No sooner had it been announced that the Senate was preparing to vote for cloture on Chuck Hagel’s nomination as Secretary of Defense than the Washington Free Beacon‘s Adam Kredo unleashed yet another attack on the former Nebraska senator. After spending two and a half months battering Hagel with specious accusations that [...]]]>
No sooner had it been announced that the Senate was preparing to vote for cloture on Chuck Hagel’s nomination as Secretary of Defense than the Washington Free Beacon‘s Adam Kredo unleashed yet another attack on the former Nebraska senator. After spending two and a half months battering Hagel with specious accusations that he was “anti-Israel” and harbored negative views about Jews, Kredo’s new credo is that Hagel has “an Indian problem.”
According to Kredo’s latest anti-Hagel screed:
The U.S. has long viewed India as a key ally in its fight against terrorism in the porous border regions between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Tensions have arisen between India and Pakistan over the latter’s failure to stymie terrorist activities.
Hagel appears to accuse India of fueling tensions with Pakistan, claiming it is using Afghanistan “as a second front” against Pakistan.
“India for some time has always used Afghanistan as a second front, and India has over the years financed problems for Pakistan on that side of the border,” Hagel says in the speech. “And you can carry that into many dimensions, the point being [that] the tense, fragmented relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan has been there for many, many years.”
The controversial comments mark a departure from established United States policy in the region and could increase tensions between the Obama administration and India should the Senate confirm Hagel on Tuesday, according to experts.
Well, actually just one “expert”, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Dhume uses his AEI perch to bemoan that two thirds of the nearly three million Indian-Americans who vote Democrat (84% voted for Barak Obama in 2008) and the fact that only one in five identifies with the Republican party, which they should regard as their “natural home.” Dhume claims that the view Hagel expressed (at least as presented to him by Kredo) is “both over-the-top and a sharp departure from a U.S. position that has seen democratic India as a stabilizing influence in Afghanistan and Asia more broadly.”
As with nearly all of the Free Beacon’s “revelations,” there is more to the story, and far less cause for outrage…
For one thing, the setting for Hagel’s talk from which the quote about India was ripped was a triennial Academic Festival at Cameron University in Lawton, Oklahoma, “a dynamic, privately funded, year-long symposium which explores a topic worthy of in-depth study.” The topic of the 2011-2012 Academic Festival was “Afghanistan: Its Complexities and Relevance.” Guest speakers, campus-wide activities, seminars, special events and cross-curricular events during the academic year were strategically planned to support the study of the Festival’s topic, and to provide “numerous opportunities for Cameron students and the public to gain an understanding of this central Asian country” at no charge. Hagel was one of five guest speakers who came to Cameron’s campus between August 2011 and March 2012.
Hagel is a Distinguished Professor of National Governance at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service as well as a Distinguished Centennial Visiting Professor at the University of Nebraska-Omaha’s College of Public Affairs and Community Service. He is the author of “America: Our Next Chapter: Tough Questions, Straight Answers” in which he examines foreign policy problems, including China’s growing economy, India and Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities, and Iran’s aggressive political, ideological and nuclear stances. During his two terms in the U.S. Senate, Hagel was a member of the Committee for Foreign Relations and the Select Committee on Intelligence, among other appointments.
The other guest speakers during the Academic Festival were Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner; Steve Coll, Pulitzer Prize winner and the president of the New America Foundation; journalist and foreign policy analyst Robin Wright; and Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the chief of staff of military operations in Afghanistan 2002 who assumed command of all international forces in Afghanistan in June 2009.
Hagel’s main focus during his talk was Afghanistan, not India. It follows that his comments were intended to explain how the involvement of various regional state and nonstate actors in Afghanistan complicates the situation there. Pakistan’s involvement is well known to American viewers of the nightly news, India’s much less so.
A 2008 report by the Council on Foreign Relations – which the Free Beacon‘s Bill Gertz points to as “one of the most elite foreign policy organizations in the United States with a membership of some 4,700 officials, former officials, journalists, and others” — makes it quite clear that claims about Indian involvement in Afghanistan are neither new nor unfounded:
India’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), has long faced allegations of meddling in its neighbors’ affairs. Founded in 1968, primarily to counter China’s influence, over time it has shifted its focus to India’s other traditional rival, Pakistan. RAW and Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), have been engaged in covert operations against one other for over three decades. The ongoing dispute in Kashmir continues to fuel these clashes, but experts say Afghanistan may be emerging as the new battleground.
Citing a former RAW official by the name of B. Raman, the CFR report, written by Jayshree Bajoria, also notes that Indian concern about Pakistan was a key aspect of this involvement:
Since its inception in 1968, RAW has had a close liaison relationship with KHAD, the Afghan intelligence agency, due to the intelligence it has provided RAW on Pakistan. This relationship was further strengthened in the early 1980s when the foundation was laid for a trilateral cooperation involving the RAW, KHAD, and the Soviet KGB. Raman says RAW valued KHAD’s cooperation for monitoring the activities of Sikh militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Sikhs in the Indian state of Punjab were demanding an independent state of Khalistan. According to Raman, Pakistan’s ISI set up clandestine camps for training and arming Khalistani recruits in Pakistan’s Punjab Province and North West Frontier Province. During this time, the ISI received large sums from Saudi Arabia and the CIA for arming the Afghan mujahadeen against Soviet troops in Afghanistan. “The ISI diverted part of these funds and arms and ammunition to the Khalistani terrorists,” alleges Raman.
