by Djavad Salehi-Isfahani
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was elected to office largely on his promise to lift the economy out if its deepest recession since the Iran-Iraq war. One year later, evidence of a recovery is hard to find, but he has achieved a few significant accomplishments.
Rouhani’s most visible accomplishment [...]]]>
by Djavad Salehi-Isfahani
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was elected to office largely on his promise to lift the economy out if its deepest recession since the Iran-Iraq war. One year later, evidence of a recovery is hard to find, but he has achieved a few significant accomplishments.
Rouhani’s most visible accomplishment is lower inflation, down by more than half from over 40 percent a year ago. The runaway inflation of the last three years that alienated the middle class and even many conservatives from former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is now back to a level that Iranians consider normal.
Containing inflation was achieved at considerable cost, though, by keeping government expenditures to a minimum and forgoing any kind of fiscal or monetary stimulus. Rouhani even managed to increase energy prices last April without any protest, indicating that his popularity has so far survived austerity. The energy price hikes were substantial enough to close the budget gap left by Ahmadinejad’s generous — some would say irresponsible — cash transfers. The price of gasoline was increased by 75 percent, diesel by 67 percent, and other energy prices by about 30 percent.
Rouhani’s second economic achievement was restoring the business confidence lost to the erratic economic management of the Ahmadinejad years. He did this by simply getting elected and by appointing a competent team. His election stopped or at least slowed down the hemorrhaging of Iran’s economy, which has been hit by draconian international sanctions and bad domestic policies.
Rouhani’s greatest economic success came in the form of a political victory. He overcame substantial domestic opposition to rapprochement with the West to sign the Joint Plan of Action (JPA) with world powers last November. The economic impact of the JPA has been underwhelming, but without it the economy would have continued to slide.
The agreement can be credited with the strengthening of Iran’s currency, the rial, which is a good indication of rising business confidence. Since November, Iran’s oil exports have also increased by 30 percent, about $7 billion of Iran’s frozen funds have been released, and petrochemical exports, which received specific sanctions relief, have increased.
This spring, auto production (also marked for sanctions relief in the JPA) was up by a whopping 90 percent compared to a year ago according to Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh, the minister for industry, mines and commerce. He also mentioned increases in petrochemicals production by 9 percent and durable goods by 30 percent.
These improvements are most likely lost on the average Iranian, whose job prospects and income has not increased since Rouhani took office. The obvious culprit is, of course, the financial and shipping sanctions that limit Iran’s access to its foreign exchange earnings and continue to choke large sections of its industries. Manufacturers are still using cumbersome and costly channels to procure their raw materials and parts. For them, the optimistic official statements and newspaper headlines proclaiming the imminent “collapse of the sanctions regime,” is just talk. Indeed, while Western critics of Iran’s limited sanctions relief, particularly in Washington, point to the flood of foreign business missions to Tehran, no actual investment has occurred due to the continued uncertainty about the future of the sanctions.
The latest disappointing jobs report shows the limited impact of the JPA so far. Industry as a whole continued to lose jobs last spring, more than 6 months after the signing of the agreement.
There were 700,000 fewer industry workers employed in spring 2014 than when Rouhani took office. These numbers cast doubt on the claim made in a recent report published by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and Roubini Global Economics that the economic benefit of the JPA “is reflected in increased economic output and improvements in employment within Iran.” National accounts data published last week shows that industrial output for 2013/14 as a whole was down by 4.5 percent and industrial employment has been falling through spring 2014.
Data on personal incomes and consumption published by the Statistical Center of Iran also indicates that economic recovery is yet to come. For the Iranian year that ended on March 20, 2014, real household consumption fell by 5 percent for urban households and 12 percent for rural ones. Their real food expenditures meanwhile fell by 14 percent.
So does the anemic economic recovery weaken Rouhani’s hand in the nuclear negotiations and should the West therefore toughen its position now in order to extract further concessions from Iran?
Sanctions have no doubt increased Iran’s willingness to negotiate, but it would be a mistake to think that more sanctions always brings more concessions. Most Iranians believe their government has held its part of the bargain since last November, so they would see more sanctions now as bad faith on the part of the P5+1 (US, UK, France, Russia, China plus Germany) and blame the failure of the negotiations on them. This would reduce pressure on Rouhani to make further concessions.
Furthermore, the Iranian middle class, after having survived eight years of Ahmadinejad, still regards Rouhani as the best leader to champion its interests. The poor, who, despite years of sanctions are decreasing as a proportion of the total population, are meanwhile relatively well protected. Thanks to the cash assistance program instituted by Ahmadinejad (about $40 per person per month in international dollars) in 2012/13, when average real incomes and expenditures were falling, poverty rates actually fell. At the time, only 5 percent of the population was counted as poor, based on a $5 per day poverty line (in international dollars). Iran’s effective income assistance programs can be adjusted to protect them against further economic deterioration.
The more interesting question is how the course of the talks could affect Rouhani’s presidency beyond its first year.
As they stand now, Rouhani’s plans are helping the private sector lead the economic recovery and letting markets form the basis of economic life in the Islamic Republic. If the talks succeed in the next four months and sanctions are gradually lifted, Iranian businesses are sure to spring into action, as they do when oil money starts to flow. Rouhani will be then be well on his way to a second term.
But Rouhani has reservations about this scenario. In the past, oil-induced booms have deepened Iran’s dependence on the outside world, something that runs counter to the vision of a “Resistance Economy” identified with the Supreme Leader.
If the talks fail, as the Washington hawks seem to wish, Rouhani would have to reverse course; instead of re-integrating Iran into the global economy with the private sector in the lead, he would promote economic self-reliance and resistance to outside pressures, a strategy that fits much better with the state and its para-statals at the helm.
