by Jim Lobe
Since Obama’s announcement last week that he will normalize relations with Cuba, a number of commentators have analyzed what impact this might have on US-Iranian ties, particularly with respect to the ongoing negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program.
Aside from neoconservatives, such as Elliott Abrams, and other hawks, like Lindsey Graham and John McCain—who predictably deplored the move and worried that Obama’s move portends US surrender at the negotiating table—the Wilson Center’s Aaron David Miller was one of the first to do a more thoughtful analysis of what it might mean for Iran policy. In his post, entitled “After Cuba Comes Iran,” Miller argued that, despite the key differences between the two countries, Obama’s decision to normalize ties with Havana “should be a clear sign of where he might like to go with Iran on the nuclear issue in coming months.”
Paul Pillar, a regular contributor to the National Interest, also alluded to the possibility that the Cuba initiative, coupled with Obama’s more assertive policy shifts on immigration and climate change, could indeed indicate where Obama wants to go with Iran and expressed the hope that these moves will encourage him to inject into the US negotiating position the flexibility that will be needed to conclude an agreement.
In another important contribution published by Voice of America Tuesday, the Atlantic Council’s Iran expert, Barbara Slavin argued what I’ve been thinking (but hadn’t put pen to paper) for the past week:
For those in the Iranian government who are pushing for a long-term nuclear deal with Washington, seeing Obama use his presidential authority to relieve the embargo against Cuba despite the vocal objection of some in Congress should increase confidence that he can waive key nuclear-related sanctions against Iran in a similar fashion.
In my opinion, Obama’s willingness to make a bold foreign policy move that is certain to provoke heated opposition from not insignificant domestic constituencies (that are also overrepresented in Congress) should—contrary to the narratives put out by the neoconservatives and other hawks—actually strengthen the Rouhani-Zarif faction within the Iran leadership who are no doubt arguing that Obama is serious both about reaching an agreement and forging a new relationship with the Islamic Republic.
I asked Farideh Farhi—whose analysis of internal Iranian politics and foreign policy is, as far as LobeLog (among many others) is concerned, the best available—about this Wednesday. She replied by email as follows:
I think Obama did himself a lot of good in changing the perception of him in Iran, as well as the rest of the world, as a weak and indecisive president. I think that perception just received a beating and will help those in Tehran who are making the case that Obama is serious and can deliver on substantial sanctions relief or that he is the best person to deal with (given the fact that he is relieved of election pressures). To be sure, all this will be focused on nuclear negotiations and not normalization of relations that developed in the Cuba situation, but if it happens, it will certainly be a breakthrough that may gradually open the path towards normalization.
Farideh pointed in particular to the official reaction by Iran’s Foreign Ministry to Obama’s Cuba announcement as offering some indication about how it was being interpreted in Tehran. That statement emphasized the president’s acknowledgment that more than 50 years of isolation and sanctions against Cuba had not worked and “I do not believe we can continue doing the same thing for over five decades and expect a different result.” Obama’s remarks about having learned “from hard-earned experience that countries are more likely to enjoy lasting transformation if their people are not subjected to chaos,” according to Farideh, were also likely to be seen favorably in Tehran as Obama’s repudiation of “regime change.” (Related points were made in another analysis, “If It’s True on Cuba, It’s True on Iran,” published in the Huffington Post by Trita Parsi and Ryan Costello shortly after Obama’s announcement.)
I would add that the fact that the Castro brothers, who have “resisted” Yanqui imperialism and “global arrogance” for even longer than Tehran, are now willing to establish a new relationship with their own “Great Satan” may also count for something in the internal debate that swirls around Ayatollah Khamenei’s office. If, after all, revolutionary Cuba is willing to turn the page with their historic nemesis—defiance of which has largely defined Cuba’s out-sized standing and status in the world—shouldn’t hardcore revolutionaries around Khamenei at least consider the idea, if not of normalisation (which appears out of the question for the moment), then at least moving with greater confidence toward some rapprochement?
That view is shared by Kenneth Katzman, the senior analyst of Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Persian Gulf Affairs at the Congressional Research Service. “I think we should also not minimize how the Cuba rapprochement might play in the inner counsels in Tehran,” he said in an email. “Surely, Rouhani and Zarif can now go to the Supreme Leader and say ‘The Castro brothers are at least as distrustful of the United States as you are, and they were able to reach a deal with the United States. Why wouldn’t you do the same??”
Of course, opponents of Obama’s normalization of ties with Cuba will try to rally a Republican-led Congress behind their efforts to restrain Obama’s efforts by, among other measures, denying funding for an embassy, refusing to confirm a nominee as ambassador, and introducing legislation designed to constrain the president’s authority to waive or lift certain sanctions or further ease the trade embargo. And, if they succeed, particularly with respect to the sanctions issue, there’s no doubt that such action will be used by hard-liners in Tehran to argue that Obama lacks the power to follow through on any promises he makes about lifting sanctions and related concessions, in a nuclear deal.
