by Jasmin Ramsey

Two conversations are presently occurring in Washington about Iran. Hawks and hardliners are searching for new ways to force the Obama administration to tighten or impose further sanctions, and/or discussing when the US should strike the country. Meanwhile, doves and pragmatists have been pointing out the ineffectiveness of sanctions in [...]]]> via Lobe Log

by Jasmin Ramsey

Two conversations are presently occurring in Washington about Iran. Hawks and hardliners are searching for new ways to force the Obama administration to tighten or impose further sanctions, and/or discussing when the US should strike the country. Meanwhile, doves and pragmatists have been pointing out the ineffectiveness of sanctions in changing Iran’s nuclear calculus (even though the majority of them initially pushed for these sanctions) as well as the many cons of military action. Although the hawks and hardliners tend to be Republican, the group is by no means partisan. And these conversations do converge and share points at times, for example, the hawks and hardliners also complain about the ineffectiveness of sanctions, but in the context of pushing for more pressure and punishment.

That said, both sides appear stuck — the hawks, while successful in getting US policy on Iran to become sanctions-centric, can’t get the administration or military leaders to buy their interventionist arguments, and the doves, having previously cheered sanctions as an alternative to military action, appear lost now that their chosen pressure tactic has proven ineffective.

Hawks and Doves Debate Iran Strike Option

On Wednesday, the McCain Institute hosted a live debate that showcased Washington positions on Iran, with the pro-military argument represented by neoconservative analyst Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute and Democrat Robert Wexler, a member of the US House of Representatives from 1997-2010, and two prominent US diplomats on the other side — Ambassadors Thomas R. Pickering, who David Sanger writes “is such a towering figure in the State Department that a major program to train young diplomats is named for him”, and James R. Dobbins, whose distinguished career includes service as envoy to Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti and Somalia.

Only the beginning of this recording (I can’t find any others) is hard to hear, and you won’t regret watching the entire lively discussion, particularly because of Amb. Pickering’s poignant responses to Pletka’s flimsy points — she inaccurately states IAEA findings on Iran’s nuclear program and claims that, even though she’s no military expert, a successful military operation against Iran wouldn’t necessarily include boots on the ground. In fact, experts assess that effective military action against Iran aimed at long-term positive results (cessation of its nuclear program and regime change) would be a long and arduous process, entailing more resources than Afghanistan and Iraq have taken combined, and almost certainly involving ground forces and occupation.

Consider some the characteristics of the pro-military side: Wexler repeatedly admits he made a mistake in supporting the war on Iraq, but says the decision to attack Iran should “presuppose” that event. Later on he says that considering what happened with Iraq, he “hopes” the same mistake about non-existent WMDs won’t happen again. Pletka, who endorsed fighting in Iraq until “victory” had been achieved (a garbled version of an AEI transcript can be found here), states in her opening remarks that the US needs to focus on ”what happens, when, if, negotiations fail” and leads from that premise, which she does not qualify with anything other than they’re taking too much time, with arguments about the threat Iran poses, even though she calls the Iranians “very rational actors”.

While Wexler’s support for a war launched on false premises seriously harms his side’s credibility, it was both his and Pletka’s inability to advance even one indisputable interventionist argument, coupled with their constant reminders that they don’t actually want military action, that left them looking uninformed and weak.

The diplomats, on the other hand, offered rhetorical questions and points that have come to characterize this debate more generally. Amb. Pickering: “Are we ready for another ground war in the Middle East?”, and, “we are not wonderful occupiers”. Then on the status of the diplomatic process: “we are closer to a solution in negotiations than we have been before”. Amb. Dobbins meanwhile listed some of the cons of a military operation — Hezbollah attacks against Israel and US allies, interruptions to the movement of oil through the vital Strait of Hormuz, a terror campaign orchestrated by the Iranians — and then surprised everyone by saying that these are “all things we can deal with”. A pause, then the real danger in Amb. Dobbins’ mind: that “Iran would respond cautiously”, play the aggrieved party, withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, kick out IAEA inspectors and accelerate its nuclear program at unknown sites. Then what, the audience was left to wonder. Neither Pletka nor Wexler offered an answer.

