by Marsha B. Cohen
Mitch McConnell did it, Harry Reid didn’t. Elizabeth Warren did it, Bernie Sanders didn’t. Al Franken did it, Tom Coburn didn’t.
I’m referring to the signing of the latest letter, crafted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and proffered by Senators Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
Mitch McConnell did it, Harry Reid didn’t. Elizabeth Warren did it, Bernie Sanders didn’t. Al Franken did it, Tom Coburn didn’t.
I’m referring to the signing of the latest letter, crafted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and proffered by Senators Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), urging President Barak Obama to turn a cold shoulder to newly elected Iranian president Hassan Rouhani while pursuing a more confrontational and aggressive Iran policy. The Arms Control Association’s Greg Thielmann has already penned an important discussion of why this measure complicates efforts to reach a peaceful solution with Iran, which I highly recommend.
It is worth recalling that another Iranian president-elect, Mohammad Khatami — a reformist whose surprise election shocked the Iranian political establishment — was also greeted by sanctions pushed through Congress. On August 19, 1997, weeks after Khatami took office, President Bill Clinton confirmed that virtually all trade and investment activities by US persons with Iran were prohibited. Those sanctions not only boosted Iranian hardliners who oppose a detente with the US, they also helped ensure that Khatami and his supporters would be unsuccessful in making many of the economic improvements and political changes needed to improve the lives of the Iranian people. His crippled victory was followed by the election of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005. Since then, dozens of letters, resolutions and sanctions bills have emanated from Congress, which of late seems incapable of accomplishing anything else.
According to the “76 senators” who signed the letter:
We believe there are four strategic elements necessary to achieve resolution of this issue: an explicit and continuing message that we will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapons capability, a sincere demonstration of openness to negotiations, the maintenance and toughening of sanctions, and a convincing threat of the use of force that Iran will believe. We must be prepared to act, and Iran must see that we are prepared.
So the US must somehow demonstrate an “openness to negotiations” while maintaining and toughening sanctions and convincingly threatening to “use force”, even as it remains mired in Iraq and Afghanistan and utterly bewildered about Syria and Egypt?
Saxby Chamblis did it, Richard Shelby didn’t. Sheldon Whitehouse did it, Ron Wyden didn’t. Chuck Schumer did it, Barbara Boxer didn’t.
Signing and not signing such letters may be of limited practical consequence — though AIPAC and other lobbying groups are certainly keeping tabs — but the political fallout of abstaining can be deafening. When Chuck Hagel was nominated for Secretary of Defense, his detractors screamed about the anti-Iran “letters” he hadn’t signed, according them equal status with his actual votes.
Tammy Baldwin, who was mercilessly hammered by her 2012 opponent Tommy Thompson for wavering on Iran sanctions, didn’t sign onto this letter.
Al Franken (D-MN), who did, won his seat in 2008 after a recount that lasted for months, unseating incumbent Norm Coleman by a mere 312 votes. Coleman, a stalwart of the Republican Jewish Coalition, is salivating at the prospect of Franken making a single false move on the pro-Israel/anti-Iran front that would enable Republicans to pounce. While Franken seems to be in a strong position for reelection in 2014, he can take nothing for granted in the current political environment.
The last listed co-signer, newbie Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), is currently focused on the economy and particularly on who will be running the Fed. But she has been quick to climb aboard the bandwagon that’s torpedoing the prospect of improved relations with Iran, as has Angus King, the Maine Independent who replaced Republican Olympia Snowe.
Of course, the 24 who, for one reason or another, chose not to sign the letter are hardly “profiles in courage”. Some aren’t seeking reelection when their current Senate term is up and can run free of the AIPAC leash, among them Max Baucus, Tom Coburn, Jay Rockefeller and Carl Levin. Perhaps the most curious non-signers are the AIPAC-endorsed, staunchly pro-Israel senators who have consistently voted in favor of increasingly crippling Iran sanctions but also recently abstained from signing a similar letter last December, urging the President to stiffen them. This group includes Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).
