for the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission.

While Iran and the West have held discussions over ISIS in Iraq, on Syria they are far apart due to deep divisions over Assad’s continued leadership role in the country. Ever since Syria became the only Arab country to side with Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, the countries have been strategic allies. Now this alliance has effectively excluded Iran from officially partaking in the US-led international coalition against ISIS. Of course, Iran hasn’t expressed disappointment. Last week Foreign Minister Javad Zarif called the group a “coalition of repenters” at a think tank event in New York, a reference to the Gulf states’ and Turkey’s alleged roles in supporting the rise of ISIS. But the US still reportedly notified Iran ahead of launching airstrikes in Syria this week, which Rouhani tepidly criticized.

Out of all the European member states, the UK’s diplomatic relations with Iran suffered the most over the last decade. Yet despite persistent tensions, Cameron and Rouhani marked a clear road ahead for the expansion of British-Iranian relations this week. Their meeting can instigate more frequent and wider channels of dialogue between the UK and Iran following on the announcement in June that their respective embassies would reopen. Italy, Germany and France, which have maintained trade ties with Iran, are also already exploring ways to expand business ventures with Iran if a final nuclear deal is signed.

The Cameron-Rouhani meeting will also have an important impact on deepening relations between the EU and Iran, which could expand beyond the nuclear issue to dialogue on trade and human rights. This week in New York, Presidents François Hollande of France and Heinz Fischer of Austria also met with Rouhani for the first time. Over the last year, Zarif has visited a large number of EU member states and hosted over ten European foreign ministers as well as the EU’s high representative in Tehran. Given the standoff with Russia over Ukraine, there have been serious considerations in the EU over how it could diversify its energy pool through Iran’s gas exports in a post-nuclear deal scenario.

The unprecedented meeting between Rouhani and Cameron also adds to the general mood of Western détente with Iran that could open new doors for a meaningful resolution in Syria and an effective military response to the Islamic State. How quickly and the extent to which this happens depends on the outcome of the nuclear talks over the next two months.

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by Jim Lobe

New York — On his second trip to the UN General Assembly as Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani Tuesday said he looked forward to better relations with regional rival Saudi Arabia and only tepidly criticized the US attack on Islamic State (ISIL or ISIS) and Khorasan targets in Syria.

Speaking at a press breakfast with about two dozen media representatives, Rouhani expressed hope that the P5+1 (US, UK, France, Russia, China plus Germany) and Tehran will conclude a comprehensive agreement on Iran’s nuclear program by the current Nov. 24 deadline but noted that differences remain and that this week’s series of meetings in New York are likely to be critical.

Failure to reach an agreement, he said, will not necessarily result in a rapid uptick in tensions between Washington and Tehran.

“If there [is] no final agreement, there will perhaps be another way to go,” he said.

“For now, everything is based, God willing, on reaching an accord. [But failure to meet the deadline] doesn’t mean we will go back to the way things were before.”

He also suggested that the Obama administration should accept Iran’s role as a regional leader in the fight against ISIS, stressing that, while Washington justified its initial military reaction to the Sunni group’s sweep last month across much of central and northern Iraq largely in terms of protecting US personnel and property, Iran was already taking action to bolster anti-ISIS forces on the ground.

“Americans are very aware that the country that prevented the [Baghdad] government from falling was Iran,” he said. “Iran’s role has been undeniable.”

“Countries in the region are much more qualified to lead [the anti-ISIS] efforts than those who are outside and don’t know the region as well,” he said through a translator.

Tuesday’s breakfast marked the first of a series of events featuring Rouhani, who will address the UN General Assembly Wednesday morning and hold a more general press conference Friday. It came amidst intensified diplomacy between the P5+1 and Iran, which included a meeting lasting more than one hour between Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, who had already arrived in New York last week, Monday.

The breakfast, in which Rouhani answered questions in Farsi, also came in the immediate aftermath of the Pentagon’s confirmation that it had attacked targets of Khorasan, an al-Qaeda offshoot that Washington claims is actively planning and preparing attacks against western states, including the US, inside Syria.

Khorasan is not known to have links with ISIS, whose recent military successes in both Syria and Iraq prompted Obama’s decision to dispatch some 1,600 US trainers and advisers to Iraq and to authorize air strikes against ISIS forces in both countries.