But it’s pretty clear that Obama is determined to fight such actions, and it’s most unlikely that anti-Castro diehards like Marco Rubio and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen will be able to gather enough Democratic supporters to overcome a presidential veto. Indeed, given the strong support for Obama’s action from such quarters as the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Foreign Trade Council, and various agricultural lobby groups whose members are eager to significantly increase their exports to Cuba, normalization’s foes may find it more difficult than they anticipate to rally a large majority of Republicans behind them despite the party leadership’s determination to deny Obama any kind of foreign policy success.
At the same time, any serious effort by the anti-Castro forces on Capitol Hill will pose some difficult questions for key players on Iran, especially the Israel lobby and the various groups associated with it. The Cuba and Israel lobbies have worked closely together for decades—their common interests have converged perfectly in the persons of the outgoing chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and former House Foreign Committee chair Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. And now is the moment when the Cuba lobby needs all the help it can get. Moreover, if the leadership of the Israel lobby believes that normalization with Cuba will make a nuclear deal and rapprochement with Iran substantially more likely, will it decide that this is a fight worth fighting? Of course, the leadership is not monolithic, especially on a question that, at least on the face of it, is so far removed from Israel itself, and it will be very difficult to mobilize all but the lobby’s most right-wing constituents behind preventing normalization with Cuba. But it will be fascinating to watch.
Photo: US President Barack Obama talks with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani of during a phone call in the Oval Office, Sept. 27, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
]]>by Derek Davison
The challenge of rebuilding the once strong but now broken ties between the United States and Iran was the topic of a June 3 Atlantic Council event, “US-Iran Relations: Past, Present, and Future.” The discussion, moderated by Barbara Slavin, included John Marks, founder of the international NGO Search [...]]]>
by Derek Davison
The challenge of rebuilding the once strong but now broken ties between the United States and Iran was the topic of a June 3 Atlantic Council event, “US-Iran Relations: Past, Present, and Future.” The discussion, moderated by Barbara Slavin, included John Marks, founder of the international NGO Search for Common Ground, and former Iranian diplomat, Seyed Hossein Mousavian. Much of the event focused on Mousavian’s insights from his time as a member of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team (2003-05), and his involvement in talks between the US and Iran on combatting Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan in late 2001.
Mousavian identified three distinct stages in Iran’s historical relationship with the United States. From 1856, when the first treaty between the two nations was signed, until 1953, when the CIA participated in a coup that overthrew the elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and replaced it with the autocratic rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, US-Iran ties were friendly, albeit not extensive.
Mutual distrust
Iranians believed that the American people and their government supported Iranian reform and anti-colonial efforts (an American missionary, Howard Baskerville, was killed by government forces while participating in Iran’s 1909 constitutional revolution). But the 1953 coup, and the response by the US and UK to Mossadegh’s plan to nationalize Iran’s oil industry, represented a fundamental shift in America’s policy toward Iran. Where it once opposed colonialism and autocracy, America, as a co-sponsor of the coup and as the Shah’s new great power patron, was now, as far as Iranians were concerned, fundamentally identified with both. According to Mousavian this period of “dominance,” ended in 1979 with the Islamic Revolution and the hostage crisis. Hostility has been at the root of US-Iran relations ever since.
There are many reasons to believe, as Mousavian does, that the current state of hostility between Iran and the United States cannot be maintained. The international sanctions that have been levied against it to force the government to agree to limits on its nuclear power program are not meant to last forever. They rely on an international consensus that is almost unprecedented and can be disrupted by any discord among the P5+1 member nations (US, UK, France, China, and Russia plus Germany).
Sanctions have severely damaged the Iranian economy, which President Hassan Rouhani promised to fix during his 2013 election campaign. Politics aside, the human cost of sanctions is also growing by the day. The progress that has already been made in the nuclear talks makes the current moment critically important; if negotiations break down now, it’s difficult to see a way forward without a resurgence of the debate here over military action.
Amidst the debate over how much uranium enrichment capacity Iran “needs” and how much it actually wants, or the dispute over modifications to the proposed heavy-water reactor at Arak, the basic, almost insurmountable challenge to the nuclear talks is that the US and Iran simply do not trust the other side to abide by the terms of a final settlement.
Washington, which maintains diplomatic relations with every country it fought a war with in the 20th century apart from North Korea, is unable to move past the 444 days from 1979-81 in which Iranians held 52 Americans hostages in Tehran, despite the fact that no American hostage was killed in the process. The Iranians meanwhile remember the US’ role in the 1953 coup and its support for Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War. Mousavian argues that broken American promises have also contributed to Iranian (and particularly Revolutionary Guard) mistrust. The IRGC worked to secure the freedom of Americans taken hostage in Lebanon in the 1980s, and likewise cooperated with US military actions in Afghanistan post-9/11 because, according to Mousavian, American diplomats promised that those efforts would lead to closer US-Iranian ties. In both cases, though, those ties never materialized.
Comprehensive negotiations
The solution, as Mousavian sees it, is for the US and Iran to engage in talks on a broad, comprehensive range of issues rather than focusing only on Iran’s nuclear program. He suggests starting with those areas where the two countries’ interests are broadly aligned: the need for stability in Afghanistan and Iraq, the fight against regional drug trafficking, the effort to contain Salafi extremism and to combat Al-Qaeda-style terrorist movements, and the need for security and stability for Persian Gulf shipping.
