by Derek Davison
One of the unintended consequences of the decision to extend the international talks on Iran’s nuclear program is the growing number of neoconservative calls for even more pressure on Iran. So it was on July 28 that the Gemunder Center Iran Task Force, a creation of the Jewish [...]]]>
by Derek Davison
One of the unintended consequences of the decision to extend the international talks on Iran’s nuclear program is the growing number of neoconservative calls for even more pressure on Iran. So it was on July 28 that the Gemunder Center Iran Task Force, a creation of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), hosted a panel discussion, “The Elusive Final Deal with Iran: Developments and Options Going Forward,” the participants of which all agreed on the need to “pressure” Iran now, and presumably forever, or at least until a new regime takes over in Tehran (which will be any day now, surely).
The substance of the discussion closely mirrored JINSA’s July 17 report, “Improving the Prospects for an Acceptable Final Deal with Iran,” which also focused on “pressure.” The panel repeatedly made the case for more pressure, which highlighted the shifting goalposts that have marked the neocon approach to the talks between Iran and the P5+1 (US, UK, France, China, and Russia plus Germany) since they began.
America and its allies were supposed to pressure Iran into negotiating and bringing its nuclear program into compliance with international expectations. Now that Iran is (again) negotiating and is in compliance, the calls for increasing pressure continue from neoconservative think tanks and certain actors on Capitol Hill.
When Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations talks about the importance of increasing pressure on Iran while “giving them a way out,” it’s not quite clear how that differs from what has already happened up until this point. Now American pressure is supposed to leverage not just Iran’s participation in the talks, not only its compliance with its NPT obligations, but also inspire Iranian capitulation to the agenda of American hawks. Iran’s failure to capitulate is proof positive that it hasn’t been pressured enough. Either the Iran hawks aren’t getting the hang of this “negotiating” thing or they consider “pressuring” Iran the end, not the means.
So what should pressure amount to when it comes to Iran and the nuclear talks? According to the JINSA report, Iran “respects only strength” (that really is a direct quote), so naturally a “credible” military threat is required. This requires more public threats of a military response, more public pledges to defend America’s regional allies from alleged Iranian aggression, more public tests of US “bunker buster” weaponry like the Massive Ordinance Penetrator (MOP), and more weapons sales, including MOPs, to Israel.
The panel also heavily emphasized the idea that America must “compete” with Iran regionally, “interdicting Iranian actions” as Ambassador Dennis Ross put it. This would presumably ratchet up the “pressure” on Iran. But the chaotic state of affairs throughout the Middle East right now makes it almost impossible for the US to adopt an across-the-board policy of opposing Iranian action everywhere. There are three regional flashpoints where Iran is currently active: Gaza, where it may be strengthening its support for Hamas; Syria, where it supports Bashar al-Assad against the rebel factions trying to unseat him; and Iraq, where it supports the Shia-led government (even if its support for Nouri al-Maliki is waning) and opposes the Islamic State (IS).
In Gaza, the US can and will oppose Iranian activity that might harm Israeli interests, but in Syria the picture becomes muddled, since America supports some of the rebels fighting Assad (the Free Syrian Army) but opposes others (the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusra Front and IS, also opposed by Iran). Meanwhile, in Iraq, for all practical purposes the US and Iran are on the same side, backing Maliki (or at least Baghdad) against IS and the Baathist Naqshbandi Army, though Washington has emphasized the need for a policy of reconciliation between Baghdad and Iraq’s disaffected Sunnis. JINSA’s report notes, in something of an understatement, that “the United States has been reticent to counter Iranian attempts to bolster its Shiite allies” in Syria and Iraq. Well, there’s a reason for that; doing so would materially damage US interests in Iraq and would risk the rise of a greater threat in Syria.
The panelists disagreed somewhat on the ideal length of a comprehensive deal. Ross, somewhat more realistically than his fellow panelists, suggested that an acceptable deal would sunset after 20 years, whereas former George W. Bush officials Stephen Rademaker and Eric Edelman seemed to be unhappy with a deal that would ever sunset. Rademaker specifically objects to language in the JPOA indicating that at the conclusion of a comprehensive solution, “the Iranian nuclear programme will be treated in the same manner as that of any non-nuclear weapon state party to the NPT.” While this would still leave Iran subject to Article III of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, specifically its requirement that states comply with safeguards negotiated with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to prevent the development of a nuclear weapon, Rademaker insists that Iran should remain under the terms of a comprehensive deal indefinitely. This is certainly a non-starter for the Iranians, who have been clear that they will only accept a deal under which Iran will ultimately be treated like any other NPT-signatory, but maybe they’re only insisting on that point because the US hasn’t “pressured” them enough yet.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and US Secretary of State John Kerry shake hands after world powers reached an agreement with Iran over its nuclear program on November 24, 2013. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images)
]]>by Jim Lobe
I’ve been slowly reading Robert Gates’ Duty over the last week or so and some of it is quite pertinent in light of the recent recommendation by JINSA’s Michael Makovsky and Lt. Gen. David Deptula (ret.) in the Wall Street Journal that the Obama administration provide Israel with Massive Ordinance Penetrator (MOP) [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
I’ve been slowly reading Robert Gates’ Duty over the last week or so and some of it is quite pertinent in light of the recent recommendation by JINSA’s Michael Makovsky and Lt. Gen. David Deptula (ret.) in the Wall Street Journal that the Obama administration provide Israel with Massive Ordinance Penetrator (MOP) bombs and B-52 bombers to deliver them against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Here’s what they wrote in their article entitled, “Sending a Bunker-Buster Message to Iran”:
By transferring to Israel MOPs and B-52Hs the administration would send a signal that its ally, which already has the will, now has the ability to prevent a nuclear Iran [a very dubious assertion, according to most experts]. Once they are delivered — ideally as the current six-month interim deal is set to expire in July — Iran will be put on notice that its nuclear program will come to an end, one way or another.