Inferring that any senator not signing an AIPAC-crafted letter has opposed crippling sanctions or will oppose the next round of them would be a major mistake. Most of the two dozen non-signers of the latest letter, including Rand Paul (R-KY), who opposes a military attack on Iran, have voted in favor of sanctions in the past and will probably do so in the future unless some political incentive convinces them otherwise. The absent Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) were among the original cosponsors of S. 65 – the AIPAC-promoted “Back Door to Iran War” resolution that expressed support of an Israeli attack on Iran. It garnered 91 cosponsors and passed the Senate 99-0 on May 22. Kirk’s website is meanwhile applauding the House’s passage of the latest Iran sanctions in the House (as is AIPAC; the accompanying photo to this post is the lead image on its website’s front page) and urges the Senate to act as well, which will likely happen in September.
Just about every resolution and vote ratcheting up sanctions against Iran has passed the Senate with a hefty majority. Murkowski, Wyden, and Jon Tester (D-MT) were among the 44 senators who signed an AIPAC letter in June 2012 opposing negotiations with Iran although they didn’t sign this one.
President Obama has defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result”. How ironic it would be if he were to heed this latest letter and, yielding to Congress, sign off on more and stricter sanctions, just as a new Iranian president offers at least an opening for a better era in US-Iran relations.
That said, Rouhani, who stated the other day that “we need to have negotiations without threats” needs to move quickly — while Congress is on its five week summer break — in making some headlines of his own, by, for example, establishing direct contact with the United States.
]]>News and views relevant to US Foreign policy for Sept. 14
“Moments of Truth in Libya and Egypt”: Marc Lynch, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, discusses the significance of the protests in Egypt and Libya for US relations. Although the events in Libya – [...]]]>
News and views relevant to US Foreign policy for Sept. 14
“Moments of Truth in Libya and Egypt”: Marc Lynch, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, discusses the significance of the protests in Egypt and Libya for US relations. Although the events in Libya – where terrorists apparently used the fortuitously-timed public demonstrations as cover for a preplanned operation targeting US diplomats – have seen the Pentagon dispatch drones and warships to the country, Lynch notes that the difference in official and public responses in Egypt and Libya says much about how leaders in these places view US influence over them:
In short, the response from Libya suggests a broad national rejection at both the governmental and societal level of the anti-American agitation. The leaders have said the right things and have done their part to quickly pre-empt a spiral of conflict and recrimination between Americans and Libyans.
…. In Egypt, on the other hand, President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood has been notably invisible. To this point, we have heard no statements from Egyptian government officials condemning the assault on the embassy, no expressions of concern or sympathy, no suggestion of any fault on their own side. The Muslim Brotherhood had previously been planning rallies against the notorious film, and at the time of this writing has not canceled them. Even when they finally issued a statement condemning the violence in Libya, they were not forthcoming on Cairo.
An exchange between the Muslim Brotherhood’s public relations people and the US embassy in Cairo highlighted the differences with respect to Egypt. Though the Brotherhood condemned the attack on the Cairo compound in English, the US Embassy noted that on its Arabic-language social media feeds, the Brothers were praising the men who stormed the Cairo compound and had called for further protests outside of the embassy on Friday.
As Foreign Affairs commented:
The Muslim Brotherhood’s sponsorship of the film protests might be an ill-advised attempt at the diversionary politics Mubarak was a master of, but the costs are high. . If Egypt’s ultra-Salafists take a harder line on the film or manage to co-opt the protests, Morsi could easily lose ground to them.
More protests have since taken place outside US embassies in Tunisia, Sudan and Yemen and have resulted in the breach of the facilities by the protestors. The Obama Administration is now facing further criticism that it had advance warning of threats made against US facilities abroad on 9/11 this year but did not raise alert levels, and over remarks Obama made in a television interview following the Cairo protests stating that while the US did not consider Egypt an ally, it also did not consider Egypt an enemy.
Officially, Egypt is classified as a “major non-NATO ally” and receives US$1.5 billion in military assistance annually. The State Department has since walked back the president’s remark.
“Egypt trying to persuade Iran to drop Assad”: The Associated Press reports that the Egyptian government is seeking to work out an exit for the Assads from Syria with Iran’s support, in exchange for normalizing relations with the Islamic Republic:
Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi made the offer when he met last month with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran, officials close to the Egyptian presidency said. Morsi’s visit to Iran, to attend a summit of the 120-nation Nonaligned Movement, was the first by an Egyptian president since the 1979 Islamic Revolution there, when diplomatic ties between the countries were cut.
….