These talks can be supplemented with what Marks characterizes as informal, “person-to-person” diplomacy, especially cultural and scientific exchanges, perhaps eventually leading to formal apologies — from the Iranians, for the hostage crisis, and from the Americans, for the 1953 coup and the 1988 downing of Iran Air Flight 655. Once rapport has been built on these areas of common ground, the two sides can begin to tackle more challenging issues, such as (from the US perspective) Iran’s support for Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon, its relations with Israel, its ballistic missiles program, and its human rights record.
While Mousavian may be right that a comprehensive approach to US-Iran talks would be preferable to the current process, there’s a problem: comprehensive negotiations will take a very long time. The fact is that the current state of affairs around the nuclear talks will resolve itself, one way or another, long before any comprehensive US-Iran talks have a chance to achieve anything. Likewise, the crisis in Syria, which continually threatens to engulf the region, is too immediate a problem to be part of an extensive long-term framework. Mousavian accordingly suggests a two-track approach, where issues of critical, near-term concern are handled in a multi-lateral way, while longer-term, more comprehensive bilateral talks are undertaken. This may not be ideal, but it’s possible that such an approach could have real benefits. As he points out, the nuclear talks, specifically the P5+1′s recognition of Iranian needs with respect to uranium enrichment, offer a blueprint for progress (to wit, the US being receptive and responsive to Iran’s wishes) on a range of other issues.
This is a critical point for the possibility of renewing US-Iran relations. Regional stability requires Iran and the US to find a way of cooperating together, and the resurgence of Salafi extremism and terrorist groups in the region has aligned the interests and incentives of both countries. But working toward that stability requires a considerable commitment to open, comprehensive negotiations before this potentially vital relationship can be repaired.
Photo: After decades of no contact between high-level US and Iranian officials, a historic meeting between US Secretary of State John Kerry, left, and Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif occurred on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York on September 13, 2013 — one month after Iran’s presidential inauguration of the moderate cleric, Hassan Rouhani.
]]>via IPS News
It’s no wonder that Egypt has floundered in its efforts to create a more democratic system from the ruins of the Mubarak regime.
A sweeping new history of Middle Eastern political activists shows that the search for justice has deep roots in the region but has often been thwarted [...]]]>
via IPS News
It’s no wonder that Egypt has floundered in its efforts to create a more democratic system from the ruins of the Mubarak regime.
A sweeping new history of Middle Eastern political activists shows that the search for justice has deep roots in the region but has often been thwarted by the intervention of foreign powers.
The Arab Spring revolts of 2011 were “both improbable and long in the making,” writes Elizabeth Thompson in her book, “Justice Interrupted: The Struggle for Constitutional Government in the Middle East.”
The young people who massed in Tahrir Square and overturned the U.S.-backed Mubarak dictatorship were the heirs of Col. Ahmad Urabi, whose peasant army was crushed in 1882 by British troops. The beneficiaries of 2011 so far, however, are the heirs of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose concept of “justice” appears to restrict the rights of women, religious minorities and secular groups.
On Tuesday, President Mohamed Morsi’s own legal adviser resigned to protest a law that would force the retirement of more than 3,000 judges – Mubarak appointees that have sought to blunt the rising influence of Islamist politicians such as Morsi. The United States, while criticising human rights abuses under the new regime, appears to be placing a higher priority on Egypt maintaining its peace treaty with Israel.
If, as President Barack Obama likes to say – quoting Martin Luther King – “the arc of history bends toward justice” – in the Middle East, that arc has been exceedingly long.
The breakup of the Ottoman Empire after World War I interrupted movements for constitutional government and tainted liberalism by association with Western colonialism. Military autocrats, nationalists and Islamic groups took their place.
Thompson, a professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of Virginia, structures her book by compiling mini-biographies of strivers for justice beginning with an early Ottoman bureaucrat, Mustafa Ali, who wrote a critique of corruption in Egypt, and ending with Wael Ghonim.
Ghonim, a Google executive, created a Facebook page devoted to a young Egyptian beaten to death in 2010 by police that attracted 300,000 followers – many of whom later gathered in Tahrir Square.
Others profiled in the book include Halide Edib, known as Turkey’s “Joan of Arc,” who first supported, then opposed Kemal Ataturk’s dictatorship; Yusuf Salman Yusuf or “Comrade Fahd,” whose Iraqi Communist Party was the largest and most inclusive political movement in modern Iraqi history; and Ali Shariati, the Iranian Islamic Socialist whose ideals were hijacked by the clerical regime after the 1979 revolution.
At a book launch Tuesday at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Thompson was asked by IPS if her book was largely a “history of losers” and whether there was any way to break the dismal cycle of one step forward, two steps back toward effective, representative government in the Middle East.
She compared recent revolts in the region to the 1848 revolutions in Europe that failed at the time but were key precursors of democratic movements to follow.
“You have to think long term,” she said. The optimistic interpretation of the Arab Spring is that it has led to “a fundamental shift in the political culture that will bear fruit decades later.”
She conceded that the current picture in Egypt is not a happy one.