While Gates in his book (pp. 190-191] doesn’t say whether Israel requested the same weaponry in 2007, his description of the arguments presented, both pro and con, would certainly apply to Makovksy’s and Deptula’s arguments today. The passage is worth quoting in full, although the main point is summarized at the end when Gates quotes directly from what he told Bush in private. Here’s the passage as a whole:
Debate [about Iran's nuclear program] heated up considerably in May [2007], prompted by several Israeli military requests that, if satisfied, would greatly enhance their ability to strike the Iranian nuclear sites. In a meeting with the Joint Chiefs and me in the Tank on May 10, in the middle of a conversation on Afghanistan, the president suddenly asked if anybody was thinking about military action against Iran. He quickly added that the goal was of course to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapons and that he “just wanted you to be thinking about it — not a call to arms.”
Two days later the national security team met with the president in his private dining room adjacent to the Oval Office. The participants included Cheney, Rice, Mullen, Bolten, Hadley, Hadley’s deputy Jim Jeffrey, and me. We addressed two questions: How do we answer the Israelis and what should we do about the Iranian nuclear program? In many respects, it was a reprise of the debate over the Syrian nuclear reactor the year before. Hadley asked me to lead off. When making my case to the president on a significant issue like this one, I always wrote out in advance the points I wanted to make, because I did not want to omit something important. Given Bush 43′s green light to Olmert on the Syrian reactor, I was very apprehensive as the meeting began.
I recommended saying no to all the Israelis’ requests. Giving them any of the items on their new list would signal U.S. support for them to attack Iran unilaterally: “At that point, we lose our ability to control our fate in the entire region.” I said we would be handing over the initiative regarding U.S. vital national interests to a foreign power, a government that, when we asked them not to attack Syria, did so anyway. We should offer to collaborate more closely with Israel, I continued, doing more on missile defense and other capabilities, “but Olmert should be told in the strongest possible terms not to act unilaterally.” The United States was not reconciled to Iran having nuclear weapons, but we needed a long-term solution, not just a one-to-three-year delay. I went on to say that a strike by the United States or Israel would end divisions in the Iranian government, strengthen the most radical elements, unify the country behind the government in their hatred of us, and demonstrate to all Iranians the need to develop nuclear weapons. I warned that Iran was not Syria — it would retaliate, putting at risk Iraq, Lebanon, oil supplies from the Gulf (which would lead to skyrocketing oil prices), and the end of the peace process, as well as increasing the likelihood of a Hizballah war against Israel. Addressing what I knew to be Cheney’s desire to deal with the Iranian nuclear program before Bush left office, I observed that our current efforts to isolate Iran, significantly increase their economic problems, and delay their nuclear program might not be successful in bringing about a change of policy in Tehran during the Bush presidency, but they would leave his successor a robust array of tools with which to apply pressure. Finally, I pointed out that the president’s own conditions for preemptive war had not been met, our own intelligence estimate would be used against us, and we would be the ones isolated, not Iran.
Cheney spoke next, and I knew what was coming. Matter-of-factly, he said he disagreed with everything I had said. The United States should give Israel everything it wanted. We could not allow Iran to get nuclear weapons. If we weren’t going to act, he said, then we should enable the Israelis. Twenty years on, he argued, if there was a nuclear-armed Iran, people would say the Bush administration could have stopped it. I interjected that twenty years on, people might also say that we not only didn’t stop them from getting nuclear weapons but made it inevitable. I was pretty sure Condi did not favor accommodating Israeli’s requests, but the way she expressed her concerns about not leaving our ally in the lurch or feeling isolated led Mullen and me after the meeting to worry that she might be changing her mind. Mullen talked about the difficulty of carrying out a successful attack. Hadley remained silent. At the end, the president was non-commital, clearly frustrated by the lack of good options for dealing with Iran. He had a lot of company in the room on that score.
That afternoon I flew to Colorado Springs to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the North American Aerospace Defense Command. Aboard the plane, I became increasingly worried that the president might be persuaded by Cheney and Olmert to act or to enable the Israelis to act, especially if Condi’s position was softening. I decided to communicate once again with Bush privately. I said,
“We must not make our vital interests in the entire Middle East, the Persian Gulf, and Southwest Asia hostage to another nation’s decisions — no matter how close an ally. Above all, we ought not risk what we have gained in Iraq or the lives of our soldiers there on an Israeli military gamble in Iran. Olmert has his own agenda, and he will pursue it irrespective of our interests. …We will be bystanders to actions that affect us directly and dramatically. …Most evidence suggests we have some time. …The military option probably remains available for several years. …A military attack by either Israel or the United States will, I believe — having watched these guys since 1979 — guarantee that the Iranians will develop nuclear weapons, and seek revenge. …A surprise attack on Iran risks a further conflict in the Gulf and all its potential consequences, with no consultation with the Congress or foreknowledge on the part of the American people. That strikes me as very dangerous, and not just for sustaining our efforts in the Gulf.”
Most of that should act as a rebuttal to Makovsky’s and Deptula’s dangerous recommendations.
]]>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
In its latest report on Iran’s nuclear program, the Iran task force of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) admits that it is divided over the value of the Joint Plan of Action (JPA), the Nov. 24 agreement between Iran and the P5+1, but that [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
In its latest report on Iran’s nuclear program, the Iran task force of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) admits that it is divided over the value of the Joint Plan of Action (JPA), the Nov. 24 agreement between Iran and the P5+1, but that if after six months from the date of the JPA’s signing on Jan. 10 no final agreement is reached, the U.S. should support an Israeli attack on Iran if its government decides to carry one out. I’ll reprint the the executive summary below, but here’s the final paragraph:
The United States should move immediately to impose new sanctions and consider even tougher actions against Iran if no acceptable final is [sic] agreement is in place 180 days after the JPA’s formal implementation on January 20. At that time, the United States should do nothing that would impinge upon Israel’s ability to decide what actions it must take at that time, and indeed should support Israel if it takes military action.
This passage, of course, mirrors the provision in the Kirk-Menendez “Wag the Dog” Act of 2013 that similarly urges the U.S. to back Israel if its government feels “compelled to take military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran’s nuclear weapon program,” although it pushes the date forward to July 20 instead of at any time.