In the narrow, security-focused discussion of Iran that passes for analysis these days in the US, the broader issues of importance to Western leaders are easily lost. But for those interested in longer-term relations with Iran, it helps to bear in mind that the current negotiations are not just about Iran’s nuclear activities; they are also about the direction that Iran’s economy will take in the coming decade, and who could benefit from it.
Photo: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani visits the Shahid Rajai Port Complex port in Hormozgan Province on Feb. 25, 2014.
]]>by Jim Lobe
A week after the now-notorious “Adelson Primary” at the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) convention in Las Vegas, the Washington Post ran the first of what it called a series of profiles of a “handful of wealthy donors” who are likely to give a ton of money — many [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
A week after the now-notorious “Adelson Primary” at the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) convention in Las Vegas, the Washington Post ran the first of what it called a series of profiles of a “handful of wealthy donors” who are likely to give a ton of money — many tons, now that the Supreme Court has opened the floodgates of campaign cash in the McCutcheon v. FEC case — to political candidates in the current and 2016 election cycles. It chose hedge fund supremo Paul Singer as its first subject, a major GOP funder.
Actually, the Post ran two versions of the profile — one longer piece on its blog and a second, somewhat shorter piece printed in the newspaper. The blog post is more comprehensive. While it focuses primarily on Singer’s support — and substantial contributions to campaigns — for gay marriage around the country, it also mentions other causes that have benefited from his largesse, including his opposition to any form of financial regulation and Israel about which it notes only:
Like fellow Republican donor Sheldon Adelson, Singer is staunchly pro-Israel. He is on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition, which held its spring meeting last weekend. He was a member of a large American delegation that went to celebrate Israel’s 60th anniversary in 2008.
The print version of the profile, in contrast, focused almost exclusively on Singer’s LGBT rights advocacy; indeed, neither the word “Israel,” nor the phrase “Republican Jewish Coalition,” nor the name “Sheldon Adelson” appear in the more than 1,000-word piece. The only hint in the article — which is likely to be more influential in forming opinions about Singer’s philanthropy within the Beltway than the blog post — that he has any interest in Israel at all is found in the last paragraph in which it is noted that Singer sits on the board of the “conservative” [!!??] Commentary magazine. But then you’d have to know that Commentary is a hard-line neoconservative journal obsessed with Israel to figure out that Singer takes an interest in matters Middle Eastern.
In a blog post published Monday by The Nation, LobeLog co-founder and contributor Eli Clifton (who now lives in New York and thus doesn’t have ready access to the Washington Post print edition) noted appropriately that the Post’s blog profile had skimped over Singer’s Israel-related philanthropy, notably his generosity to the Likudist Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), to which he contributed $3.6 million between 2008 and 2011 and may have provided yet more since, albeit not through his family’s foundation. According to tax forms compiled by Eli, between 2009 and 2012, Singer also contributed about $2.3 million to the American Enterprise Institute which, of course, led the charge to war in Iraq and remains highly hawkish on Iran, although those contributions may have had as much or more to do with AEI’s laissez-faire economic theology as with its Israel advocacy. It’s safe to say that his current memberships on the board of both the RJC and Commentary – both staunchly Likudist in orientation — belie some substantial financial support, as does his previous service on the board of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) whose executive director, Mike Makovsky, yesterday co-authored an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal urging the Obama administration to transfer some B-52s and bunker-busting Massive Ordnance Penetrators to Israel ASAP for possible use against Iran. In the past, Singer’s family foundation has also contributed to Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy and the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) — organizations which he may still be supporting, albeit not through his foundation, which is required by the IRS to publicly disclose its giving.
In other words, there is reason to believe that Singer’s Israel-related giving — it seems most, if not all of which, has been provided to hard-line neoconservative, even Islamophobic organizations — he told the New York Times in 2007 that “America finds itself at an early stage of a drawn-out existential struggle with radical strains of pan-national Islamists” — certainly rivals, if not exceeds, his entirely laudable campaign on behalf of gay rights.
One thing Eli left out of his Nation post was Singer’s role as kind of the ultimate “vulture capitalist.” As noted in this Right Web profile quoting Greg Palast:
Singer’s modus operandi is to find some forgotten tiny debt owed by a very poor nation. …He waits for the United States and European taxpayers to forgive the poor nations’ debts, then waits a bit longer for offers of food aid, medicine and investment loans. Then Singer pounces, legally grabbing at every resource and all the money going to the desperate country. Trade stops, funds freeze, and an entire economy is effectively held hostage. Singer then demands aid-giving nations to pay monstrous ransoms to let trade resume.
In one case he demanded $400 million from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for a debt he had acquired for less than $10 million; in another he secured $58 million from the Peruvian government in exchange for letting President Alberto Fujimori flee the country in a private plane Singer had seized against payment of the debt.
More recently, his efforts to capitalize on Argentina’s debt (see here and here for IPS’ coverage) — which was touched on very briefly by the Post’s blog profile — have included the creation of an organization, the American Task Force Argentina (ATFA), that has taken out full-page ads in Capitol Hill newspapers linking the government of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner to Iran and an alleged cover-up of the highly questionable Iranian role in the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, as well as the enlistment of FDD, AEI, and staunchly pro-Israel lawmakers, such as Sen. Mark Kirk and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who have benefited from his campaign contributions, in his cause. Singer’s case has been opposed by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and a host of humanitarian and charitable organizations concerned that, if he succeeds at the U.S. Supreme Court, efforts to relieve poor countries of unsustainable debt may be set back by a more than a decade.