Women, who in 2011 figured prominently in the overthrow of Mubarak, are now afraid to go to Tahrir Square for fear of being molested by thugs. Morsi, the president who hails from the Muslim Brotherhood, “is in a defensive posture,” Thompson said, “playing to the Salafist right.” Meanwhile, “the poor and the Copts are losing out.”
However, the Egyptian press has never been so free and Middle Easterners in general are more exposed to information than at any time in their history, she said. “People are not sealed off like they were in Syria in 1989” when state-run media omitted news that the Berlin Wall had fallen, she said.
Still, time and again in the last 150 years, the desire for security and independence from foreign powers has trumped liberal conceptions of human rights.
Thompson’s book contains many tantalising “What ifs” often linked to foreign machinations.
What if France had permitted Syria to retain an independent constitutional monarchy under King Feisal after World War I? French troops instead occupied the country under an internationally blessed mandate that lasted until after World War II.
What if Akram al-Hourani, leader of the Arab Socialist Party in Syria after independence, had not agreed to union with Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt in 1958? Nasser proceeded to outlaw Syrian political parties and in 1963, the Baath party staged a coup and installed a regime that is fighting for its existence today.
The book also sheds light on important figures such as the Palestinian Salah Khalaf, Yasser Arafat’s number two who was known as Abu Iyad. Assassinated in 1991 by the rejectionist Abu Nidal faction, Iyad had made the transition from terrorist mastermind to supporter of the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. Arafat, who used to rely on Khalaf’s advice, might have steered his movement more wisely in his later years if he had not lost Abu Iyad as well as PLO military commander, Abu Jihad, who was killed by Israelis in 1988.
If, as Thompson concludes, the Arab Spring “has reprised the struggle interrupted by the World Wars and the Cold War,” it is a struggle that is still far from being won.
Photo: Protests across Egypt have not brought a right to information. Credit: Khaled Moussa al-Omrani.
]]>A viral video calling on world leaders to a “set the red line” to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon has garnered over 1.3 million YouTube views thanks to a savvy social media campaign on Facebook and Twitter.
It’s been promoted by conservative bloggers and Washington-based organizations like [...]]]>
A viral video calling on world leaders to a “set the red line” to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon has garnered over 1.3 million YouTube views thanks to a savvy social media campaign on Facebook and Twitter.
It’s been promoted by conservative bloggers and Washington-based organizations like the Republican Jewish Coalition and The Israel Project. But the 15-minute-long film is leading some experts to question the filmmaker’s message.
The video is part of an “independent, not-for-profit project designed to harness the global voice of humanity for the purpose of a peaceful solution to prevent a nuclear Iran,” say the film’s two principals, Banafsheh Zand and Shraga Simmons, on their website, settheredline.com.
Zand, who narrates the film, was born in Iran and fled the country during the Iranian revolution in 1979.
Her father, Iranian journalist Siamak Pourzand, committed suicide in 2011 after having been imprisoned since 2001 for writing articles critical of Iran’s political leaders.
Set The Red Line’s narration offers a list of reasons why Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program must be stopped, including that “Iranian leaders are on a messianic warpath with the ultimate goal of hastening the Mahdi, the messianic Twelfth Imam, to usher in an era of global Islamic domination.”
“Iran has a plan to take over the world, and they view the United States as the ‘Great Satan,’ which must be destroyed,” Zand warns in the film.
“The Iranian regime will push war because that is [their] mandate and they’ve said it everyday and if westerners think that that regime can be deterred … then they will be in for a surprise because that regime has no intention of giving up its nukes,” Zand told The American Independent in an email.
The film endorses ongoing diplomatic efforts to find a peaceful solution to tensions over Iran’s nuclear program but urges viewers to support a “backup solution” should diplomacy fail.
“We must continue and even intensify the various diplomatic methods that world leaders have worked so hard to implement. But the reality is that Iran’s nuclear clock is ticking faster than the diplomatic clock,” says Zand in the film. “So we need an effective and reliable backup solution. It’s called the Red Line.”
Viewers are urged to participate in a social media campaign to push world leaders to lay down the “red line,” defined in the film as “world leaders make a pronouncement outlining a clear and unambiguous set of criteria that will serve as fair warning to Iran that crossing this line will trigger a devastating military response.”
“Pragmatically, the red line puts us in a much better position of going up against a non-nuclear Iran than having to face the certainty of war against a genocidal and nuclear Iran,” says Zand later in the film.
“The red line is specifically and only for the purpose of getting world leaders to pressure the Iranian regime to give up their nuclear weapons. I do not support any external military action on Iran,” Zand told TAI.
“Why would anyone attack a country whose people loath it?” Zand asked TAI. “Why would anyone attack a country with suicide bombers deployed around the world?”
“The Khomeinist regime totally intends to kill Westerners, Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs because they believe that they (the Shia Twelvers) are the ‘anointed’ ones and … they believe that it is the duty of all Muslims to die in the name of the Islamic pole that the Khomeinists have decided to head,” said Zand to TAI. “[T]hat regime openly says that it is Muslim duty to die, as collateral damage and that Sunnis have no say in the matter.”