Now, JINSA claims that it has U.S. national security interests at heart, but it’s difficult to understand how U.S. backing for an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities will serve U.S. national interests if negotiators are still trying to work out the details of a final agreement six months from now. Indeed, such a move would be potentially catastrophic, not only for possibly involving the U.S. in a new Middle East war with a much bigger adversary than the Taliban or Iraq or Libya, but also because most experts believe that it would put a swift end to the international nuclear non-proliferation regime, isolate both Israel and the U.S., destroy the sanctions regime that the Obama administration has so painstakingly put together, and induce Iran to kick out IAEA inspectors and take its nuclear program underground. Most experts believe an Israeli attack could set back Iran’s nuclear program two years at most. So here we have JINSA insisting that we shouldn’t do anything to discourage Bibi Netanyahu to go for it!
As reader of this blog know, the JINSA task force is simply the latest incarnation of a mainly neoconservative group originally put together under the hawkish Bipartisan Policy Center in 2008. When its first report came out in the fall of that year, I called it a “roadmap to war” and have been diligently following its periodic reports ever since. Its membership has changed over time–it was weighted heavily toward staunchly pro-Israel personalities from both parties at the outset; it’s now disproportionately populated by former Bush aides, such as former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman (who is co-chair of the task force), former Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control and Nonproliferation Steve Rademaker, Dick Cheney’s former national security adviser John Hannah, and former State Department Counselor Eliot Cohen–although its ultra-hawkish message has remained consistent. As has its staff director, Michael Makovsky, a Churchill biographer who served as an oil expert in the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans in the run-up to the Iraq war and previously lived on a settlement on the West Bank, according to various reports that he has never denied, so far as I am aware. Makovsky became JINSA’s CEO last year, and he took BPC’s task force with him.
Of course, the most interesting member of the task force is Amb. Dennis Ross, who served on the BPC task force at its birth until he entered the Obama administration in Jan. 2009 and soon found himself to be the NSC’s senior director for Iran until he left in late 2011 to become counselor of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Ross co-chairs the task force with Edelman.
Now, what is particularly curious about both Ross and this latest JINSA report is that the report doesn’t seem to correspond to his views. As you can see below, the executive summary asserts that the JPA is “deeply flawed,” but, at the report’s rollout Monday at JINSA headquarters, Ross spent most of his time defending the agreement (contrary to Jennifer Rubin’s assessment of his position–”Ex-Obama Adviser: Interim Deal is a Sham.”
“I’m not one of those who thinks the agreement is that bad,” he said, arguing, in effect, that he “could live with Iran having a limited enrichment program with a highly intrusive inspection regime,” unlike others on the task force who echo Netanyahu’s demand that Iran be permitted no enrichment.
That doesn’t mean that Ross isn’t a hawk. Indeed, he argued that the White House’s warning that adding new sanctions would destroy the diplomatic track and make war the only remaining option could easily be interpreted as bolstering Obama’s previous threat to take military action against Tehran unless a satisfactory agreement is reached. Ross made this argument in a more comprehensive exposition of his views about the JPA and the P5+1 process published in Politico Sunday, not an insignificant amount of which is inconsistent with the report by the task force which he chairs. Ross also made clear that he, like a couple other members of the task force, did not believe that a final agreement would be reached within six months, which, of course, raises the question of why the group set that as the date at which Israel should be given a green light to attack Iran.
I didn’t get a chance to ask Ross about that in the Q&A period. Makovsky, however, insisted that the report–except on the question of whether Iran could be permitted some enrichment as part of a final agreement–represented a consensus by the entire task force, which would include Ross. I asked Rademaker whether he thought that provision for an Israeli attack after 180 days was a good idea. “We didn’t have a long debate about this,” he told me, noting that “Israel is the most immediately threatened by Iran’s program.” He added that “there’s a lot of downsides to using military force,” but the threat of an Israeli attack could “enhance the prospect for successful diplomacy.”
In any event, here’s the executive summary:
]]>Executive Summary
Preventing a nuclear-capable Iran remains the most pressing national security challenge facing the United States and its Middle East allies, and a permanent diplomatic settlement that fully addresses international security concerns remains the preferred means to achieve this objective. We judge this outcome to be more remote and harder to achieve now than before the P5+1 countries and Iran signed an interim deal in Geneva, known as the Joint Plan of Action (JPA), which went into effect January 20, 2014.The JPA is intended as an interim arrangement that pauses parts of Iran’s nuclear program during negotiations for a longer-term settlement. But it also sets out so-called “elements of the final step of a comprehensive solution.” We believe the JPA is deeply flawed because the combination of interim and final concessions it contains undermine the effort to prevent a nuclear Iran.
Our previous report, issued in the run-up to Geneva, spelled out six principles to which any deal must conform to protect U.S. national security interests. To be acceptable, we argued any deal must require Iran to resolve outstanding international concerns, adhere to international legal requirements and roll back its nuclear program. It would also need to put in place a strict inspections regime and clear deadlines for Iran to uphold its commitments. Finally, we made the case that to obtain such a deal the United States would have to negotiate and enforce it from a position of strength, to make it unmistakably plain to Tehran that it has the most to lose from the failure of diplomacy.
The aim of this report is to: show where this agreement falls short of the parameters dictated by our principles; explain the risks generated by these shortcomings; and provide recommendations for pursuing a final agreement to prevent a nuclear Iran.
The JPA fails to meet the standards we had previously laid out, both in the interim and the long term. It allows Iran to retain enough key aspects of its nuclear program to continue progress toward nuclear weapons capability – including its 3.5 percent enriched uranium stockpile, existing enrichment capacity and ability to improve the performance of its extant centrifuges – and even authorizes it to construct an additional nuclear facility. But the JPA does not require Iran to address its unresolved legal obligations. Instead, it implicitly recognizes Iran’s proclaimed right to enrich in practice, undermining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and envisions a time limit on any Iranian concessions. Worse still, it suggests that after the conditions of a final deal lapse, Iran will “be treated in the same manner as that of any” state, as if it had not pursued nuclear weapons in defiance of international law or sponsored global terrorism for more than three decades. Finally, the JPA weakens U.S. leverage to pursue even this flawed long-term deal, both by beginning to unravel the existing international sanctions regime and by seeking to limit Congress’s power to pass additional measures. Overall, this does not buy time for the P5+1 to negotiate a final deal. Instead, the JPA makes it possible for Iran to progress toward undetectable nuclear weapons capability without even violating the agreement.