In retaliation, in the mid-1980s, RAW set up two covert groups of its own, Counter Intelligence Team-X (CIT-X) and Counter Intelligence Team-J (CIT-J), the first targeting Pakistan in general and the second directed at Khalistani groups. The two groups were responsible for carrying out terrorist operations inside Pakistan (Newsline), writes Pakistani military expert Ayesha Siddiqa. Indian journalist and associate editor of Frontline magazine, Praveen Swami, writes that a “low-grade but steady campaign of bombings in major Pakistani cities, notably Karachi and Lahore” was carried out. This forced the head of ISI to meet his counterpart in RAW and agree on the rules of engagement as far as Punjab was concerned, writes Siddiqa. The negotiation was brokered by then-Jordanian Crown Prince Hassan bin-Talal, whose wife, Princess Sarvath, is of Pakistani origin. “It was agreed that Pakistan would not carry out activities in the Punjab as long as RAW refrained from creating mayhem and violence inside Pakistan,” Siddiqa writes.
In the past, Pakistan also accused RAW of supporting Sindhi nationalists demanding a separate state, as well as Seraikis calling for a partition of Pakistan’s Punjab to create a separate Seraiki state. India denies these charges. However, experts point out that India has supported insurgents in Pakistan’s Balochistan, as well as anti-Pakistan forces in Afghanistan. But some experts say India no longer does this. As this Backgrounder explains, Pakistan is suspicious of India’s influence in Afghanistan, which it views as a threat to its own interests in the region. Experts say although it is very likely that India has active intelligence gathering in Afghanistan, it is difficult to say whether it is also involved in covert operations.
Hagel’s analysis in his lecture at Cameron University was substantively supported by the CFR report three years earlier, although he did not take it that far. As the You Tube clip indicates, contrary to Kredo’s claim, Hagel never used the phrase “sponsored terrorist activities”. Furthermore, in posting the 54-second excerpt from Hagel’s speech online, great care was apparently taken to avoid providing the context of Hagel’s India remarks, which no doubt would make them even less “controversial” than they already are.
After being contacted by Kredo for comment, a spokesperson at the Indian Embassy seems to have been rather skeptical of his take on Hagel’s expressed views. “Such comments attributed to Sen. Hagel, who has been a long-standing friend of India and a prominent votary of close India-U.S. relations, are contrary to the reality of India’s unbounded dedication to the welfare of the Afghan people,” the spokesperson reportedly told Kredo in an email. Her statement clearly leaves room for the possibility that the attributed remarks were not quite what Kredo interpreted them as.
Chuck Hagel doesn’t have an Indian problem. The Washington Free Beacon has a Chuck Hagel problem.
]]>by Farideh Farhi
During my childhood days in pre-revolutionary Iran, I played the game Telephone often. It began with one kid whispering a phrase to the person beside them. Each child then whispered the same phrase until it reached the last person, who revealed a phrase invariably quite different from the [...]]]>
by Farideh Farhi
During my childhood days in pre-revolutionary Iran, I played the game Telephone often. It began with one kid whispering a phrase to the person beside them. Each child then whispered the same phrase until it reached the last person, who revealed a phrase invariably quite different from the original. We had good fun.
I thought about that game when I read Elliott Abrams’s piece about having Breakfast with the Supreme Leader. My curiosity naturally peaked at the thought of neoconservative extraordinaire Abrams having breakfast with Iran’s leader. Wouldn’t I want to be a fly on the wall for that conversation! But alas, no such event took place at all.
Abrams merely reported what Rafael Bardaji — former national security advisor to the Spanish Prime Minister — said at a joint meeting hosted by the Henry Jackson Society and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in London last week. According to Abrams, this is the story:
The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, invited then-Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar to breakfast while he was visiting Iran. The Spanish official party decided to begin by asking the ayatollah a friendly or neutral question rather than a hostile or critical one. The idea was to get the meeting off on a better footing, so they began with a question about the complex government and religious power structure in Iran. Given all the official civil and religious bodies and positions and their various responsibilities, they asked him to describe what exactly is his job. ‘My job’, the Supreme Leader replied, ‘is to set Israel on fire.’
Wow! Abrams claims this happened in 2001, but it should have been 2000, since Aznar visited Iran in October of that year (well before Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president of Iran) and yet, we hear about this rather nasty stuff now? Abrams assures us that there was previous reporting of this event “elsewhere”. But “elsewhere” was merely May of 2012 when Mr. Aznar spoke to journalists and diplomats at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and said this:
Israel to him [Khamenei] was a kind of historical cancer and anomaly, a country … condemned to disappear. At some point he said very clearly, though softly as he spoke, that an open confrontation against the US and Israel was inevitable, and that he was working for Iran to prevail in such a confrontation. It was his duty as the ultimate stalwart of the Islamic global revolution.
And this:
Khamenei said Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution sought to rid the world of two evils, the US and Israel, “and to preserve unhurt the virtues of the religious regime of the ayatollahs,” according to Aznar. The existence of Israel and the US seriously threatened to pervert the religious society the Supreme Leader envisioned for Iran, and that is something he could not allow to happen, Aznar continued.
There is nothing about setting Israel on fire in this Times of Israel piece, though it’s still pretty damning. One doesn’t need private reference to know that Khamenei likes to use the cancerous tumor analogy for Israel. In fact, a couple of months ago he repeated it during a public speech. But describing “his job” as committed to the destruction of Israel to a European leader is pretty out there and Abrams wants us to accordingly think through “the likelihood of arriving at a good negotiated solution with Iran, and the possibility of persuading and pressuring the Supreme Leader to abandon his nuclear weapons program,” while “keeping this rare encounter with him by a Western democratic leader very much in mind.”
Still, I remained curious as to whether Aznar had spoken of this encounter before. And indeed, in 2006, according to Haaretz, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Aznar five years ago that “setting Israel on fire” was the first order of business on the Iranian agenda.
