With President Barack Obama winning re-election, foreign policy analysts here are pondering whether his victory will translate into major changes from the rather cautious approach he followed overseas in his first term.

For now, speculation is focused primarily on the Middle East, the region that has dominated the international agenda [...]]]> via IPS News

With President Barack Obama winning re-election, foreign policy analysts here are pondering whether his victory will translate into major changes from the rather cautious approach he followed overseas in his first term.

For now, speculation is focused primarily on the Middle East, the region that has dominated the international agenda since 9/11, much to the frustration of those in the Obama administration who are hoping to accelerate Washington’s “pivot” to the Asia/Pacific, especially in light of growing tensions between China and Japan and the ongoing political transition in Beijing.

Others are hoping that Obama will be willing to invest a fair amount of whatever additional political capital he gained from his victory on reviving international efforts to curb global warming, a challenge that thrust itself back into public consciousness here with hurricane-force winds as “Super-Storm Sandy” tore up much of the northeastern coast, including lower Manhattan.

Indeed, long-frustrated environmental groups seized on Obama’s allusion to the “destructive power of a warming planet” in his Chicago victory speech early Wednesday’s morning as a hopeful sign that the president, who hardly mentioned the problem during the campaign for fear of key coal-producing swing states, notably Ohio, may make climate change one of his “legacy” issues.

“President Obama’s legacy will be shaped by his ability to take on big challenges, including climate change, clean energy, environmental protection, and sustainability,” said Andrew Steer, president of the World Resources Institute (WRI).

As with climate change and other issues with major domestic implications, however, Obama will be constrained by certain political realities, most notably the fact Republicans will still hold a solid majority in the House of Representatives and 45 seats in the Senate, enabling them to effectively block any legislation to which they are strongly opposed.

“You’ve had an election that more or less preserves the status quo in the House,” noted Charles Kupchan, a foreign policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “At a time when Obama’s top priority is getting the economy going, I’m not sure we’ll see a major initiative on climate change.”

And, while Obama won a sturdy majority of the electoral vote, his margin in the national vote is unlikely to exceed three percent when all the votes are counted. As a result, the institutional and partisan balance of power remains much the same as before the election.

Moreover, the fact that foreign policy did not play much of a role in a campaign dominated by the economy – only five percent of voters told pollsters as they left the voting booth that foreign affairs was the most important issue facing the country – suggests that Obama cannot claim a clear mandate for major policy changes.

Still, the fact that his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, dropped his earlier hawkish, neo-conservative rhetoric as the election approached and essentially embraced Obama’s general policy approach, including even in the Middle East, in the closing weeks of the campaign was taken by some as a green light, if not a mandate, to pursue the president’s instincts.

“The election campaign, and not only the outcome, should be seen as the rout of the neo-conservatism of the disastrous 2001-2006 period of the Bush administration and the consolidation of a broad, bipartisan foreign policy consensus,” wrote Middle East analyst and occasional White House adviser Marc Lynch on his foreignpolicy.com blog Wednesday.

He predicted that what he called Obama’s “caution and pragmatism” in the region, particularly with respect to generally supporting democratic transitions, seeking ways to convene Israelis and Palestinians, engaging moderate Islamists, and pursuing Al-Qaeda and its affiliates, is unlikely to change, although he suggested that bolder approaches in some areas were called for.

In particular, the administration should begin “serious efforts at real talks with Iran” on its nuclear programme and “be prepared to take yes for an answer,” he wrote, echoing a consensus among realists in the foreign policy establishment that Obama will have greater flexibility to strike a deal with Tehran now than at any time in the last two years.

Reports of back-channel talks between the U.S. and Iran in preparation for a new round of negotiations between Tehran and the so-called P5+1 powers after the election have been circulating for two weeks.

