With the rumored extension of the negotiations in Vienna on Iran’s nuclear program hanging in the air, a group of legislators and right-wing thinkers gathered on Capitol Hill yesterday to talk about what they believe a comprehensive deal with Iran should entail.
Senator Dan Coats (R-IN) told the assembled crowd that he was there [...]]]>
With the rumored extension of the negotiations in Vienna on Iran’s nuclear program hanging in the air, a group of legislators and right-wing thinkers gathered on Capitol Hill yesterday to talk about what they believe a comprehensive deal with Iran should entail.
Senator Dan Coats (R-IN) told the assembled crowd that he was there to “ring the alarm” about the danger of a nuclear-armed Iran, and, indeed, that alarm rang over and over again throughout the event. The afternoon’s speakers were clear on one thing: nothing short of total Iranian capitulation would be an acceptable outcome to the talks, and even that would really only be acceptable if it came in the aftermath of regime change in Tehran. They were decidedly less clear as to how that outcome might be achieved.
The forum, “High Standards and High Stakes: Defining Terms of an Acceptable Iran Nuclear Deal,” was sponsored by the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) (successor to the now-defunct Project for the New American Century), the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), and the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), which specializes in finding Democrats who agree with the neoconservative agenda when it comes to Iran. The speakers broadly agreed on the need to maintain and even increase sanctions to encourage the Iranians to negotiate, which seemingly ignores the fact that the Iranians are already negotiating and that the sanctions are in place precisely so that they can be traded away in exchange for Iranian concessions.
Among the materials distributed at the session was a paper by a group called the “Iran Task Force,” which has a few members in common with the “Iran Task Force” formed within the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs but nonetheless seems to be a different group. The paper was titled, “Parameters of an Acceptable Agreement,” though it might better have been called “Parameters of a Deal That Would Certainly Be Rejected by Iran.”
The task force’s “acceptable agreement” requires, among other items, the complete dismantling of Iran’s enrichment capabilities and extraordinary monitoring requirements that would remain in place permanently. Again, this would not be a deal so much as it would be unconditional surrender by the Iranians, and would impose restrictions on Iran that even retired Israeli generals don’t seem to believe are necessary. If this is how the “Iran Task Force” defines an “acceptable agreement,” it seems fair to ask if they want any agreement at all.
One of the legislators who spoke at the forum was Brad Sherman (D-CA), who has endorsed the Iranian opposition group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq, (aka MEK, MKO, PMOI and NCRI), which lobbied itself off the US terrorist organizations list in 2012, and whose desire for regime change is quite explicit.
Congressman Sherman offered some of the most colorful (or maybe terrifying) remarks. For example, he declared that Iran’s “breakout” period must be “years,” which would presumably involve subjecting all of Iran’s nuclear scientists to some kind of amnesia ray to make them unlearn what they already know about enriching uranium. He then argued that Iran’s ultimate goal was not a nuclear missile, but a device that could be smuggled into a major city and detonated without directly implicating Tehran. Most Iran hawks assume (based on questionable evidence) that Iran’s nuclear program is ipso facto a nuclear weapons program. But Sherman apparently believes that Iran doesn’t only crave a nuclear weapon, but will obviously use that weapon once it’s built to bring destruction upon the world. Sherman closed by proposing that the United States arm Israel with advanced “bunker buster” bombs and surplus B-52 bombers, which would surely ensure peace in that region.
After the legislators had their say, it was time for the expert panel, featuring FDD’s Reuel Marc Gerecht, Ray Takeyh from the Council on Foreign Relations, and Stephen Rademaker from the BPC. Gerecht argued that Iran has a “religious” need to acquire nuclear weapons, which might come as a shock to the Iranian religious establishment, and criticized the Obama administration’s unwillingness to apply “real” economic pressure to force Iranian concessions. He never got around to describing what “real” economic pressure looks like, or how much different it could be from what Iran is currently experiencing. It was also unclear why, if Iran does have such a strong need to develop a nuclear weapon, and if it hasn’t yet felt any “real” economic pressure, it agreed to, and has by all accounts complied with, the terms of the interim Joint Plan of Action reached in Geneva last year.
But it was Rademaker who came closest to openly admitting the theme that underpins the hawks’ entire approach to these talks: that no nuclear deal will ever be acceptable without regime change. He criticized last year’s historic deal for its promise that a comprehensive deal would remain in place for a specified, limited duration, and that Iran would be treated as any other Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) signatory at the conclusion of the deal. Rademaker later compared Iran to Brazil and Argentina, whose nuclear programs were both abandoned after their military regimes gave way to democratic governments. At that point the suggestion that regime change, which didn’t exactly work out the way the US envisioned in Iran (1953) and Iraq (2003), must precede any normalization of Iran’s nuclear program was obvious.
]]>by Derek Davison
This Monday marked the end of a five-day conference (May 15-19) in Kiev, called “Ukraine: Thinking Together,” organized by The New Republic and specifically its literary editor, Leon Wieseltier. The conference press release promised that “an international group of intellectuals will come to Kiev to meet Ukrainian counterparts, [...]]]>
by Derek Davison
This Monday marked the end of a five-day conference (May 15-19) in Kiev, called “Ukraine: Thinking Together,” organized by The New Republic and specifically its literary editor, Leon Wieseltier. The conference press release promised that “an international group of intellectuals will come to Kiev to meet Ukrainian counterparts, demonstrate solidarity, and carry out a public discussion about the meaning of Ukrainian pluralism for the future of Europe, Russia, and the world.” However, Wieseltier’s remarks at the conference, delivered on May 17, focused very little on “Ukrainian pluralism” and instead painted a picture of a crisis that bears little resemblance to what we actually know about the situation in Ukraine.