Simmons told TAI that “military action should only be a last resort, when sanctions, diplomatic isolation and negotiations have failed to stop the regime.”
In interviews with TAI, experts questioned the approach outlined in the film.
“The video is conveniently vague so we never know to whom we’ll leave it to draw this red line. The US? Israel? The United Nations Security Council?” said Iran expert and author Barbara Slavin. “All we’re told is that it has to happen before Iran develops nuclear weapons. If Iran crosses this line it triggers a devastating response, say the filmmakers. This sounds more like an argument for war than an effort to prevent it.”
Matt Duss, a policy analyst at the liberal Center for American Progress, also criticized the film.
“Like most of the most hawkish arguments about Iran it’s plagued by a fundamental contradiction,” said Duss. “One is this claim, which is highly arguable, that Iran’s leaders are determined to destroy the west and this is a non-negotiable element of their extremist Muslim beliefs; and we must set a red line. These two things are contradictory. If Iran’s threat to destroy the west is nonnegotiable then why would they take a red line seriously?”
He added, “There’s this idea that Iran’s leaders are all apocalyptic crazies looking to trigger the return of the Shiite messiah, but there’s little evidence to suggest these beliefs drive Iranian policy.”
Zand, speaking in the film, says that Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, the UAE, and Iraq “would all fall like dominoes” if faced with an aggressive, nuclear-armed Iran.
But, according to Slavin, “there is absolutely no indication that there would be regime change in any of these places.”
“If Iran got a nuclear weapon the Saudis and all the countries across the Persian Gulf would probably shore up their alliances with the US even more and there would be a vigilant effort to contain Iran,” Slavin went on to add.
Set The Red Line garnered over one million YouTube views thanks to an effective social media campaign, said the film’s director.
“It was very grassroots, which to me is a huge success,” said Simmons. “Thousands of individuals sent the film out to their private email lists and posted on Facebook. We also contacted approximately 1,000 ‘Facebook administrators’ whose groups deal with issues of foreign affairs. I know for certain that a number of very large Facebook groups (with a million followers) promoted it to their lists.”
The Israel Project, “a one-stop source for detailed and accurate information about Israel and the Middle East,” according to its website, promoted the film both on its website andon Twitter.
Twitter accounts belonging to the Republican Jewish Coalition and a Fox News Produceralso promoted the film.
Neither Simmons nor Zand is new to political activism.
Simmons is senior editor of Aish.com, the online outreach arm of the Orthodox Jewish organization Aish HaTorah. His blog posts frequently criticize what he sees as biased reporting by journalists covering Israel.
Simmons accused CBS’s 60 Minutes of “further demonizing Israel and eroding its support in the West” after the show aired a segment examining the treatment of Palestinian Christians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
In a November 18, 2012, post — written during the Israel Defense Forces’ “Operation Pillar of Defense” in the Gaza Strip — Simmons criticized CNN’s Zain Verjee’s “horribly biased” interview of Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev. Verjee asked about reports of children wounded by Israeli airstrikes and questioned how the IDF’s actions help bring peace to the region.
Verjee “sounds like she’d be more comfortable on Hamas TV,” wrote Simmons.
Simmons emphasized that his work on Set The Red Line was conducted independently from his job at Aish HaTorah.
“It happens that I am employed as an editor at the Aish.com website,” said Simmons. “I knew that the credibility of the message required full independence, so I took a full leave of absence from that position to enable me to make the film independently, without any organizational involvements whatsoever.”
Zand explained to TAI that she and Simmons spoke on Skype about making the film and shortly thereafter she was flown to Israel to narrate the film.
“I don’t even know what Aish HaTorah is,” said Zand. “We both agree Iran is out of order and intends to kills westerners and Israelis. Neither one of us want war.”
Tax disclosures show that from 2005 to 2010, Simmons served as secretary of Honest Reporting, a group that characterizes itself as “monitor[ing] the news for bias, inaccuracy, or other breach of journalistic standards in coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict.”
Honest Reporting apparently participated in the release of Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against The West, a 2005 film that compared the rise of radical Islam to the rise of Nazism in the 1930s.
The film’s website warns, “As we sleep in the comfort of our homes, a new evil rises against us. A new menace is threatening, with all the means at its disposal, to bow Western Civilization under the yoke of its values. That enemy is Radical Islam.”
“[Honest Reporting] now denies any involvement in the production of ‘Obsession.’ But its website promoted it as an Honest Reporting project in 2005, the year it was first released,” reported Sara Posner in a 2008 Jewish Week article.
As Posner reported, an archived version of the Honest Reporting website from June 14, 2006, shows Obsession listed as an “affiliate” project. The site also declared at the time: “HonestReporting’s ‘Obsession’ Wins Award at WorldFest Independent Film Festival.”
The film gained mainstream attention after 28 million DVDs were distributed to swing-state voters via newspaper inserts and bulk mailings before the 2008 U.S. presidential election.
Set The Red Line was Zand’s first collaboration with Simmons but not her first foray into political advocacy.
Her LinkedIn profile states that from February 2010 to October 2012, the month Set The Red Line was released, she worked as a consultant at Iran180, a group that “demand[s] a 180 by the Iranian government on their pursuit of nuclear weapons and the treatment of their citizens,” according to its website. Iran180’s outreach director, Chris DeVito, told TAI that Zand no longer works with the organization.