Lynch also called for Washington to get behind a major push to unify the two main Palestinian factions and “encourage the renewal of a peace camp in the upcoming Israeli election” in hopes reviving serious efforts to achieve a two-state solution – a recommendation that also been urged by many analysts disappointed by Obama’s failure over the last two years to apply real pressure on Israel to halt the growth of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Since 2010, Obama and his fellow Democrats have avoided confronting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who made little secret of his support for Romney – on either issue in major part because they felt their re-election chances depended heavily on the neutrality, if not the goodwill of the powerful Israel lobby.

Remarkably, however, those fears appear to have proved largely unfounded. Despite the expenditure of tens of millions of dollars in swing states on ads by the hard-line neo-conservative Republican Jewish Coalition and the Emergency Committee for Israel, as well as repeated charges by Romney that Obama had “thrown Israel under the bus,” 70 percent of Jewish voters opted for the president – a result that suggested that at least those hard-line neo-conservative elements of the lobby most closely tied to Netanyahu and the settler movement were not nearly as powerful as generally believed.

If so, Obama may have more room for manoeuvre on both Israel-Palestine and Iran, if he chooses to exercise it, than he himself previously thought.

Indeed, the election results were greeted with some considerable anxiety by Netanyahu’s supporters both here and in Israel.

“(R)emember that Obama is deeply committed to three things: global nuclear disarmament, rapprochement with the Islamic world, and Palestinian statehood,” wrote David Weinberg Wednesday in Israel Hayom, an Israeli newspaper funded by U.S. casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a major Netanyahu backer who also funded the election ads against Obama.

“I believe that he will forcefully act to progress on all three fronts, and this could bring him into conflict with Israel,” he added. “So start filling your sandbags. We’re in for a rough ride.”

Moreover, surveys of Jewish voters nationwide and in the swing states of Ohio and Florida commissioned by J Street, a “pro-peace” Zionist group, found that Obama’s tally among Jewish voters was only four percent less than in 2008 – roughly the same proportionate loss he suffered among virtually all demographic groups, except Latinos, who increased their support for the president significantly compared to four years ago.

The surveys also found overwhelming (79 percent) support for the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem, 76 percent support for an active U.S. role in negotiating a settlement, as well as a significant plurality for continuing diplomacy with Iran.

Still Kupchan believes Obama is unlikely to aggressively challenge Netanyahu, especially on the Israel-Palestinian issue.

“I think the chances of a major push on the peace process are slim,” said Charles Kupchan, a foreign policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “That would happen only if there is an opening of sorts in the region or if it comes primarily from within Israel and a shift in the electoral landscape there that gives it Netanyahu an incentive to do something bold.”

But he, too, predicted that Obama will try harder to reach some agreement with Iran in the coming months while continuing to resist intervention – especially military intervention – amid the continuing turmoil in the Arab world.

“The one place you’ll see a growing footprint and presence and growing activism,” he said, will be in Asia, especially if “things heat up more over territorial disputes between China and its neighbours. And the new Chinese leadership may pursue a more confrontational stance which could in turn invite an American response in kind.”

Politico has the scoop on an expensive advertisement funded by a mideast-focused hawkish advocacy group featuring an aggressive speech that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made on Sept. 11. The ad is scheduled to air in several cities in Florida tomorrow, where the Jewish vote [...]]]>
via Lobe Log

Politico has the scoop on an expensive advertisement funded by a mideast-focused hawkish advocacy group featuring an aggressive speech that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made on Sept. 11. The ad is scheduled to air in several cities in Florida tomorrow, where the Jewish vote could determine who wins the key state if it’s a close presidential election. Chilling music plays in the background as the Israeli leader proclaims: ”The fact is that every day that passes, Iran gets closer and closer to nuclear bombs. The world tells Israel wait, there’s still time. And I say wait, for what? Wait until when?”

The $1 million slot was paid for by Secure America Now (SAN), which conceals the identity of its donors with its 501(c)4 status. SAN claims it operates in a “non-partisan” manner but doesn’t publish a list of its board or members. Nevertheless, one high-profile member is Frank Gaffney’s sister and fellow neoconservative activist, Devon Cross, who said in a SAN press release (now removed) about a 2011 poll showing American views of Iran as a top national security threat that:

Though both the Bush and Obama administrations have been reticent to consider military options to address the threat posed by Iranian nukes, the American people are prepared to support such action should sanctions fail. Americans across the political spectrum are focused on security, even though these issues get far less attention from politicians than these polling numbers indicate they should.

