by Mitchell Plitnick

Today, I’m asking my readers to please support the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The group has been working hard on some new legislation and it’s really important to help get this bill to the floor of the Senate and the House.

According to a report in Buzzfeed, [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Mitchell Plitnick

Today, I’m asking my readers to please support the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The group has been working hard on some new legislation and it’s really important to help get this bill to the floor of the Senate and the House.

According to a report in Buzzfeed, AIPAC has been working with congressional staff members for months on the bill, trying to find the formula for success. The bill would “…aim to prevent U.S. companies from participating in the (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel) campaign without infringing on Americans’ First Amendment rights to political speech. It would also try to make the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership being negotiated between the U.S. and E.U. conditional on whether the E.U. takes action to stop BDS.”

And how would they prevent US companies from participating in BDS? By “…authorizing states and local governments to divest from companies deemed to be participating in BDS,” and by denying “…federal contracts to such companies.” This bill should be at the top of the agenda for American activists in the United States who wish to see our country change its policies towards Israel and Palestine.

AIPAC hasn’t been doing very well of late. Their attempt to weasel a provision into another bill that would have allowed Israelis to enter the United States without a visa while Israel refused to make the same arrangement for US citizens raised a lot of hackles on Capitol Hill, even in some offices that are very AIPAC-friendly. The proposed provision was killed. AIPAC was unable to sway the Senate against the nomination of former Senator Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense. Nor has it been able to significantly impact the Obama administration’s efforts to reach an agreement with Iran on its nuclear program.

There have been a lot of failures lately, including the failure to get Congress to push hard for an attack on Syria last year. But this bill, if it ever reaches the floor, could be the biggest bust of all, with some serious ramifications for the powerful lobbying group.

Let’s just start with the First Amendment issues this raises. If this bill ever sees the light of day, AIPAC is going to try to convince people that it is similar to the laws passed forty years ago in response to the Arab League’s boycott of Israel. Put simply, it isn’t.

Those laws–the 1977 amendments to the Export Administration Act (EAA) and the Ribicoff Amendment to the 1976 Tax Reform Act (TRA)–were drawn up narrowly, to apply only in the case of abetting or cooperating with a boycott directed at Israel by other countries. The mentions of boycott “by a foreign nation” or similar words are so frequent that the meaning cannot be missed. This is no surprise, of course; Congress is loath to dictate to US businesses, and it is especially tricky where a national interest is not clearly and immediately at stake. So these laws were contrived so that they only barred supporting boycotts by foreign countries against Israel.

In the case of BDS, no government is running this program, not even the pseudo-governments of the Palestinian Territories. The Palestinian Authority (PA) has not endorsed boycotts of Israel and is, itself, completely incapable of boycotting Israeli goods and services. It is in most ways a captive market to Israel. Hamas has, frankly, paid little attention to such measures, though they have encouraged them rhetorically from time to time.

There is a call for BDS from Palestinian civil society, but that is not covered by the 1970s laws. Moreover, any law that would target BDS would need to be constructed in such a way so that it would not have made boycotts of Apartheid South Africa illegal. Those boycotts also came in response to a call from the African National Congress. If businesses could not engage in such activities, there would be great outrage.

So the Arab League boycott is moot as a basis for anti-BDS legislation. The right to boycott is also not limited by what the government decides is an acceptable boycott and what is not. People, and businesses, are free to choose with whom they will do business. Congress making such decisions violates the very essence of the First Amendment, and it is highly unlikely that such a law could pass as a result and, if it could, even less likely that it could withstand legal challenges.

The bit about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is even more toxic. The point of TTIP is to make international trade between the United States and European Union easier, to reduce tariffs and lessen bureaucracy. The idea is to significantly improve the speed, and thus the volume and value, of trade between the two economic giants. Adding stipulations like ensuring that EU states are working against BDS is precisely what TTIP is designed to avoid. Whatever my own objections to TTIP (and they are many), it clearly holds great appeal for businesses on both sides of the Atlantic.