Haaretz chose to pursue the veracity of this rather inflammatory comment with Aznar’s aides, who apparently refused to provide the exact quote, but mentioned that Aznar had written about his meeting with Khamenei in the past:
“He received me politely,” Aznar wrote, “and at the beginning of the meeting he explained to me why Iran must declare war on Israel and the United States until they are completely destroyed. I made only one request of him: that he tell me the time of the planned attack.”
I am unable to find the source from which this quote is taken, but there is no prior reference to Aznar’s meeting with Khamenei and anything that was said between them prior to 2006.
As I mentioned above, Aznar did go to Iran in October 2000, and apparently had a lovely time, saying in a joint press conference with then president Mohammad Khatami that “fruitful” negotiations “on objectives pursued by Tehran and Madrid” were held. He appreciated “the initiative of Dialogue among Civilizations put forward by President Khatami” and discussions on “political, economic, cultural and scientific areas.” He said that progress had been made in relations and that he hoped they “will become even better.”
Aznar apparently appreciated his two-day visit to Iran (including his sightseeing trip to beautiful Isfahan) so much that he forgot all about the stuff Khamenei had told him for a good 6 years. Perhaps Ahmadinejad’s infamous words about Israel, which went viral in 2005, jolted his memory!
But going back to Abrams’ reporting of Aznar’s words, it’s interesting that the former somehow manages to avoid mentioning that even in the Times of Israel article he refers to, when Aznar was reportedly pressed by the audience, Aznar somewhat changed his tune:
Pressed by members of the audience to specify whether Khameini explicitly called for Israel’s destruction, Aznar said the Iranian leader told him it was necessary to eliminate the threat that Israeli [sic] poses. “And that means obviously the elimination of Israel,” said Aznar. “If Israel is alive the threat survives. They’re trying to eliminate the threat. The elimination of the threat means Israel must be eliminated.”
So Khamenei told him that it was necessary to eliminate the threat that Israel poses. And this, in Aznar’s telling, must have meant eliminating Israel “since the elimination of threat means Israel must be eliminated.”
But wait, did Khamenei really use the word eliminate? Affirmative is the answer, Aznar noting “however that he spoke to the Iranian leader through an interpreter.”
And there you have it! After 12 years, a whisper that possibly began with a translation about the need to eliminate the Israeli threat, with the help of Aznar, his aides and advisors, and now Abrams, turns into “Khamenei said it is my job to set Israel on fire.”
Some people apparently never outgrow the game of Telephone.
]]>Chuck Hagel hasn’t even been nominated for Secretary of Defense and yet rumors abound that he is a frontrunner for the job. The volume of the squawking from hard-line hawks opposing his nomination reveals much about the way the neoconservative echo chamber operates.
Morris Amitay, a former executive director of [...]]]>
Chuck Hagel hasn’t even been nominated for Secretary of Defense and yet rumors abound that he is a frontrunner for the job. The volume of the squawking from hard-line hawks opposing his nomination reveals much about the way the neoconservative echo chamber operates.
Morris Amitay, a former executive director of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), founder of Washington PAC, and author of the 2008 ultimatum, Why Jews Must Vote for John McCain“, opined to Adam Kredo of the Washington Free Beacon that Hagel becoming Secretary of Defense “would be a very unwise and disastrous choice for U.S. policies and activities regarding the Middle East.” Asked to rate Hagel’s views on Israel, Amitay responded, “He’s probably the worst.”
“He is one of the most hostile critics of Israel that has ever been in the Senate,” harrumphed Morton Klein, President of the Zionist Organization of America to The Algemeiner, a right-wing (and virulently anti-Obama) Jewish news site.
Noah Silverman of the Republican Jewish Coalition wrote that Hagel’s nomination would be a “gut check” for pro-Obama Israel supporters, gleefully pointing to a litany of complaints about Hagel refusing to sign letters of support on a variety of Israel-related topics compiled by the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC). Silverman also referenced the rantings of Jennifer Rubin, Right Turn blogger at the Washington Post, who dusted off and recycled some anti-Hagel canards from her files, in particular an anti-Hagel screed she wrote for Commentary in 2010.
What do Rubin and the hyper-pro-Israel, franti-Iran-spinmeisters find so distressing and dangerous about Hagel? And how justified are their accusations? Rubin notes that “In 2009, Hagel signed a letter urging Obama to open direct negotiations with Hamas, a position so extreme that Obama hasn’t (yet) embraced it.”
In fact, the said letter was the brainchild of Henry Siegman, the Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress for nearly three decades, an ordained Orthodox rabbi, a US army chaplain awarded a bronze star during the Korean War and currently President of the US/Middle East Project (USMEP). He also authored a 2006 article for the New York Review of Books stating that negotiating with Hamas was Israel’s last chance for peace. Hagel’s nine “extreme” bi-partisan co-signatories were two veteran presidential national security advisers, Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski; economic adviser Paul Volcker; JFK’s special counsel Ted Sorensen; former House International Relations Committee chairman Lee Hamilton, a Democrat; former Bush #41 UN ambassador Thomas Pickering, co-chair of USMEP; World Bank president James Wolfensohn; Carla Hills, a former US trade representative during the Ford administration; and another former Republican senator, Nancy Kassebaum Baker.
Hagel’s anti-Israel stance is epitomized by a (rather fuzzily cited) Hagel quote dug up by Rubin, which she apparently considers damning: “Let me clear something up here if there’s any doubt in your mind. I’m a United States Senator. I’m not an Israeli senator. I’m a United States Senator. I support Israel. But my first interest is, I take an oath of office to the constitution of the United States. Not to a president, not to a party, not to Israel.”