So, while Singer’s support for LGBT rights is certainly an interesting and newsworthy topic for the Post’s profile of this major Republican donor — after all, it is a kind of man-bites-dog story — it seems pretty irresponsible to completely ignore, as the Post did in its print version, these other dimensions of Singer’s political philanthropy, particularly given the chronological proximity to the “Adelson Primary.”
]]>by Jim Lobe
Anyone who has followed the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) knows it’s a neoconservative organization whose central purpose since its founding in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 has less to do with democracy than with promoting the views of Israel as defined, in particular, by [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
Anyone who has followed the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) knows it’s a neoconservative organization whose central purpose since its founding in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 has less to do with democracy than with promoting the views of Israel as defined, in particular, by Bibi Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party. It is no wonder that Sheldon Adelson, who casually called this week for the nuking of Tehran if Iran doesn’t abandon its nuclear program, provided the group with more than $1.5 million in donations between 2008 and 2011, as we reported yesterday.
Now, it just so happened that was in the news this week on another front: Jofi Joseph, the White House staffer who worked on the proliferation file on the National Security Council and who was outed as the tweeter known as @NatSecWonk, served as a fellow at FDD in 2011. Here’s how the New York Times first reported his association and characterized FDD:
According to Mr. Joseph’s biography on the Web site of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a neoconservative group where he was a fellow for 2011, “between his stints on Capitol Hill, Jofi was a senior consultant with a professional services firm, facilitating strategic planning and policy analysis for the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts on critical infrastructure protection.” (Emphasis added.)
The succeeding paragraph named FDD associates, including John Hannah, former national security adviser to Dick Cheney, House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (whose SuperPac, incidentally, received at least $5 million from Adelson in the last election cycle), Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, and Gary Bauer, the Christian Zionist leader who serves on the boards of the Christians United for Israel and the Emergency Committee for Israel — all neoconservatives.
One day later, the Times published a follow-up article on Joseph, but this time, the characterization of FDD changed rather remarkably. Here’s the new paragraph:
In 2011, Mr. Joseph also held a national security fellowship with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, which has a generally conservative bent. “Clearly, he had risen up through the Democratic ranks,” said Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of the foundation, where fellowships are designed for “young and upcoming national security people in D.C.” of all views, Mr. Dubowitz said.
Well, all one can say is that the Times nailed it on the first go-round, but really blew it the second time. What does “a generally conservative bent” mean when attached to an organization whose principal purpose is the advocacy of the Likud Party’s foreign-policy views in the U.S.? I understand “generally conservative” as meaning someone like Brent Scowcroft or Robert Gates. Moreover, “neoconservative” as a description of FDD is not only accurate, it’s also very concise in contrast to “has a generally conservative bent,” which is quite vague and verbose in a way that newspapers try to avoid.
We can, of course, speculate as to why the change occurred. It could have been the decision of a copy editor who may have felt uncomfortable with “neoconservative” and thought that “generally conservative” sounded better. Or it could’ve been that Dubowitz strongly objected to the word “neoconservative” attached to his organization because it has taken on a rather pejorative meaning in popular parlance due to the critical role the neoconservatives played in promoting the Iraq war (which FDD actively promoted from the “get-go” after 9/11, running a TV ad produced by a former Israeli Embassy press official, for example, that suggested that Yasser Arafat, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were all part of the same threat.)
Indeed, I suspect that’s one very good reason why some readily identifiable neoconservatives who featured so prominently in promoting the Iraq war — people like Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, and Doug Feith — have been keeping such a low profile on Iran over the past year. They’re the ones who gave neocons a bad name, while Dubowitz wasn’t even on the scene back then.
]]>by Eli Clifton
Washington’s premiere hawkish think tank is funded by a small handful of Republican mega donors, according to a just-published tax filing. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), which employs some of the most consistent advocates of crippling sanctions and hyping threats of military action against Iran, receives [...]]]>
by Eli Clifton
Washington’s premiere hawkish think tank is funded by a small handful of Republican mega donors, according to a just-published tax filing. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), which employs some of the most consistent advocates of crippling sanctions and hyping threats of military action against Iran, receives the majority of its funding from Home Depot funder Bernard Marcus, hedge funder Paul Singer and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.
FDD’s President Clifford May tells me his organization has “both Republicans and Democrats among its donors and we are proud of our work with policymakers on both sides of the aisle.”
That might be true. But the fact remains that as of 2011, the FDD has been highly dependent on some of the Republican party’s most committed donors.
My full write up on the FDD’s hyper-partisan underwriters can be read at Salon.com. The FDD’s 2011 “Schedule A”, which shows the organization’s largest donors from 2008 to 2011, can be viewed below.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
Outside of Iran, there is no doubt that the biggest losers in Iran’s election this past weekend were the Likud government in Israel and its supporters, especially neoconservatives, in the United States.
The response of Israel’s Prime Minister to the election of centrist candidate Hassan Rouhani as [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
Outside of Iran, there is no doubt that the biggest losers in Iran’s election this past weekend were the Likud government in Israel and its supporters, especially neoconservatives, in the United States.
The response of Israel’s Prime Minister to the election of centrist candidate Hassan Rouhani as Iran’s next President was almost comical in its sharp reversal from the rhetoric of the past eight years. As was widely reported, Benjamin Netanyahu said that it was Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and not the president who set nuclear policy.
That is, of course, true, and it is precisely what opponents of an attack on Iran have been saying for the past eight years. Netanyahu and his neocon allies, on the other hand, were repeatedly pointing to outgoing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the fearsome specter, the man who wanted to “wipe Israel off the map” and must be prevented from acquiring the means to do so. With Ahmadinejad gone, and, much to the surprise of many observers, not replaced by someone from the arch-conservative (or, in Iranian political terms, principlist) camp, the hawks have lost their best tool for frightening people and getting them behind the idea of attacking Iran.