It is one thing for US citizens with influence in Washington to go along with the powerful lobbying forces defending Israel’s ability to act with impunity in the region; for the most part, that has not had a negative effect on trade. But this would be a very different matter. Now we are talking about AIPAC going up against powerful, domestic business interests. That is a whole new ballgame.

Even bringing the bill to the floor would demonstrate in a clearer way than ever before that AIPAC is willing to compromise US commercial interests and even one of the most cherished and basic freedoms the US prides itself on for the sake of Israeli interests.

Consider also that the overwhelming majority of boycott actions, divestment decisions and even popular proposals for sanctions against Israel have focused squarely on Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. They have not targeted Israel as a whole, with the exception of some of the attempts at cultural and academic boycott. But these are not major concerns for Israel nor do they have the same impact potential as economic boycotts and divestment. So, the threat to free speech and to international trade that this bill represents would be demonstrably in the service of the settlement enterprise, the siege of Gaza and the occupation regime more generally. The mask would be off.

In reality, I very much doubt any such legislation is ever going to move forward, at least not from AIPAC. They know the problems as well as anyone and, while I don’t doubt that they are working constantly with their closest friends in Congress to see if something could work, I don’t think they’ll be successful. But if you want to see AIPAC suffer major damage, such a bill would do it. I can’t think of a better strategy to oppose AIPAC than to do everything we can to make sure this sort of doomed anti-BDS legislation hits the floor in Congress with a resounding thud.

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by Jim Lobe

The latest issue of the New Yorker features a lengthy article by Connie Bruck on the recent travails of AIPAC, especially its unsuccessful efforts since last November to increase sanctions on Iran, and its steady Likudnik drift, which has increasingly alienated its more liberal and Democratic supporters in Congress.

The article, “Friends [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Jim Lobe

The latest issue of the New Yorker features a lengthy article by Connie Bruck on the recent travails of AIPAC, especially its unsuccessful efforts since last November to increase sanctions on Iran, and its steady Likudnik drift, which has increasingly alienated its more liberal and Democratic supporters in Congress.

The article, “Friends of Israel,” makes clear (in case any additional evidence were required) that the  group’s intention all along was to sabotage the ongoing negotiations between Iran and world powers, which we at LobeLog chronicled pretty intensively during the key five-month period, and casts more insider light on the pressure exerted by AIPAC, related groups, and key donors on Democratic lawmakers. Consider this passage, for example:

[Majority Leader Eric] Cantor and [Minority Leader Steny] Hoyer have been steadfast supporters of AIPAC, and its members have held at least a dozen fund-raisers for them each year. But last December AIPAC’s efforts to implement sanctions against Iran were so intense that even this well-tempered partnership fractured. When Congress returned from its Thanksgiving recess, legislators in the House began discussing a sanctions bill. According to the former Congressional aide, Cantor told Hoyer that he wanted a bill that would kill the interim agreement with Iran. Hoyer refused, saying that he would collaborate only on a non-binding resolution.

Cantor sent Hoyer resolution that called for additional sanctions and sought to define in advance the contours of an agreement with Iran. “The pressure was tremendous—not just AIPAC leadership and legislative officials but various board members and other contributors, from all over the country,” the former congressional aide recalled. “What was striking was how strident the message was,” another aide said. “‘How could you not pass a resolution that tells the President what the outcome of the negotiations has to be?’” Advocates for the sanctions portrayed Obama as feckless. “They said, ‘Iranians have been doing this for millennia. They can smell weakness. Why is the President showing weakness?’” a Senate aide recalled.