On Iran, Rubin wrote in 2010: “Hagel was one of two senators in 2004 to vote against renewal of the Libya-Iran sanctions act. (“Messrs. Hagel and [Richard] Lugar … want a weaker stance than most other senators against the terrorists in Iran and Syria and the West Bank and Gaza and against those who help the terrorists. They are more concerned than most other senators about upsetting our erstwhile allies in Europe — the French and Germans — who do business with the terrorists.”)
The unidentified parenthetical quote she used in both her Washington Post and Commentary attacks on Hagel was lifted from a 2004 New York Sun editorial disparaging Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry for his adherence to “Lugar-Hagelism”– a foreign policy stance that regards direct negotiations with antagonists as being far more productive and efficacious than sanctions:
…what is Lugar-Hagelism?
One indicator came on July 24, 2001, when the Senate voted 96 to 2 to renew the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act. The act helps deny Iran and Libya money that they would spend on supporting terror or acquiring weapons of mass destruction. The two senators who opposed the measure? Messrs. Lugar and Hagel.
Another indicator came on November 11, 2003, when the Senate, by a vote of 89 to 4, passed the Syria Accountability Act authorizing sanctions on Syria for its support of terrorism and its occupation of Lebanon. Mr. Hagel – along with Mr. Kerry – didn’t vote. Mr. Hagel met in Damascus in 1998 with the terror-sponsoring dictator, Hafez Al-Assad, and returned to tell a reporter about the meeting, “Peace comes through dealing with people. Peace doesn’t come at the end of a bayonet or the end of a gun.”
Kerry and Hagel weren’t alone in abstaining on the Syria Accountability Act vote. Sen. Joe Lieberman didn’t cast a vote either. More to the point, Hagel’s stance on Syria, expressed to the Council on Foreign Relations in 2005, has proven itself astute, even prescient:
The United States should be very cautious about supporting the collapse of the Assad regime. That would be a dangerous event, with the potential to trigger wider regional instability at a time when our capacity to help shape a desired regional outcome is very limited. Our objective should be a strategic shift in Syria’s perspective and actions that would open the way to greater common interests for the countries of the region.
Furthermore, it would appear that attacks from the right on Hagel might also apply to Kerry: “Mr. Kerry has a lot in common with Mr. Hagel; Mr.Hagel is also a decorated Vietnam veteran who is now a multimillionaire. Mr. Kerry has a lot in common with Mr. Lugar, too; they are both former Navy officers. Mr. Lugar has been in the Senate for 27 years, while Mr. Kerry has been there, and serving on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Mr. Lugar now chairs, for 19 years.”
Ironically, during the 2012 election cycle, Lugar — who the New York Sun dubbed “Ayatollah Lugar” for his skepticism about the wisdom of Iran sanctions — received $20,000 from NORPAC, a leading pro-Israel political action committee in New Jersey, more than any other candidate in the 2012 election cycle. The Jewish Week explains why pro-Israel groups lamented Lugar’s defeat in the Indiana GOP primary and his absence from the Senate:
Lugar, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, consistently backed defense assistance for Israel and in the 1980s championed freedom for Soviet Jews. But he was also known for pushing a more active U.S. approach to brokering Middle East peace than that favored by much of the pro-Israel lobby, and he preferred to move ahead cautiously on Iran sanctions….
Israel advocates and GOP insiders explained that Lugar represented a breed of lawmaker who pro-Israel groups see as valuable to their cause and disappearing: One who reaches across the aisle.
“Lugar wasn’t actively pro-Israel, but he wasn’t anti either,” said Mike Kraft, a staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the 1970s and 1980s who now is a consultant on counterterrorism and writes for a number of pro-Israel websites and think tanks. “But generally losing a good, balanced, thoughtful guy on foreign policy is a real tragedy. It weakens the American political system.”
Try telling that to Jennifer Rubin.
- Dr. Marsha B. Cohen is an independent scholar, news analyst, writer and lecturer in Miami, FL specializing in Israeli-Iranian relations. An Adjunct Professor of International Relations at Florida International University for over a decade, she now writes and lectures in a variety of venues on the role of religion in politics and world affairs.
]]>According to Micah Zenko, the International Atomic Energy Association’s (IAEA) and Hillary Clinton’s recent endorsement of a March deadline for Iran nuclear talks is a pressure tactic resulting from exasperation over the lack of progress thus far. (His focus on US reasoning gives more weight to the claim that the [...]]]>
According to Micah Zenko, the International Atomic Energy Association’s (IAEA) and Hillary Clinton’s recent endorsement of a March deadline for Iran nuclear talks is a pressure tactic resulting from exasperation over the lack of progress thus far. (His focus on US reasoning gives more weight to the claim that the IAEA is heavily influenced by the US.) But Zenko doesn’t point out that March 2013 had also been established as a key month by Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu back in September.
During his speech at this year’s UN Annual General Assembly, Netanyahu used a much-ridiculed cartoon graphic to show that Iran could complete the second to last stage of uranium enrichment required to create a bomb by the Spring or Summer of 2013:
Where’s Iran? Iran’s completed the first stage. It took them many years, but they completed it and they’re 70% of the way there. Now they are well into the second stage. By next spring, at most by next summer at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage. From there, it’s only a few months, possibly a few weeks before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb.