These shortcomings complicate prevention of a nuclear Iran, undermine the nonproliferation regime and contribute to regional instability. To stave off these risks, the United States must now do the best it can with what time remains to protect its security interests, as well as those of its allies in the region.
As we made clear in our previous reports, this task force continues to believe the optimal outcome would be an Iran with no enrichment capability whatsoever. Because the JPA precludes this, and contains the flaws outlined above, some task force members believe the deal is unacceptable. These task force members believe the United States must still press for a final agreement permitting Iran to keep only a civilian nuclear power program but no enrichment facilities or capabilities.
Other task force members believe the JPA, while not the best solution, provides an opportunity to test Iran’s true intentions definitively with an endgame proposal. By offering Iran much of what it claims to want – civilian nuclear power and enrichment – while also containing the most stringent possible limits to preclude nuclear weapons capability, U.S. negotiators can give Iran the chance to prove whether or not it is serious in its declared peaceful aims. To be acceptable, these task force members believe, a final deal must limit Iran to: no enrichment beyond 5 percent; no 20 percent enriched uranium stockpile, and no more than 1,000 kilograms (kg) of 5 percent; no second-generation centrifuges, and no more than 1,000 installed first-generation centrifuges; deactivation of the Fordow enrichment facility; and no plutonium track.
All task force members agree an acceptable final deal must require Iran to meet all of its international legal obligations, come clean about its past nuclear weapons research and work, and accept a much more intrusive inspections regime.
Given that the JPA grants Iran greater concessions than it extracts, and considering how close Iran is to nuclear weapons capability, it is critical such a final, permanent deal which fulfills our principles be put in place as soon as possible, preferably before the JPA’s six-month interim expires. Achieving this will require the United States to use all forms of leverage available to induce Iran to accept it, including intensified sanctions, credible military preparations, tighter cooperation with regional allies and clear support for a potential Israel strike.
The United States should move immediately to impose new sanctions and consider even tougher actions against Iran if no acceptable final is agreement is in place 180 days after the JPA’s formal implementation on January 20. At that time, the United States should do nothing that would impinge upon Israel’s ability to decide what actions it must take at that time, and indeed should support Israel if it takes military action.
by Jim Lobe
Exactly three weeks ago, a confident Dennis Ross, President Barack Obama’s top Iran policy-maker for most of his first term, made the following assessments and predictions in an op-ed entitled, ironically, “Don’t Discount the Iranian Election:”
So now Ayatollah Khamenei has decided not to leave anything [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
Exactly three weeks ago, a confident Dennis Ross, President Barack Obama’s top Iran policy-maker for most of his first term, made the following assessments and predictions in an op-ed entitled, ironically, “Don’t Discount the Iranian Election:”
So now Ayatollah Khamenei has decided not to leave anything to chance. …If there had been any hope that Iran’s presidential election might offer a pathway to different policy approaches on dealing with the United States, he has now made it clear that will not be the case. His action should be seen for what it is: a desire to prevent greater liberalization internally and accommodation externally.”
…Clearly, the Supreme Leader wanted to avoid the kind of excitement that Rafsanjani would have stirred up had he continued making public statements, as he has over the last two years, about Iran’s need to fix the economy and reduce Iran’s isolation internationally (a theme he has emphasized in recent years). But the exclusion of Rafsanjani from the election is also an important signal to anyone concerned about Iran’s nuclear program. If the Supreme Leader had been interested in doing a deal with the West on the Iranian nuclear program, he would have wanted [former President Akbar Hashemi] Rafsanjani to be president.
I say that …because if the Supreme Leader were interested in an agreement, he would probably want to create an image of broad acceptability of it in advance. Rather than having only his fingerprints on it, he would want to widen the circle of decision-making to share the responsibility. And he would set the stage by having someone like Rafsanjani lead a group that would make the case for reaching an understanding. Rafsanjani’s pedigree as Khomeini associate and former president, with ties to the Revolutionary Guard and to the elite more generally, would all argue for him to play this role.
…(T)he fact that the Iranian media is lavishing attention on [Saeed] Jalili certainly suggests that he is Khamenei’s preference, even though he has the thinnest credentials of the lot.
If Jalili does end up becoming the Iranian president, it will be hard to avoid the conclusion that the Supreme Leader has little interest in reaching an understanding with the United States on the Iranian nuclear program.”
Three weeks later, we know not only that Jalili did not win the election, but that the candidate backed with enthusiasm by both Rafsanjani and former reformist president Mohammad Khatami — Hassan Rouhani — did. Moreover, during his campaign, Rouhani did exactly what, in Ross’s assessment, made Rafsanjani’s candidacy unacceptable to Ali Khamenei: he spoke “about Iran’s need to fix the economy and reduce Iran’s isolation internationally…” — themes which he repeated in his 90-minute post-election press conference. In addition, Rouhani — given his 15 years on the Supreme National Security Council — appears to be an excellent vehicle for creating “an image of broad acceptability of [an agreement on Iran's nuclear program] in advance” if Khamenei were interested in such an accord. And, although he isn’t a former president like Rafsanjani, Rouhani’s reputed ability to bridge differences between conservatives, pragmatists and reformists would help Khamenei “widen the circle of decision-making to share the responsibility” of a deal. He would also be well placed to “lead a group that would make the case for reaching an understanding.”
Thus, if we assume, as Ross did three weeks ago, that Khamenei leaves nothing to chance and has the power to do so — a very questionable assumption among actual Iran experts (see here and here for examples) — then we might also see Jalili’s defeat and Rouhani’s surprise victory on what was essentially Rafsanjani’s platform as clear signals that Khamenei is indeed “interested in doing a deal on the Iranian nuclear program.” The only missing element in this scenario was Rafsanjani who, as noted above, strongly backed Rouhani and helped rally the centrists and reformists behind him. In light of Ross’s previous assessments regarding how the supreme leader signals his intentions on nuclear negotiations, would it be unreasonable to expect that Ross would not only be somewhat humbler with respect to his understanding of Iranian politics, but also rather hopeful about prospects for a real deal?