AIPAC was betting that the Democrats, facing midterms with an unpopular President, would break ranks, and that Obama would be unable to stop them. Its confidence was not unfounded; every time Netanyahu and AIPAC had opposed Obama he had retreated. But Obama took up the fight with unusual vigor. …As the Cantor-Hoyer resolution gathered momentum, House Democrats began holding meetings at the White House to strategize about how to oppose it.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the head of the Democratic National Committee, attended the meetings, at some political risk. Wasserman Schultz represents a heavily Jewish district in South Florida, and has been a reliable signature on AIPAC’s letters and resolution; she has boasted of concurring with a hundred per cent of its positions. Now the lobby e-mailed out an “AIPAC Action Alert,” including the text of a story about the meetings in the conservative Washington Free Beacon, in which she was described as “siding with the Mullahs over the American people.” The alert asked AIPAC’s executive-council members to contact her office, ask if the story was true, and challenge her opposition to Cantor-Hoyer. Stephen Fiske, the chair of the pro-Israel Florida Congressional Committee PAC, sent a similar alert to Wasserman Schultz’s constituents, setting off a cascade of calls to her office. (Fiske told the Free Beacon that the callers included a team of young students: his son’s classmate at a Jewish day school in North Miami Beach.) Wasserman Schultz was furious. Soon afterward, she flew to Israel for the funeral of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. On the trip, she remarked to a colleague, “They’re doing this to me?” [Emphasis added.]

Eventually, of course Hoyer disassociated himself from the initiative, and, as the months unfolded, AIPAC’s campaign to undermine the negotiations by enacting new sanctions legislation in both the House and Senate became increasingly partisan, jeopardizing the group’s carefully cultivated image of bipartisanship, until it finally essentially gave up the effort in March. The article offers many such anecdotes, but, of course, the sentence I bolded above helps to confirm the theory that AIPAC’s aim wasn’t to strengthen President Obama’s hand in the P5+1′s (US, UK, France China, Russia plus Germany) talks with Iran; on the contrary, the objective—entirely consistent with Netanyahu’s wishes, was to blow up the talks.

I particularly appreciated Bruck’s pretty extensive quotation of remarks by former Washington State Democratic Rep. Brian Baird whose on-the-record frankness about AIPAC was undoubtedly made possible by the fact that he left Congress in 2010 and apparently has no intention of running again. Baird, one of the very congressmen who traveled to Gaza after the 2009 war, explains the relationship between fund-raising and AIPAC:

“‘The difficult reality is this: in order to get elected to Congress, if you’re not independently wealthy, you have to raise a lot of money. And you learn pretty quickly that, if AIPAC is on your side, you can do that. They come to you and say, ‘We’d be happy to host ten-thousand-dollar fund-raisers for you, and let us help write your annual letter, and please come to this multi-thousand-person dinner.’” Baird continued. “Any member of Congress knows that AIPAC is associated indirectly with significant amounts of campaign spending if you’re with them, and significant amounts against you if you’re not with them.”

“…When key votes are cast, the question on the House floor, troublingly, is often not ‘What is the right thing to do for the United States of America?’ but ‘How is AIPAC going to score this?’” He added, “There’s such a conundrum here, of believing that you’re supporting Israel, when you’re actually backing policies that are antithetical to its highest values and, ultimately, destructive for the country.” In talks with Israeli officials, he found that his inquiries were not treated with much respect. In 2003, one of his constituents, Rachel Corrie, was killed by a bulldozer driven by an Israeli soldier, as she protested the demolition of Palestinians’ homes in Gaza. At first, he said, the officials told him, ‘There’s a simple explanation—here are the facts.” Or, “We will look into it.” But, when he continued to press, something else would emerge. “There is a disdain for the U.S., and a dismissal of any legitimacy of our right to question—because who are we to talk about moral values?” Baird told me. “Whether it’s that we didn’t help early enough in the Holocaust, or look at what we did to our African-Americans, or our Native Americans—whatever! And they see us, members of Congress, as basically for sale. So they want us to shut up and play the game.”

