As the situation on the ground in Syria becomes ever more fluid and the Assad regime appears to be tottering, a familiar group of hawks is calling for U.S. military action to fill the void. As reported by Foreign Policy‘s Josh Rogin, on Tuesday two prominent neoconservative groups, the [...]]]>
As the situation on the ground in Syria becomes ever more fluid and the Assad regime appears to be tottering, a familiar group of hawks is calling for U.S. military action to fill the void. As reported by Foreign Policy‘s Josh Rogin, on Tuesday two prominent neoconservative groups, the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) and Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), released an open letter to President Obama calling for the use of U.S. airpower to establish “safe zones” in rebel-held areas. The letter suggests that “the United States cannot outsource its strategic and moral responsibilities to cynical great powers, regional actors who do not fully share our values, or international mediators. Only resolved U.S. leadership has the potential to halt the bloodshed and ensure the emergence of a Syria that advances America’s national security interests.”
The letter’s sixty-plus signatories include only three Syrians, but the roster will be rather familiar to those who remember the various open letters released by the FPI’s predecessor group, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). These letters played a key role in the public runup to the Iraq war. Soon after the September 11 attacks, for example, a group of many of the same signatories as today’s letter claimed that “even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.”
While the FPI/FDD letter includes a handful of Syrian opposition activists and human rights officials (notably Amnesty International’s Larry Cox), it remains dominated by neoconservative pundits (such as William Kristol, Robert Kagan, Michael Ledeen, Martin Peretz, and Cliff May) and Bush administration veterans (such as Karl Rove, Elliott Abrams, Douglas Feith, and John Hannah). (More information about most of these individuals can be found at RightWeb.) The full text and list of signatories can be found here, courtesy of Josh Rogin.
]]>- National Review Online: Clifford D. May, president of the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies, lashes out at the UN for considering Palestinian requests for a condemnation of Israeli settlement construction. “[W]hy should Palestinians negotiate if they can get the U.N. to force Israel to make concessions in exchange for nothing?” asks May. The UN, says May, is wasting its time when it should be confronting Iran. “Iran’s rulers are executing dissidents daily, developing nuclear weapons, and sending warships through Suez.” He argues that the settlements are really a non-issue, writing, “Hamas, Hezbollah, and the theocratic rulers of Iran have been candid: Creation of a Palestinian state is, at best, a secondary goal. Their primary objective is the defeat and destruction of the world’s only Jewish state.”
- The Heritage Foundation: The Heritage Foundation’s vice president of foreign and defense policy studies, Kim Holmes, blogs that “Obama’s ‘engagement’ strategy toward the ‘Islamic world’ is irrelevant to the Middle East” and that protesters’ demands for “freedom and better standards of living” cause the Obama administration to “launch denunciations with dizzying speed when it is a pro-American dictator like Egypt’s Mubarak, but to delay for days in saying a word when it’s an anti-American thug like Libya’s Qadhafi and Iran’s Ahmadinejad.” He concludes, “If we find Ahmadinejad’s behavior unacceptable, we need to consider options more forceful than talking with ‘multilateral institutions.’”
Ori Nir, at Americans for Peace Now, has a good analysis of Maj. Gen. Yaakov Amidror, who is apparently Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s new national security adviser. Replacing another ultra-hawk, Uzi Arad, Amidror seems to be a big-time hawk on [...]]]>
Ori Nir, at Americans for Peace Now, has a good analysis of Maj. Gen. Yaakov Amidror, who is apparently Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s new national security adviser. Replacing another ultra-hawk, Uzi Arad, Amidror seems to be a big-time hawk on Palestinian issues. But what about Iran?
In Israel, Noam Sheizaf has been addressing this question with a deft touch — there is a split right now in the Israeli security establishment. Sheizaf long ago exploded Jeffrey Goldberg‘s notion of a “consensus,” but the combination of upheaval both in the region and in Bibi’s cabinet are forcing constant re-evaluation.
I saw Amidror speak in December at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ conference on Iran. The hard-line neocon think tank put the aged and bearded reservist general on its ‘bomb Iran’ panel, moderated by FDD honcho Cliff May. The panel featured Goldberg, the disingenuous Reuel Marc Gerecht, and Ken Pollack, the lone dissenter from the notion that a military strike in Iran could achieve any of its ostensible aims. As you can imagine, the panel was a lot of laughs (literally: the transcript lists 28 breaks for “LAUGHTER”).