On the question of humility, the answer is not really, at least judging by his latest analysis, entitled “Talk to Iran’s New President. Warily.” Ross doesn’t even mention Jalili, Khamenei’s previously presumed chosen one. And while Ross seems genuinely puzzled by why Khamenei “allowed Mr. Rowhani to win the election,” particularly in light of the fact that the president-elect had “run against current [Khamenei-approved] Iranian policies,” he still sees the supreme leader as all-powerful, implying that Rouhani would not have won had Khamenei not approved of his victory.
As to the meaning of Khamenei’s permitting Rouhani to win, Ross floats four possible options, none of which, however, admits the possibility that Khamenei is prepared “to do a deal” acceptable to the West (a possibility for which Ross, just three weeks before, believed could have been signaled by the Guardian Council’s approval of Rafsanjani’s candidacy). He does entertain the possibility that Rouhani gained Khamenei’s approval for reasons related to the nuclear issue, but strictly for tactical purposes — not to reach a final accord that would preclude Iran’s attaining “breakout capability” (as would presumably have been possible if Rafsanjani had won the presidency):
He [Khamenei] believes that Mr. Rowhani, a president with a moderate face, might be able to seek an open-ended agreement on Iran’s nuclear program that would reduce tensions and ease sanctions now, while leaving Iran room for development of nuclear weapons at some point in the future.
He believes that Mr. Rowhani might be able to start talks that would simply serve as a cover while Iran continued its nuclear program.
Ross, who has been arguing for several months now that Washington needs to drop its approach of seeking incremental confidence-building accords with Iran in favor of making a final ultimatum-like offer (backed up by ever-tougher sanctions and ever-more credible threats of military action) that would permit Tehran to enrich uranium up to five percent (subject to the strictest possible international oversight in exchange for a gradual easing of sanctions), goes on to reject any let-up in pressure on Tehran.
Even if he were given the power to negotiate, Mr. Rowhani would have to produce a deal the supreme leader would accept. So it is far too early to consider backing off sanctions as a gesture to Mr. Rowhani.
We should, instead, keep in mind that the outside world’s pressure on Iran to change course on its nuclear program may well have produced his election. So it would be foolish to think that lifting the pressure now would improve the chances that he would be allowed to offer us what we need: an agreement, or credible Iranian steps toward one, under which Iran would comply with its international obligations on the nuclear issue.”[Emphasis added.]
Now, I, for one, find this reasoning difficult to understand. Ross may be right that external pressure was responsible for Rouhani’s election, but I suspect that it was a good deal more complicated than that, and, in any event, one of the last people I would seek out for an explanation as to why Rouhani won would be Ross, given his assessments of Iranian politics just three weeks ago. But to assert that easing pressure on Iran once Rouhani takes office (as a goodwill gesture) would somehow reduce the chances that Rouhani would be allowed to make concessions on the nuclear issue just doesn’t make much sense, if, for no other reason, virtually all Iran experts agree that Khamenei (and presumably hard-liners in and around his office) don’t believe Washington really wants an agreement because its ultimate goal is regime change. (Just today, Khamenei, while insisting that “resolving the nuclear issue would be simple” if hostile powers put aside their stubbornness, noted, “Of course, the enemies say in their words and letters that they do not want to change the regime, but their approaches are contrary to these words.”) If Khamenei is to be persuaded otherwise, Washington should work to bolster Rouhani and the forces that supported him in the election.
Indeed, most Iran specialists whose work I read argue that Rouhani’s election has really put the “ball in President Obama’s court”, as the International Crisis Group’s Ali Vaez wrote this week. They say that the response should not only be goodwill gestures, such as a congratulatory letter on his inauguration, but far more generous offers than what has been put on the table to date. Vali Nasr, for example, made the point last week when he argued that Rouhani “will likely wait for a signal of American willingness to make serious concessions before he risks compromise.”
For the past eight years, U.S. policy has relied on pressure — threats of war and international economic sanctions — rather than incentives to change Iran’s calculus. Continuing with that approach will be counterproductive. It will not provide Rowhani with the cover for a fresh approach to nuclear talks, and it could undermine the reformists generally by showing they cannot do better than conservatives on the nuclear issue.
…There is now both the opportunity and the expectation that Washington will adopt a new approach to strengthen reformists and give Rowhani the opening that he needs if he is to successfully argue the case for a deal with the P5+1.”
Paul Pillar made a similar point in the National Interest last week:
Rouhani’s election presents the United States and its partners with a test — of our intentions and seriousness about reaching an agreement. Failure of the test will confirm suspicions in Tehran that we do not want a deal and instead are stringing along negotiations while waiting for the sanctions to wreak more damage. …Passage of the test …means not making any proposal an ultimatum that is coupled with threats of military force, which only feed Iranian suspicions that for the West the negotiations are a box-checking prelude to war and regime change.”
“The Iranian electorate has in effect said to the United States and its Western partners, “We’ve done all we can. Among the options that the Guardian Council gave us, we have chosen the one that offers to get us closest to accommodation, agreement and understanding with the West. Your move, America.”
And, in contrast to Ross, who believes that time is fast running out and the “multilateral step-by-step approach …has outlived its usefulness,” the Brookings Institution’s Suzanne Maloney argued in Foreign Affairs that
To overcome the deep-seated (and not entirely unjustified) paranoia of its ultimate decision-maker, the United States will need to be patient. It will need to understand, for example, that Rouhani will need to demonstrate to Iranians that he can produce tangible rewards for diplomatic overtures. That means that Washington should be prepared to offer significant sanctions relief in exchange for any concessions on the nuclear issue. Washington will also have to understand that Rouhani may face real constraints in seeking to solve the nuclear dispute without exacerbating the mistrust of hard-liners.
In spite of this advice, things are moving in the opposite direction. On July 1, tough new sanctions to which Obama has already committed himself will take effect. Among other provisions, they will penalise companies that deal in rials or with Iran’s automotive sector. The Republican-led House is expected to pass legislation by the end of next month (that is, on the eve of Rouhani’s inauguration) that would sharply curb or eliminate the president’s authority to waive sanctions on countries and companies doing any business with Iran, thus imposing a virtual trade embargo on Iran. Other sanctions measures, including an anticipated effort by Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham to get an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) resolution passed by the Senate after the August recess, are lined up.