DeVito declined to offer a detailed opinion on the film but stated, “There are elements of the narrative that are extremely important and entirely valid.”
During his first Press Conference today following his successful second-term campaign, President Barak Obama emphasized that the United States wants to peacefully resolve the tense dispute over the Islamic Republic’s controversial nuclear program (the US is reportedly considering a more-for-more negotiating strategy) but denied that talks are “imminent”. Importantly, he didn’t reject [...]]]>
During his first Press Conference today following his successful second-term campaign, President Barak Obama emphasized that the United States wants to peacefully resolve the tense dispute over the Islamic Republic’s controversial nuclear program (the US is reportedly considering a more-for-more negotiating strategy) but denied that talks are “imminent”. Importantly, he didn’t reject the notion of direct talks either:
PRESIDENT OBAMA: With respect to Iran, I very much want to see a diplomatic resolution to the problem. I was very clear before the campaign, I was clear during the campaign and I’m now clear after the campaign — we’re not going to let Iran get a nuclear weapon. But I think there is still a window of time for us to resolve this diplomatically. We’ve imposed the toughest sanctions in history. It is having an impact on Iran’s economy.
There should be a way in which they can enjoy peaceful nuclear power while still meeting their international obligations and providing clear assurances to the international community that they’re not pursuing a nuclear weapon. And so yes, I will try to make a push in the coming months to see if we can open up a dialogue between Iran and not just us but the international community, to see if we can get this thing resolved. I can’t promise that Iran will walk through the door that they need to walk though, but that would be very much the preferable option.
Q: And the — (inaudible) — conversation picked up?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I won’t talk about the details of negotiations, but I think it’s fair to say that we want to get this resolved and we’re not going to be constrained by diplomatic niceties or protocols. If Iran is serious about wanting to resolve this, they’ll be in a position to resolve it.
Q: At one point just prior to the election, there was talk that talks might be imminent —
PRESIDENT OBAMA: That was — that was not true, and it’s not — it’s not true as — as of today, OK?
Obama essentially read from the US’ official Iran script, apart from his last comment about moving the process along regardless of “diplomatic niceties or protocols” if Iran wants to sincerely engage. This sounds like a hint to the Iranians that he means business and wants them to put something tangible forward — presumably so he can bring it home to the chorus of anti-diplomacy factions in Congress.
How the Iranians will respond to Obama’s hint is the question, especially considering their own domestic political considerations. Writing in Al-Monitor, Banafsheh Keynoush argues that Iran’s hardliners are ready to engage, but won’t submit without serious incentives. Indeed, as Iran scholar Farideh Farhi points out, the key to moving the diplomatic process forward and avoiding a military conflict is flexibility on both sides:
]]>Unless Khamenei and company are given a way out of the mess they have taken Iran into (with some help from the US and company), chances are that we are heading into a war in the same way we headed to war in Iraq. A recent Foreign Affairs article by Ralf Ekeus, the former executive chairman of the UN special Commission on Iraq, and Malfrid-Braut hegghammer, is a good primer on how this could happen.
The reality is that the current sanctions regime does not constitute a stable situation. First, the instability (and instability is different from regime change as we are sadly learning in Syria) it might beget is a constant force for policy re-evaluation on all sides (other members of the P5+1 included). Second, maintaining sanctions require vigilance while egging on the sanctioned regime to become more risk-taking in trying to get around them. This is a formula for war and it will happen if a real effort at compromise is not made. Inflexibility will beget inflexibility.
Adding to a central point of David Remnick’s article in the New Yorker earlier this week — that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has gone too far with his pressure campaign against President Barak Obama and alienated allies in the process — are additional arguments in the National Interest, the [...]]]>
Adding to a central point of David Remnick’s article in the New Yorker earlier this week — that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has gone too far with his pressure campaign against President Barak Obama and alienated allies in the process — are additional arguments in the National Interest, the National Journal (print edition), Al-Monitor and the Atlantic:
Paul Pillar explains how “Netanyahu’s Arrogance” may contribute to the reshaping of US-Israel relations:
Maybe Netanyahu’s arrogance, greater than the norm even for Israeli prime ministers dealing with the United States, may be a force that eventually reshapes the relationship. It can do so by making it painfully clear to Americans what they are dealing with. M. J. Rosenberg evidently is talking about this when he goes so far as to say that Netanyahu “poses an existential threat to the Jewish state.” He is referring to the damage being done to the relations with the superpower patron—that “all Netanyahu is accomplishing with his ugly saber-rattling is threatening the survival of the US-Israel relationship.” That may well be the effect of Netanyahu’s behavior on the relationship, but perhaps we should not speak of this in terms of threats. Replacing the current pathological relationship with a more normal one certainly would be good for U.S. interests. Ultimately, however, it also would be good for the interests of Israel, which, in order to get off its current path of endless conflict and isolation, desperately needs the sort of tough love that it is not getting now.