While it may seem somewhat unrelated, this last point recalled for me a couple of op-eds published in the New York Times during the most recent war in Gaza on the subject of liberal Zionists (who, not coincidentally, reside almost exclusively in the Democratic Party, and their reaction to the evermore-rightward and aggressive drift of Israeli politics and policy. Both were written by Israelis; the first by Shmuel Rosner, an Israeli writer and fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, which is supposed to study and make recommendations about relations between Israel and the Jewish Diaspora; the second, by Antony Lerman, the former director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research and author of “The Making and Unmaking of a Zionist.” In his column, “Israel’s Fair-Weather Fans,” Rosner essentially tells liberal Zionists who have warned Israel’s leadership that their right-wing policies are putting at risk the support of liberal US Jews to, in Baird’s words, “shut up and play the game.”

If all Jews are a family, it would be natural for Israelis to expect the unconditional love of their non-Israeli Jewish kin. If Jews aren’t a family, and their support can be withdrawn, then Israelis have no reason to pay special attention to the complaints of non-Israeli Jews.

…If they still want to root for a Jewish state, there’s no substitute for Israel. If they believe there is a need for Jewish sovereignty, Israel is the only option available to them. As the song says, there’s no other country even it it’s on fire.

For his part, Lerman more or less agrees that liberal Zionists in the US have become largely irrelevant, at least in terms of influencing Israeli policies and actions, and thus his title, “The End of Liberal Zionism.”

“Today, the dominant organizations, like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League, as well as a raft of self-appointed community leaders, have swung to the right. They have made unquestioning solidarity with Israel the touchstone of Jewish identity—even though majority Jewish opinion is by no means hawkish.

…In reality, the only Zionism of any consequence today is xenophobic and exclusionary, a Jewish ethno-nationalism inspired by religious messianism. It is carrying out an open-ended project of national self-realization to be achieved through colonization and purification of the tribe.

Noting that the collapse of the latest US efforts for peace talks, as well as Netanyahu’s de facto rejection last month of the possibility of an independent Palestinian state (despite his previous grudging commitments to a two-state solution), Lerman argues that liberal Zionists have reached a dead end.

Liberal Zionists must now face the reality that the dissenters have recognized for years: A de facto single state already exists, where rights for Jews are guaranteed while rights for Palestinians are curtailed. Since liberal Zionists can’t countenance anything but two states, this situation leaves them high and dry.

Of course, this reality also means that liberal Zionists—who undoubtedly constitute a majority of American Jews (who in turn constitute a major source of political campaign funding for Democrats)—face a choice between their Zionism, as defined by Netanyahu and AIPAC, on the one hand and their liberal values on the other. The two appear to have become mutually exclusive.

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by Ellie Geranmayeh 

In recent weeks, hard-line members of the US Congress have stepped up their game of obstructing diplomacy with Iran. Resolving the Iranian nuclear conflict has been used as a chip in domestic politics rather than a foreign policy issue pursued through a multilateral track. Opposition to incentivized diplomacy with Iran is [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Ellie Geranmayeh 

In recent weeks, hard-line members of the US Congress have stepped up their game of obstructing diplomacy with Iran. Resolving the Iranian nuclear conflict has been used as a chip in domestic politics rather than a foreign policy issue pursued through a multilateral track. Opposition to incentivized diplomacy with Iran is likely to intensify with the looming US mid-term elections and the November 24 deadline for the extended negotiations. Powerful factions in Congress are signaling that they will try to tie the hands of the US executive when it comes to fulfilling its obligations under a reasonable final deal. Given how sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program operate, the hawks in Congress are not just a problem for the US president — they are a problem for Europe, too.

President Barack Obama has presidential authority to negotiate with Iran on its nuclear program and issue temporary waivers on easing sanctions. At some point, the administration and Congress will have to see eye to eye in order to legislate for permanent sanctions relief as part of a comprehensive agreement. The on-going debate on Capitol Hill around this issue has vast implications for European companies that have been severely limited in their ability and willingness to do business with Iran due to the secondary effect of US sanctions. European companies took a large financial hit to endorse the sanctions regime against Iran since 2006. They understandably want a durable deal allowing them to trade with Iran without risking US Treasury penalties or a future US president dramatically altering the policy on Iran to Europe’s detriment.