The Costs of War With Iran and the C-Word

While watching the McCain debate, I wondered if Pletka and Wexler would consider reading a recently published book by Geoffrey Kemp, an economist who served as a Gulf expert on Reagan’s National Security Council and John Allen Gay, entitled War With Iran: Political, Military, And Economic Consequences. This essay lays out the basis of the work, which mainly focuses on the high economic costs of war, so I won’t go into detail here, but yesterday during the book’s launch at the Center for National Interest (CNI), an interesting comment was made about the “C-Word”. Here’s what Kemp said during his opening remarks, to an audience that included everyone from prominent foreign policy experts and former government officials, to representatives from Chevron and AIPAC:

You certainly cannot, must not, underestimate the negative consequences if Iran does get the bomb…But I think on balance, unlike Senator McCain who said that the only thing worse than a war with Iran is an Iran with a nuclear weapon…the conclusion of this study is that war is worse than the options, and the options we have, are clearly based on something that we call deterrence and something that we are not allowed to call, but in fact, is something called containment. And to me this seems like the most difficult thing for the Obama administration, to walk back out of the box it’s gotten itself into over this issue of containment. But never fear. Successive American administrations have all walked back lines on Iran.

Interestingly, no one challenged him on this during the Q&A. And Kemp is not the only expert to utter the C-Word in Washington — he’s joined by Paul Pillar and more reluctant distinguished voices including Zbigniew Brzezinksi.

Diplomacy as the Best Effective Option

Of course, if more effort was concentrated on the diplomacy front, as opposed to mostly on sanctions and the military option, Iran could be persuaded against building a nuclear weapon. Consider, for example, US intelligence chief James Clapper’s statement on Thursday that Iran has not yet made the decision to develop a nuclear weapon but that if it chose to do so, it might be able to produce one in a matter of “months, not years.” Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee that “[Iran] has not yet made that decision, and that decision would be made singularly by the supreme leader.”

It follows from this that while the US would be hard pressed in permanently preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon (apart from adopting the costly and morally repulsive “mowing the lawn” option), it could certainly compel the Iranians to make the decision to rush for a bomb by finally making the military option credible — as Israel has pushed for — or following through on that threat.

So where to go from here? Enter the Iran Project, which has published a series of reports all signed and endorsed by high-level US foreign policy experts, and which just released it’s first report with policy advise: “Strategic Options for Iran: Balancing Pressure with Diplomacy”. There’s lots to be taken away from it, and Jim Lobe, as well as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have covered it, but it ultimately boils down to the notion that the US needs to rethink its policy with Iran and creatively use the leverage it has gotten from sanctions to bring about an agreement. Such an agreement will likely have to be preceded by bilateral talks and include some form of low-level uranium enrichment on Iranian soil and sanctions relief if Iran provides its own signifiant concessions. The report also argues for the US to engage with Iran on areas of mutual interest, including Iraq and Afghanistan.

During the Wilson Center report launch event, Amb. Pickering summed up the status of negotiations with Iran as follows: “Admittedly we should not expect miraculous moves to a rapid agreement, but we’re engaged enough now to have gone beyond the beginning of the beginning. We’re not at the end of the beginning yet, but we’re getting there.” Later, Jim Walsh, a member of the task force and nuclear expert at MIT pointed out that 20-percent Iranian uranium enrichment, which everyone is fixated on now, only became an issue after Iran stopped receiving fuel for its Tehran Research Reactor and began producing it itself. In other words, the longer the US takes to give Iran a deal it can stomach and sell at home, the more the Iranians can ask for as their nuclear program progresses. “The earlier we can get a deal, the better the deal is likely to be,” he said.

While you would expect the State Department’s decision to de-list the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) would elicit cheers from anti-Iran neo-conservatives, the MEK has, in fact, been one of a number of issue — including former Israeli Prime Minister Sharon’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza and [...]]]> via Lobe Log

While you would expect the State Department’s decision to de-list the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) would elicit cheers from anti-Iran neo-conservatives, the MEK has, in fact, been one of a number of issue — including former Israeli Prime Minister Sharon’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza and Washington’s engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood — that has been the source of considerable division among the neo-cons.

Strong opposition to de-listing the MEK, let alone providing it with U.S. (or even Israeli) support has been based mostly among those most ardent Iraq hawks closely associated with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), particularly Michael Rubin; Danielle Pletka, and Michael Ledeen, who moved over to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy (FDD) a couple of years ago and, of all people, should know a con when he sees one. Their opposition is based on the conviction (shared by many critics on the left and among realists or anyone who has ever actually been to Iran) that the MEK is largely hated in Iran itself and thus that any perceived U.S. support for — or complicity with — it will prove entirely counter-productive to their goal of regime change.

Or, as Rubin put it last March:

The problem with those who would embrace the MEK is that it would undercut the chance for regime collapse.