James Kitfield argues that “by inserting himself into a U.S. presidential election, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu has jeopardized the long-term health of the alliance”:
But more important, this pressure on a U.S. president waging a tough reelection campaign all but guarantees that the enmity between Obama and Netanyahu will only worsen, to the point where they, like Shamir and Bush, may not talk frankly or show their true cards. What if one country wants to strike and other isn’t ready? What if one country strikes and then both need to coordinate the aftermath? If the leaders aren’t on the same page, their countries aren’t likely to be either. Netanyahu’s gambit has lowered trust when the stakes–war and a nuclear-armed rogue–are highest.
Barbara Slavin says Netanyahu’s misreading of US attitudes is harming his own strategy:
Recent polls show that 70% of the American people do not think it is worth attacking Iran to try to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons — and a majority would not join an Israeli strike against Iran. For someone partly raised and educated in the United States, the Israeli prime minister is profoundly misreading the American mood.
Instead of pushing the US government to agree to “red lines” beyond which Iran cannot cross, Netanyahu is alienating US officials and many other Americans — including those who count themselves pro-Israel. The Israeli prime minister is repeating a pattern of ill-considered behavior that made the administration of Bill Clinton so furious at him that Clinton’s campaign advisers eagerly went to Israel in 1999 to work for Netanyahu’s then political rival, Ehud Barak.
And while being less daring than the others, even Jeffrey Goldberg is trying to explain why Netanyahu is taking the risk of “alienating” Obama:
]]>So why risk alienating the man who he believes will probably be president until January of 2017? Because Netanyahu genuinely believes that Obama, at the crucial moment (whether it is this year, next year or the year after), will flinch and allow Iran to cross the nuclear threshold. This is why he is pestering the President for red lines. I’ll get into the red line discussion later, but the nub of the issue now is Netanyahu’s view of Obama.
Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign studiously avoids calls for war with the Islamic Republic. While some advisers have been hawkish on Iran in the past, only John Bolton has called for an attack since the campaign got underway. Instead, on a recent press call, Romney adviser Dan Senor went out [...]]]>
Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign studiously avoids calls for war with the Islamic Republic. While some advisers have been hawkish on Iran in the past, only John Bolton has called for an attack since the campaign got underway. Instead, on a recent press call, Romney adviser Dan Senor went out of his way to twice state that he was “not suggesting the military option should be used” (even as he admonished the Obama administration for openly discussing potential consequences of an attack).
In an interview with journalist Barbara Slavin published yesterday on Al-Monitor, another top Romney adviser made abundantly clear that there are very few differences between Romney’s Iran policy and President Obama’s.
Ambassador Richard Williamson told Slavin that “President Romney will seek a negotiated settlement,” which incidentally the Obama administration also considers the “best and most permanent way” to end the crisis over Iran’s nuclear program. Williamson even commented on the possible costs and consequences of attacking Iran, noting, as myriad others have, that an attack would only delay — not stop — a potential Iranian nuclear weapon:
SLAVIN: You’ve talked about a credible threat of military force yet much, if not all, of Israel’s intelligence and defense establishment oppose a strike, saying that would push Iran to develop nuclear weapons.
WILLIAMSON: You can degrade their quest for nuclear breakout. It would be expensive, it would be costly; it’s something we should avoid if possible but it’s not something we should take off the table. If you do, then you will have no chance to get a negotiated settlement.
Because he views a potential Iranian nuclear weapon as a threat to the security of the U.S., its allies in the region and the nuclear non-proliferation regime, Obama’s vowed again and again to keep all options “on the table.”
That leaves Williamson’s endorsement of a “zero enrichment” policy — lining up with hawkish Member of Congress declaring that Iran cannot be allowed to maintain any domestic uranium enrichment — as the main difference. Officially, that’s U.S. policy under the Obama administration, though officials have hinted a compromise might be possible to strike a deal. Perhaps that’s because domestic enrichment, as reiterated yesterday, is the firmest of Iranian demands in negotiations.
The hardest of the hard-line neoconservatives ramped up a campaign for war with Iran today, putting them at odds with not just Obama but Romney as well. Perhaps that’s why Romney tends to avoid focusing on foreign policy issues. As Vice President Joe Biden recently said, “Governor Romney has called for what he calls a ‘very different policy’ on Iran. But for the life of me it’s hard to understand what the governor means by a very different policy.”
]]>“Such disclosures could be very beneficial for confidence building,” Goldschmidt wrote. “If Iran were to admit that it had been working towards becoming a nuclear threshold state and has undertaken some weaponization activities in the past, it would help persuade the international community that this time, Tehran has indeed opted for full cooperation and transparency.”
Next Barbara Slavin explains why U.S. insistence that Iran be excluded from multilateral planning sessions on Syria could prove detrimental to solving the crisis:
]]>As despicable as Iran’s intervention on the side of Assad’s killing squads may be, Iran has major interests in Syria that cannot be ignored. An Iranian ally for more than three decades, Syria is a conduit for Iran to aid Hezbollah in Lebanon and a base Iran has used to support Palestinian militants. Iran, as the largest majority-Shiite nation, also identifies with the Alawite Assad regime and with Syria’s Alawite minority.