Wieseltier should be familiar to anyone who has been paying attention to the neoconservative policy world. Despite being considered a liberal thinker, he has worked on behalf of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) and its offshoot, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI), as well as continues to be affiliated with PNAC’s successor, the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI). FPI has written many letters, all including Wieseltier’s signature, to prominent DC politicians, endorsing a litany of neocon policy goals: military intervention in Syria, increased hostility toward Iran, and belligerence toward Russia. Wieseltier himself insists that he is not a neocon, and former LobeLog contributor Ali Gharib once declared him a “liberal neocon enabler and booster” rather than a neocon in his own right. This may be a distinction without much of a difference.
During his remarks in Kiev, Wieseltier began by placing his feelings on the situation in Ukraine in the context of his “somewhat facile but nonetheless sincere regret at having been born too late to participate in the struggle of Western intellectuals, some of whom became my teachers and my heroes, against the Stalinist assault on democracy in Europe.” That desire seems to have motivated Wieseltier to concoct a new narrative of recent events that papers over the very real internal struggle going on among the Ukrainians themselves, in order to make the crisis entirely about Russian aggression. He concedes that “Putin is not Stalin,” at least, and no one could challenge his assertion that “Putin is bad enough,” but Wieseltier was still trading in half-truths through much of his speech.
For starters, Wieseltier opines that “[t]he Ukrainian desire to affiliate with the West, its unintimidated preference for Europe over Russia, is not merely a strategic and economic choice; it is also a moral choice, a philosophical choice, a societal decision about ideals, a defiance of power in the name of justice, a stirring aspiration to build a society and a state that is representative of some values and not others.” This assumes facts not in evidence — specifically, of a “Ukrainian desire to affiliate with the West.” According to polling data, prior to Crimea’s secession in March, when Ukrainians were asked which economic union their country should join if it could only join one, support for joining the European Union never polled higher than a slim plurality of Ukrainian citizens. A Gallup poll taken in June-July 2013 found that more Ukrainians saw NATO as a “threat” than as “protection” (a plurality chose “neither”). Predictably, Ukrainians in the country’s east have been more likely to have a negative view of NATO and the EU than Ukrainians in the west.
Even now, after Crimea’s secession and the implied threats of a Russian invasion, only 43% of Ukrainians want stronger relations with the EU to the exclusion of stronger relations with Russia, and only 45% of Ukrainians have a positive view of the EU’s influence on Ukraine. These are both pluralities, yes, but they hardly speak to some universal “Ukrainian desire to affiliate with the West.” In fact, there is evidence to suggest that recent polling that indicates growing support for joining the EU reflects the Ukrainians’ response to what they see as Russian aggression and does not necessarily involve any abiding Ukrainian desire to join the West.
Wieseltier talks about four principles that guide the Ukrainian “revolution”: liberty, truth, pluralism, and moral accountability, but in each case his remarks obscure what is really happening in Ukraine. He talks about liberty, “the right of individuals and nations to determine their own destinies and their own way of life,” but ignores the fact that, for many Crimeans and Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine, the Euromaidan protests that ousted former President Viktor Yanukovych took away their rights, as individuals, “to determine their own destinies.” This was not a democratic or electoral transfer of power; it was a coup against what was by all accounts a legitimately elected government. Weiseltier seems unconcerned that Ukraine’s revolution effectively disenfranchised vast numbers of Ukrainian citizens by short circuiting their electoral process. He also criticizes Russian propaganda that calls the Kiev government “fascist” without acknowledging that there are fascist or soft fascist elements involved with Euromaidan who have been given a significant role in the government.
But it is on the principle of “pluralism” where Wieseltier is most confounding. He says that “[t]he crisis in the Ukraine is testing the proposition that people who speak different languages can live together in a single polity. That proposition is one of the great accomplishments of modern liberalism. Putin repudiates it.” But Putin’s geopolitics aside, it was, in fact, the new Ukrainian parliament installed by Euromaidan that initially repudiated that proposition; its very first act was a repeal (passed but not signed into law) of a 2012 law that allowed regional languages to attain semi-official status in parts of Ukraine with sizable non-Ukrainian populations. The impact of this action in terms of stoking the fears of Ukraine’s Russian population about the intentions of the new government probably can’t be overstated.
It seems clear that, as Jim Sleeper writes, Wieseltier has “learned nothing from his moral posturing on Iraq.” As he and his colleagues in PNAC and the CLI did a decade ago, Wieseltier is still using the language of principle and moral absolutes to mask reality and support the desire for a more muscular American foreign policy.
]]>The three-year old Syrian crisis presents dire dilemmas for Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and in refugee camps across the Middle East. Given Syria’s traditional role as a sponsor of Palestinian resistance movements and a home to hundreds of thousands of refugees, Palestinian leaders are understandably torn [...]]]>
The three-year old Syrian crisis presents dire dilemmas for Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and in refugee camps across the Middle East. Given Syria’s traditional role as a sponsor of Palestinian resistance movements and a home to hundreds of thousands of refugees, Palestinian leaders are understandably torn between loyalties to President Bashar al-Assad and his enemies.