Cairo would agree to restore full diplomatic ties, a significant diplomatic prize for Iran given that Egypt is the most populous Arab nation and a regional powerhouse. Morsi would also mediate to improve relations between Iran and conservative Gulf Arab nations that have long viewed Shiite Iran with suspicion and whose fears of the Persian nation have deepened because of Iran’s disputed nuclear program. …. Morsi’s argument is that neither Assad nor the rebels fighting his regime appear to be capable of winning the civil war, creating a stalemate that could eventually break up the Arab nation with serious repercussions for the entire region, the officials said.
“Israel’s window for action against Iran ‘is getting much smaller,’ says Ambassador Oren”: The Times of Israel carries an interview with Israel’s US ambassador, Michael Oren. Questioned by his interviewers as to what isn’t “well between the US and Israel,” Oren downplays the significance of public disputes between the two countries and accusations of partisanship, responding that “in the strategic issues, the spectrum of our common interests and communications is vast”:
When we talk about Iran, we proceed on the assumption that we have a structural difference. The structural difference is that Israel is a small country, living in Iran’s backyard, with certain capabilities. And Israel is threatened almost daily with national annihilation. And of course the United States is a big country, far away from Iran, with much greater capabilities, and not threatened with national annihilation.
…. Clearly, things have been said which might not have been helpful for the situation. But at the same time in the last few weeks the prime minister had telephone conversations with American officials — he had an hour-long conversation with the president the other night — and things are also said not for public consumption. And they are part of this very intimate, candid and continuous dialogue that we have with the United States.
When asked, Oren denied that Netanyahu has been using the elections to push the US further towards Israel’s “red lines.” His boss, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, recently gave a rare interview to The Jerusalem Post – stating much the same – in an apparent effort to deflect criticism that he is rooting for a Republican victory in November.
“Boxer Expresses Disappointment Over Israeli Prime Minister’s Remarks”: Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee released a widely-reported letter this Wednesday criticizing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for politicizing debate over the Iranian nuclear program. Boxer emphasizes the increased sanctions on Iran and military aid the US has provided to Israel since Obama took office, and asks that he clarify his views of the US-Israel relationship:
In light of this, I am stunned by the remarks that you made this week regarding U.S. support for Israel. Are you suggesting that the United States is not Israel’s closest ally and does not stand by Israel? Are you saying that Israel, under President Obama, has not received more in annual security assistance from the United States than at any time in its history, including for the Iron Dome Missile Defense System?
As other Israelis have said, it appears that you have injected politics into one of the most profound security challenges of our time – Iran’s illicit pursuit of nuclear weapons.
I urge you to step back and clarify your remarks so that the world sees that there is no daylight between the United States and Israel. As you personally stated during an appearance with President Obama in March, “We are you, and you are us. We’re together. So if there’s one thing that stands out clearly in the Middle East today, it’s that Israel and America stand together.”
“Romney’s foreign policy: An ideology that dare not speak its name”: The Washington Post carries an interview with Alex Wong, the foreign policy director for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, in which Wong parries questions over whether or not Romney is a neoconservative himself:
Q: Does he embrace neoconservatism?
A: “You know,” said Wong, “throughout this campaign Governor Romney has indicated that his view on the world is peace through strength, American leadership, in guaranteeing an American century, that this new century continues to be an American century. And that’s the governing philosophy of Governor Romney on peace through strength.”
Q: So does he consider himself a neoconservative?
A: “What I’m saying is,” said Wong, “Governor Romney’s embrace of American values and interests and his call for American leadership is a philosophy of peace through strength.”
The interviewer, Jason Horowitz, later commented on the exchange in a separate article:
]]>His [Romney’s] reaction this week [to the violence in Libya and Egypt] made it clear that when it comes to Republican foreign policy, the neocons are still the only game in town.
…. Romney and his advisers — Wong declined to say whether they were consulted before the candidate weighed in on the the embassy chaos — are tripling down on the clear contrasts offered by neoconservatism’s trumpeting of values, which lends itself nicely to campaign seasons but is more complicated in actual governance (see the war in Iraq).