At the FDD conference, Amidror’s stance on Iran basically boiled down to this: ‘Attacking Iran is a last resort that we will almost definitely have to use, so we are getting ready.’ Here’s his key comments, with my emphasis:
I believe that attacking Iran is a very bad situation, but there is something worse, that Iran will have a nuclear capability.
But we are not running to attack Iran. We want to postpone it as much as possible because we want to give the world, the Americans, everyone who is ready to help, to stop Iran without using military forces.
So it – it is not just an option. We prepare all of this very thoroughly, investing a lot of it, but we are not running to use it and we hope that someone will find another solution.
If you ask me as an expert for assessment that what I did 25 years, what is my assessment, my assessment is it is almost impossible to stop Iran without military force, but we should not run to use it before we be sure 100 percent and more that there is no other alternative.
It seems that, while Amidror pays lip service to the “last resort” of an attack, he is already gearing up to do it.
Amidror seems to have a ridiculously flawed understanding of the concept of “deterrence.” He thinks the Lebanon War in 2006 was a good example of Israel establishing such a deterrence. But, you know, that’s kind of funny, because deterrence is only a useful concept until force is unleashed — Damocles kept his head, after all. Nonetheless, here’s Amidror:
Deterrence includes two elements: the first is the determination to use your capability and the second is to have this capability. I think it was very important that Israel made the decision to go to war and sustained the war for more than a month, despite extensive Hizballah rocket attacks across northern Israel.
The determination of Israel’s government to respond and to retaliate is a very important factor in restoring deterrence. …As a small country, we cannot allow ourselves the luxury of reacting proportionally. Israel’s military action sent a very important message to the people around us.
I wonder what the Israeli hawks and neocon allies would say if you asked them today: “Why are you so worried about the Muslim Brotherhood?” Don’t they remember Lebanon 2006? (I’m sure that they would answer with something akin to the five-year-version of the Ledeen Doctrine.)
Nir has a primer on Amidror’s politics:
Amidror is associated with the ultra-right national-religions party “The Jewish Home.” In 2008, he headed a commission tasked with composing the party’s list for the general elections. The party, which is dominated by former National Religious Party (NRP) politicians, supports a “greater Israel” ideology and is considered the most authentic political representative of the ideological messianic settlers in the West Bank.
He adds that Amidror’s most recent opinion article is headlined: “Security is Preferable to Peace,” as if one has nothing to do with the other.
All of this is no surprise: Amidror is a such a close ally of the religious settler movement that he spoke at a 2006 event supporting one such settlement, Beit El, and its chief accomplishment: the Arutz Sheva conspiracy website. Also speaking at the event was then-Arutz Sheva personality Alex Traiman, a Beit El resident. Traiman wrote and directed Clarion Fund‘s latest propaganda film, “Iranium,” which aims to raise public support for attacking Iran.
So let’s see: Yaakov Amidror is in bed with the uber-hawks at FDD and with the religious settlers at Clarion who are all pushing hard (in concert) for an attack on Iran, and he thinks that a good deterrence policy is to attack. This does not bode well. I’ll toss this to Sheizaf for his informed thoughts…
]]>But if the Iranians were paying attention, they would see that BBC Persian has an excellent report on another piece of [...]]]>
But if the Iranians were paying attention, they would see that BBC Persian has an excellent report on another piece of propaganda: the neoconservative-dominated “Iranium” documentary from the Clarion Fund.
The BBC Persian piece notes that the film’s writer and director, Alex Traiman, is an ideological Israeli settler who lives in the West Bank; it is critical of many of the facts and figures in the film.
The movie’s narrator, Academy Award-winning Iranian actor Shoreh Aghdashloo, answered some tough questions. Aghdashloo said she is against a war — which organizers of a premiere event said was Traiman’s goal — but can tolerate opposing or critical views. She said that some of the comments about “executions” may be exaggerated, but this film reveals the true appearance of the regime.
That tracks closely with Traiman’s own comments. At the Heritage Foundation premiere, the West Bank settler more or less admitted that the movie presents an alarmist account.
Aghdashloo, having admitted some exaggerations, goes on to praise the film as a detailed historical account. The point, she said, is the Iran can’t be trusted with a bomb. “Can you trust a regime that does not respect its own people/children to have such a destructive weapon?” she asks in the interview.
So, if she’s against war, and Iran doesn’t relent in its alleged nuclear weapons program, what does she suggest doing?
This problem is the same one which Clifford May, a star of “Iranium” and the head of the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies, faced when quizzed on television about it. May and other neocons call for sanctions and “credible military threats,” though they think neither tack is likely to succeed. Some former Iraq hawks, like Ken Pollack, have softened their stance on Iran — calling for a policy of eventual military containment because launching a war would be disastrous. May, on the other hand, thinks that should pressure fail, bombing would be the next U.S. move.