So, Netanyahu has stepped up his push for a hard line on Iran, saying, “The international community must not become caught up in wishful thinking and be tempted to relax the pressure on Iran to stop its nuclear program.” Netanyahu is admitting that all the rhetoric around Ahemdinejad was insincere, and that the Iranian president is only relevant insofar as his visage can be used to whip people into a frenzy behind his call for war.
He has plenty of support in the United States. As the Iranian election results were coming in on Saturday, the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Josh Block of The Israel Project and other, similar sources tweeted incessantly about how meaningless the elections were. Ahmadinejad was exactly what the hawks wanted, an Iranian leader who displayed fiery rhetoric, was confrontational with the West and expressed hostility toward Israel and even Jews more broadly (though his frequently cited statement about wiping Israel off the map was fabricated, he did host a conference of leading Holocaust deniers, for instance, among other incidents). Rouhani, a man determined to project an air of reasonableness, makes the drumbeat for war harder to sustain.
Recognizing this, Netanyahu, his friends at Commentary Magazine, and similar extremists have warned against getting “caught up in wishful thinking” regarding Rouhani. Already, there have been declarations that Israel’s hoped-for attack on Iran has been set back by at least another year. And even the tentative, merely polite response from US President Barack Obama has been met with apoplexy from the radical hawks.
So, what does Rouhani mean for US and Israeli policy? Of course, it is very true, as opponents of war on Iran have been saying for years, that the Supreme Leader, not the President, makes the major decisions in Iran. But, just as the Likud/Neocon campaign to use Ahmadinejad as the face of Iran was disingenuous, so too is their current attempt to contend that the Iranian president, and this election is meaningless.
The Iranian President is not like the Israeli one or the British monarchy; that is, it is not a merely ceremonial role. As we have seen repeatedly, the President of Iran handles quite a bit of the public diplomacy of the Islamic Republic, and he has considerable influence over domestic issues, appointments and other facets of government. When the Iranian people made their choice, it was far from a meaningless one.
One event, prior to the election, was particularly telling. A few days before, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called on all Iranians to vote. This was not just a “get out the vote” pitch, as we see so often in the United States. After the events of 2009, there was, quite understandably, widespread cynicism among moderates and reformists in Iran. Khamenei drove the point home by encouraging even those who “do not support the Islamic system” to cast their ballots. The result was a fantastically high voter turnout: 72.7% according to the Iranian Interior Ministry, a figure that was supported by virtually all reports from the ground. Combined with the eleventh hour joining of forces behind Rouhani, this turned into a mandate for centrism over the hardline conservative views that Khamenei himself holds and that have dominated Iranian politics for most of the past decade.
While it’s a little much to assume that Khamenei’s call to vote would bring victory to a man who, while hardly a radical reformist, clearly sees things differently than Iran’s Supreme Leader, he surely knew it was a possibility. Why would he do that?
The events of 2009 are quite likely the answer. The contested presidential election of that year, and the protests, violence and national schism it produced did a lot of harm to Khamenei and Iran. The interior breech has not yet healed; more than that, the Green Movement and the Islamic Republic’s response damaged Iran in the international arena. It made it much easier to ratchet up the calls for war in the US (even if they have not reached the tipping point Netanyahu and his neocon friends hoped) and, with the subsequent events of the Arab Awakening, it undermined Iran’s efforts to usurp Saudi Arabia’s position in the region. Instead of the image Iran wants to portray — that of an Islamic Republic whose 1979 revolution threw off Western domination — it appeared more like the Arab regimes whose time seems to have finally run out.
There can be little doubt that Khamenei’s willingness to risk a new president who holds different views about Iran’s domestic politics and international strategy was meant to address those wounds from 2009. And therein lies the real opportunity.
Rouhani was elected by promising to fix the economy, improve Iran’s international standing, including with the West, and relaxing some social laws. Both of the first two are inseparable from the standoff with the US and Israel. How far is Khamenei willing to go to break that impasse?
On Tuesday, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Iran was willing to stop its enrichment of uranium to 20% levels, if “substantial reciprocal steps” were forthcoming. No doubt, the hawks consider this more deception, but Rouhani has also called for greater transparency for the Iranian nuclear program as well.
This is a real opportunity, and one that the United States and Europe must explore to the fullest. If the hawks are right, then this is the easiest way to prove that. Which, conversely, makes it all the more encouraging that Iran seems to be making the first move toward accommodation.
This is not speculation that Khamenei has suddenly had a radical shift in outlook. After all, his call to vote came after the usual politicking, and political shenanigans, that trims the list of candidates to one that the Guardian Council, and by extension, Khamenei approves of. Still, that list included not only Rouhani, but also Mohammadreza Aref, a reform-minded candidate than Rouhani who withdrew voluntarily to increase Rouhani’s chances of winning.
And it is not at all difficult to believe that, after eight years of increasing tension, declining Iranian prestige in the Middle East and an economy reeling under the weight of Western sanctions, Khamenei may wish to pursue a new strategy, one which holds the possibility of reversing those trends and perhaps resolving, or at least significantly ameliorating, some of the vexing problems that Iran faces and which, eventually, could destabilize his regime.
It is perfectly sensible, politically. Now is the time for Barack Obama to close his ears to a Congress that frames the issue as an Iranian choice between war and total capitulation and ignores even the experts it calls to its hearings, in favor of Netanyahu’s paranoia, and his lunatic demands. Obama has an opportunity to test Iranian intentions right away, and very possibly, to march the region back from yet another bloody misadventure.