…Iranians living under the regime’s yoke hate the MEK. That is not regime propaganda; it is fact, one to which any honest analyst who has ever visited Iran testify. Ordinary Iranians deeply resent the MEK’s terrorism, which has targeted not only regime officials, but also led to the deaths of scores of civilians. During the Iran-Iraq War — a conflict that decimated cities and led to tens of thousands of civilian deaths — the MEK sided with Saddam Hussein.

…If the MEK is delisted, let the MEK celebrate. But whether listed as a terrorist group or not, it would be wrong and counterproductive to embrace the group unless, of course, the goal of those for officials on the group’s payroll is simply to aid the current regime in its efforts to rally its subjugated masses around the flag.

The last reference, of course, was to the legion of high-profile former Republican and Democratic administration officials and military officers (useful idiots and/or mercenaries, so far as MEK foes are concerned) who have been speaking out in favor of the MEK, most, if not all of them, in return for tens of thousands of dollars paid out by the MEK’s multitudinous front groups and p.r. consultants. (The Washington Post covered a good lot of them last July when the FBI started looking into their lobbying activities.

Pletka, whose blog post this week about Obama “hat[ing] Israel” can only be described as truly bizarre, nonetheless raised some good questions last year about the morality of those who support the MEK and the application of double standards regarding Washington’s enforcement of its terrorism laws:

If this is an enemy/enemy/friend thing, let’s consider whether we wish to replace the creepy, Islamist, dictatorial mullahs with the creepy, Islamist, dictatorial cult. Seems a bad trade to me. The United States should be supporting democracy in Iran, not a one-for-one swap among murderers and thugs.

And here’s another question: Where’s the FBI and the Justice Department? A terrorist group is lobbying in the United States. It’s paying top political fixers to make its case. It’s paying speaking fees to former government officials. Where’s the money from? How’s it being transferred? And would it be okay for Hezbollah to do this? Al Qaeda?

Unfortunately, these arguments didn’t get very far with more prominent associates and colleagues at AEI, although Richard Perle, such as Newt Gingrich, who spoke at a MEK rally in Paris last July (Bowing before a recognized cult leader in a foreign country must be particularly humiliating for someone like Gingrich, but I guess Sheldon Adelson’s $10m didn’t cover all his campaign debts); John Bolton, Allan Gerson, who was one of the MEK’s attorneys; and the former (and mercifully briefly) CIA director under Bill Clinton, James Woolsey. Richard Perle, who appeared at an Iranian-American “charity event” in Virginia in 2004 but then claimed he had no idea that it was a fund-raiser for the MEK has since wisely kept his silence.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the neo-con critics of the MEK sceptics (besides the big-name endorsers noted above) have been, of course, the Iran Policy Committee (IPC) headed by Raymond Tanter, as well as a number of writers and think tankers, including contributors to the Weekly Standard, the National Review, and Commentary (notably Jonathan Tobin), and Daniel Pipes, the director of the Middle East Forum. Unlike the IPC, which has always insisted that the MEK got a bad rap and is truly a deeply pro-American group dedicated to all the principles and values that have made this country great, the latter have basically propounded “the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend” argument disdained by Pletka.

Rubin and Tobin grappled last February on Commentary’s Contentions blog on the practicality of backing the MEK in the wake of reports that Israel had used the MEK to assassinate an Iranian scientist the previous month — reports that, in Tobin’s view, were “difficult to doubt.” Tobin:

The MEK are allies of convenience and, just like many wartime allies in other conflicts, share only a common enemy with Israel. But however nasty they may be, Israel need not blush about using them. For a democracy at war, the only truly immoral thing to do would be to let totalitarian Islamists like those in Tehran triumph.

To which Rubin responded:

Jonathan is correct that Israel cannot ignore the Iranian regime’s genocidal intent, and he is also correct that there is no moral equivalence between alleged Israeli targeting of Iranian nuclear scientists and Iranian assassination attempts upon Israeli diplomats.

…By utilizing the MEK—a group which Iranians view in the same way Americans see John Walker Lindh, the American convicted of aiding the Taliban—the Israelis risk winning some short-term gain at the tremendous expense of rallying Iranians around the regime’s flag. A far better strategy would be to facilitate regime change. Not only would the MEK be incapable of that mission, but involving them even cursorily would set the goal back years.