Palestinians have fought in Syria on behalf of both the regime and the rebels. The conflict has deepened ideological and political wedges between Palestinians and complicated their patchwork of international alliances. Moreover, as various proxy battles are waged within Palestinian refugee camps in Syria, the Palestinian refugees there are now enduring an underreported humanitarian crisis.
Syria’s Role in the Palestinian Resistance
Historical bonds between Palestinian resistance movements, refugees, and the Syrian government have complicated Palestinian attitudes toward the grinding civil war in Syria. In 1948, 90,000 Palestinians fled to Syria as refugees. Since then, several hundred thousand more have arrived and settled in large refugee camps, such as Yarmouk in Damascus.
Syria has been more than just a host to refugees—it has actively fomented Palestinian resistance to Israel. The Syrian government armed, financed, and protected various left-leaning Palestinian guerilla groups that were established in Yarmouk during the 1960s. Two of these groups included the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Marxist-Leninist group founded in 1967, and the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Council (PFLP-GC), established in 1968 as a splinter group from the PFLP.
The Assad regime has also funded Islamist Palestinian movements. After Jordanian authorities kicked Hamas’ leadership out of Amman in 1999, the Palestinian group establishedits political bureau in Damascus and received weaponry, financial assistance, and political support from the Syrian regime.
This partnership was ideologically paradoxical for the rigidly secular Assad regime. Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose Syrian branch waged an uprising against the Syrian regime from 1976-1982. The uprising ended with a regime-led offensive against rebel-controlled Hama—Syria’s third-largest city—that left tens of thousands of civilians dead and still rallies jihadist rebels against the Assad regime. Despite this bloody history, Bashar al-Assad’s support for groups such as Hamas (and the more radical Palestinian Islamic Jihad) played into Syria’s grander geostrategic strategy of countering Israel’s military dominance in the Levant by arming anti-Israel proxy networks.
A Resistance Divided
The outbreak of violence in Syria complicated Damascus’ relationship with these resistance groups, strengthening its ties with certain secular Palestinian currents but sundering them with most of the Islamists. Assad’s Palestinian backers have generally framed their narratives of the Syrian crisis around a Western-backed conspiracy to overthrow the only Arab regime that remains willing to confront Israel. The Palestinian supporters of the rebellion, however, view Assad as a dictator responsible for killing his own people. Rebel supporters are quick to bring up the massacre of Palestinian refugees at the Lebanese camp of Tel al-Zaatar in 1976, for which Hafez al-Assad’s forces bore responsibility.
The PFLP-GC and the West Bank-based Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party have thrown their weight behind Assad, as have several prominent religious and civil society figures in the West Bank—including Bishop Atallah Hanna (the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Sebastia), Murad al-Sudani (Secretary-General of the Palestinian Writers’ Union), and Adel Samara (a left-leaning intellectual). Hamas, however, severed ties with the Assad regime and openly declared support for the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Meanwhile, certain Gaza-based Salafist factions, including the Mujahedeen Shura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem, have supported the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), even after al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri disavowed the notorious Syrian rebel group this past January. According to Mohammed Hijazi, an expert on Islamist movements in Gaza, “scores of Salafists in Gaza” have traveled to Syria to fight alongside ISIS and other al-Qaeda-linked groups.
Meanwhile, Fatah, the dominant party within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority (PA), has been forced to take a neutral stance on the Syria conflict while also trying to stand up for the safety of Palestinians inside Syria. Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the PA as well as the PLO, is currently preoccupied with peace negotiations with Israel. Abbas does not want to antagonize the Syrian government or the Palestinian groups it supports. Yet he also does not want to invest his already limited political capital in supporting a regime that has committed serious human rights violations. Nor does he want to alienate the Obama administration, which he needs on his side to pressure Israel over sensitive topics like settlements or the right of return. Additionally, both pro- and anti-Assad groups within the Palestinian resistance stand to gain political capital if the PLO’s seemingly moribund peace negotiations with Israel ultimately fail and more Palestinians become convinced that a peaceful solution to the conflict with Israel cannot be found.
As these divisions simmer, Palestinian refugee camps in Syria have become sites of violent clashes between Palestinian and Syrian groups with opposing stakes in the conflict. When many analysts expected the regime to lose control of Damascus, the PFLP-GC militants fought against rebels in the capital, leading anti-Assad forces to target the Yarmouk camp, precipitating a serious humanitarian crisis. Food and medicine supplies were cut as the Syrian Army laid siege to the camp in July 2013. The government was able to negotiate a fragile ceasefire to bring aid into Yarmouk, but on March 2, the al-Qaeda-affiliated rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra moved in and imposed its own siege. Although the PFLP-GC retains significant support and influence among the refugees, the Free Syrian Army has made inroads in the area as the siege continues.
Both sides in the Syrian conflict espouse the Palestinian cause and accuse the other of serving Israel’s interests. Officials in Damascus claim that Israel sponsors the insurgents to destabilize the last Arab state willing to confront Tel Aviv. The Islamist rebels, however, criticize the Assad regime for pacifying Syria’s border with Israel for the last four decades and failing to re-conquer the occupied Golan Heights. Certain elements within the Islamist rebellion havestated their intentions to “liberate” Palestine after they “liberate” Syria by toppling the Ba’athist regime in Damascus, however ill-equipped they are to truly challenge Israel on the battlefield. Thus, both sides play the “Palestinian card” to attack the other while appealing to wider pan-Arab and pan-Islamic trends in the Middle East.