It would be good to learn what Ross, who is co-chairing the new Iran task force of the ultra-hawkish Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, thinks of these new and pending forms of pressure and whether they are likely to improve the chances that Rouhani will be able to deliver a deal.
]]>by Marsha B. Cohen
Americans will soon get to see their taxpayer dollars at work when Israel’s Iron Dome anti-rocket system, funded largely by the US, is deployed during President Obama’s Israel visit.
Unless the inauguration of Pope Francis I causes an abrupt change in his itinerary , Obama will land in [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
Americans will soon get to see their taxpayer dollars at work when Israel’s Iron Dome anti-rocket system, funded largely by the US, is deployed during President Obama’s Israel visit.
Unless the inauguration of Pope Francis I causes an abrupt change in his itinerary , Obama will land in Israel on Wednesday, March 20. Immediately after an official welcoming ceremony at Ben Gurion Airport, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres will show him an Iron Dome battery, set up at the airport so the President won’t have to travel to a site where the mobile anti-rocket system is being deployed.
The Iron Dome system may well be the quintessential metaphor for US-Israel relations in general, and for Obama’s relationship with Netanyahu in particular, the love child of a sometimes steamy, often frosty and increasingly strained affaire de coeur between defense spending and domestic politics. According to outgoing Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Israel has already received $270 million towards the construction of Iron Dome and — despite the hand-wringing and wrangling over budget cuts in Congress — is slated to receive another $680 million, nearly a billion dollars on top of Israel’s usual $3 billion in annual US military assistance. These figures are corroborated by a Congressional Research Report published last March, which points out that Israel receives 60% of all American Foreign Military financing.
JINSA (the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs) waxes rhapsodic about Iron Dome’s “affordability and effectiveness,” a claim that would make some of the system’s staunchest defenders blanch and its critics guffaw. Each interception costs $100,000 — two interceptors at $50,000 apiece targeting every incoming rocket that appears headed for a populated area of Israel — hardly “cost effective.” The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) also uncritically enthuses that “the Iron Dome missile defense system is now hailed as a groundbreaking innovation, an example of the technological prowess of Israel, and an embodiment of the unique relationship between the Jewish state and the United States.”
The hagiographic account of Iron Dome on AIPAC’s website is however both incomplete and seriously flawed:
The idea for Iron Dome arose after Israel’s 2006 war with Hizballah, in which more than 4,000 rockets were launched into the country’s north. As rocket fire from Gaza targeting southern Israeli communities also intensified, it became clear that a system was needed to defend against short-range rockets and missiles.
Not exactly. Last November, the Wall Street Journal offered a much more detailed account of Iron Dome’s origin. Brig. Gen. Daniel Gold, the director of the Defense Ministry’s Research and Development department, had gone ahead and decided on the development of Iron Dome, calling for proposals from defense companies for anti-rocket systems in August 2004 — two years before the Second Lebanon War. He did so without any authorization from Israel’s political leadership. It was not until after the 2006 “Second Lebanon War” between Israel and Hizballah that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak — under withering criticism for allowing Israeli civilians in non-border regions to come under rocket and missile attacks — backed Iron Dome, giving the project $200 million in December 2007. The rocket attacks during and since the 2008 invasion of Gaza (“Operation Cast Lead”) increased demand for a rocket interception system. The system went into operation in March 2011, shooting down its first rocket on April 7 and reportedly taking out 8 more rockets in the next three days.
According to AIPAC, by April 2011 “an Iron Dome battery was fielded outside the southern city of Beersheba and shot down its first rocket fired from Gaza. Since then the system has achieved an 85-percent interception rate and is constantly improving, as its developers enhance its accuracy and expand its range.”
Last week, Reuven Pedatzur, a highly respected Israeli security analyst who has been a sharp critic of the Iron Dome project since 2008 when he pointed out that billions had been squandered on the program, cited studies by missile defense experts that suggest Iron Dome’s successful interception rate may well be 5% or less — far below the 84% success rate cited by the Israeli Defense Forces and other defenders of the program. Pedatzur cites research done by three rocket scientists: Professor Theodore Postol, a world-renowned scientist and expert in missile defense and two other rocket scientists, Dr. Mordechai Shefer, formerly of Rafael, and a scientist he refers to only as “D.”, who recently worked for Raytheon, the manufacturer of the Patriot missiles. After investigating the performance of Iron Dome during Operation Pillar of Defense this past November, all three concluded that “Iron Dome’s rate of success did not come close to the figure of 84% as reported by the IDF”:
According to the three scientists, who conducted their research separately by analyzing dozens of videos filmed during the operation, most of the explosions which look as if they were successful interceptions, are actually just the self-destruction of the Iron Dome’s own missiles. The scientists point out that in every case the explosions, seen as balls of fire during the day and clouds of smoke at night, were round and symmetrical. In the case of successful interceptions, in which the incoming missile’s warhead is destroyed, there should have been another ball of fire or cloud of smoke. They also uncovered a strange phenomenon whereby the Iron Dome’s missiles followed identical trajectories, and self-destructed at precisely the same time. In some of the videos, it appears that the Iron Dome’s missiles made a very sharp turn shortly before self-destruction. That cannot be, say the scientists, as there is no way that the missile defense system could “remember” that it needs to turn in the direction of the incoming Grad missile a quarter-second before it self-destructs.
Pedatzur also noted that these scientists discovered 3,200 civilian damage reports that were filed for destruction caused by incoming rockets. Could the 58 rockets that the IDF admits were not intercepted by Iron Dome have caused so much damage? Compared with the damage from rockets during the Second Lebanon War before Iron Dome was deployed, Pedatzur considers that unlikely. Furthermore, Israeli police reports counted 109 cases of rockets falling in populated areas, twice as many as the number claimed by the IDF. Pedatzur compares the exaggerated success rate of Iron Dome to the initial 96% interception rate claimed for the Patriot missile system during the aftermath of the Gulf War. Professor Postol later found the Patriot success rate to have been zero.