The Weekly Standard has generally avoided the controversy, but last May, Lee Smith, who is also associated with FDD, penned a generally sympathetic article entitled “Terrorists or Fall Guys” in which he quoted, among others, his FDD colleague and AEI alum, Reuel Marc Gerecht, as asserting, “If the PLO can be rehabilitated, so can the MEK.” The article featured at some length statements by Brig. Gen. David Phillips, the retired commandant of the U.S. Army Military Police, whose job was to disarm the MEK after the 2003 invasion and who opposed transferring the MEK from Camp Ashraf to Camp Liberty on the grounds that the Iraqi government would probably hand its members over to Tehran. The final sentence of the piece:

American credibility and prestige are on the line, says Phillips, not only in how we treat people under our protection but also in how we deal with Iran. “We’re afraid of sending the Iranians a strong message and getting them mad. But that’s exactly the message we want to send them.”

That’s apparently Smith’s bottom line on the question.

Pipes, who, unlike almost all other neo-cons, opposes U.S. intervention in Syria, has come out in clear support of the MEK, which, in a 2011 article entitled “Empower Iranians Vs. Tehran,” he called “the most prominent Iranian opposition group.”

He apparently disagrees with Rubin, a long-time senior editor of MEF’s Middle East Quarterly — and someone who has actually spent some time in Iran — about the MEK’s popularity inside Iran, arguing that:

…([J]ust as the MeK’s organizational and leadership skills helped bring down the shah in 1979, these skills can again facilitate regime change. The number of street protestors arrested for association with the MeK points to its role in demonstrations, as do slogans echoing MeK chants, e.g., calling Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei a “henchman,” Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a “dictator,” and shouting “down with the principle of Velayat-e Faqih” (that a religious figure heads the government).

From which we might fairly conclude that Pipes thinks that the MEK organized the Green Movement, or, better yet, that he takes Tehran’s for word it.

In any event, this is where Pipes comes out:

“Following a court-mandated review of the MeK’s terrorist designation, the secretary of tate must soon decide whether to maintain this listing. With one simple signature, the Obama administration can help empower Iranians to seize control over their destiny — and perhaps end the mullahs’ mad nuclear dash.”

Just last week, it came out that The Legal Project, yet another arm in Pipes’ empire, had “coordinated and financed the defense” of Seid Hassan Daioleslam in a defamation lawsuit filed in 2008 by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) and its president, Trita Parsi. The lawsuit was dismissed earlier this month by Federal District Court Judge John Bates on a summary judgment motion by the defense that the plaintiffs had failed to provide sufficient evidence that Daioleslam’s allegations that NIAC and Parsi were agents of the Iranian regime were malicious; that is, that the defendant knew at the time that he made those accusations that they were untrue. (The judge made no finding as to whether the accusations were in fact true, and you can read NIAC’s reaction here.)

While Diaoleslam has long denied charges by Parsi and others that he is himself associated with the MEK, our own Daniel Luban wrote a series of posts back in 2009 that provided evidence of such a link and of the rather nefarious purposes that Diaoleslam and his editor at the time, Kenneth Timmerman, were entertaining when the article that was the subject of the lawsuit was published. (See here and here for additional background and information.) In the course of his own inquiry, Daniel asked how it was that Diaoleslam, “whose professional activities are mostly limited to writing occasional pieces for obscure right-wing websites, is getting the money to devote himself full-time to research — not to mention how he can afford the likes of Sidley Austin LLP, the white-shoe law firm that is defending him in his lawsuit with NIAC.” So now we have at least a partial answer to that question; Pipes was helping him out. (Incidentally, for those of you who are interested in Obama-hatred and Islamophobia, don’t miss Pipes’ <a href=", whose professional activities are mostly limited to writing occasional pieces for obscure right-wing websites, is getting the money to devote himself full-time to research — not to mention how he can afford the likes of Sidley Austin LLP, the white-shoe law firm that is defending him in his lawsuit with NIAC." So now we have at least a partial answer to that question — Pipes, who believes that the MEK can lead the Iranian masses to overthrow the regime. It may be worth noting that Timmerman, who published Daioleslam's original report on NIAC, appears to believe that the MEK is indeed a terrorist group, as noted in an article he wrote for his Foundation for Democracy in Iran last year.

(Incidentally, for those of you interested in Pipes’ Islamophobia, don’t miss his <a href=”>recent five-part series in the Washington Times on Obama’s alleged early Muslim identity. It amasses an enormous amount of material to prove that Obama “has specifically and repeatedly lied about his Muslim identity” — except that the evidence marshaled by Pipes in support of that conclusion proves no such thing. Indeed, if there were a motion for summary judgment based on Pipes’ evidence, I would imagine that Judge Bates would throw the case out.)

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.

Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post: The neoconservative pundit attacks the Obama administration for not aligning its “red line” [...]]]> via Lobe Log

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.

Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post: The neoconservative pundit attacks the Obama administration for not aligning its “red line” on Iran (a nuclear weapon), with Israel’s red line (nuclear weapon-making capability) and not adhering to Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand for a deadline:

The Obama policy is in shambles. Which is why Cordesman argues that the only way to prevent a nuclear Iran without war is to establish a credible military threat to make Iran recalculate and reconsider. That means U.S. red lines: deadlines beyond which Washington will not allow itself to be strung, as well as benchmark actions that would trigger a response, such as the further hardening of Iran’s nuclear facilities to the point of invulnerability and, therefore, irreversibility.

Which made all the more shocking Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s dismissal last Sunday of the very notion of any U.S. red lines. No deadlines. No bright-line action beyond which Iran must not go. The sleeping giant continues to slumber. And to wait — as the administration likes to put it, “for Iran to live up to its international obligations.”

Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal: The board shares Krauthammer’s analysis:

Most of all, Iran continues its march toward a nuclear weapon despite the President’s vow that it is “unacceptable.” The U.S. says it has isolated Iran, but only last month the U.N. Secretary-General defied a U.S. plea and attended a non-aligned summit in Tehran. The Administration has issued wholesale exemptions to Congressional sanctions, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared on the weekend that the U.S. is “not setting deadlines” for Iran as it sprints to a bomb.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has engaged in repeated public arguments with Israel, supposedly its best ally in the region. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, recently declared that he doesn’t want to be “complicit” in any Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear sites. The White House failed to contradict him. A nation that appears so reluctant to stand by its friends won’t be respected or feared by its enemies.

Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post: The neoconservative pundit laments the fact that Israel’s Prime Minister must resort to “heckling” the US president to get what he wants and quotes a staffer from the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies to further her position on the Israel vs. Iran debate:

Such is the state of the U.S.-Israel relationship. The tussle over who requested what begs the question as to why the leaders aren’t meeting in New York. If the relationship is as close as Obama insists, there would be every reason to meet, make a show of solidarity and make a joint statement regarding Iran. So Netanyahu resorts to heckling Obama in public over “red lines.”

Schanzer said, “ The real problem here is the lack of transparency on the part of President Obama. When was the last time he delivered an official presidential statements on the Iranian nuclear crisis? He has not given the American people or the Israelis a glimpse of how he plans to tackle what has become the most pressing foreign policy issue of our time. This is what is driving Bibi to his wits end. “

So how is that leading from behind, timidity in the face of jihadists, meekness toward Iran and heavy defense cut policy working out? Are we more safe or are events spinning out of control? Are we most respected or less? The answer: Romney is being unfair pointing all this out.

Danielle Pletka, the New York Times: Explictly hawkish views and recommendation stated here by the vice president for foreign and defense policy at the neoconservative-dominated American Enterprise Institute:

America cannot prevent every tragedy, nor can we assure ourselves of the affection of every Middle Eastern citizen. But we can have a policy in Iraq that fights Iranian influence, a policy in Egypt that incentivizes liberalism among elected leaders, a policy in Syria that hastens the fall of Assad and promotes the rise of moderates, a policy that punishes attacks on our embassies that take place unimpeded by the local government (see Egypt), and a policy that rewards the values we cherish and punishes extremism. And yes, those policies can go hand in hand with a military strategy that attacks our enemies where they live. We may not always win the fight of western liberalism against Islamist extremism, but we could try much harder.

David Makovsky, the New Yorker: Ali Gharib points out why an argument made by David Makovsky of the AIPAC-created Washington Institute — that Israel’s bombing of Syria’s nuclear program should be factored into calculations about attacking Iran’s program — doesn’t stand up to an important test.

Conservative commentators and advisers to Mitt Romney’s foreign policy team have been chattering to the press a lot in the past few weeks, often on background to discuss in internal machinations over policy. The result is an emerging picture of a Romney team fractured by a lack of focus and [...]]]> via Think Progress

Conservative commentators and advisers to Mitt Romney’s foreign policy team have been chattering to the press a lot in the past few weeks, often on background to discuss in internal machinations over policy. The result is an emerging picture of a Romney team fractured by a lack of focus and unable to draw a sharp distinction between the candidate’s policies and those of President Obama.

Two press accounts today bolster the notion of disarray on Romney’s foreign policy team. In an article in the Daily Beast, neoconservative American Enterprise Institute vice president of foreign policy and defense studies Danielle Pletka — whose husband Stephen Rademaker advises Romney — lamented the lack of a top tier foreign policy spokesman for Romney who can speak to the press and keep the candidate abreast of developments, which in effect is keeping foreign policy on the back-burner:

One of the things that troubles me is that there is no lead foreign policy person who is traveling with the governor and who is there to talk to the press. … [Foreign policy] is one of President Obama’s biggest failings and the American people need to hear a debate about more than the economy.”