He concluded that Iran could be stopped if a “credible” “red line” was set. Netanyahu’s assessment was critiqued by the non-proliferation focused Arms Control Association, among others, as “overly alarmist“. And until now, the US has defied Israeli pressure to set their line according to Israel’s, so what’s with this March deadline? Zenko’s analysis:
The answer depends greatly on whether the timeline to attack Iran is based on Israel’s national interest and its military capabilities, or those of the United States. Israeli officials have stated at various times that redlines should be “clear” (without providing clarity) and that they “should be made, but not publicly.” One also said, “I don’t want to set redlines or deadlines for myself.” Since November 2011, Israeli officials have also warned about a “zone of immunity,” which Barak has described as “not where the Iranians decide to break out of the non-proliferation treaty and move toward a nuclear device or weapon, but at the place where the dispersal, protection and survivability efforts will cross a point that would make a physical strike impractical.”
It is unclear how dispersed, protected, or survivable Iran’s nuclear program would have to be, but Secretary Clinton’s warning of “components…on a shelf somewhere” could indicate that the Obama administration is moving toward the zone of immunity logic. But what are these components, how many would be required to assume “weaponization,” and how would this new intelligence be presented as a justification for war? In addition, it is tough to make the case for going to war with Iran because it refused to concentrate its nuclear sites (that are under IAEA safeguards) in above-ground facilities that can be easily bombed.
Previously, U.S. officials have been less eager than the Israelis to define a specific redline, largely because the two countries have different perceptions of the Iranian threat and vastly different military capabilities. Setting a March deadline provides some certainty and perhaps coercive leverage to compel Iran to cooperate with the IAEA. But declaring deadlines also places U.S. “credibility” on the line, generating momentum to use force even if there is no new actionable intelligence that Iran has decided to pursue a nuclear weapon. Based on what we know right now, that would be a strategic miscalculation.
Some analysts are meanwhile suggesting that Zenko is completely off the mark. Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the non-proliferation and disarmament program at the international Institute for Security Studies, called Zenko’s analysis “alarmist” today on Twitter: ”With respect, you are wrong about the meaning of the March deadline for #iran to answer IAEA Qs. It only means new Resolution,” he said.
“If anyone else had written an alarmist claim the US set a March deadline for war, @MicahZenko would have roasted it,” said Fitzpatrick.
“There is the possibility of progress in the next round [of Iran nuclear talks], but it’s going to require that both sides be more flexible and a little more creative,” says the Arms Control Association’s Daryl Kimball in an interview with the Council on Foreign Relations.
“Whatever happens after [...]]]>
“There is the possibility of progress in the next round [of Iran nuclear talks], but it’s going to require that both sides be more flexible and a little more creative,” says the Arms Control Association’s Daryl Kimball in an interview with the Council on Foreign Relations.
“Whatever happens after the election, the most important thing is that the P5+1 process resumes and that it be a much more dynamic negotiation that is not simply a reiteration of previous well-understood positions,” he said.
Iran expert and Lobe Log contributor Farideh Farhi also warns that inflexibility on both sides will impede a peaceful resolution to this decades-long dispute:
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.
By contrast, a nuclear deal that gave something to both sides and promised both sides a significant stream of future benefits would give both actors an incentive to stick to the terms. It would also tend to silence the hawks in both camps who push for hardline solutions (i.e., those Americans who favor military force and those Iranians who might favor actually getting a bomb). The problem here, as my colleague Matt Bunn reminded me yesterday, is that the current level of mistrust makes it hard for either side to convince the other that it will actually deliver the stream of benefits that will have to be part of the deal.
The late negotiation expert Roger Fisher famously recommended giving opponents “yes-sable” propositions: If you want a deal, you have to offer something that the opponent might actually want to accept. In the same vein, Chinese strategic sage Sun Tzu advised “building a golden bridge” for your enemies to retreat across.
Translation: If we want a lasting nuclear deal with Iran, it can’t be completely one-sided. Paradoxically, we don’t want to strong-arm Iran into accepting a deal they hate, but which they are taking because we’ve left them no choice. A completely one-sided deal might be easier to sell here at home, but that sort of deal is also less likely to endure. In order to last, there has to be something in it for them, both in terms of tangible benefits but also in terms of acknowledging Iranian interests and national pride. Otherwise, the deal won’t stick and we’ll be back to the current situation of threat-mongering, suspicion, and strategic distraction. That might be an outcome that a few neo-cons want, but hardly anyone else.
The Washington Post‘s Greg Miller has begun a three-part series on the future of the Obama Administration’s counterterrorism drone strike program, which will include a “next-generation targeting list” (aka “kill list”) in the form of a “dipposition matrix”.
Though the White House, CIA, JSOC and ODNI declined comment requests, the article cites [...]]]>
The Washington Post‘s Greg Miller has begun a three-part series on the future of the Obama Administration’s counterterrorism drone strike program, which will include a “next-generation targeting list” (aka “kill list”) in the form of a “dipposition matrix”.
Though the White House, CIA, JSOC and ODNI declined comment requests, the article cites “dozens of current and former national security officials, intelligence analysts and others.”
Miller’s report somewhat contradicts the Obama Administration’s frequent assertions that al Qaeda is exhausted and on the run. The officials interviewed essentially offer a redux of the “War on Terror” methodology minus the renditions and speechifying. And, even while touting the success of the program, the Administration remains committed to “embedding” it in national security planning.
According to Miller, the program is meant to outlive the Obama Administration: “White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan is seeking to codify the administration’s approach to generating capture/kill lists, part of a broader effort to guide future administrations through the counterterrorism processes that Obama has embraced.”
The expansion of the US’s drone fleet and African operations were also noted, as was the US’s overall growing reliance on unarmed drone surveillance, now over Libya, and according to the Post, Iran. Meanwhile, The Diplomat notes the US is looking to create a more autonomous drone force that is less dependent on operator-control to carry out missions.
Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations reflects on President Obama’s institutionalization of “extrajudicial killings” in comparison to his predecessor’s more careful approach:
]]>Having spoken with dozens of officials across both administrations, I am convinced that those serving under President Bush were actually much more conscious and thoughtful about the long-term implications of targeted killings than those serving under Obama. In part, this is because more Bush administration officials were affected by the U.S. Senate Select Committee investigation, led by Senator Frank Church, that implicated the United States in assassination plots against foreign leaders—including at least eight separate plans to kill Cuban president Fidel Castro—and President Ford’s Executive Order 11905: “No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination.”
Back in January, academic Matthew Kroenig claimed the United States could militarily strike Iran without causing havoc and catastrophe in the region. His arguments were widely criticized and supported by the usual suspects. Jamie Fly, the neoconservative executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative, disagreed with Kroenig, but only because [...]]]>
Back in January, academic Matthew Kroenig claimed the United States could militarily strike Iran without causing havoc and catastrophe in the region. His arguments were widely criticized and supported by the usual suspects. Jamie Fly, the neoconservative executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative, disagreed with Kroenig, but only because Kroenig did not go far enough. Then in May the two penned an op-ed arguing that President Obama had offered Iran too many carrots. This was just days before the talks almost collapsed after the only “relief” the Western-led negotiating team offered Iran was spare parts for aircraft that have suffered tremendously under sanctions. What would assist the negotiation process, according to Fly and Kroenig? More threats of military force, of course.
Although using the military option on Iran hasn’t exactly taken off as a preferred choice here in Washington, Kroenig and like-minded folks working at prominent platforms like the Wall Street Journal continue to beat their drums. That’s likely one reason why the Council on Foreign Relations hosted a debate moderated by Foreign Affairs editor Gideon Rose between Kroenig and Trita Parsi, a prominent US-Iran relations analyst and president of the National Iranian American Council. The entire debate is worth listening to, but in a nutshell, Kroenig reiterates the arguments from his article: out of the 3 potential outcomes with Iran — successful diplomacy, nuclear containment and military conflict, the third is most likely and planning should begin even while the US continues its diplomatic track with Iran. Israel isn’t equipped to do the job, so the US should carry out “limited” strikes and only respond devastatingly if Iran retaliates with more than wimper by, for example, closing the Strait of Hormuz.
Parsi accordingly points out several flaws in Kroenig’s argument: an Iranian nuclear weapon is neither inevitable nor imminent, diplomacy has neither failed nor been whole-heartedly utilized and the experience of the Iraq War, which took the lives of 5,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, shows that a war with Iran is hardly going to be quick and relatively painless as Kroenig suggests. Parsi adds that as with the lead-up to the Iraq War, proponents of the military option with Iran are not from the military or intelligence communities. In fact, neoconservative hawks regularly contest the validity of intelligence and military assessments, which is ironic to say the least. Parsi also notes that as former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has repeatedly emphasized, bombing a country is the best way to convince it that it needs a nuclear deterrent to ward of future attacks…
]]>Lobe Log publishes Hawks on Iran every Friday. Our posts highlight militaristic commentary and confrontational policy recommendations about Iran from a variety of sources including news articles, think tanks and pundits.
Joe Lieberman, RFE/RL: The independent senator who said in April that if Iran ”is approaching a [...]]]>
Lobe Log publishes Hawks on Iran every Friday. Our posts highlight militaristic commentary and confrontational policy recommendations about Iran from a variety of sources including news articles, think tanks and pundits.
Joe Lieberman, RFE/RL: The independent senator who said in April that if Iran ”is approaching a nuclear weapons capability, then we have to act militarily” reiterates his stance more explicitly:
“So, we’re coming to a point where there will only be two choices for not just the U.S and Israel but other countries.” Lieberman said. “Will we simply sit back and let Iran become a nuclear power and destabilize the region and start a nuclear arms race in the Middle East? Or will we be compelled to take some military action to delay or destroy that program?”
He said it “doesn’t make any sense” to wait until Iran actually possesses nuclear weapons to take military action. “What we are saying,” he said, “is [that] we have to be ready, if all else fails — economic sanctions, diplomacy, etc.”
…
But many, even in the intelligence community, have suggested that an attack on Iran would not totally eliminate the Islamic republic’s ability to produce nuclear weapons, since Iran’s nuclear facilities are believed to be located deep underground or inside mountains.
Asked about that, Lieberman replied that a military strike would at least delay Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and buy time until a new Iranian regime, possibly more amenable to negotiations, came to power.
“I think we have the capability either to eliminate the Iranian nuclear weapons program or to disable it in a way that it will be delayed for enough years that we may hope and pray that there will be a regime change and that there will be a more democratic and friendly regime,” he said.
Elliott Abrams, Council on Foreign Relations: While referencing a poorly sourced and unverifiable Wall Street Journal report alleging that Iran is militarily involved in Syria, Abrams agrees with a Washington Post editorial board op-ed calling American policy today “reprehensible” and “morally indefensible” for its passivity”:
We appear to have concluded that passivity is the best policy, that nothing important is at stake, and that an Iranian victory is nothing much to be concerned about. We appear unconcerned as well about public opinion in the Arab world, where people can hear Syrian rebels criticizing the United States for providing only rhetorical support and being indifferent to their slaughter. The president who traveled to Cairo in 2009 to court Arab opinion has apparently decided that speeches are one thing, and action another.
I have little to add to the Post’s rhetoric in its editorial today. This is a shameful, and damaging, moment in American foreign policy.