Shifting Geopolitical Winds
As the Syrian crisis enters its fourth year, the evolution of the conflict could have major implications for Palestinians.
Following several Israeli bombings of strategic sites in Syria, Assad has threatened to retaliate against Israel. Ultimately, given that the Syrian Army is bogged down fighting the insurgents, it is doubtful that Damascus would initiate an Arab-Israeli war. However, if Assad does retaliate, the Palestinians—particularly those living in Israel proper—will have much at stake.
Iran is also a factor. When Iran and Hamas’ relationship cooled as a consequence of their opposing stakes in the Syrian crisis, Iran cut its support for Hamas and increased its assistance to the PFLP and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Although Iran and Hamas achieved a rapprochement in late 2013, ultimately agreeing to disagree on Syria, it appears that Iran’s renewed support for Hamas has not come at the expense of its sponsorship of these other groups, which have been at odds with Hamas for many years due to various political disputes. Since Hamas ended its relationship with the Assad regime and the Egyptian military ousted the Muslim Brotherhood government in Cairo, the Gaza-based group has been hard pressed to find foreign sponsors. Within this context, Hamas has been careful not to antagonize Iran by clamping down on Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other Gaza-based groups that have violated Israel-Hamas ceasefires. Therefore, the Syrian crisis has forced Hamas to recognize other political powers in Gaza as a consequence of Iranian pressure.
The potential for Salafist groups, such as ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, to carve out a de factoIslamic emirate in parts of northern Syria could send reverberations through the West Bank and Gaza as well. In both territories, Palestinian Salafist groups have challenged Fatah and Hamas’ authority in several ways, including by launching terrorist attacks. Gaza-based Salafists, meanwhile, have traveled to Syria to fight alongside ISIS. With such currents gaining greater power in the Egyptian Sinai, Lebanon, and western Iraq, al-Qaeda’s dream of establishing a borderless Islamic emirate in the Levant will continue to impact the regional environment. Under such circumstances, Hamas will likely be compelled to strike a balance between leading the jihad against Israel while simultaneously restraining other groups that seek to steal the resistance banner as Hamas engages in ceasefire negotiations with Israeli authorities.
As the Syrian crisis appears to have no easy solution in sight and the Palestinians’ internal divisions are unlikely to resolve in the near-term, the Syrian conflict’s polarizing impact will likely be felt within the Palestinian population for the foreseeable future. Of course, while the stateless Palestinians have less capacity to influence events in Syria compared to major regional powers that are heavily involved in the conflict, nearly all Palestinians understand that their people have high stakes in Syria.
Sam Badger is a graduate teaching associate of philosophy and graduate student at San Francisco State University. Giorgio Cafiero is a Washington, D.C.-based foreign affairs analyst and a regular contributor to the Huffington Post.
*This article was first published by Foreign Policy in Focus and was reprinted here with permission.
Photo: This photo taken in January 2014 shows residents of Yarmouk, a neighborhood of Palestinians in Syria, lining up as far as the eye can see to receive food supplies. The grinding civil war has exacerbated political divisions in the Palestinian resistance and left ordinary Palestinians open to attacks from fighters on both sides of the conflict.
]]>by Jim Lobe
A short item just to note that Bill Kristol, in a Sunday appearance on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopolous”, crystallized (shall we say) the internal split among neoconservatives over how to react to the military coup and subsequent repression against the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
A short item just to note that Bill Kristol, in a Sunday appearance on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopolous”, crystallized (shall we say) the internal split among neoconservatives over how to react to the military coup and subsequent repression against the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Breaking with his fellow-neoconservative princeling, Robert Kagan (with whom he co-founded the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and its successor, the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), Kristol came out against cutting military aid to Egypt. Here’s the relevant exchange:
Stephanopoulos: Bill Kristol: one country that has not said [this was a coup and aid should be cut] is Israel. Israel, ironically, actually wants to keep the aid flowing.
Kristol: Well, I think they prefer the military to rule to the Muslim Brotherhood ruling. And I think an awful lot of people in the region prefer that. You know, an awful lot of the Arab governments prefer it. And it’s not clear to me that we shouldn’t prefer it.
So I’m a little — I’m — most of my friends in the foreign policy world are for cutting off aid. I’m much more uncertain about it at this point. I mean, this is a trigger we can only pull once. You can only cut off the aid once. And what’s the point of — what would happen concretely? What better thing is going to happen in Egypt or in the region if, tomorrow morning, the president got on TV and said we’re cutting off the aid?
I’m very doubtful about that, and I think there’s a lot we can do with our relationship with the Egyptian military that will be harder to do once we cut off the aid.
Of course, in referring to his friends, Kristol no doubt had Kagan in mind. For his part, Kagan, who has been by far the most outspoken neoconservative calling for an aid cut-off — even to the extent of accusing Washington of being “complicit” in the massacres that have taken place over the last two weeks — had just signed off on a statement last Friday by the “Working Group on Egypt” (which he co-chairs with Michele Dunne of the Atlantic Council) calling on Obama to immediately suspend military aid to Egypt and stating that a failure to do so would be a “strategic error.” The same statement called for Washington to use its influence to block funding by international financial agencies until the interim government reverses course. In addition to a number of liberal internationalists, other neocons who signed the statement included Elliott Abrams, Ellen Bork, and Reuel Marc Gerecht.