Former John Bolton aide Richard Grenell’s tenure as the campaign foreign policy spokesman ended almost before it started when the openly-gay Grenell resigned after the campaign buckled under pressure from right-wing groups and kept him cloistered during a critical foreign policy conference call with reporters.

One aide recalled to the Daily Beast a weekly team conference call where one adviser raised a report in Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency — known for its blatantly false propaganda — that Russia, Iran, Syria and China would stage a joint military exercise. The adviser told the Daily Beast:

It was so lame. These conference calls are really for people who have an hour in a half of time every week to waste.

The disarray was also on display in a Washington Times article from Monday. In the story, Romney advisers outlined a policy centered on supporting allies and not publicly diverging from supporting allies’ positions (something that already happened when an adviser trashed the British prime minister).

But when it comes down to policy specifics in the Washington Times, the Romney campaign again falls back on platitudes that offer little distinction from Obama’s policies. For example, Alex Wong, a young foreign policy adviser, told the paper:

In Afghanistan, while Mr. Romney agrees with 2014 as a realistic time frame for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, he simply would not have announced the withdrawal date ahead of time the way that Mr. Obama did.

The same could be said of Iran, where both the Washington Times article and past explanations have drawn little contrast with Obama’s policies, aside from heightened rhetoric.

Other recently emerging rifts on the team pit Republican moderates against the so-called “Cheney-ites” (those linked to former vice president Dick Cheney and his aggressive foreign policy). And the Cheney-ites often win out. But Americans, with Iraq just in the rearview and Afghanistan about to wind down, are war-wary. Perhaps that’s why an adviser said in May that “Romney doesn’t want to really engage these issues until he is in office.”

Weekly Reads/Watch:

Weekly Reads/Watch:

The hawks on the American Enterprise Institute’s foreign policy team are usually quick to hype the threat of a nuclear Iran and warn anyone who will listen that a nuclear armed Iran would spell doomsday for Israel and regional stability in the Middle East. But Reposted by arrangement with Think Progress

The hawks on the American Enterprise Institute’s foreign policy team are usually quick to hype the threat of a nuclear Iran and warn anyone who will listen that a nuclear armed Iran would spell doomsday for Israel and regional stability in the Middle East. But Danielle Pletka, the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI now says that the problem with a nuclear weapons possessing Iran is that the world might accept it as a responsible, nuclear weapons possessing state.

Pletka, speaking in an AEI promotional video, veers off-course from her usual talking point that a nuclear Iran would be uncontainable and hellbent on the destruction of Israel, saying:

The biggest problem for the United States is not Iran getting a nuclear weapon and testing it. It’s Iran getting a nuclear weapon and not using it. Because the second they have one and they don’t do anything bad, all of the naysayers are going to come back and say, ‘See! We told you Iran is a reponsible power. We told you Iran wasn’t getting nuclear weapons in order to use them immediately. We told you Iran wasn’t seeking regional influence or regional hegemony through its acquisition of nuclear weapons. And they will eventually define Iran with nuclear weapons as not a problem.

Watch it:

“Hold on. The ‘biggest problem’ with Iran getting a nuclear weapon is not that Iranians will use it but that they won’t use it and that they might behave like a ‘responsible power’?” Media Matters’ MJ Rosenberg asks, adding, “But what about the hysteria about a second Holocaust?”

Pletka’s new position — that the “biggest problem” is Iran possessing a nuclear weapon and not using it — is probably not going to be the talking point du jour at AEI’s December 6, event “The Costs of Containing Iran: More Than the U.S. Is Bargaining For.” But it will be interesting to see if Pletka uses the venue to clarify her position and reaffirm her hard-line stance against a nuclear Iran.

AEI scholar Michael Rubin recently took to the blog of the neoconservative flagship Commentary and attacked Tehran Bureau, an excellent resource on all things Iran, for linking to what he called “fake biographies of conservatives,” which, he suggested, warranted a Congressional investigation. His reference was to profiles on the website Right [...]]]> and Ali Gharib

AEI scholar Michael Rubin recently took to the blog of the neoconservative flagship Commentary and attacked Tehran Bureau, an excellent resource on all things Iran, for linking to what he called “fake biographies of conservatives,” which, he suggested, warranted a Congressional investigation. His reference was to profiles on the website Right Web (RW), a project of the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive DC think tank.