Europeans companies have good reasons to worry that Congress won’t play ball as part of a final deal agreed to by Iran and the P5+1 (US, UK, France, China, Russia plus Germany. US lawmakers have called for fresh sanctions and/or for existing sanctions, which are suspended under the interim nuclear deal, to be reinstated. These measures would clearly spoil the spirit of good faith in the negotiations and go against the interim nuclear deal agreed to last November. Other members of Congress have proposed restricting the presidential waivers on sanctions against Iran. Most recently, a bill attempting to restrict the president’s ability to implement a final deal unless Congress can be satisfied that the funds released to Iran are not directed at terrorism or human rights abuses has also been circulated. This puts a huge burden on implementation timelines for a final deal and an impossible bar for the US executive to meet.

Powerful lobby groups and senators have campaigned Congress to shift the goal posts for the nuclear talks to include Iran’s role in sponsoring terrorism and its human rights record. Representative Eliot Engel has predicted that even if a final deal was reached, Congress would not allow the lifting of sanctions until Iran stopped being a “bad actor” in the region. Engel unhelpfully omitted to note what exactly this means or how to measure when Iran is being a force for good. Although these are all areas of concern for the West, they are unconnected to Iran’s nuclear program and rest outside the parameters of the nuclear talks. Proponents of these measures know well that the outcome of actually endorsing such conditions will squeeze Iran out of the talks. The European strategy of tackling human rights issues in tandem with supporting the nuclear talks provides a better model for progress on both issues.

The position of Congressional hawks is at odds with the P5+1’s overriding objective of removing potential threats posed by Iran’s nuclear program and lifting associated sanctions. Focusing on this goal is partially easier for the EU, which, unlike the US, has maintained clear divisions between sanctions targeting Iran’s nuclear program and those directed at human rights and terrorism. Europeans also have a different psychology when it comes to tacitly accepting Iran’s limited enrichment capability. For example, the UK Foreign Affairs Committee recently backed diplomacy with Iran and publicly acknowledged that “there is probably no prospect of a lasting deal which does not allow Iran to enrich uranium”. This stands in stark contrast to the hard-line position by Israel and certain members of Congress insisting Iran dismantle all its centrifuges and cease uranium enrichment on its own soil.

Without doing Obama’s job for him, Europeans should outline their interests and reasons for backing a final nuclear deal within the US political debate. Although this may not have much sway with the hawks, it could have a noticeable impact on those members of Congress who are sitting on the fence when it comes to diplomacy with Iran. Sceptics must be reminded that Iran has fully implemented the interim nuclear deal, which has in turn provided a stringent inspection on Iran’s nuclear program. A final deal can fulfill the checklists Western powers need to ensure Iran is unable to make a clandestine dash for the bomb. The alternatives to diplomacy, of upping sanctions or engaging in military conflict, cannot wholly eliminate Iran’s capacity for nuclear weapons. These actions will further destabilize an already turbulent and unpredictable region. They would also remove the potential for Iran to become a constructive actor in countries like Iraq.

Diplomacy with Iran has been a true exercise in patience, and there is a long road ahead. Congress should be wary of being perceived as the unreasonable actor in the nuclear talks. After all, it was the Europeans who in the early 2000s persuaded a reluctant US administration to follow the dual-track approach of sanctions and dialogue that avoided war and resulted in last year’s interim accord. But it was also Europe, rather than the US, that accepted the high costs associated with sanctioning Iran’s oil and banking sector, which was fully endorsed by Congress. If the US legislature obstructs a final deal without due cause, the international consensus behind sanctioning Iran to address proliferation concerns would be in danger. This could result in unwanted consequences not only in the Iranian case, but also in building future partnerships with Europe on sanctions, notably with respect to Russia.