]]>by Jasmin Ramsey
The following quote from this Washington Post article on last week’s nuclear talks with Iran stood out despite it being a regurgitation of past statements:
“I don’t want to overpromise, but we’re encouraged,” said the official, speaking to reporters accompanying Secretary of State John [...]]]>
by Jasmin Ramsey
The following quote from this Washington Post article on last week’s nuclear talks with Iran stood out despite it being a regurgitation of past statements:
“I don’t want to overpromise, but we’re encouraged,” said the official, speaking to reporters accompanying Secretary of State John F. Kerry during a visit to Europe. “Our people who were there felt the sanctions have gotten Iran’s attention,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe diplomatically sensitive negotiations.
Sanctions are working, says the Obama administration, repeatedly, for one reason or another. Yet practically everyone else — including those who initially pushed for and/or continue to tout sanctions on Iran — appear to disagree, while Iran hasn’t budged from its previous negotiating stance.
Sanctions probably won’t work, argues Clifford May, president of the neoconservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies — possibly the most effective DC-based advocate of “crippling sanctions” on Iran — while pushing for ongoing sanctions. (This is also a great example of the supporting logic used by hardline sanctions advocates):
[Sanctions on Iran] are unlikely to succeed — if success is defined as stopping the regime’s rulers from developing nuclear weapons — yet they are an essential component of any serious and strategic policy mix.
And why are sanctions on Iran “essential”, according to May?
Sanctions may be most useful after a strike against Iran’s nuclear-weapons facilities. At that point, American and other Western diplomats will need all the leverage they can get. Their job will be to insist that Iran’s rulers verifiably end the nuclear-weapons program, halt terrorism sponsorship, and ease domestic oppression. In return: no further damage and the sanctions lifted. If such an agreement can be reached, the conflict will be over, cooperation can begin, and the people of Iran will soon be more free and prosperous, while Iran’s neighbors will sleep more soundly. If such an agreement cannot be reached, continuing and even tightening sanctions will make it more difficult for Iran to replace facilities destroyed after a military option has been exercised.
Now on to Israel’s former foreign minister, Shlomo Ben Ami, who notes that the kind of sanctions that Iran is currently enduring will likely only harden its leaders’ alleged nuclear drive:
Yes, a harsh sanctions regime might still gain additional supporters, but an Iran with its back against the wall would probably be even more obstinate in its nuclear drive. After all, Iraq was an easy target in the first Gulf War precisely because it had abandoned its nuclear program, and possessed no weapons of mass destruction. Similarly, Libya’s Muammar el-Qaddafi exposed himself to a NATO onslaught by relinquishing his WMDs.
Virginia tech economist and Lobe Log contributor Djavad Salehi-Isfahani argued in October 2012 that the current sanctions regime — and the Ahmadinejad government’s response to it — could harm Iran’s middle/upper classes (otherwise natural allies of the West), and judging by recent reports, he’s probably right.
The counterproductive effects of sanctions have compelled several experts to point out that the so-called “tool” can only be effective if it’s accompanied with the very real possibility of significant relief. Paul Pillar’s thoughts on Congress’ apparently unquenchable thirst for sanctioning Iran back in December 2012 still apply today, a week after members of the Senate and House introduced more legislation that’s unlikely to positively impact the diplomatic process with Iran:
It should be clear from the history of the past couple of years, as well as a little thought about incentives for Iranian policymakers, that simply piling on still more sanctions without more Western flexibility at the negotiating table will not attain the U.S. objective. The sanctions are hurting Iran and are a major reason Iran wants to negotiate a deal. But the Iranians have dismissed the only sanctions relief that has been offered so far as peanuts, which it is. They have no reason to make significant concessions if they don’t think they will be getting anything significant in return. If members of Congress were really interested in inducing changes in Iran’s policy and behavior, they would be devoting as much time and energy to asking why the powers negotiating with Iran evidently do not intend to depart much from their failed negotiating formulas of the past as they would in trying to find some new sanction to impose.
(On Friday Pillar elaborated on how elements of the Israel lobby in the US and Congress are sustaining Iran’s alleged nuclear drive.)
An here’s the essence of a major report on the effects and results of sanctions on Iran released by the International Crisis Group last week:
…rather than adjusting its nuclear policy to remove the sanctions, the [Iranian] regime likely will continue to adjust its economic policy to adapt to them. While important regime constituencies have been harmed by international penalties, not all of them have been harmed equally, and some not at all. Evidence suggests that groups with superior contacts to the state have been able to circumvent sanctions and minimise damage to their interests. Average citizens, by contrast, suffer the effects: reports of widespread shortages, notably of specialised medicines, abound.
Moreover, sanctions as a tool of coercive diplomacy are only as effective as the prospect of relieving them in exchange for policy shifts is real. Yet, sanctions on Iran have become so extensive and so intricately woven that it will be hard to offer significant, concrete relief short of a major – and improbable – turnaround in major aspects of the Islamic Republic’s domestic and foreign policies. That, in addition to considerable mutual mistrust, leaves as the best case outcome for now a time-limited (albeit renewable) suspension or waiver of some sanctions by the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) in exchange for time-limited (albeit renewable) Iranian steps providing reassurance as to the program’s peaceful intent.
All this seems to suggest that a) sanctions aren’t working if the goal is to persuade Iran to agree to Western demands on its nuclear program; and b) the Obama administration’s Iran policy is incoherent.