It’s a remarkable moment when the two arguably most influential neocons of their generation disagree so clearly about something as fundamental to US Middle East policy, Israel and democracy promotion. They not only co-founded PNAC and the FPI; in 1996, they also co-authored “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy” in Foreign Affairs, which among other things, advocated “benevolent global hegemony” as the role that Washington should play in the post-Cold War era. But they now appear to have a fundamental disagreement about how that benevolence should be exercised in a strategically significant nation which is also important to Israel’s security.
Of course, this disagreement highlights once again the fact that democracy promotion is not a core principle of neoconservatism. It also suggests that the movement itself is becoming increasingly incoherent from an ideological point of view. Granted, Kagan considers himself a strategic thinker on the order of a Kissinger or Brzezinski, while Kristol is much more caught up in day-to-day Republican politics and consistently appears to align his views on the Middle East with those of the Republican Jewish Coalition and the Likud-led Israeli Government. But what is especially interesting at this moment is the fact that Sens. John McCain and Lindsay Graham — both leaders of what could be called the neoconservative faction of the Republican Party — are moving into Kagan’s camp.
]]>Weekly Reads/Watch:
- News: Israeli elections likely to postpone any deliberations on Iran strikeWeekly Reads/Watch:
Jamie M. Fly/Robert Zarate, Weekly Standard: A common argument touted by hawks these days is that President Obama should seek regime change in Syria because Iran would be weakened from the loss of a major ally. The neoconservative-dominated Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) have led that call and this week FPI Executive Director Jamie M. Fly (an Iraq war hawk who has never been shy about his hopes for Iran) and Policy Director Robert Zarate, claimed that if Obama doesn’t forcefully intervene in Syria, scary Iran will be emboldened by the U.S.’s refusal to force change in other countries:
If the United States still can’t bring itself to stop the mortally wounded Assad regime (which lacksnuclear weapons) from murdering its own people and destabilizing its neighbors, then how likely is it to deal with much harder cases in the Middle East—like a nuclear-armed Iran that starts inflicting Syria-like mass atrocities on its own people or menacing its own neighbors? Indeed, not only Damascus and Tehran, but also America’s allies and partners throughout the world, are waiting and watching to see whether the Obama administration and Congress will truly side with the Syrian people and show resolve against Assad.
Unabashed hawk Jennifer Rubin, who regularly argues that the U.S. should wage war on Iran for Israel and often regurgitates commentary from FPI and FDD staffers, was quick to feature Fly and Zarate’s article at her Washington Post perch.
Max Boot, Commentary: The Council on Foreign Relations’ Max Boot allied with neoconservatives as an early supporter of the U.S.’s war on Iraq and has been a persistent agitator for war with Iran, even while acknowledging that strikes would not set back its alleged nuclear ambitions by much. Last week he accordingly disapproved of a New York Times article about Obama’s foreign policy for giving too much credit to the President despite what Boot considers to be serious failures. Obama was not only insufficiently militaristic with Iran writes Boot, he should also be criticized for trying to avoid an Israeli war on Iran:
There is also little or no mention in Bergen’s article…of Iran, where Obama opposed strong sanctions on the Central Bank that were ultimately passed by Congress, and where he has tried to pressure Israel not to strike while all but ruling out the use of American force against this dangerous nuclear program;
Michael Rubin, Commentary: Like Fly and Boot, the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Rubin (who was Pentagon adviser on Iran and Iraq during the first George W. Bush administration) advocates confrontational U.S. foreign policy particularly in the Middle East. While he has admitted during public forums that a military campaign on Iran should be avoided, he has no qualms about advocating Iranian “regime collapse” byway of U.S. “private decision-making” (whatever than means) and other methods:
]]>Just as terrorism is a tactic, and it’s the ideology underlying its practitioners which should be the target of U.S. policy, the nuclear weapons are less of a problem than the regime which would wield them. The key to U.S. national security is simply regime collapse in Iran. How to hasten that collapse should be the guiding principle of U.S. policy.
*This week’s must-reads/watch:
- T. X. Hammes: On Bombing Iran, A False [...]]]>
*This week’s must-reads/watch:
Mitch McConnell: The Senate Minority Leader recommended this week that lawmakers draft a resolution “authorizing the use of force” against Iran. Said McConnell:
I made a recommendation last night for something that I think might convince the Iranians that we’re serious about it, and that would be to debate and vote on a resolution authorizing the use of force. That doesn’t guarantee that force would be used, but it certainly would be a credible step in the direction saying we view this as a very serious matter.
Casey, Graham and Lieberman, Wall Street Journal: While promoting their recently proposed resolution which Robert Wright says makes war with Iran more likely because it severely limits U.S. options, the senators argue for harsher punitive measures against the Islamic Republic:
First, it is imperative that the U.S. and its partners accelerate and expand economic pressure on Tehran. The only thing Iran’s leaders value more than their nuclear ambitions is the survival of their regime. Consequently, sanctions must threaten the very existence of that regime in order to have a chance of stopping its illicit nuclear activities.
They also advocate the threat of military force:
As importantly, however, we must put to rest any suspicion that in the end the United States will acquiesce to Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear-weapons capability and adopt a strategy of containment.
Analysts explain that one of the reasons why Iran is resistant to Western demands is because it believes the U.S. is seeking regime change through any and all means. Don’t policy recommendations like this directly feed into that paranoia?