SAN has been accused of using flawed techniques for its polling. The Washington Post’s Adam Serwer described one such poll showing that Obama had lost Jewish support for the Democrat party because of his dealings with Israel “laughably bogus” because

Not only does their sample skew conservative, (only 64 percent of respondents voted for Obama, as opposed to the 77 percent of Jewish votes he actually got) but many questions in the poll are phrased in as leading a manner as possible. Indeed, given the wording of the questions, it’s actually surprising that 63 percent of respondents overall approved of Obama.

SAN’s media productions also repeat neoconservative talking points about the Obama administration’s mideast foreign policy, including a 2012 SAN ad claiming that in his first interview as president, “Obama chose Arab TV for an apology.” The ad goes on to show Obama saying that it is “important for us to be willing to talk to Iran,” with a voiceover in the ad claiming that “Iran answered with terror, attacks on our troops and nuclear weapons development. … Tell President Obama: no apologies, no weakness. It’s time to stop Iran.”

In its assessment of this ad Politifact.com concluded:

Obama’s first television interview after taking office was with the Al Arabiya network at the White House. But the ad gets nothing right beyond that. By saying ‘all too often the United States starts by dictating,’ Obama was not apologizing but being diplomatic about past strategies that failed to yield results. What’s more, the ad criticizes Obama’s approach to Iran, but his quote actually referred to the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Another ad features a suburban mother complaining that Obama has made the US less secure in many ways, including by ceasing the use of “enhanced interrogation” techniques, “all but abandoning Israel,” “apologizing for America,” failing to stop Iran from allegedly trying to develop a nuclear weapon, and “making clear the era of American exceptionalism is over.”

As Politico’s Maggie Haberman notes, “Bibi Netanyahu is not running a campaign in the US – it just looks that way in this new ad.”

WASHINGTON, Jul 30 2012 (IPS) - Congress’s rush to pass new sanctions against Iran ahead of the August recess comes amidst an intensified drive to pin the Iranian government to deadly acts of international terrorism and amplified moves by U.S. politicians to demonstrate their support for Mideast ally Israel ahead of [...]]]> via IPS News

WASHINGTON, Jul 30 2012 (IPS) - Congress’s rush to pass new sanctions against Iran ahead of the August recess comes amidst an intensified drive to pin the Iranian government to deadly acts of international terrorism and amplified moves by U.S. politicians to demonstrate their support for Mideast ally Israel ahead of the November presidential election.

The push to implement more punitive measures against an increasingly demonised Iran could undermine efforts to resolve the longstanding impasse over Iran’s nuclear programme peacefully.

Jamal Abdi, policy director for the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), told IPS that even the mere “threat” of the new sanctions, which will be a combination of two bills passed in December and May by the House of Representatives and the Senate that target Iran’s energy sector and its ability to conduct financial transactions electronically, “have had a negative effect on the Iran nuclear talks and limited the president’s ability to use sanctions as a tool for leverage”.

A Jul. 25 hearing on Iran’s alleged support for international terrorism saw testimony from expert witnesses recommending that U.S. policy should be focused on gathering international support for holding Iran responsible and weakening its influence in the region.

According to the written testimony of Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP or the Washington Institute), “…Iran cannot win a conventional war against the West, but it can exact a high price through asymmetric warfare.”

“Exposing Iran’s involvement in international terrorism is now more important than ever, both to deny the group its coveted ‘reasonable deniability’ and to build an international consensus for action against Iran’s support for terrorism,” he wrote.

Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign policy programming at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), wrote in her testimony that “the fall of the house of Assad would be devastating to Iran. So we clearly have an interest in Syria’s future.”