Not necessarily, argued Iran scholar Farideh Farhi, here on Lobe Log last year:
The US’ Iran policy cannot be considered incoherent if the policy objectives and the instruments have become the same. It can still be considered immoral for trying to add to the economic woes of a good part of the Iranian population – irrespective of the fact that the Iranian government is most responsible for those economic woes – particularly at a time when so many people in the world are already suffering from unemployment and economic downturn. But it is not incoherent. It is intended to harass and it is doing so in a calculated and now rather routine, bureaucratic way. Weaning from routines and habits will be hard.
Iranian and Western officials expressed cautious optimism after talks with Iran concluded in Almaty, Kazakhstan last week with reports of moderate sanctions relief being offered by the 6 world-powers P5+1 negotiating team. But only moderate sanctions relief is unlikely to get the Iranians — who will reportedly respond to the offer during the next two months — to budge significantly. Mohammad Ali Shabani, an Oxford University PhD student with a solid understanding of the Iranian perspective, explained why in Al-Monitor on February 28. His conclusion is pertinent ahead of the March/April meetings:
Considering the lack of reciprocity, the upcoming Iranian presidential elections and the mere fact that Jalili’s team only listened in Kazakhstan, it would be wise to refrain from expecting a breakthrough in the near future. What would be wise is to appreciate the consensual desire to turn the talks from events into a real diplomatic process, as well as the time needed to bridge the wide gulf between Iran and the P5+1’s positions. Most importantly, it is crucial that all sides show the political will to move forward — and recognize that more than one party may be pursuing a dual-track policy.
Photo: The 19 September 2012 meeting of EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Dr. Saeed Jalili, the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, in Istanbul, Turkey. (Credit: European External Action Service – EEAS)
]]>by Marsha B. Cohen
Taking advantage of the delay in the vote on Chuck Hagel’s nomination to the Senate, the spinmeisters of the anti-Hagel propaganda machine have a new charge to hurl at the former Nebraska Senator. Ben Shapiro of Breitbart.com claims that “Senate sources” have told him that Hagel secretly accepted a campaign [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
Taking advantage of the delay in the vote on Chuck Hagel’s nomination to the Senate, the spinmeisters of the anti-Hagel propaganda machine have a new charge to hurl at the former Nebraska Senator. Ben Shapiro of Breitbart.com claims that “Senate sources” have told him that Hagel secretly accepted a campaign contribution from “Friends of Hamas.” The allegation has been picked up and promulgated by numerous right-wing websites and blogs, including Algemeiner and the Sheldon Adelson-owned news daily, Israel HaYom (Israel Today).
Putting aside the common sense realization that no real “friends of Hamas” would be dumb enough to actually form an organization in the US or anywhere else, with a bank account that writes checks to political candidates on behalf of an internationally recognized terrorist organization, we have to ask when and where we have heard that phrase ‘Friends of Hamas’ before”?
The first time was during President Bill Clinton’s re-election campaign in 1996, when it festooned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Steve Emerson headlined Friends of Hamas in the White House.
As Ali Mazrui of the International Policy and Strategy Institute (IPSI) pointed out, while “Clinton’s administration had been more pro-Israel than any other U.S. administration since Lyndon Johnson, this same Clinton administration had domestically made more friendly gestures towards U.S. Muslims than any previous administration.” In 1995, Vice President Al Gore had visited a mosque. The following year, President Clinton sent greetings to Muslims for their Ramadan fast. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton hosted an Eid el Fitr celebration at the White House at the end of Ramadan in 1996, and would do so again in 1998. During the Clinton administration, the first Muslim chaplain in the US Air Force was sworn in. President Clinton discussed a wide range of domestic and international issues with a delegation of Arab Americans at the White House. National Security Adviser Anthony Lake met with a delegation of Muslims to get their views on the Bosnian crisis. Not everyone was pleased by this outreach:
The Clinton gestures towards Muslims were sufficiently high profile that a hostile article in the Wall Street Journal in March 1996 raised the spectre of “Friends of Hamas in the White House” – alleging that some of the President’s Muslim guests were friends of Hamas, and supporters of the Palestinian movement. The critic in the Wall Street Journal (Steve Emerson) had a long record of hostility towards U.S. Muslims. His television programme on PBS entitled Jihad in America (1994) alleged that almost all terrorist activities by Muslims worldwide were partially funded by U.S. Muslims. President Clinton’s friendly gestures to Muslims probably infuriated this self-appointed crusader of Islamophobia.
How exactly did reaching out to Muslims equate “Friends of Hamas” being in the “White House”? Emerson explained:
In response to the terrorist carnage committed by Hamas in Israel, President Clinton has organized an anti-terrorist summit in Egypt to begin today. But other participants at the conference, and the American public as well, might be a bit surprised to learn that both the president and first lady have closely embraced an Islamic fundamentalist group in the U.S. that champions and supports Hamas. This group also openly supports, lobbies for, and defends other Islamic terrorist groups.
The contacts between the White House and the Islamic radicals began on Nov. 9, 1995, when President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore met with Abdulrahman Alamoudi, executive director of the American Muslim Council, as part of a meeting with 23 Muslim and Arab leaders. A month later, on Dec. 8, Mr. Clinton’s national security adviser, Anthony Lake, met with Mr. Alamoudl at the White House along with several AMC board members and other American Islamic leaders. By Feb. 20, Mrs. Clinton was allowing the AMC to draw up the Muslim guest list for the first lady’s historic White House reception marking the end of Ramadan. One person familiar with the situation says that Mrs. Clinton’s syndicated newspaper column of Feb. 8, “Islam in America,” was based on “talking points” provided by the AMC.