Foreign Policy Initiative “Time to Attack Iran” Event: This week Matthew Kroenig, Jame M. Fly and Elbridge A. Colby debated attacking Iran this week at the militaristic Washington think tank. Kroenig and Fly advocated military strikes on Iran and Fly went even further by arguing that “limited strikes” weren’t enough and that the main goal of U.S. policy on Iran should be regime change. Kroenig’s “Time to Attack Iran” article resulted in serious push-back from respected analysts like Paul Pillar and Stephen Walt. Fly’s recommendations have received less attention despite their extremism.
Wall Street Journal Editorial Board: The Journal rarely has anything but vehement criticism for President Obama, but this week they praised his display of hawkishness at this year’s American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference. At the same time, the board also absurdly argued that Obama is protecting Iran over Israel, while challenging the administration to become more militaristic:
As for military strikes, senior Administration officials have repeatedly sounded as if their top priority is deterring Israel, rather than stopping Iran from getting a bomb.
…
If the President’s contention is that an Israeli strike would be less effective and have more unpredictable consequences than an American strike, he’s right—and few Israelis would disagree. Israelis don’t have the same military resources as the U.S.The question Mr. Netanyahu and Israeli leaders have to ponder is whether Mr. Obama now means what he says.
Mitt Romney, Washington Post: The Republican presidential frontrunner expresses his commitment to Israel while declaring how militaristic he would be with Iran as President:
As for Iran in particular, I will take every measure necessary to check the evil regime of the ayatollahs. Until Iran ceases its nuclear-bomb program, I will press for ever-tightening sanctions, acting with other countries if we can but alone if we must. I will speak out on behalf of the cause of democracy in Iran and support Iranian dissidents who are fighting for their freedom. I will make clear that America’s commitment to Israel’s security and survival is absolute. I will demonstrate our commitment to the world by making Jerusalem the destination of my first foreign trip.
Most important, I will buttress my diplomacy with a military option that will persuade the ayatollahs to abandon their nuclear ambitions. Only when they understand that at the end of that road lies not nuclear weapons but ruin will there be a real chance for a peaceful resolution.
Emanuele Ottolenghi, New York Times: The Foundation for Defense of Democracies’s senior fellow recommends that the U.S. threaten Iran with war and implement more extreme punitive measures:
As tough as the current sanctions against Iran are, they will work only if Iran is brought to its knees once again. The pain inflicted must be far greater for the country to see backtracking as preferable. Iran is a rational actor; and it cannot be dissuaded at this point, barring extreme measures.
If Western nations wish to avoid a military confrontation in the Persian Gulf and prevent a nuclear Iran, they must adopt crippling sanctions that will bring Iran’s economy to the brink of collapse. That means a complete United Nations-imposed oil embargo enforced by a naval blockade, as well as total diplomatic isolation. And they must warn Iran that if it tries to jump the last wall, the West is willing and capable of inflicting devastating harm.
Howard Kohr at AIPAC 2012: During the first part of his speech the executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee says there’s “still time” before the U.S. needs to use “force” and then recommends threatening military action and subjecting Iran to “disruptive measures”:
Four tracks are critical. Tough, disciplined, principled diplomacy. Truly crippling sanctions. Disruptive measures and establishing a credible threat to use force.
Mike Huckabee, Washington Times: The former Republican presidential candidate turned Fox News television host explains his hawkish vision for U.S. policy on “evil” Iran and ally Israel (emphasis mine):
The Obama administration should strictly enforce sanctions against Iran’s Central Bank, accelerate the timetable of the European Union’s oil boycott of Iran and increase covert action within Iran to destabilize the regime and its nuclear program. The State Department should provide long-overdue assistance to Iranian dissidents with satellite phone and Internet technology to enable them to organize and communicate free from the regime’s authoritarian boot.
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu comes to the White House next week, Mr. Obama should issue an unequivocal statement that Israel is fully within its rights to protect itself against the existential threat of Iran, and if it does so, it will enjoy U.S. support. He should further state that the United States is actively considering military action.
Amos Yadlin, New York Times: The former Israeli military intelligence chief turned expert at the Washington Institute for Near Easy Policy recommends that the U.S. commit to going to war with Iran if its current policies fail to prevent Israel from attacking first:
Mr. Obama will therefore have to shift the Israeli defense establishment’s thinking from a focus on the “zone of immunity” to a “zone of trust.” What is needed is an ironclad American assurance that if Israel refrains from acting in its own window of opportunity — and all other options have failed to halt Tehran’s nuclear quest — Washington will act to prevent a nuclear Iran while it is still within its power to do so.
Peter Brookes, National Review: The Heritage Foundation senior fellow recommends that “any Iranian hostility” should be met with U.S. military might:
Iran understands strength, especially the military kind – and it only benefits from the bickering that we’ve seen again and again in recent years between Israel and the United States on a number of matters.
The president should also lean forward on the military option, beyond the tired old phrase that “it’s still on the table.” While Obama must be careful not to make threats he isn’t willing to keep, he should define red lines that are not to be crossed.
Iran will surely blame us for any Israeli strike, whether we’re involved from the get-go or not. As such, the president should ready U.S. forces for a possible Persian punch directed at us in the aftermath of an Israeli attack on Iran.
Assuming Israel doesn’t give us advanced warning, any Iranian hostility toward us or our interests should feel the searing heat of U.S. air and naval assets, not only targeting Iran’s nuclear program, but its conventional and paramilitary forces, too.