John McCain, Republican National Convention: Even NBC’s Chris Matthews was taken aback by the former presidential candidates militarist speech at the RNC this week. Here’s what McCain had to say about Iran (and Syria):
]]>When Iranians rose up by the millions against their
repressive rulers, when day beseeched our president, chanting in
English, “Are you with us or are you with them?” When the
entire world watched as a brave young woman named Neda was shot
and bled to death in a street in Tehran, the president missed an
historic opportunity to throw America’s full moral support
behind an Iranian revolution that shared one of our highest
interests: ridding Iran of a brutal dictatorship that terrorized
the Middle East and threatens the world.
(APPLAUSE)
…
In other times, when other courageous people fought for
their freedom against sworn enemies of the United States,
American presidents, both Republicans and Democrats, have acted
to help them prevail.
(APPLAUSE)
Sadly — sadly for the lonely voices of descent in Syria
and Iran and elsewhere in the world will feel forgotten in their
darkness and sadly for us, as well. Our president is not being
true to our values.
(APPLAUSE)
For the sake of the cause of freedom, for the sake of
people who are willing to give their lives so their fellow
citizens can determine their own futures and for the sake of our
nation, the nation founded on the idea that all people
everywhere have the right to freedom and justice. We must
return to our best traditions of American leadership and support
those who face down the brutal tyranny of their oppressors and
our enemies.
Aid to the PA is under bi-partisan attack in Congress due to the Palestinians’ campaign to somehow upgrade their standing in the United Nations. The campaign against the Palestinians, and [...]]]>
Aid to the PA is under bi-partisan attack in Congress due to the Palestinians’ campaign to somehow upgrade their standing in the United Nations. The campaign against the Palestinians, and also against the United Nations, has already gained enough momentum that yesterday’s hearing, initially to have been held in session of the Subcommittee on the Near East and South Asia, was upgraded to a hearing of the full Foreign Affairs committee.
Leading the charge, unsurprisingly, is Committee Chair Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), who has introduced a bill threatening UN funding mainly, though not exclusively, over the issue of Israel and the Palestinians. But her predecessor as Chair, Howard Berman (D-CA) was absolutely blunt in saying: “I believe it is appropriate to point out that should the Palestinians pursue their unilateralist course, the hundreds of millions of dollars in annual assistance that we have given them in recent years, will likely be terminated.”
Four leading Democrats, Steve Israel (D-NY), Robert Brady (D-PA), Eliot Engel (D-NY) and Steven Rothman (D-NJ) have sent a bill to the Foreign Affairs Committee which would
- … prohibit Foreign Military Financing program assistance to countries that vote in the United Nations General Assembly in favor of recognizing a Palestinian state in the absence of a negotiated border agreement between the Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
With all this, you’d think aid to the PA was doomed, would you not?
But hold on. At the hearing, there were four witnesses, with David Makovsky of the AIPAC-created Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) being the most moderate. The other speakers were James Phillips of the Heritage Foundation, Dr. Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (which, along with Heritage, are neo-conservative think-tanks, with more info available here) and neocon all-star Elliott Abrams.
Makovsky was predictably dubious about cutting off aid to the Palestinians, and the entire panel was more or less united around the idea that Congress must at least keep funding PA security forces that are working with Israel to prevent attacks on Israelis.
Abrams, somewhat surprisingly, joined not only Makovsky but also the dovish “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobbying group J Street in cautioning against cutting other aid to the PA. He said,
- I would say the best response is not to zero out all aid to the PA. Some programs are very much in our own interest and Israel’s, such as the security programs. Defunding them right now would make life harder for Israelis and Palestinians alike. Nor do I favor generally cutting off the PA, for several reasons. The entire PA (as opposed to the Fatah and PLO leadership) is not to blame for what the PLO/Fatah crew is planning in New York. A collapse of the PA would not be in our interest nor in Israel’s or for that matter Jordan’s. In fact it might benefit only Hamas and other extremist and terrorist groups.
- Thanks to American and European financial support, Palestinian security cooperation with Israel has gone hand-in-hand with Prime Minister Salam Fayad‘s success in institution building. There is no doubt that improved law and order in the West Bank, along with Israel‘s lifting of most of its major manned checkpoints, has been a key contribution to what the World Bank has cited as the 9.3 percent growth enjoyed by the West Bank in 2010, at a time of worldwide recession. However, without U.S. aid, which could also play a role in ensuring that Israel continues its monthly transfer of 380 million shekels (around $107 million dollars) in customs clearances to the PA, the odds are greater that PM Fayad will resign, imperiling both security cooperation and the institution building effort. As many of us know, PM Fayad has been the greatest obstacle to Fatah-Hamas reconciliation efforts. If an unintended consequence of a U.S. cutoff of aid is Fayad‘s resignation, we remove that obstacle. In other words, withholding of U.S. aid will undermine the people we want to help, and help the people that we want to undermine.
There’s a lot here that bears close scrutiny, as the picture Makovsky paints is pretty far removed from reality. But the important point is this wide agreement, spanning the center-left to the far right, that cutting off aid to the PA is against the interests not only of the PA but of Israel and the US as well.
This leads to an obvious question: is continuing aid to the PA in the interests of the Palestinians?
While there has been little visible Palestinian opposition to the UN campaign, or, in recent months, to the PA in general, there has also been remarkably little enthusiasm about it from any sector of the Palestinian public or civil society.
So while it’s virtually certain that, even among those opposed to the UN bid, Palestinians will collectively be furious, again, at the US for its opposition to any initiative they ever take, it’s not clear that a sizeable portion of the Palestinian public is impressed with Mahmoud Abbas campaign here.
And yet, this may produce a renewed opportunity for the PA leadership.