US Anti-ISIS Campaign

Rouhani did not explicitly address Khorasan during the breakfast, focusing instead on ISIS, as well as other groups he referred to as “terrorist.”

As to the US air strikes in Syrian territory, Rouhani questioned their legality but did not explicitly denounce them. He stressed, however, that any military action within a country’s borders should either be authorized by the UN Security Council or by the country whose territory is subject to attack. “[It’s not] legal, particularly without the authority of the government,” he said.

“…Everything that does take place must take place within the legal framework,” he said later in reference to US counter-terrorist actions in Iraq and Syria, and possible coordination between Tehran and Washington in that effort.

Perhaps his most significant remarks, however, came in response to a question about relations between Iran and its regional rival, Saudi Arabia. It came in the wake of a meeting Monday between Zarif and Riyadh’s foreign minister, Prince Saudi al-Faisal in which the latter reportedly invited Zarif to visit the kingdom.

Many observers have commented recently that any effort to isolate and defeat ISIS and eventually reach a political settlement to the civil war in Syria will require understandings worked out between Tehran and Riyadh.

“Saudi Arabia is an important country in our region, and we believe that the relationships between [Iran and the Gulf] countries must be very dignified and very strong,” Rouhani said. “Our relationship with Saudi Arabia is not within the level that our people expect. I believe relations deserve to be warmer.”

He went on to say that he believed Riyadh was moving “closer and closer with us” as a result of a conditions in the region, an apparent reference to ISIS’s advances. “Within the next few months, I believe our relations will grow warmer,” he added.

Rouhani also repeatedly stated that Iran’s role as a leader in the anti-ISIS fight should be given more recognition, noting that he had spoken at length about the dangers posed by “extremism and violence” in his speech to the General Assembly a year ago.

“Perhaps this [ISIS] threat and danger were not crystal clear when I spoke,” he observed.

And he questioned Washington’s claim to leading the international fight against ISIS. “Can countries [carry out this effort] without cooperation and coordination and succeed,” he asked.

“Is a coalition needed? If so, who is best suited to lead? …Is it possible [to defeat extremism] without [addressing root causes and] without knowing the region very well?” he asked rhetorically.

“Countries in the region are much more qualified to lead…,” he said.

“The Americans are free (to make their own) judgment, but people are aware that the strongest government that has taken the strongest fight against terrorism has been Iran,” he said.

Without citing the United States by name, Rouhani also implicitly criticized Washington’s strategy in Syria, noting that it was not “easily digestible” for Iranians to accept the leadership of countries which had supported anti-Assad insurgent groups, some of which have been associated with ISIS or Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate.

He also complained that “a country” that says it wants to fight against a terrorist group but, at the same time, forms, arms and trains an anti-government group in a third country (a reference to Saudi Arabia) and then sends them back in hopes it will fight the terrorist group was “nebulous and ambiguous at best” and constituted a “very confusing behavior and policy.”

Nuclear Talks

On the nuclear negotiations, Rouhani broke no new ground but suggested that current differences between the P5+1 and Iran went beyond the size and scope of Tehran’s uranium enrichment program and included the timeframe of any comprehensive agreement and the lifting of sanctions as well as what changes will be made to the Arak reactor.

“This week will clarify many things as to whether we will reach an agreement in two months,” he said, adding that both sides agree that the “continuation of the current agreement doesn’t benefit anyone.”

If an agreement is indeed reached, relations between Iran and the US will be “completely different” and will constitute a “win-win for all sides,” he said, noting that he and President Obama had spoken “in depth about a number of issues of co-operation” once the nuclear issue had been resolved during their ground-breaking phone conversation one year ago, as Rouhani was being driven to the JFK airport after the General Assembly.

Rouhani also acknowledged that there was domestic opposition to an agreement and rapprochement between the US and Iran, noting that various sectors in both countries had opposed the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) reached in November last year. “But after the dust settled,” he noted, Iranians “…saw only roses, not thorns, on the path.”

Detained Washington Post Reporter

A number of attendees at the breakfast raised the plight of Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian and his wife who have been detained in Iran for more than two months without formal charges.