As we all know, those pro-Hamas Clintons survived the assault by Emerson and his echo-chamber. Clinton won re-election. The First Lady almost made it to the top slot on the Democratic ticket twelve years later, and then distinguished herself as Secretary of State for four years. No doubt there’s someone, somewhere, already preparing opposition research to use against the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign if there is one, diligently compiling the former Secretary of State’s meetings with Arab leaders and chronicling all of the nice things she might ever have said about Muslims. All too soon Jennifer Rubin will be regurgitating them in her Washington Post blog, “Right Turn.”
Emerson’s ominous warning in Middle East Quarterly the following year that Americans should “Get Ready for Twenty World Trade Center Bombings” the following year would elevate him to the status of prophet in the media immediately after 9/11, and make him the face and voice of anti-terrorist Islamophobia. More recently, Emerson was faced with questions about donor transparency with regard to his nonprofit and tax-deductible, Investigative Project on Terrorism Foundation, which avoids revealing much of the information that charities are routinely required to disclose. Emerson is currently making headlines with an entire dossier of “soft on Islam” charges against John Brennan, whose nomination as Director of the CIA is also under consideration in the Senate.
Such is the origin and journalistic debut of the phrase “Friends of Hamas” now being used against Chuck Hagel.
A recrudescence of political Hamasteryia occurred in the spring of 2012, when redrawing the boundaries of New Jersey’s 9th congressional district pitted two Democratic incumbents — Rep. Steve Rothman and Rep. Bill Pascrell — against one another. The heated June primary attracted outside interest, media attention and several endorsements of each candidate by prominent political figures. President Obama remained neutral, but his campaign adviser, David Axelrod, supported Rothman. Bill Clinton favored Pascrell, who had endorsed Hillary Clinton in her run for the White House. Both House members were considered to be pro-Israel. Each had received funding and endorsements in their previous campaigns from NORPAC, a pro-Israel political action committee headquartered in New Jersey, but NORPAC ultimately threw its support behind Rothman.
The primary deteriorated into an Islamophobic hate fest when certain overzealous Rothman supporters tried to smear Pascrell by claiming he had the support of members of New Jersey’s Muslim community. Conservative “investigative journalist” Joel Mowbray was clearly alluding to Emerson’s attack on Clinton when he wrote an article for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies headlined “The Friends of Bill Pascrell“:
Because of redistricting, Rep. Bill Pascrell (D, NJ) is running for re-election this coming Tuesday against a fellow Democratic incumbent Congressman. Pascrell’s slogan: “100% New Jersey Fighter.”
Given his troubling associations with Muslim figures who have espoused fiery anti-Israel rhetoric and turned a blind eye to Hamas sympathizers, though, it’s hard to tell against whom he’s actually fighting.
Take, for example, one of Pascrell’s closest allies for at least a decade: Mohamed El Filali, who is an executive with a local mosque whose founding imam is in jail on terrorism charges and whose current imam is fighting deportation on terror-related grounds.
El Filali leads what could seem like a strange existence, leading grotesque rallies by day and then cozying up at night with Congressmen — or at least one Congressman in particular, Bill Pascrell…Pascrell appears to be actively targeting the Arab and Muslim community, last week bringing out the first elected Muslim Congressman, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), who has become one of the most vocal critics of Israel in Congress…While Pascrell has voted in favor of foreign aid for Israel, he has also engaged in caustic Israel bashing, such as signing on to the so-called “Gaza 54” letter, the Keith Ellison-led effort which accused the Jewish state of collective punishment against Gaza.
…Of course there is no problem with courting support in the Arab and Muslim community. But there seems to be a troubling pattern with the associations Pascrell has chosen to cultivate in garnering that support. Should a congressman be condoning – by accepting contributions and other support – the most radical elements as part of his outreach?
Nonetheless, Pascrell went on to defeat Rothman, facing Republican challenger Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who was much more subtle in brandishing the pro-Hamas charge against Pascrell. In an op-ed constructed in the form of an “open letter”, Boteach called on Pascrell to repudiate the “Gaza 54 letter”:
Bill, I will not repeat the earlier error made by some members of our community in labeling you an “enemy” of Israel. My religion commands me to speak truth and show gratitude, and you have voted in favor of foreign aid to Israel on numerous occasions. To perpetuate the myth, started in the Democratic primary, that you are a foe of Israel would contravene my value system, which obligates me to thank you for votes in favor of the Jewish state. By assisting in the continuity of American aid to Israel, you have made the Middle East safer, not just for Jews, but for the hundreds of millions of Arabs whose freedom under their own tyrannical regimes is largely predicated on Israel setting an example of a viable democracy in a region which Arab dictators claim can never be democratized.
…I respectfully request of you, Bill, to either explain your signature on the Gaza 54 Letter, or, if it was a mistake to sign it, as I suspect you now believe, to please repudiate it.
Pascrell won the House seat by a landslide, taking 75% of the votes cast. Even with the financial backing of Sheldon Adelson, Boteach received less than a quarter of the congressional district’s votes, and was livid when NORPAC declined to support him.
Now it’s Chuck Hagel’s turn. Will the Hamas canard prove to be “strike three” for the Islamophobic and “pro-Hamas” smear? Or will a phantom campaign contribution break the neoconservative losing streak — and usher in a new era of transparency whereby every political candidate is responsible for the views and ties of their campaign donors, both real and imagined?
]]>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.