Reuel Marc Gerecht, another expert from FDD interviewed for “Iranium,” is an unabashed Iran hawk, who manages to squeeze in jokes about how much he has written about advocating an attack on the country.
It seems that, unlike Pollack, some hawks have not learned their lessons from Iraq. This should give pause to Aghdashloo, as she opposes a war. Those who painted a worst-case scenario for Iraq — as “Iranium” does for Iran — were wrong. Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. Yet those who ignore these lessons are exactly the people with whom Aghdashloo has joined forces.
Columbia Professor Hamid Dabashi also appeared in the BBC Persian report. While Aghdashloo said she lent her voice to the film to speak the truth, Dabashi claimed that her voice doesn’t give the film any credibility. In fact, he said, her presence in the movie only undermines her own credibility.
More then Aghdashloo, what worries me is how quickly those involved in this film seem to acknowledge and dismiss its exaggerations. The choice to use violent force in international affairs is one of the gravest decisions a government — whether in the U.S. or Israel — can undertake. That these critics of Iran are so sloppy when trying to present the public with a series of casus belli is disconcerting.
]]>Zakheim, a foreign policy hawk, talked to The Jerusalem Post at the Herzliya Conference.
Zakheim said in an interview that in his opinion, Israel did not have to attack Iran to stop its [...]]]>
Zakheim, a foreign policy hawk, talked to The Jerusalem Post at the Herzliya Conference.
Zakheim said in an interview that in his opinion, Israel did not have to attack Iran to stop its nuclear program. Israel, he said, has developed the Arrow 2 ballistic missile defense system, which, together with US Navy Aegis missile defense ships in the Mediterranean, would likely succeed in intercepting an Iranian missile fired at Israel.
“There is less than a 1-percent chance that an Iranian missile will get through these defenses,” Zakheim said. “Iran, however, is worried about Israel’s alleged nuclear program, and their fear is 100%, so why would they want to take a 1% chance if there is a 100% chance that they will be destroyed?” Zakheim also warned about the potential fallout Israel would face from such an attack. He said that on the one hand, Israel would turn the Iranian people into its “permanent enemy,” and on the other hand, an attack could lead to “terrible relations” with the US.
Zakheim’s suggestion that the Iranian leadership might be behaving in a rational manner goes against what Iran hawks such as Reuel Marc Gerecht, Jennifer Rubin, and Cliff May argue. More importantly, an assumption of rationality permits a realistic analysis of an Iranian cost-benefit situation. Given Israel’s “qualitative military edge,” it would seem highly unlikely that an Iranian leadership that values self-preservation would engage in a first-strike nuclear attack.
The former Reagan and George W. Bush administration official went on to deliver comments that must have sent chills up the spines of “linkage” deniers.
“The US will be attacked in Afghanistan and Iraq, and this could turn the administration against Israel like never before,” he said.
This can’t have gone over well with The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin, who lashed out at James Jones, President Obama’s former national security adviser. Jones told reporters at Herzliya that “The Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains the core problem in the Middle East, and solving it will go a long way toward securing regional and even global peace.”
Rubin wrote:
One suspects that the upper echelons of the military are steeped in the brew of “Israel is the key to the region’s problems” conventional wisdom. In that regard, one is tempted to advise a great many generals and admirals to hush up and fight.
In panels and interviews at the Herzliya Conference, respected foreign policy realists, a former Mossad chief, and a former U.S. national security adviser have all echoed the message that the “military option” is an extremely dangerous and counterproductive policy choice for Israel and the U.S. But these statements don’t seem to slow down those Iran hawks who are committed to the narrative that Iran is an “existential threat” and can only be defeated through direct confrontation.
]]>May, the president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), which has five other experts who appear in the film, called Iran “radical.” But [...]]]>
May, the president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), which has five other experts who appear in the film, called Iran “radical.” But May refuses to answer whether he knew that the movie he starred in was written and produced by Alex Traiman, a member of another ideological religious movement: the Israeli settlers in the West Bank. (More below.)
With a history of hawkish pro-Israel advocacy and a past career as the spokesman for the Republican National Committee, we do know that May fits well into the film, which waffles between the usual Clarion Fund calls to action against the Muslim menace and a partisan flair of attacks on Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.
May offered hints of hawkishness in his Fox interview, delivering a thinly-veiled call for escalated actions to halt Iran’s nuclear program.
“The Western community needs to make up its mind that this regime must not get nuclear weapons,” May said, “and they must decide to take accelerated steps to achieve that goal.”