William Kristol, Weekly Standard: The publication’s founder and editor was one of the most enthusiastic proponents of the Iraq War. Here he implies that Israel’s “American friends” should pressure President Obama into adopting Israel’s hawkish Iran policy and at minimum ensure that Obama supports Israel’s actions against Iran:
]]>It would of course be better if President Obama were not wedded to a timeline that fails to recognize the imperatives of Israel’s security. The task of American friends of Israel is first to try to persuade President Obama to act sooner than he now appears willing to do, to persuade him that the United States should stand arm in arm and side by side with Israel. But if President Obama continues to insist that it is Israel who takes the lead, the task of American friends of Israel will be to ensure that President Obama at least lives up to his promise Sunday that “when the chips are down, I have Israel’s back.”
Leading the charge is the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), the ideological successor to the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which played a critical role in mobilising support for “regime change” in Iraq in the late 1990s and subsequently spearheaded the public campaign to invade the country after the 9/11 attacks. The group sent reporters appeals by two of its leaders for military action on its letterhead Monday.
In a column headlined “Speak Softly …And Fight Back” in this week’s Weekly Standard, chief editor William Kristol, co-founder of both PNAC and FPI, said the alleged plot amounted to “an engraved invitation” by Tehran to use force against it.
“We can strike at the Iranian Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), and weaken them. And we can hit the regime’s nuclear weapons program, and set it back,” he wrote, adding that Congress should approve a resolution authorising the use of force against Iranian entities deemed responsible for attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, acts of terrorism, or “the regime’s nuclear weapons program”.
Kristol’s advice was seconded by Jamie Fly, FPI’s executive director, who called for President Barack Obama to emulate former presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton when they ordered targeted strikes against Libya in 1986 and Iraq in 1993, respectively, in retaliation for alleged terrorist plots against U.S. targets.
Read more.
]]>WASHINGTON, Feb 25, 2011 (IPS) – In a distinct echo of the tactics they pursued to encourage U.S. intervention in the Balkans and Iraq, a familiar clutch of neo-conservatives appealed Friday for the United States and NATO to “immediately” prepare military action to help bring down the regime of Libyan leader [...]]]>
WASHINGTON, Feb 25, 2011 (IPS) – In a distinct echo of the tactics they pursued to encourage U.S. intervention in the Balkans and Iraq, a familiar clutch of neo-conservatives appealed Friday for the United States and NATO to “immediately” prepare military action to help bring down the regime of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and end the violence that is believed to have killed well over a thousand people in the past week.
The appeal, which came in the form of a letter signed by 40 policy analysts, including more than a dozen former senior officials who served under President George W. Bush, was organised and released by the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), a two-year-old neo-conservative group that is widely seen as the successor to the more-famous – or infamous – Project for the New American Century (PNAC).
Warning that Libya stood “on the threshold of a moral and humanitarian catastrophe”, the letter, which was addressed to President Barack Obama, called for specific immediate steps involving military action, in addition to the imposition of a number of diplomatic and economic sanctions to bring “an end to the murderous Libyan regime”.
In particular, it called for Washington to press NATO to “develop operational plans to urgently deploy warplanes to prevent the regime from using fighter jets and helicopter gunships against civilians and carry out other missions as required; (and) move naval assets into Libyan waters” to “aid evacuation efforts and prepare for possible contingencies;” as well as “(e)stablish the capability to disable Libyan naval vessels used to attack civilians.”
Among the letter’s signers were former Bush deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Bush’s top global democracy and Middle East adviser; Elliott Abrams; former Bush speechwriters Marc Thiessen and Peter Wehner; Vice President Dick Cheney‘s former deputy national security adviser, John Hannah, as well as FPI’s four directors: Weekly Standard editor William Kristol; Brookings Institution fellow Robert Kagan; former Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman Dan Senor; and former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and Ambassador to Turkey, Eric Edelman.
It was Kagan and Kristol who co-founded and directed PNAC in its heyday from 1997 to the end of Bush’s term in 2005.
The letter comes amid growing pressure on Obama, including from liberal hawks, to take stronger action against Gaddafi.
Two prominent senators whose foreign policy views often reflect neo-conservative thinking, Republican John McCain and Independent Democrat Joseph Lieberman, called Friday in Tel Aviv for Washington to supply Libyan rebels with arms, among other steps, including establishing a no-fly zone over the country.
On Wednesday, Obama said his staff was preparing a “full range of options” for action. He also announced that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will meet fly to Geneva Monday for a foreign ministers’ meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council to discuss possible multilateral actions.
“They want to keep open the idea that there’s a mix of capabilities they can deploy – whether it’s a no-fly zone, freezing foreign assets of Gaddafi’s family, doing something to prevent the transport of mercenaries (hired by Gaddafi) to Libya, targeting sanctions against some of his supporters to persuade them to abandon him,” said Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation, who took part in a meeting of independent foreign policy analysts, including Abrams, with senior National Security Council staff at the White House Thursday.
During the 1990s, neo-conservatives consistently lobbied for military pressure to be deployed against so-called “rogue states”, especially in the Middle East.
After the 1991 Gulf War, for example, many “neo-cons” expressed bitter disappointment that U.S. troops stopped at the Kuwaiti border instead of marching to Baghdad and overthrowing the regime of Saddam Hussein.
When the Iraqi president then unleashed his forces against Kurdish rebels in the north and Shia insurgents in the south, they – along with many liberal interventionist allies – pressed President George H.W. Bush to impose “no-fly zones” over both regions and take additional actions – much as they are now proposing for Libya – designed to weaken the regime’s military repressive capacity.