Nonetheless, AIPAC has even bigger dreams for the future of Iron Dome: “Now that the Iron Dome has proven itself, Washington will have the ability to use it in its own defense efforts against short-range rocket threats in the Persian Gulf and South Korea.”
The real challenge — and achievement — of Iron Dome has been getting the US to pay for the anti-rocket system. The WSJ‘s Charles Levinson and Adam Entous report that Israel’s Defense Ministry approached the George W. Bush administration with a request for hundreds of millions of dollars for the system, only to receive a cold reception at the Pentagon. Experts voiced doubts about the system’s effectiveness and argued that even if it worked, such a system would be too expensive. (Most Israeli military and defense officials were also dubious.) A team of US military engineers sent to Israel by the Defense Department to meet with the Iron Dome system’s developers were unconvinced by the technology and skeptical about the prospects for its performance. They recommended that Israel adopt the American-made Phalanx system being used in Iraq.
In 2008, US Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama visited Sderot, a town near the Gaza Strip that came under severe rocket attacks during Operation Cast Lead and whose residents were constantly running for cover from incoming Qassam rockets. Obama won the election and took office as President and shortly thereafter an Iron Dome prototype successfully intercepted an incoming rocket during its first field test. Colin Kahl, appointed by Obama to overseeing US military policy in the Middle East at the Pentagon, decided to reconsider the Iron Dome’s merits — military and political.
Having raised the hackles of Israel’s newly installed Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, by calling for a settlement freeze and prioritizing the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Obama wanted to set things right with Israel. “Top Obama administration advisers saw supporting Iron Dome as a chance to shore up U.S.-Israel security relations and balance some of the political strains,” according to Levinson and Entous. In September, Kahl dispatched a team of missile-defense experts to reconsider Iron Dome. The team presented its findings to Obama a month later: “the team declared Iron Dome a success, and in many respects, superior to Phalanx. Tests showed it was hitting 80% of the targets, up from the low teens in the earlier U.S. assessment.”
In 2009, the US agreed to provide $204 million for the Iron Dome system’s development. The National Jewish Democratic Council pointed to Iron Dome as one of the means by which Obama had restored Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge — eroded during the Bush years. An additional $680 million over three years was allocated for the purchase of additional batteries in May 2012, during talks between Barak and US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. Barak met with Obama’s new Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel earlier this month, during which time Hagel was said to have pledged continued US support for Iron Dome. Israel eventually hopes to triple the number of Iron Dome batteries deployed in defense of military as well as civilian targets.
If Obama had favored funding an Iron Dome program for any other country, you can be sure that Republicans would be shrieking about the administration’s increasing of the deficit by borrowing funds to expend close to a billion US taxpayer dollars on a system with a success rate that been grossly exaggerated. Furthermore, as Walter Pincus of the Washington Post has pointed out, the US government has no rights to the Iron’s Dome’s technology, which is owned by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., an Israeli government-owned, for-profit company.
Consider all this next week when you see Netanyahu and Peres showing off the Iron Dome to President Obama.
Photo: The Iron Dome CRAM launcher near the Israeli town of Sderot. Credit: Natan Flayer.
]]>During the phone call with JINSA, Smith discussed how support for Israel and its peace treaty with Egypt led to massive U.S. support for the military dictatorship of deposed President Hosni Mubarak. In the current situation, Smith said, the $1.3 billion of military aid to Egypt “gives (the U.S.) some leverage, but we also need to realize it’s going to boomerang on us as well. This is something that’s going to happen.”
What Smith describes as a hypothetical future cost is actually exactly what has already been happening in the Arab world for decades now. The boomerang has long since turned back in the U.S.’s direction. There’s even a term for it: linkage.
A concept that has long held sway among top military officers such as Gen. David Petreaus, linkage refers to the strategic price that the U.S. pays for its “special relationship” — a policy of unflinching support — with Israel, even as various Israeli-Arab conflicts fester.
It’s a bit surprising to hear Smith talk about linkage, since the notion is common neoconservative bête noire. (The usual neocon reading is “reverse-linkage” — that the road to peace in the Middle East runs through anywhere but Jerusalem.) Smith did, however, only express linkage from a strictly Egyptian perspective. After initially stammering in response to a question, Smith said:
We need to also look at the peace treaty as a liability, because this is how many Egyptians are going to look at it. Again, if I were an — I’m not Egyptian, but if I were an Egyptian, and I had no problems with Israel, I would again be compelled to look at the peace treaty and say, ‘This is a problem. This under-girds every bit of corruption we’ve seen in the last thirty years of Egypt. The peace treaty is killing us.’ So I would say that for American policymakers, we need to be extremely sensitive to this.
Earlier in the call, he said the same thing, emphasizing that this sentiment among Egyptians does not come from anti-Semitism or hatred of Israel:
The central plank of ‘Mubarakism’ was the peace treaty. It was not just the 1.3 billion in aid that goes to Egypt every year. … Everything that comes out of this created this military and political and business elite. … If I were an Egyptian patriot and I didn’t want war with Israel, even if I’d gone to Israel and loved Israel, I would have to say that this peace treaty is a real problem because this peace treaty, for the past thirty years, has been the glue that has empowered the elite.
Mubarak’s repressive regime was “underwritten” by the treaty, Smith said, acknowledging the U.S. role in it: “I’m not saying that the U.S. wanted to make the ruling elite corrupt, but the U.S. empowered (them).”
Though unconvinced that a good solution exists at the moment, Smith did seem to endorse “a more liberal (Egyptian) government that is responsive to the needs of its people.” While Smith said he’d “like to see elections as soon as possible,” he also sees a lack of viable candidates who could press the ruling military circle into these reforms.
That said, Smith conceded that waiting too long for elections — i.e., continued support for the military regime — could backfire (as if it hasn’t already after three decades). He said that bringing elections either “too quickly or too slowly” could create problems, proposing in the latter scenario a potential coup by young officers that could entrench a new cadre atop a military dictatorship.