With unity between the PA and Hamas still nothing more than idealistic words, the future of the Palestinian national movement, and the identities of any potential interlocutors with Israel and the US, is completely in doubt. One reason is, indeed the continuing insistence of Fatah that PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad have a prominent role in a unity government. But really, that is just the public face of the real concern, which is loss of US funding.
But if arguments such as those put forward by Makovsky and Abrams win the day on Capitol Hill, the PA leadership will have new options. The US will have demonstrated a reluctance to cut Palestinian aid and, while this is not likely to extend to maintaining aid to a PA that includes Hamas, it may well allow for more boldness in Palestinian diplomacy, and further actions to try to internationalize the issue and take it out of exclusively US hands.
But taking advantage of such an opportunity will require bold and clever leadership, which the PA/PLO/Fatah have not demonstrated any hint of.
One last curiosity in all of this talk of suspending aid to the PA. That came from the inimitable Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League. He said: “I certainly understand the anger in Congress. You ignore us and then you want us to continue giving you aid?”
Foxman says this as a man who staunchly defends an Israeli government that has repeatedly thumbed its nose at the United States and embarrassed the President, despite the fact that aid to Israel, in both dollars and on the ground military coordination is greater and deeper than at any time in history.
One can only imagine the color of Abe’s face if the obvious irony was pointed out to him.
]]>The two bills, very likely drafted by AIPAC, cite a number of statements by President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton to support a [...]]]>
The two bills, very likely drafted by AIPAC, cite a number of statements by President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton to support a very strong stance against the Palestinian campaign, highlighting the extent to which the Administration was already behind these efforts, even before Congress added its voice.
The Senate bill (which had 89 co-sponsors and passed by unanimous consent) and the House version (which gathered 356 co-sponsors and passed by a vote of 407-6) both have the point that the Palestinians are “circumventing negotiations” at the heart of their argument.
Not surprisingly, this argument is widely echoed among “pro-Israel” groups in Washington. Michael Singh of the AIPAC-spawned Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) warned that “If indeed the Palestinians seek to circumvent negotiations and seek recognition by the acclamation of the UN General Assembly, the painstaking gains made in Israeli-Palestinian economic cooperation will almost certainly be lost.”
Neoconservative leader Elliot Abrams said: “That the PLO is following this path suggests a lack of interest in the genuine negotiations that are the only real path to statehood… But this entire episode reveals a lack of Palestinian seriousness about negotiations and suggests that, while talks may commence and avoid the September UN confrontation, they will go nowhere.”
But Saeb Erekat, a leading PLO negotiator, says the Palestinians are holding fast to the UN course, despite US pressure. “We don’t see a contradiction between the efforts being exerted to revive the peace process and our bid to go to the UN.”
With the number of countries that have already expressed recognition of a Palestinian state, it is a given that any UN vote will favor that state. It’s also a given that this will not confer UN membership on Palestine and won’t change things much from the status quo.
Yet AIPAC has pulled out all the stops, and, with Congress supplying the political pressure, the Obama Administration is treating the Palestinian campaign with extreme gravity. Why the panic?
One reason could be a fear of the ancillary results. The US may be concerned that such a vote, which will provoke massive outrage among the Israeli public, will provoke Israel to take its own, already considerable, unilateral actions in retaliation.
Indeed, Israel warned of just such a reaction today, when the government announced that they were expropriating uncultivated land belonging to a West Bank Palestinian town, Karyut, in order to retroactively attach a settlement outpost called Hayovel to the settlement of Eli. This violates not only Israel’s previous commitments, but also Netanyahu’s own words.
In his famous Bar-Ilan speech where Bibi gave his lip-service acceptance to a two-state solution, Netanyahu said: “We have no intention of building new settlements or of expropriating additional land for existing settlements.”
So much for that.
But the timing seems intended to send the message to Washington that Israel is prepared to make good on its repeated threats to take much more aggressive unilateral actions than its normal expansion of settlements if the Palestinians pursue this UN vote.
Aaron Miller, who worked on these issues for decades, expresses another concern: “The (Obama) administration seems terrified at the prospect of letting matters drift and the prospects of a Palestinian resolution at the UN for which it has no real response. Such an outcome could trigger violence when it becomes clear to Palestinians that very little has changed.”
The more likely scenario, however, is an eruption in the West Bank if the US goes its influence beyond blocking Security Council resolutions into preventing any action even in the UN General Assembly, one of the few global arenas where the Palestinians have any leverage against Israel.
The basic premise of the AIPAC and congressional argument, publicly, is the tired refrain that “only negotiations between the parties” can resolve the conflict.
Yet, as Erekat contended, continued negotiations and UN support for Palestinian statehood are not mutually exclusive. It would strengthen the Palestinian position a bit, but would hardly tilt the balance.
The real issue is that the UN vote would harm the rhetoric of the decomposing “peace process.” The US is desperate to revive negotiations, and the real development they are finding so hard to contend with is that the Palestinian Authority, in the wake of revelations in the Palestine Papers and the general atmosphere of the Arab Spring, is no longer able to pursue negotiations without results.
But the Netanyahu government has determined that the only way it can maintain its policies in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem is under the cover of ongoing talks, and the Obama Administration has no options to offer either party other than a return to the same failed formula.
So, the tool is to accuse the Palestinians of circumventing those negotiations. Ironically, this is precisely the strategy they should pursue, to find alternatives to the same old talks mediated by people like Dennis Ross who are obviously representing Israel. But in fact, as Erekat notes, all this really is is an effort to strengthen the Palestinian hand in those negotiations, even if only a little.
And that sends AIPAC into a frantic lobbying tizzy.
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