Umit Enginsoy, of the Turkish news site Hurriyet, seems to be one of the only journalists to have noticed that, had Obama waited a few more days — until 2011 — to make these recess appointments, the four ambassadors could have served until the end of 2012 before requiring Senate confirmation. (Recess appointments last until the end of the subsequent calendar year.) Since Obama made these appointments in the waning days of 2010, the diplomats will have to secure the confirmation of the full Senate by the end of 2011, or their diplomatic posts may once again be vacant.
As it is, the president’s move has been assailed by Republicans and neoconservative ideologues. The Obama administration most likely did not want to make matters worse by squeezing in half a dozen recess appointments — four of them diplomats — on the holiday weekend prior to the official opening of the 112th Congressional session on Jan. 3rd (although neither chamber will even be sworn in until Jan. 5). Though weekend appointments most likely would have been valid, since Obama himself announced fifteen recess appointments on March 27, 2010 — a Saturday.
While Obama’s decision to make before-year-end appointments shortens the potential terms of the diplomats at their postings, the long delay in their Senate approval owes to special interests, politics, and ideological attacks from neoconservatives and their allies.
When Obama named Ricciardone as the top U.S. envoy to Ankara on July 1, his confirmation by the Senate was expected to be routine. A career diplomat who speaks fluent Turkish, his first assignments were to Ankara and Andana when he entered the U.S. Foreign Service 32 years ago. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee interviewed Ricciardone on July 20, and his appointment was approved to go before the full Senate. With confirmation imminent, Ricciardone’s predecessor, Amb. James Jeffrey, left Ankara at the end of July, preparing to become the U.S.’s top diplomat to Baghdad in mid-August.
But on August 5, when the Senate unanimously confirmed 27 of Obama’s ambassadors, Ricciardone was not on the list. By the time the names were brought forward for a voice vote, neoconservative pundits and their allies had been attacking Ricciardone for weeks. Über-hawk Elliott Abrams blamed Ricciardone, who had served as Ambassador to Egypt between 2005 and 2008, for both the growing popularity of the Muslim Brotherhood and for the failure of democratization and political reform in Egypt, telling The Cable’s Josh Rogin:
“Especially in 2005 and 2006, Secretary Rice and the Bush administration significantly increased American pressure for greater respect for human rights and progress toward democracy in Egypt. This of course meant pushing the Mubarak regime, arguing with it in private, and sometimes criticizing it in public. In all of this we in Washington found Ambassador Ricciardone to be without enthusiasm or energy.”
Speaking to Rogin, Danielle Pletka, Vice President of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), also went after Ricciardone, questioning his loyalties: “Now is not the time for us to have an ambassador in Ankara who is more interested in serving the interests of the local autocrats and less interested in serving the interests of his own administration.”
After the August 5 vote, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) took up the anti-Ricciardone banner, placing a hold on any further Senate consideration of Ricciardone’s nomination. Parroting Abrams and Pletka, Brownback expressed doubts that Ricciardone would be “tough” enough on the Turkish government, or capable of reversing what Brownback called a “Turkish tilt toward Iran and away from Israel.”
As Laura Rozen of Politico reported, Brownback sent a letter on June 12, 2002, lavishing praise on Ricciardone’s diplomatic skills and thanking him and his staff for their professionalism in the fight against terrorism. While Ambassador to the Philippines, Ricciardone played a key role in the attempt to secure the release of two Evangelical missionaries captured and held for over a year by the Abu Sayyaf organization.
Nevertheless, Brownback’s stubborn and single-handed block of Senate consideration of Ricciardone’s nomination remained in place until the end of the 111th Congress, even after his Nov. 2 election as governor of Kansas.
When Sen. John Kerry, outgoing chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, breezed into Ankara as part of his Middle East tour in November, urging Turks to play nice with Israelis, he apologized for the delay in appointing a U.S. ambassador to Turkey.
“I tried very, very hard to get an ambassador chosen before we left for recess in October,” Kerry told Turkish journalists. “We had one or two senators who blocked it. This is not the U.S.’s position, this is politics at home and we were trying to break through it. I will go back next week and I am going to speak to those senators. I will try to secure a nomination, if not I will personally recommend to the president that he make a recess appointment.”
But Kerry and the Turks both knew the possibility that Ricciardone might receive a “recess appointment” during the congressional lull in October and November had already been pre-empted by a deal reached by Democratic and Republican senators. A little known and rarely used procedural manoeuvre — twice weekly pro forma sessions, during which the Senate’s presiding officer gavels in and out in a deserted chamber — kept the Senate technically in session but without the ability to get anything accomplished. This stripped Obama of his power to make recess appointments just before and after the 2010 election.