US diplomats have included Iran in discussions about other countries — most recently Iraq and Afghanistan — where Iran also has major national-security interests and an ability to shore up or sabotage stability.
Frequent IPS News contributor Barbara Slavin begins this C-Span discussion on Iran’s nuclear program by noting that she’s concerned about the trajectory the U.S. is on with Iran:
…it’s very easy to impose sanctions, and more sanctions and more sanctions, more pressure on the country, but to what end? [...]]]>
Frequent IPS News contributor Barbara Slavin begins this C-Span discussion on Iran’s nuclear program by noting that she’s concerned about the trajectory the U.S. is on with Iran:
…it’s very easy to impose sanctions, and more sanctions and more sanctions, more pressure on the country, but to what end? If there isn’t a really sound diplomatic engagement strategy coupled with it, then you may be put in a position where Iran behaves more like a pariah state because it really doesn’t see any more options for itself. I think we had some indications of that with that strange business at the British embassy.
U.S. hawks agree that their country is going in the wrong direction with Iran, but for different reasons. Last week Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations declared that the “only credible option” for significantly delaying the Iranian nuclear program considering the U.S.’s “lack of success” with its sanctions policy would be a “bombing campaign”.
These words are coming from a man who famously made his “Case for American Empire” shortly after 9/11 by claiming that the U.S. needed to go to war with Afghanistan first, so it could take on Iraq. And what were his views on the false allegations that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11? The truth doesn’t matter plus another unsubstantiated claim:
The debate about whether Saddam Hussein was implicated in the September 11 attacks misses the point. Who cares if Saddam was involved in this particular barbarity? He has been involved in so many barbarities over the years–from gassing the Kurds to raping the Kuwaitis–that he has already earned himself a death sentence a thousand times over. But it is not just a matter of justice to depose Saddam. It is a matter of self defense: He is currently working to acquire weapons of mass destruction that he or his confederates will unleash against America and our allies if given the chance.
Now Boot is claiming that the U.S. is suffering from a “failure of imagination” by failing to “face up” to the “growing threat from the Islamic Republic”. Given the history of Boot’s predictions, and the low premium he places on facts, we can only hope that policy makers will regard his apocalyptic predictions with the degree of skepticism that they failed to show in the case of Iraq.
]]>“The administration is trying to buy off Congress, buy off pressure from Israel and make sure nothing will further erode the president’s chances for re-election,” Suzanne Maloney, an Iran [...]]]>
“The administration is trying to buy off Congress, buy off pressure from Israel and make sure nothing will further erode the president’s chances for re-election,” Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, told IPS.
If the latest measure was more of an attempt to appease and garner support from key voting blocs than to change Iran’s behavior, the political impasse between the two countries is likely to continue while the hawkish trend against Iran in Congress progresses. Slavin continues:
Maloney said, however, that the latest punitive measures would not be sufficient to change Iran’s posture, particularly at a time of fractious internal politics.
“If anything, this will reinforce paranoia in Tehran that this is all about regime change,” she said. She expressed concern that there is “no adult supervision” of Iran policy in the Obama administration and that “no one is thinking ahead” about the consequences of further weakening the Iranian economy.
Continuously implementing punitive measures against Iran that are unlikely to produce different results begs the question of whether sanctions are even effective. This Monday Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner said that “intensification of sanctions by this Administration” with multilateral support “has inflicted substantial damage to the Iranian economy.” But how does the U.S. measure success and what is the strategy behind sanctions other than imposing maximum hardship upon the Iranian government?
Earlier this week Harvard University’s Stephen Walt and the National American Iranian Council’s Trita Parsi discussed the U.S.’s Iran sanctions policy on NPR. While noting that “there is in fact no reason to believe that Iran is actively seeking a nuclear weapon at this time,” Walt argued that the U.S. should be trying to “convince them not to cross that particular line” using different methods including the “diplomatic option” which has not been utilized effectively thus far. Painting Iran as a nuclear threat prematurely can be a self-fulfilling prophecy:
The thing that makes countries want to pursue some kind of nuclear deterrent is precisely the fact that they feel threatened. We’ve been trying these sort of sanctions and what I would call a sort of occasional not-very-enthusiastic diplomacy for over a decade now and with no apparent success. Maybe this is a time when we ought to be trying an alternative, and by that alternative I don’t mean going to war.
Parsi also said that U.S. sanctions against Iran are creating frustration toward the U.S. among Iranians who disagree with their government’s policies:
It’s not really differentiating between an activity undertaken by the revolutionary guard or an activity taking place by an ordinary citizen. So everyone is being hit by it. And it’s not led to the type of situation in which people will say oh, we have to rise up against the regime because these sanctions are so difficult. On the contrary, the effect that you’re starting to see is that people are saying you all know, the entire world know that we’re not happy with this government, so why are you putting pressure on the people? You should be putting pressure on the regime. Instead, the people are being punished, and now you’re starting to increasingly see that they’re starting to vent some of their frustrations towards the United States and not just towards the regime.
Both Walt and Parsi seemed to agree that if the U.S. really doesn’t want Iran to get nuclear weapons, it has to change it’s approach to the Islamic Republic sooner rather than later.
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