If Right Web sounds familiar to our readers, that’s because we often link to RW profiles. In fact, though he never mentioned it, the two Tehran Bureau articles with RW links Rubin mentioned were written by us (one by Ali on his own; the other co-authored). We’ve also both contributed to RW’s illuminating features section (that’s called disclosure, kids). Needless to say, we think RW is a useful website and a valuable resource.

Rubin, obviously, does not share our view. In his post, he wrote:

Someone at [PBS's] Frontline website has been substituting fake biographies of conservatives written by an organization called Right Web for legitimate institutional biographies.

That someone, of course, is us. Rubin‘s feigned ignorance of our work is comical. He’s raised his objections of our coverage in person before at an AEI event, asserting to Ali that he was not an “Iran hawk,” and, while researching an article last November, Ali e-mailed Rubin with an interview request to which he replied:

Ali, the more you link to Right Web, the less you have credibility as a journalist.  I’ll pass.

Rubin appears to have been waging a private jihad against RW for some time. In his initial Commentary post, Rubin cited a 2009 correspondence with RW’s director, Michael Flynn (Rubin refers to him as the “editor”). The actual correspondence, which RW reprinted on its website, demonstrates that Rubin mischaracterized Flynn’s response to an inquiry. (The e-mails contained this lovely rebuttal to Rubin‘s objection to being called an ‘Iran hawk’: “In our humble opinion, suggesting assassinating a country’s leader is tantamount to attacking that country.”)

RW rightly called Rubin‘s attacks “smears” against the website. The profiles are all fully sourced and based on publicly available news clips. And they were hardly “substitut(ed)” for “legitimate institutional biographies.” In a letter to the editors of Commentary (which Flynn reproduced in an article on Right Web after Commentary failed to respond to his queries), Flynn wrote that RW profiles

do not attempt to be comprehensive, nor do they try to mislead readers into thinking that they are somehow “official” biographies. At the top of each profile we state, “Right Web neither represents nor endorses any of the individuals or groups profiled on this site.”

Again, that statement is at the top of every single RW profile.

A few days after Rubin‘s attack, Tehran Bureau appended an editor’s note to the two pieces Rubin mentioned. Part of the note read:

After reviewing the matter, we find that the biographies on the Right Web site are not at all fake or fabricated, and seem to be well-sourced.

Rubin, predictably, threw a hissy fit in a second Commentary post:

That the editors at PBS Frontline are unable to differentiate between assertions of opinion on hard-left blogs and fact-checked news sources suggests an unfortunate lack of judgment and professionalism and an organization undeserving of tax-payer subsidy.

By way of an example, Rubin attempts to deconstruct the RW page for the Office of Special Plans (OSP), a short-lived and controversial outfit in George W. Bush’s Defense Department that was widely criticized as a nexus of neoconservative ideologues who selectively spread intelligence to the White House and the press in order to build a case for war against Iraq.

Rubin attacks the integrity of Robert Dreyfuss, a veteran national-security reporter for the The Nation whose work is cited in the RW profile of OSP. Rubin, as he always does, dredged up Dreyfuss’ past work for controversial conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche’s magazine. That bit is true, but Dreyfuss long, long ago disassociated himself from the LaRouchie scene, and has since distinguished himself as an excellent reporter on U.S. foreign policy.

Rubin goes on to attack a retired air force officer and whistle blower; impugns the credibility of legendary investigative reporter Sy Hersh (because of one admittedly bizarre speech); and cites a Pentagon Inspector General report that he claims exonerated OSP and officials involved therein. The IG report actually states that the OSP was not directly involved in the intel scandals that provoked the investigation, but rather had become a generic term to refer to the work of the Office of the then-Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, led by Douglas Feith, whose intel work the IG characterized as “inappropriate” and misleading. Rubin, of course, does not mention these rather important and relevant findings, which are, however, mentioned in Feith’s RW profile).

Rubin criticizes our piece in Tehran Bureau for asserting that Pentagon analyst Harold Rhode “worked in the” OSP, an assertion we actually never made. We wrote that he had been “involved with” OSP’s work, as has been widely reported and as one would expect given his very close and long-standing ties with Richard Perle who helped Feith get his job. (Feith’s son, David, currently an assistant editorial features editor at — surprise! — the Wall Street Journal, helped Perle and David Frum research their 2003 neo-conservative classic, An End to Evil when he was still in high school, according to the book’s acknowledgments.