Rouhani insisted that the case was in the hands of the judiciary and that he hoped it would be resolved very soon.

“The judiciary has not yet made a determination,” he said.

Asked whether their detention may have been designed to sabotage the P5+1 talks and weaken his government, Rouhani said he didn’t think the action was “premeditated” (the translator said “pre-programmed”) with that intent, although his answer fell short of a categorical rejection of that notion.

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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani arrives in New York on Sept. 22, 2014 ahead of his address to the United Nations General Assembly

On Sunday a Reuters report quoting unnamed “senior Iranian officials” suggested Tehran was trying to use the crisis posed by the group that calls itself the Islamic State (ISIL or ISIS) in Iraq to increase Iran’s leverage in negotiations over its nuclear program.

But a senior Iranian official directly involved in the talks denied the claim that Iran was trying to mix the two issues, insisting in an email to me that “We have enough on our plate with the nuclear issue.”

The French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius supported the Iranian official’s comments in remarks made at the Council of Foreign Relations on Sept. 22, which I included in my piece. (France has been a challenging negotiating partner for Iran and has even been accused of impeding the interim nuclear deal reached in Geneva last November during the second to last session of talks.)

But in a strange update of its story, Reuters argued that the White House’s insistence today that the issues are being kept separate confirmed Reuter’s initial premise.

“While not surprising, the U.S. response suggests the White House feels a need to tell Iran publicly that it wants other issues kept away from the nuclear talks,” said the Reuters report.

When I heard the full quote by White Press Secretary Josh Earnest, it sounded like he was actually denying the premise of Reuter’s initial report.

Here’s the full response by Earnest with the one quote Reuters used in bold. (I wasn’t at the briefing so I won’t know the question that preceded Earnest’s response until the transcript becomes available.)

The conversations related to the P5+1 talks have to do with resolving the international community’s concerns about the Iranian nuclear program. Those conversations to try to resolve those concerns are entirely separate from any of the overlapping interests that Iran may have with the international community as it relates to ISIL. As you’ve heard me discuss on at least a couple of other occasions, it is not in the interest of the Iranian regime for this extremist organization to be wreaking havoc on its doorstep. So, like the international community, the Iranians are understandably concerned about the gains that ISIL has made in Iraq and they have indicated that they are ready to fight ISIL. But the United States will not coordinate any of our military activities with the Iranians, the United States will not be involved in sharing intelligence with the Iranians and the United States will not be in the position of trading aspects of Iran’s nuclear program to secure commitments to take on ISIL. These two issues are entirely separate.

Considering the strained state of the negotiations, it’s certainly possible that both sides are keeping the talks solely focused on Iran’s nuclear program to prevent further complications.

Read more about this story and where the talks stand in my piece today for IPS News.

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has time to get its pants on. –Winston Churchill

Opponents of a nuclear agreement with Iran are mobilising once more. A recent letter to colleagues from the chairman and ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee sponsored by Ed Royce (R-CA) and Eliot Engel (D-NY) contains almost as many distortions of the truth as the annual address to the UN General Assembly of the current Prime Minister of Israel.

Here are some of those distortions.

Iran’s nuclear program poses a severe threat to the national security of the United States and our allies. How can the nuclear program of a state that is not known to possess nuclear weapons and is assessed by US intelligence not to have taken a decision to acquire nuclear weapons pose a severe threat? Do the comparable nuclear programs of Brazil and Japan pose a severe threat to their neighbours? Does Israel’s nuclear program pose a severe threat to its neighbours?

For several years, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has sought Iran’s cooperation regarding evidence that Tehran has conducted extensive research and development on a nuclear weapon. What the IAEA has reported is evidence of research, not of development. And some of that evidence is open to non-nuclear interpretations. The possibility that some of it has been fabricated cannot be excluded.

Last November, Iran agreed to disclose information on such “potential military dimensions” to the IAEA. Last November Iran agreed to “resolve all outstanding issues that have not already been resolved by the IAEA”. In the Nov. 11, 2013 agreement there is no reference to a “possible military dimension”. The relevant part of subsequent IAEA reports is headed “Clarification of Unresolved Issues.”