]]>Michael Ledeen, a neoconservative polemicist and long-time Iran hawk who joined the Foundation for Defense of Democracies after leaving the American Enterprise Institute in 2008, is being honest when he reminds us here that he has opposed direct US military intervention in Iran. For Ledeen, Iranian-regime change is more attainable if [...]]]>
Michael Ledeen, a neoconservative polemicist and long-time Iran hawk who joined the Foundation for Defense of Democracies after leaving the American Enterprise Institute in 2008, is being honest when he reminds us here that he has opposed direct US military intervention in Iran. For Ledeen, Iranian-regime change is more attainable if it’s executed from the ground up, and the US should do everything it can to facilitate that process. In 2010 he unapologetically argued that the US should covertly or openly support regime change-inclined Iranians during a debate at the Atlantic Council and reiterated that argument in “Takedown Tehran“ this year. (For some reason Ledeen seems to think that the Green Movement would invite the regime-change-oriented US support he advocates, even if key opposition figures have opposed the broad sanctions that he endorses. This may be due to his allegedly well-informed sources, some of whom have led him astray in the past.)
In any case, sanctions should be part of the US regime-change strategy, argues Ledeen, who promoted the US invasion of Iraq (although he later denied doing so), but sanctions alone will never be the means to his desired end:
But I don’t know anyone this side of the White House who believes that sanctions, by themselves, will produce what we should want above all: the fall of the Tehran regime that is the core of the war against us. To accomplish that, we need more than sanctions; we need a strategy for regime change.
Like fellow ideologues — such as Bret Stephens, a Wall Street Journal deputy editor and “Global View” columnist – Ledeen argues that the US must also execute a war strategy with Iran because like it or not, we’re already at war (for a closer look at this line of reasoning, see Farideh’s post):
But even if all these are guided from Washington and/or Jerusalem, it still does not add up to a war-winning strategy, which requires a clearly stated mission from our maximum leaders. We need a president who will say “Khamenei and Ahmadinejad must go.” He must say it publicly, and he must say it privately to our military, to our diplomats, and to the intelligence community.
Without that commitment, without that mission — and it’s hard to imagine it, isn’t it? — we’ll continue to spin our wheels, mostly playing defense, sometimes enacting new sanctions, sometimes wrecking the mullahs’ centrifuges, forever hoping that the mullahs will make a deal. Until the day when one of those Iranian schemes to kill even more Americans works out, and we actually catch them in the act. Then our leaders will say “we must go to war.”
But Ledeen’s Washington Times column this week suggests that he may be pivoting toward the military option:
I have long opposed military action against the Iranian regime. I believe we should instead support democratic revolution. However, our failure to work for regime change in Iran and our refusal to endorse Mr. Netanyahu’s call for a bright “red line” around the mullahs’ nuclear weapons program, makes war more likely, as similar dithering and ambiguity have so often in the past.
Interestingly, in August Ledeen stated that the Israeli strategy was to push the US to attack Iran:
…Israel does not want to do it. For as long as I can remember, the Israelis have been trying to get U.S. to do it, because they have long believed that Iran was so big that only a big country could successfully take on the mullahs in a direct confrontation. So Israel’s Iran policy has been to convince us to do whatever the Israelis think is best. And while they’re willing to do their part, they are very reluctant to take on the entire burden.
“Faster, Please!”, right?
]]>This is USA Today’s editorial board suggesting that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Iran-attack media campaign is likely just more of the same Israeli tactic to pressure the United States into implementing harsher measures against Iran’s nuclear program:
Say this for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: He’s a master at [...]]]>
This is USA Today’s editorial board suggesting that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Iran-attack media campaign is likely just more of the same Israeli tactic to pressure the United States into implementing harsher measures against Iran’s nuclear program:
Say this for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: He’s a master at whipping up worry that he’s about to launch an attack on Iran. He’s been doing it for years, extracting American support in the process.
So perhaps what’s happening in Israel today is just more Netanyahu stagecraft, timed to the U.S. presidential campaign. If so, it’s an Oscar-worthy performance. By all appearances, Netanyahu is preparing his nation for war.
More directly:
The leading theory for Netanyahu’s timing — speculative but logical — is that he sees the American political campaign as a moment of maximum leverage. President Obama, fearing the loss of Jewish votes in a close election, will feel compelled either to back an Israeli attack or to deter the Israelis by making new, more specific commitments to a U.S. attack later.
The pity is that the analysis is probably right, because the United States so far seems incapable of conducting the kind of debate Israel is having.
After noting the heated debate within Israel about the pros and cons of attacking Iran, the board concludes that a vigorous debate also needs to take place in the US before it “risks launching itself into another military morass”:
The decisions could not be more fateful. No American would be immune from the impact of an attack on Iran. That’s why the time for a vigorous debate — not just in Israel but in the USA, too — is before the bombs fly.
And this is Clifford D. May, President of the hawkish Washington think tank, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, disagreeing with the board, firstly by declaring that US intelligence and International Atomic Energy Association assessments about Iran’s nuclear program are wrong with a single statement: “Iran’s rulers have been developing nuclear weapons” and that “should no longer be a matter of debate.” Secondly, by referencing belligerent Iranian rhetoric against Israel as “reasons” why the Israelis are “very much justified in using military force”, and thirdly, by invoking the horrors of the Holocaust and WWII:
]]>But if the Israelis know where the centrifuge factories are, and if they are confident they can destroy or seriously degrade them, that course of action deserves serious consideration. Diplomacy has run its course. Sanctions have damaged Iran’s economy but do not appear to have weakened the will of the theocratic regime.
Winston Churchill called World War II an unnecessary war because it could have been prevented: The Nazis should never have been allowed to obtain the weapons they would use to overrun Europe. Hitler marveled to one of his generals that no one challenged him while he was weak. They waited until he was at his strongest, thus guaranteeing a much bloodier conflict.
That mistake should not be made again — never again, as we used to say.