When I asked May when he knew — if at all — that Traiman was an ideological Israeli settler, he responded by e-mail, writing:
I hope that people will see the film and decide for themselves what conclusions to draw. I know there are those who would prefer people not see the film – that’s why there were threats against those screening it in Canada – and that’s why there are those who will engage in character assassination against the film-makers.
I explained to May that pointing out Trainman’s status as a West Bank settler only counts as character assassination if you make the value judgement that settlements are bad, and repeated that I was curious about his and FDD’s stance on the illegal Israeli civilan outposts in occupied territory.
Moreover, I made clear to May that my primary question was a factual one about when he knew Traiman lived in a settlement: “Did you know — when solicited to do an interview for, when you did the interview for, and when you promoted “Iranium” — that the film was written and directed by Alex Traiman, an Israeli West Bank settler?”
May replied: “I’ve given you my answer,” and repeated a claim he’d made at FDD’s Iran conference in December that what I do “bears little resemblance to legitimate journalism.” (I hasten to note that, other than that one outburst, May has never been anything but polite. He even answered my questions that same night after the conference for the Foreign Policy piece I wrote about the proceedings.)
I wrote back to May again:
Anytime you want to talk about FDD’s or your personal stance on settlements, I’m happy to do so. Ditto with my specific factual question about the timeframe in which you knew Alex Traiman, Iranium’s writer and director, was an ideological West Bank settler.
My offer, of course, still stands.
]]>- The Washington Post: Foundation for Defense of Democracies board member and Project for the New American Century letter signatory Charles Krauthammer opines on the unrest in Egypt and takes a swing at the possibility of Mohamed ElBaradei leading an interim government. “ElBaradei would be a disaster. As head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), he did more than anyone to make an Iranian nuclear bomb possible, covering for the mullahs for years,” says Krauthammer. He goes on to characterize El Baradei as a “useful idiot” for the Muslim Brotherhood and concludes that the Egyptian military is the “best vehicle for guiding the country to free elections over the coming months.”
- National Review Online: Foundation for Defense of Democracies President Clifford May writes, “When Iranians rose up against the tyrannical regime that has ruled them for more than 30 years — when they marched in the streets chanting, ‘Obama, are you with us or against us?’ — the president mostly held his tongue, reluctant to jeopardize his policy of ‘outreach’ to Iran’s rulers. Can Obama now be more supportive of Egyptians as they confront a regime that, while authoritarian, is nowhere near as oppressive and brutal as that in Tehran?” May argues for an Egyptian army officer to take control of Egypt and schedule elections. But he rejects that Mohamed ElBaradei should serve as interim president. “He was overly solicitous of Iran’s despots in his previous job, and he is overly solicitous of the Muslim Brotherhood now. What’s more, he is no friend of America,” he writes.
- National Review Online: Foundation for Defense of Democracies President Clifford May writes about the controversy surrounding a scheduled screening of the Clarion Fund’s film, “Iranium,” which was postponed after “suspicious letters” were received and the Iranian embassy complained. May points out that “it’s worth recalling that the Islamic Republic has a long history of attempting to enforce its will extraterritorially.” On Western engagement with Iran, May, who is interviewed in the film, observes, “diplomacy, outreach, engagement, and carefully crafted speeches showing respect and apologizing for “grievances” will have limited utility.” He concludes, “No sensible, rational person can watch this film, hear this evidence, and fail to come to the conclusion that the fanatics who rule Iran must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.”
- Commentary: Alana Goodman blogs on Commentary’s Contentions blog that, according to the Times of London, Iranian Press TV has had its British bank account frozen. Goodman concludes her post, “The fake news station not only devotes itself to publishing constant anti-American and anti-Israel propaganda; it’s also issued news reports denying the Holocaust and claiming that the Mossad helped commit the 9/11 attacks. At the very least, the government should require the station to provide a content warning informing viewers that it’s funded entirely by the Iranian government.”
May’s latest column for Scripps Howard and the National Review contains some advice for recently elevated Republican House Committee chairs. (You can listen to it!) He gives a “very brief [...]]]>
May’s latest column for Scripps Howard and the National Review contains some advice for recently elevated Republican House Committee chairs. (You can listen to it!) He gives a “very brief briefing” on the Islamo-threat and, because Iran is the top priority of neoconservatives (especially May’s Foundation for Defense of Democracies), May starts off his briefing with this little-known fact: “In 1979, there was a revolution in Iran.”