– Ellie Geranmayeh is an ECFR policy fellow and the author of the recently published report, “Détente with Iran; how Europe can maximise the chances of a final nuclear deal.”

Photo: US Secretary of State John Kerry and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier brief the press about their bilateral consultations during negotiations with Iran in Vienna on July 13, 2014.

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by Jasmin Ramsey

The talks in Vienna over Iran’s nuclear program will likely continue past the July 20 deadline for reaching a final deal. President Barack Obama noted “real progress” but hinted at an extension yesterday after being briefed by Secretary of State John [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Jasmin Ramsey

The talks in Vienna over Iran’s nuclear program will likely continue past the July 20 deadline for reaching a final deal. President Barack Obama noted “real progress” but hinted at an extension yesterday after being briefed by Secretary of State John Kerry, who held several meetings with the Iranians this week.

On Wednesday, an Iranian diplomat told the Japanese Kyodo News that the talks could be extended by two months, but there’s still no official word. The editorial boards of the New York Times and the Washington Post have meanwhile come out on the side of continued negotiations.

Presently there’s not a lot of buzz around the question of whether Congress will push for more sanctions on Iran. Indeed, senior Senate aides told the Wall Street Journal yesterday that they do not see the same level of tension over a possible extension compared with the beginning of the year.

Still, as Jim wrote earlier this week, key lawmakers here in Washington are trying to make sanctions relief to Iran conditional on Congressional approval.

While the prospects of reaching a comprehensive deal any time soon are far from certain, one thing is for sure: important actors, from all sides of the political spectrum inside Iran, support the diplomatic process. Indeed, just this week the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (ICHRI) released a study showing leading Iranian activists’ support for the negotiations.

The report, Voices from Iran: Strong Support for the Nuclear Negotiations, shows that support for a successful deal are equally forthcoming not only among human rights victims and former political prisoners, but also among those who believe that the negotiations themselves would have no effect on the human rights situation in Iran.

“Opponents of the nuclear talks cannot use human rights concerns as a tool to undermine the negotiations,” said Hadi Ghaemi, Executive Director of the Campaign. “The very individuals who have suffered the most from the human rights crisis in Iran remain fully committed to the negotiations.”

More than two-thirds of the 22 key human and civil rights defenders interviewed said they felt an agreement resulting in the lifting of sanctions would improve the economic conditions of ordinary people, who would then be enabled to focus on improving civil liberties.

“Every single human rights advocate — along with journalists, editors, private business owners and so on — I have met in Iran hopes for the resolution of the nuclear conflict and eventual ending of sanctions for two basic reasons: one is economic and one is political,” said independent scholar and LobeLog contributor Farideh Farhi.

“As one prominent human rights advocate told me, the right to economic livelihood is also a human rights issue. Given the comprehensive nature of US-led sanctions, these folk see them as major violations of the Iranian peoples’ rights and want them removed,” said Farhi, who is currently in Tehran.

“Politically, while the lifting of sanctions is not presumed to automatically lead to better treatment of dissidents and critics by the state, there is hope that the reduced threat perception and reduced fear of regime change will eventually lead to the further loosening of the political environment,” she added.

“Conversely, there is fear that a breakdown in the nuclear negotiations may lead to the intensification of domestic factional and institutional conflicts, which have historically harmed the more vulnerable political and civil rights activists as well as members of the press,” she said.

This should be important news for US, Canadian (also see here) and EU politicians who appear worried that seriously engaging Iran on its nuclear program will lead to worsened human rights violations and/or believe further punitive measures at this time will improve the situation.