Iran has failed to fully cooperate with the IAEA and has failed to meet its latest deadline. Iran has failed, partially, to meet a recent deadline but the Director General of the IAEA has not reported any failure to cooperate.

We remain deeply concerned with Iran’s refusal to fully cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency. The Director General of the IAEA has not reported any failure to cooperate. In all manner of processes the missing of deadlines is liable to occur.

For several years, the IAEA has attempted to work with Iran to resolve this central issue, but Tehran has refused. In February 2012 Iran agreed with the IAEA a plan of work for resolving outstanding issues. After a change of government in Iran, in November 2013, Iran and the IAEA agreed to a Framework for Cooperation. Since November 2013 Iran has provided the access and information requested by the IAEA on 16 out of 18 occasions.

In its September 5, 2014 report, the IAEA stated that Iran had failed to meet its latest deadline, even as it continued to demolish structures and construct others at the Parchin military base, where clandestine nuclear-related activities have reportedly taken place. The latest IAEA report is devoid of any linkage between the recent missing of a deadline and construction work at the Parchin military site.

If Iran’s nuclear program is truly peaceful, “it’s not a hard proposition to prove.” Actually it’s a very hard proposition to prove. How can a state “prove” that it does not have some small secret fissile material production facility somewhere on its territory? That is why the IAEA is never ready to offer more than “credible assurances” that a given nuclear program is truly peaceful.

The only reasonable conclusion for its stonewalling of international investigators is that Tehran does indeed have much to hide. That Iran may have something to hide is a reasonable conclusion. But it is not the only reasonable conclusion.

We are concerned that an agreement that accepts Iran’s lack of transparency on this key issue would set the dangerous precedent that certain facilities and aspects of Iran’s nuclear program can be declared off limits by Tehran. Iran is under an international legal obligation to submit all nuclear facilities where nuclear material is present to IAEA inspection. There is not the remotest possibility that the current negotiation with the US and others will result in their trying to persuade the IAEA Board of Governors that certain Iranian facilities should be excluded from the scope of Iran’s safeguards agreement with the IAEA.

Both the IAEA Board of Governors and the IAEA secretariat are determined to resolve questions that have arisen in relation to what the IAEA terms “nuclear-related” research in Iran, most of which is thought to have taken place, if at all, more than ten years ago. The IAEA secretariat is highly competent and knows its job. Its task will not be facilitated by the circulation of misleading information about the nature of Iran’s participation in that resolution process.

Photo: The Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu with US Rep. Ed Royce (left) and US Rep. Eliot L. Engel in Jerusalem

A successful agreement on Iran’s nuclear program could significantly enhance US leverage and influence throughout the greater Middle East, according to a new report signed by 31 former senior US officials and regional experts released here Wednesday.

The 115-page report, “Iran and Its Neighbors: Regional Implications for US Policy of a Nuclear Agreement,” argues that a nuclear accord would open the way towards cooperation between the two countries on key areas of mutual concern, including stabilising both Iraq and Afghanistan and even facilitating a political settlement to the bloody civil war in Syria.

“A comprehensive nuclear agreement would enable the United States to perceive (regional) priorities without every lens being colored by that single issue,” according to the report, the latest in a series published in the last several years by the New York-based Iran Project, which has sponsored high-level informal exchanges with Iran since it was founded in 2002.

“If the leaders of the United States and Iran are prepared to take on their domestic political opponents’ opposition to the agreement now taking shape, then their governments can turn to the broader agenda of regional issues,” concluded the report, whose signatories included former US National Security Advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, as well as more than a dozen former top-ranking diplomats.

Conversely, failure to reach an accord between Iran and the so-called P5+1 (the US, UK, France, Russia, China plus Germany) could result in “Iran’s eventual acquisition of a nuclear weapons, a greatly reduced chance of defeating major threats elsewhere in the region, and even war,” the study warned.

The report comes as negotiations over a comprehensive nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 are set to formally resume in New York Thursday, as diplomats from around the world gather for the opening of the UN General Assembly, which will be addressed by both Presidents Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani, among other world leaders, next week.

The parties have set a Nov. 24 deadline, exactly one year after they signed a Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) in Geneva that eased some economic sanctions against Tehran in exchange for its freezing or rolling back key elements of its nuclear program.