Had such a deal not been made, Senate Democrats said in their own defense, Senate Republicans could have forced the president to repeat the entire process of nominating each of the 110 pending presidential appointees, including executive and judicial positions, and diplomatic ones like Ricciardone. The agreement allowed for the possibility of Senate confirmations during the “lame duck” congressional session,” which began in mid-November and ended last week before Christmas.
The day before the President’s recess appointments were announced, Turkish news sources were doubtful that Ricciardone’s nomination would be able to move ahead. Once the new session of Congress opens on Jan. 3, Obama will have to begin the nomination process of all pending nominees who are subject to Senate ratification at square one.
On Wednesday, while on vacation in Hawaii, Obama announced that six long-delayed nominees whose appointments were being held up in the Senate would be receiving recess appointments. including four ambassadors. Ricciardone was one of them. The Turks have their U.S. ambassador at last. Ricciardone plans to take up his long-awaited post in Ankara in early January.
As Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly points out, all four of the ambassadors who received recess appointments were considered fully qualified by the members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who had approved their nominations and sent them to the full Senate. All had been kept from taking up their diplomatic posts by unilateral actions on the part of one or two senators who prevented appointments from reaching the Senate floor for the votes that would have confirmed them. (Benen’s detailed deconstruction of Washington Post “Right Turn” blogger Jennifer Rubin‘s claim that these recess appointments were in any way “controversial” is well worth a read.)
Action on the nomination of career diplomat Robert Stephen Ford, who Obama designated to be the first U.S. Ambassador to Syria since President George W. Bush vacated the post in 2005, had been blocked by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) since the beginning of May. Benen points out: ”Republicans didn’t object to Ford, per se, but didn’t want the post filled at all. The administration insisted that having an ambassador to Syria was integral to U.S. diplomacy in the region.”
The appointment of another career diplomat, Matthew Bryza, as Ambassador to Azerbaijan had been blocked by Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ), who are fiercely protective of the interests and sensitivities of the pro-Armenian lobby ANCA. In a recent letter published in the Washington Post, Menendez accused Bryza of denying there was an Armenian genocide by Ottoman Turkey in 1915. Menendez considers Bryza too favorably disposed toward Azerbaijan and Turkey, making him by definition anti-Armenian.
Obama’s choice to post his legal adviser on ethics, Norm Eisen, in the Czech Republic has been held up by Republican Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA). Grassley blames Eisen for the firing of Inspector General Gerald Walpin in June 2009, the details of which have absolutely no bearing on his qualifications to be the top U.S. envoy to Prague.
While Turks seemed pleased that Ricciardone’s ambassadorial appointment went through, neoconservatives lost no time in disparaging it. AEI’s Michael Rubin told Hurriyet‘s Ilhan Tanir that recess appointments tended to be “lame ducks” whose one year terms were rarely extended because senators didn’t like presidents using the tactic: “Turkey might want a serious American representative with weight in Washington, but what they got is a controversial has-been who, at best, will be home before the year is out.”
Tanir also quoted Jamie Fly, executive director of the newly-founded and highly ideological Foreign Policy Initiative, as stating, “It is disappointing that President Obama made this recess appointment given Ambassador Ricciardone’s track record in previous posts. We need an ambassador in Ankara who will stand up for U.S. interests even when they conflict with Turkey’s desires. Ricciardone has shown himself unable to manage similarly difficult challenges in the past.”
Chas Freeman, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense and a retired diplomat who edited the entry for “Diplomacy’ for the current edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, strongly disagrees. “Frank Ricciardone is a diplomatic professional who speaks Turkish and who has managed embassies in the very challenging circumstances of the Philippines, Egypt, and Afghanistan. It’s hard to imagine anyone more qualified to represent our country in Ankara,” he told LobeLog in an e-mail interview. “It’s not the job of ambassadors, even American ambassadors, to act as viceroys or to direct the internal affairs of the countries to which they are accredited. Nor can the United States promote democracy in countries where U.S. policies are deeply resented and expect not to have to deal with elected governments that reflect that resentment.”
Expect this battle to re-emerge when the current term of recess appointments expires.
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