Does it sound like Rubin is doing more than looking out for the integrity of news sources that receive federal assistance? It should: He’s actually defending his career. What Rubin omits, and as his actual institutional biography and RW page demonstrate, is that he in fact worked in the Defense Department at the time. He was closely associated with other ideological neoconservatives involved with OSP who have been blamed for misleading Americans on the Iraqi threat (WMD’s and Al Qaeda ties) and worked as a political adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority. The latter was the U.S. occupation government in the early days of Iraq, at the time when the U.S. mismanaged the situation there and missed — or selectively didn’t report to the U.S. public — the rising signs of the deadly impending sectarian violence and eventual civil war. With a track record like that, perhaps one can’t blame Rubin for highly selective disclosure (‘Heckuva job, Rubin‘).

Lastly, Rubin takes a shot at RW director Michael Flynn’s CV:

Let’s hope that the editors of PBS Frontline never fact-check the editor of Right Web’s claim that he has published in the Washington Post because neither LEXIS-NEXIS nor WashingtonPost.com seem to have any record of any such article.

That’s funny: We’re not even ‘scholars’ at any institution (let alone under the tutelage of Danielle Pletka), and yet, through cunning research skills, we were able to quickly search the Post‘s website and turned up an abstract of Flynn’s 2005 article. (If Rubin wants to read the whole thing without paying, he can find a copy here — or get a new research assistant.)

Not only did Michael Rubin’s government service coincide with the run-up to and botched execution of the Iraq occupation, and not only does his research acumen leave something to be desired, but he’s also proven himself a less than stellar military analyst. When he was still vigorously boosting Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi, Rubin was a early, vociferous and persistent critic of Gen. David Petraeus’s attempts to co-opt the Sunni insurgency. What Rubin denounced as “appeasement” — as opposed to the now-discredited “deBaathification” pushed by Chalabi and his neoconservative allies at Rubin’s and Perle’s American Enterprise Institute — turns out to have salvaged the war. Over his opposition, the Petraeus-led table-turning made the general a hero among Rubin’s ideological comrades.

His attacks on Tehran Bureau, Right Web and us are only the latest chapters of a less-than-sparkling career in punditry for Michael Rubin. Despite calling for a Congressional investigation into PBS’s linking to Right Web profiles and an end to PBS’s federal funding, Rubin fails to show how any of the profiles are “fake” or “conspiracy-riddled.”

Rubin’s blog posts attacking our articles and RW are indicative of the sensitivity that he must feel, along, we would imagine, with many of his colleagues, over RW’s well-sourced and factual descriptions of neoconservatives’ (including Rubin’s) and other militarists’ careers in both the public and private sectors.

Michael Rubin‘s own career suggests misjudgment after misjudgment. And yet, he’s calling for a Congressional investigation into a news outlet based on their sources. If Rubin were to better explain and own up to some of his dubious contributions to U.S. foreign policy over the last decade — as outlined in his RW profile — instead of sweeping them under the rug, his criticisms might hold more weight.

Just look at some of the Americans who took [...]]]> If you haven’t already, head over the website of the Nation and read every last word of Matt Duss’s report from Herzliya, the biggest annual Israeli security conference. The event is best known for being where Israeli rightists and U.S. neocons swoon over each other.

Just look at some of the Americans who took the trip this year: Noah Pollak, Jennifer Rubin (whose trip was paid for by Pollak’s organization), Judith Miller, Scooter Libby, Danielle Pletka, Reuel Marc Gerecht, and so on and so on.

Duss tells it better than I could. Marvel at the madness:

To be sure, drumbeating on Iran still dominated the official conference agenda. But, as if to demonstrate that everyone has limited bandwidth for worry, almost every discussion eventually circled back to Egypt. There was growing anxiety that while Israel continued to confront the threat from the East—the growth of a “poisonous crescent” (as one member of the Israeli government put it to me) consisting of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Lebanon—the peace on its western border could no longer simply be taken for granted. Egypt was raining on everything.

The drummers were already going to have trouble keeping the beat in the wake of outgoing Mossad chief Meir Dagan’s and Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon’s recent statements that efforts at sabotage and international sanctions had likely delayed an Iranian nuke for several years. Egypt only made things more complicated. Still, it was odd to hear neoconservative doyenne Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute dismiss as “propaganda” former Mossad head Efraim Halevi’s assertion that “the US and Israel are winning the war against Iran.” “If Iran is losing, I’d like to be that kind of loser,” Pletka said, reminding the audience that, “Khomeini referred to Israel as a one-bomb country.”

“What I’m saying is not propaganda,” Halevi shot back. “The danger is believing the propaganda of others.”

Now that you’ve read the excerpt, go back and read the whole thing. Really. Think about when an Israeli general says, “In the Arab world, there is no room for democracy.” Ask yourself is these are the people we should be listening to about bombing Iran.