Then May gets into it:
Iran is a predominately Shia country but its revolution inspired the rise of militant groups among the more numerous Sunni Muslims of the broader Middle East as well. Al-Qaeda is only the best known.
Sunni jihadis and Shia jihadis are rivals, not enemies. They cooperate and collaborate against common enemies — us, for example. The evidence for this is abundant.
This is a tack May has tried before: linking Iran and Al Qaeda under the “jihadi” banner. The reasoning, from his hawkish perspective on Iran, makes perfect sense: Almost everyone agrees that the U.S. should be taking severe measures against Al Qaeda; ergo, if Iran and Al Qaeda are the same thing, the U.S. should be taking ever-more-severe actions against Iran as well.
In his latest piece doling out advice to Congress, May hints at measures beyond sanctions (my emphasis):
Make up your mind that the jihadis in Tehran will not acquire nuclear weapons — not on your watch. The sanctions imposed by the U.S. in 2010 are an important part of the effort but only a part.
Final point: 2011 is the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Osama bin Laden is alive. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a plan. Are you confident the U.S. has an adequate strategy for frustrating their ambitions?
But the Islamic Republic of Iran and Al Qaeda are not the same thing, as any honest expert in either will tell you. The two actually hate each other.
The connection that May peddles, meanwhile, is just as tenuous as when he made it about Iraq-Al Qaeda links in September 2002, as hawks were ramping up their effort to go to war with that country. He’s even made the same spurious accusation about Iran already, in an article for National Review last fall.
As for substantiating his argument with evidence in any of these cases, May has never really gone beyond ‘Well, they’re all jihadis!’
]]>Arch-Islamophobe Frank Gaffney was booted from the Conservative Political Action Conference agenda. At Religion Dispatches, Sarah Posner spoke with Suhail Khan, a Muslim conservative and board member of the group that hosts the annual CPAC, who said:
“Frank has been [...]]]>
Arch-Islamophobe Frank Gaffney was booted from the Conservative Political Action Conference agenda. At Religion Dispatches, Sarah Posner spoke with Suhail Khan, a Muslim conservative and board member of the group that hosts the annual CPAC, who said:
“Frank has been frozen out of CPAC by his own hand, because of his antics. We need people who are credible on national security . . . but because of Frank’s just completely irresponsible assertions over the years, the organizers have decided to keep him out.” That, Khan added, is similar reaction to current and former members of Congress, including Bobby Jindal, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), and the late Henry Hyde, who distanced themselves from Gaffney.
The conservative shunning of Gaffney, said Khan, is not “because of any pressure from Muslim activists but because they didn’t want to be associated with a crazy bigot.”
Naturally, Gaffney, the president of the defense industry-funded Center for Security Policy (CSP), said it was all the doing of the Muslim Brotherhood. Posner:
Frank Gaffney, the Islamophobic activist bent on getting Congress to investigate “creeping shari’ah,” talked to the conspiracy web site World Net Daily, claiming “that CPAC has come under the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is working to bring America under Saudi-style Shariah law.”
Gaffney has played this game of demagoguery about his critics before: When PBS delayed the airing of a documentary put together by Gaffney and requested editorial changes, he took the creative dispute public, charging that the Nation of Islam was taking over public broadcasting. (Don’t worry, the doc aired on Fox News.) He’s now, of course, brought his filmmaking prowess to the Clarion Fund, the well-funded producers of “Obsession,” and a forthcoming movie on Iran.
Gaffney’s CSP is involved in many efforts Islamophobic. The center’s COO, Christine Brim, has spoken at European far-right conferences as well as those of Pamela Geller.
CSP also released a report last year about ‘creeping sharia.’ But, as Matt Duss demonstrated at the Wonk Room, the authors didn’t bother to speak to any Muslims or Islamic scholars who might actually know something about Sharia. (Duss also noted the long, public record of Islamophobia from one of the report’s co-authors. One sample: “Islam was born in violence; it will die that way.”)
What substantiates Gaffney’s charge about ‘creeping sharia’ at CPAC is that CPAC is still hosting a panel on — you guessed it — ‘creeping sharia’! Ben Smith reports for Politico:
“The fact is that we will have a panel tentatively titled ‘Defining and Debating Shariah in America’ at this year’s CPAC moderated by Cliff May of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies,” emailed the American Conservative Union’s CPAC director Lisa DePasquale.
So the conservative fête retains its anti-Sharia credentials after all (despite, perhaps, Muslim Brotherhood infiltration). And FDD‘s Cliff May quietly takes a step up — and brings Gaffney down a notch — in the ongoing race to be America’s number one counter-Jihadi.
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