But even while acknowledging that support for dictatorships causes “Arabs (to) hate the U.S.“, for Smith, it was only a potential delay in elections that could “boomerang.” Also, he attributed anti-Americanism to Washington’s support for dictators “as well as” support for Israel — as if in the case of Egypt these are wholly separate.
Recognizing linkage is an important advancement. As Smith said, regular Egyptians, motivated by nothing more than national and individual interests (who might even have visited and “love” Israel), may want to re-evaluate the terms of the Egyptian-Israeli treaty. Indeed, U.S. policy makers would be wise to be “extremely sensitive” to the implications.
Today, the right-wing Heritage Foundation announced that it would be hosting a special screening of Clarion’s latest film, “Iranium,” on February 1. The event will include an appearance and comments by none other than arch-neoconservative Richard Perle. Perle, whose nickname is “The Prince of Darkness,” is widely seen as playing an important role in shaping post-9/11 Bush administration foreign policy from his perch at the Defense Policy Board.
Perle’s institutional affiliations are a useful guide for anyone seeking to understand the intellectual underpinnings of the Bush administration’s (first term) foreign policy or diagram the web of neoconservative institutions in Washington, D.C. Perle is currently a fellow at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute; a letter signatory for the Project for the New American Century; a member of the National Security Advisory Council at Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy; a member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and Committee on the Present Danger; and a board member of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and the Hudson Institute.
Perle’s role in the Clarion Fund’s film screening would indicate that the organization is deeply embedded in the neoconservative movement. Given Perle’s track record for pushing the U.S. into aggressive wars of choice, this affiliation should be looked at closely as the Fund rolls out its latest documentary, which claims to document the “threat to international stability” presented by Iran’s nuclear program.
When not teaming up with one of the chief boosters of the Iraq war, Clarion has been adding Center for Security Policy founder Frank Gaffney to its board. Gaffney was recently deemed too hot to touch by the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Sarah Posner spoke with Suhail Khan, a Muslim member of the American Conservative Union Board, the group which sponsors CPAC. Khan told Posner:
“Frank has been frozen out of CPAC by his own hand, because of his antics. We need people who are credible on national security . . . but because of Frank’s just completely irresponsible assertions over the years, the organizers have decided to keep him out.” That, Khan added, is similar reaction to current and former members of Congress, including Bobby Jindal, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), and the late Henry Hyde, who distanced themselves from Gaffney.
The conservative shunning of Gaffney, said Khan, is not “because of any pressure from Muslim activists but because they didn’t want to be associated with a crazy bigot.”
CPAC is a major event for Republicans—a veritable Woodstock, of sorts, for conservatives, and, as I wrote last year, an event with no shortage of Islamophobic rhetoric. Gaffney being “frozen out” is a major blow for his credentials within the conservative movement.
But for Clarion, linking up with the arch-neoconservative Richard Perle, and a counter-Jihadi so extreme that his Islamophobia was too much for CPAC, shows that the organization and its films are well outside of the mainstream. In the past, Clarion has succeeded in getting its projects promoted in mainstream media venues such as CNN and Fox News. It will interesting to watch and see if an organization that has now publicly acknowledged its extreme neoconservative and Islamophobic leanings can get the same type of traction with “Iranium.”
While Clarion remains a fairly small organization (despite its $18 million distribution of “Obsession” DVDs before the 2008 presidential election), the links between ultra-orthodox Aish HaTorah, neoconservative extraordinaire Richard Perle and Islamophobe Frank Gaffney should raise questions. Perhaps most importantly, are these new connections for neoconservatives like Richard Perle? Or is this simply a rare public acknowledgment of the relationship between ultra-orthodox Israelis, Islamophobes, and neoconservatives?
]]>Jim Lobe and I wrote an IPS article last week challenging the right-wing talking points that the WikiLeaks cables were a nail in the coffin for those in the Obama administration who believe, as does the military’s top leadership, that linkage is an important concept if the U.S. is going to contain Iran and withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq.
Basically, the “linkage” argument holds that continued irresolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict hinders America’s ability to achieve its national security goals in the region, both by serving as a driver of extremism and a source of anti-American sentiment. Critics of the argument contend that the significance of the conflict has been vastly overblown, and that “the Palestinian issue” is simply an excuse used by violent extremists and lacking genuine salience among Arabs, despite what they may say in public.
Duss reviews the many WikiLeaks cables in which Arab diplomats endorse the concept of linkage and the countless op-eds from Iran hawks claiming that WikiLeaks shows that Arab leaders don’t care about Palestinians or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
He writes:
All of this would seem to demonstrate the bankruptcy of the linkage argument. In reality, what it demonstrates is the willingness of some analysts to ignore evidence.
But, despite the overwhelming evidence in the cables, hawkish groups such as the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) have shown a shocking willingness to misrepresent and twist the words of Arab leaders and the Foreign Service Officers who wrote the cables.
Duss concludes:
It is of course true that hostility toward Israel and its U.S. patron will not simply dissipate upon the end of Israel’s occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state — the completeness of that de-occupation, and the contours of that state, matter greatly. There are also problems and pathologies in the Middle East that have nothing to do with Israelis or Palestinians. Securing a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will, however, make addressing some of those problems easier, by sealing up one well of resentment from which demagogues and extremists have for decades drawn freely and profitably.
Indeed, the WikiLeaks cables provide abundant evidence that Arab leaders collectively agree that containing Iran–and in the process weakening Hezbollah and Hamas–requires removing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the lightening rod for anti-West, anti-Israel and anti-U.S. sentiments in the Middle East.
]]>… Iran and its proxies are not the [...]]]>
… Iran and its proxies are not the only threat to regional stability or to Israel’s long-term security. The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and between Israel and Arab neighbors is a source of tension and an obstacle to prosperity and opportunity for all the people of the region. It denies the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people and it poses a threat to Israel’s future security. It is at odds also with the interests of the United States.
This notion tracks, nearly verbatim, with statements by diplomats from the UAE, Egypt, Jordan and Qatar, according to WikiLeaks cables. While this type of reasoning seems well grounded in facts, hawkish pundits, like Jennifer Rubin and David Frum; right wing think-tanks, like the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (see their Friday report); and Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu continue to deny the existence of ‘linkage.’
]]>