Those actions set the pattern for the 1990s. To the end of the decade, neo-conservatives, often operating under the auspices of a so-called “letterhead organisation”, such as PNAC, worked – often with the help of some liberal internationalists eager to establish a right of humanitarian intervention – to press President Bill Clinton to take military action against adversaries in the Balkans (in Bosnia and then Kosovo) as well as Iraq.
Within days of 9/11, for example, PNAC issued a letter signed by 41 prominent individuals – almost all neo-conservatives, including 10 of the Libya letter’s signers – that called for military action to “remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq”, as well as retaliation against Iran and Syria if they did not immediately end their support for Hezbollah in Lebanon.
PNAC and its associates subsequently worked closely with neo-conservatives inside the Bush administration, including Abrams, Wolfowitz, and Edelman, to achieve those aims.
While neo-conservatives were among the first to call for military action against Gaddafi in the past week, some prominent liberals and rights activists have rallied to the call, including three of the letter’s signatories: Neil Hicks of Human Rights First; Bill Clinton’s human rights chief, John Shattuck; and Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic, who also signed the PNAC Iraq letter 10 years ago.
In addition, Anne-Marie Slaughter, until last month the influential director of the State Department’s Policy Planning office, cited the U.S.-NATO Kosovo campaign as a possible precedent. “The international community cannot stand by and watch the massacre of Libyan protesters,” she wrote on Twitter. “In Rwanda we watched. In Kosovo we acted.”
Such comments evoked strong reactions from some military experts, however.
“I’m horrified to read liberal interventionists continue to suggest the ease with which humanitarian crises and regional conflicts can be solved by the application of military power,” wrote Andrew Exum, a counter-insurgency specialist at the Center for a New American Security, about Wieseltier. “To speak so glibly of such things reflects a very immature understanding of the limits of force and the difficulties and complexities of contemporary military operations.”
Other commentators noted that a renewed coalition of neo- conservatives and liberal interventionists would be much harder to put together now than during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
“We now have Iraq and Afghanistan as warning signs, as well as our fiscal crisis, so I don’t think there’s an enormous appetite on Capitol Hill or among the public for yet another military engagement,” said Charles Kupchan, a foreign policy specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
“I support diplomatic and economic sanctions, but I would stop well short of advocating military action, including the imposition of a no-fly zone,” he added, noting, in any event, that most of the killing in Libya this week has been carried out by mercenaries and paramilitaries on foot or from vehicles.
“There may be some things we can do – such as airlifting humanitarian supplies to border regions where there are growing number of refugees, but I would do so only with the full support of the Arab League and African Union, if not the U.N.,” said Clemons.
“(The neo-conservatives) are essentially pro-intervention, pro-war, without regard to the costs to the country,” he told IPS. “They don’t recognise that we’re incredibly over- extended and that the kinds of things they want us to do actually further weaken our already-eroded stock of American power.”
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Yet here we find in a press release issued Thursday by the neo-conservative Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) — the successor organization of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) — the announcement that senior officials of the national chapter of Amnesty International (AIUSA), Human Rights Watch, and Human Rights First have signed an open letter to President Obama, apparently drafted by FPI, urging him to take a series of steps to “demonstrate your administration’s commitment to human rights issues in China” in advance of and during next week’s state visit to Washington of President Hu Jintao.
Now, I have no problem with the specific content of the letter or with the general concern expressed in it about the status of human rights observance in China. Nor do I doubt the sincerity of anyone who signed the letter. (And, given their history, I’m not so surprised that Freedom House or Reporters Without Borders would go along with this kind of thing.) But why, oh why, would serious human rights groups that derive their credibility precisely from their independence from governments or political movements hitch their wagon to an organization whose founders and directors — Bill Kristol, Bob Kagan, Dan Senor, Eric Edelman — are so closely tied to the aggressive unilateralism of George W. Bush’s first term, the likes of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the defense of Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, and the conduct of Israel’s wars against Lebanon and Gaza?
By signing on to such a letter, these human rights groups — which do so much good work — not only lend some of their credibility to FPI and thus help rehabilitate a political movement that has long used human rights and democracy as an instrument for expanding U.S. power and undermining Washington’s perceived enemies (including the UN and international law). They also damage that same credibility by offering ammunition to those governments and others who see the human rights movement as a handmaiden of U.S. and western imperialism. (How does this advance their human rights advocacy in Iran, for example?) Would they have signed the letter — with their institutional affiliations! — if the sponsoring organization had indeed called itself the Project for a New American Century of which, of course, FPI is the reincarnation?
Unfortunately, this is not the first time this has happened. In July, 2009, shortly after its birth — or reincarnation — FPI published an open letter in which its 39 signatories called on Obama to take steps to show his commitment to human rights in Russia in advance of his first summit meeting with Dmitri Medvedev. Among the 39, which were dominated by the same neo-conservative crowd (James Woolsey, Josh Muravchik, Danielle Pletka, Max Boot, Gary Schmitt, etc.) that used to sign PNAC letters about Iraq, were several bona fide human-rights activists, including — albeit not in their institutional capacity — Larry Cox, AIUSA’s executive director; Mort Halperin, senior adviser of the Open Society Institute (OSI); and Stephen Rickard, OSI’s Washington director. At least, OSI appears to have begged off this latest effort.
But, as I pointed out back then, what prevents the serious human rights groups from drafting and sending their own letters? Why must they enlist themeslves in FPI/PNAC’s initiative?
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