While the two sides have reportedly agreed in principle on a number of important issues, large gaps remain, particularly with respect to proposed limits on the size of Iran’s uranium enrichment program and their duration.

The study also comes amidst what its authors called a “tectonic shift” in the Middle East triggered in major part by the military successes of the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant (IS, ISIS or ISIL), a development that has been greeted by virtually all of the region’s regimes, as well as the US—which is trying to patch together an international coalition against the Sunni extremist group—as a major threat.

“The rise of ISIS has reinforced Iran’s role in support of the government in Iraq and raises the possibility of U.S.-Iran cooperation in stabilizing Iraq even before a nuclear agreement is signed,” according to the report, which nonetheless stressed that any agreement should impose “severe restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities… (to reduce) the risks that Iran could acquire nuclear weapons.”

Still, the thrust of the report, which includes individual essays by recognised experts on Iran’s relations with seven of its neighbours, focuses on how Washington’s interests in the region could be enhanced by “parallel and even joint U.S. and Iran actions” after an agreement is reached.

Such cooperation would most probably begin in dealing with ISIL in Iraq whose government is supported by both Washington and Tehran.

Indeed, as noted by Paul Pillar, a former top CIA Middle East analyst, both countries have recently taken a number of parallel steps in Iraq, notably by encouraging the removal of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and by taking separate military actions—US airstrikes and Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) advisers—to help break ISIL’s months-long siege of the town of Amerli.

“There’s ample potential here for more communication on a source of very high concern to both of us,” Pillar said at the report’s release at the Wilson Center. “[The Iranians] see the sources of instability in Iraq; they see it is not in their interest to have unending instability [there].”

A second area of mutual interest is Afghanistan from which US and NATO troops are steadily withdrawing amidst growing concerns about the ability of the government’s security forces to hold the Taliban at bay.

It is no secret that the US and Iran worked closely together in forging the government and constitution that were adopted after coalition forces ousted the Taliban in late 2001, noted Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan expert who after the 9/11 attacks served in senior positions at the State Department and later the UN.

Lesser known is the fact that “the IRGC worked closely on the ground with the CIA and US Special Forces” during that campaign, he said.

With political tensions over recent election results between the two main presidential candidates and their supporters on the rise, according to Rubin, some cooperation between Iran and the US is likely to be “very important” to ensure political stability.

“A nuclear agreement would open the way for a diplomatic and political process that would make it possible to retain some of the important gains we have made in Afghanistan over the past 13 years,” he said.

As for Syria, Iran, as one of President Bashar al-Assad’s two main foreign backers, must be included in any efforts to achieve a political settlement, according to the report.

Until now, Iran has been invited to participate only as an observer, largely due to US and Saudi opposition.

“The Iranians are not wedded to …the continuation of the Baathist regime,” said Frank Wisner, who served as ambassador to Egypt and India, among other senior posts in his career.

In talks with Iranian officials he said he had been struck by “the degree to which they feel themselves over-stretched,” particularly now that they are more involved in Iraq.

The report anticipates considerable resistance by key US regional allies to any rapprochement with Iran that could follow a nuclear agreement, particularly from Israel, which has been outspoken in its opposition to any accord that would permit Iran to continue enriching uranium.

“It goes without saying that this is of primordial importance to Israel,” noted Thomas Pickering, who has co-chaired the Iran Project and served as US ambassador to Israel and the UN, among other top diplomatic posts.

Washington must make it clear to Israel and its supporters here that an agreement “would certainly improve prospects for tranquillity in the region” and that it would be a “serious mistake” for Israel to attack Iran, as it has threatened to do, while an agreement is in force.

Washington must also take great pains to reassure Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-led Gulf states that a nuclear agreement will not come at their expense, according to the report.

“Such reassurance might require a period of increased U.S. military support and a defined U.S. presence (such as the maintenance of bases in the smaller Gulf States and of military and intelligence cooperation with the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] states),” the report said.

“Riyadh would be willing to explore a reduction of tensions with Tehran if the Saudis were more confident of their American ally,” according to the report.