Pletka also claimed that U.S. policy is geared towards “tolerance for Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism” and during her oral statements asked why U.S. officials had not publicly declared that Iran was responsible for a bombing in Bulgaria that killed five Israeli tourists. To date, no evidence has been presented to support that allegation.

Amidst ongoing efforts to tie Iran to international terrorism, the U.S.-led sanctions regime charges ahead. But while the full traditional legislative process has now been bypassed so the pending Iran sanctions can be passed before Friday, the details of the bill in question have been waiting to be finalised for more than half a year.

Republican-spearheaded efforts to include harsher measures have clashed with Democrat-led moves to pass the bill as is, resulting in gridlock until a compromise is reached.

According to a NIAC press document, one such provision, the “Kirk Amendment”, would result in “unintended consequences” that would harm ordinary Iranians such as prohibiting Iranian-American citizens from sending money to family members in Iran and stopping pharmaceutical companies from selling medicines to Iranian hospitals “regardless of whether the Treasury Department granted them a license to do so”.

M. J. Rosenberg, a veteran Israel analyst who worked for years at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), told IPS that Congress is rushing to pass the sanctions because they “promised AIPAC that they would and want to deliver before the election season goes into full swing in September”.

“Sanctions bills seem to originate from Congress, but they actually originate from inside AIPAC,” he said.

Rosenberg, who has been consistently critical of AIPAC and other U.S. Israel lobby groups in his writings and commentary, also said that Iran is at the top of AIPAC’s agenda.

“Look at AIPAC’s conference in the spring. The Iran sanctions issue was AIPAC’s main issue. If you want to show your donors that you are 100 percent for the cause – the cause being first sanctions and then war with Iran – you have to cosponsor bills and get them passed,” he said.

On Jul. 27, President Barack Obama’s signing into law of the “United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012”, which gives Israel an additional 70 million dollars in military aid and expands military and civil cooperation, coincided with the presumptive Republican White House Nominee Mitt Romney’s trip to Israel for the foreign-policy focused portion of his campaign.

While in Jerusalem, Romney had a friendly meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and attended a fundraiser that reportedly resulted in more than one million dollars in donations from 45 Jewish donors.

According to the AP, billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who has pledged to spend 100 million dollars to defeat President Obama, was seated next Romney at the event and joined in a standing ovation when Romney declared Jerusalem to be the Israeli capital.

Ongoing efforts by the presidential contenders to demonstrate their support for Israel have been described by analysts as an effort to capture a traditionally Democrat-aligned “Jewish vote”.

On Jul. 27, Gallup issued new polling data showing that from Jun. 1-Jul. 26 Jewish registered voters still favoured Obama over Romney by 68 percent to 25 percent.

Earlier in the year, a survey of more than 1,000 self-identified Jews conducted between late February and early March by the Public Religion Research Institute (PPRI) showed that Jewish voters, who make up only about two percent of the national population but comprise more than that in several key “swing states”, such as Florida, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Illinois, remain largely liberal and Democratic in their political orientation and that U.S. Jews are more concerned about issues such as social justice than foreign policy.

Asked what issue was most important to them in the upcoming election, 51 percent cited the economy and 15 percent the growing gap between rich and poor. Only two percent of respondents cited Iran.

The relative lesser importance accorded by respondents to both Israel and Iran is remarkable in light of strenuous efforts over most of the past year by all but one of the Republican presidential candidates, as well as Republican lawmakers in Congress, to drive a wedge between Obama and his Jewish supporters over precisely those two issues.

According to Rosenberg, campaigning to the Pro-Israel community is “not about the votes, it’s about money”.

“Adelson is big in the Romney camp and has lots of friends in the Israel community and is trying to pull them away from supporting Democrats by saying he will be tougher on Iran,” he said.

“It’s not about votes, it’s about getting these millionaires and billionaires into your corner,” said Rosenberg. “I would say that about politics in general. Ultimately money turns into votes. But really, when it comes to the pro-Israel community, it’s strictly about the money.”