Photo: US Secretary of State John Kerry delivers remarks to the press in Baghdad, Iraq on Sept. 10, 2014. Credit: State Department

With the Nov. 24 deadline looming, Iran and world powers will resume talks toward a final deal over Iran’s nuclear program this week in New York, but the gap between the two sides over the future size and scope of Iran’s uranium enrichment program seems as wide as ever. Fortunately, not every think tank in DC is focused on a military solution to this conflict. Indeed, the non-proliferation-focused Arms Control Association (ACA) has been working on a phased final deal implementation plan.

The three phases, detailed in the ACA policy brief, “A Win-Win Formula for Defining Iran’s Uranium-Enrichment Capacity,” were presented during a Sept. 15 panel discussion in Washington.

The first phase, which would last from 2015 through either 2017 or 2018, requires Iran to reduce its enrichment capacity from its current 9400 Separative Work Units (SWU) down to something in the range of 4500-5400 SWU. This would extend Iran’s “breakout time,” the length of time it would take the Iranians to produce enough highly enriched uranium to fuel one nuclear bomb, from the current (estimated) 2-3 months to 9-12. Iran would agree not to enrich any uranium beyond 5%, and would convert its stockpiles of uranium hexafluoride gas to powdered uranium oxide, which would have to be reconverted to gas (an action that would likely be detected by International Atomic Energy Agency monitors) before it could be enriched. In return, the P5+1 (US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany) would allow Iran to continue research and development into more advanced centrifuge models than the relatively primitive IR-1 centrifuges it currently operates.

Phase II of the proposal would run from the completion of Phase I through 2021. At this point, Iran would be allowed to gradually bring its enrichment capacity back up to its current level (9400 SWU) while also swapping out its IR-1 centrifuges for more advanced IR-2 models. It could also continue researching more advanced centrifuge models, under an agreed upon capacity limit of 10 SWU per centrifuge. Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium would still be limited, in order to keep its breakout time in the 5-6 month range. Phase III, which is envisioned to last until sometime between 2026 and 2031, would be triggered when the IAEA is able to reach a “broad certification” that Iran’s nuclear program is entirely peaceful. This phase would keep Iran’s overall capacity at 9400 SWU but would allow Iran to begin producing advanced centrifuges in anticipation of scaling up that capacity upon the completion of that phase.

The ACA’s compromise hinges on both sides coming to some reasonable agreement with respect to Iran’s “practical needs,” a standard that was included but not defined in the text of last year’s interim Joint Plan of Action. But as noted by panelist Paul Pillar, a 28-year veteran of the CIA who has written extensively about the conflict over Iran’s nuclear program, the Iranians and the P5+1 have not been able to reach a mutual definition. Right now, Iran has a deal with Russia to supply fuel for its Bushehr nuclear plant. As far as the P5+1 is concerned, this reduces Iran’s immediate practical enrichment needs to almost nothing, but the Iranians, who have recent history on their side, are unwilling to leave their nuclear program at the mercy of a potentially unreliable foreign fuel supplier. They argue that they have a short-term practical need to fuel their current and planned future reactors with domestically enriched uranium.

Pillar also pointed out that the Iranians believe they have shown far more flexibility and willingness to compromise than the P5+1, which puts the degree to which they will be amenable to further compromise on the issue of their practical needs in question. The Iranians have consistently chafed at what they perceive as a double standard, whereby their nuclear program, which they have always insisted is peaceful, is subject to significantly greater scrutiny and limitations than countries that have actually implemented military nuclear programs, like Pakistan and India. Accordingly, Iran may reject additional compromises that reinforce that double standard.

Despite this structural obstacle, the ACA panel seemed optimistic that the two sides would find enough common ground to reach a final deal. The nuclear security expert Jim Walsh pointed to the considerable progress that has been made so far on other potential complications like Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor and the status of the Fordow enrichment facility. When it comes to enrichment, Walsh argued that the P5+1 need to reduce its “misguided” emphasis on numbers—i.e., overall capacity and breakout time—and instead look at the potential political ramifications of a deal that could reincorporate Iran into the international community and support the political ascendance of Iranian political moderates over hard-liners. Pillar noted that the outcome of these talks will likely determine Rouhani’s political future, but suggested that Iran is not desperate for a final deal. He rightly noted that the Iranian government’s receptiveness will ultimately depend on how the deal balances sanctions relief against Iran’s stated principles and requirements.