As Jim noted:

While [House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif and ranking member Eliot Engel, D-NY] were releasing their letter, on one side of the Capitol, Sen. Mark Kirk, by far the biggest Congressional recipient of AIPAC-related funding in his 2010 re-election campaign, teamed up with Marco Rubio, the keynoter at last year’s Republican Jewish Coalition convention, to introduce The Iran Human Rights Accountability Act on the other. Among other provisions, it would impose visa bans and asset freezes against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani. It’s just the kind of thing that generates a lot of goodwill in Tehran. Indeed, one of the Act’s chapters could only be interpreted as “regime change:” it declares the “policy of the United States” to be laying “the foundation for the emergence of a freely elected, open and democratic political system in Iran that is not a threat to its neighbors or to the United States and to work with all citizens of Iran who seek to establish such a political system.” Another gift to the hard-liners in Tehran who are as eager to undermine their negotiators in Vienna as the hawks here are to blow up the negotiations.

“The study makes clear that anyone concerned about human rights in Iran should not use human rights to undermine a nuclear deal,” Mike Amitay, a senior policy analyst at the Open Society Policy Center, told LobeLog. “Human rights issues should be addressed in tandem with support for the negotiations and in a way that does not undermine the success of the negotiations.”

“In this regard, recently introduced rights legislation is counterproductive and offered now as an attempt to scuttle a deal,” he said.

By the way, here’s Josh Fattal, who spent 2 years as an American hostage in Iran’s notorious Evin prison, urging Congress to support the nuclear talks with Iran:

The most important point I’d like to impress on our negotiators and members of Congress is that this is a historic opportunity. Additionally, the human toll from decades of confrontation is immeasurable. My suffering as a political hostage in Evin Prison from 2009 to 2011 was a result of decades of mutual hostility between the U.S. and Iran. But, taken in context, I got off relatively easy with only 26 months behind bars. A resolution to the standoff over Iran’s nuclear capacity will finally lead us down a different path that no longer punishes the Iranian people for the actions of their leaders.

Photo Credit: The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran

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by Jim Lobe

Ed Levine, an arms control specialist who worked for both Republican and Democratic senators for 20 years on the Intelligence Committee and another ten on the Foreign Relations Committee, wrote a detailed and devastating analysis of S. 1881, the Kirk-Menendez bill (or, as I called it, the via LobeLog

by Jim Lobe

Ed Levine, an arms control specialist who worked for both Republican and Democratic senators for 20 years on the Intelligence Committee and another ten on the Foreign Relations Committee, wrote a detailed and devastating analysis of S. 1881, the Kirk-Menendez bill (or, as I called it, the Wag The Dog Act of 2014), for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation on whose advisory board he currently serves. That analysis, which we republished on LobeLog in mid-January, played an important role in solidifying Democratic opposition in the Senate to the Kirk-Menendez bill, eventually forcing a humiliating retreat by AIPAC, which we chronicled in some detail during the winter months.

Levine has now written a second memo, this one on the Royce-Engel letter to President Barack Obama, which I wrote about last night and which had been signed by 344 House members as of Thursday. Like its predecessor, it details the problematic and unrealistic nature of many of the key demands contained in the letter and thus deserves the widest possible circulation.

• The underlying demand that Iran dismantle all its “illicit nuclear infrastructure” is simply not a feasible negotiations outcome. So, if the signatories really mean what that phrase says, then they do not want these negotiations to succeed.
• In particular, the demand to dismantle the Fordow site and the Arak reactor seems to go beyond what is really needed. The Fordow site can be limited in what is allowed to be done there, and the Arak reactor can be modified to prevent much plutonium production. Those lesser objectives are very important, and should indeed be seen as P5+1 demands in any comprehensive agreement. But complete dismantlement is unnecessary and, therefore, would at some point be seen as provocative and intended to subvert the negotiations.
• The goal that a comprehensive agreement be one “such that Iran does not retain a uranium or plutonium path to a weapon” is unrealistic. The uranium path is there, and Iran may have already mastered all the techniques that are needed to take that path. We can make that path more difficult, slower to complete, etc., such that the likelihood of Iran choosing that path is reduced because the likely consequences would be too great; but it is too late to expect that path to disappear.
• The point that “any deal must fully resolve concerns” about Iran’s past and present nuclear programs is a fair goal, but one that may prove very difficult to obtain up front. The authors seem to realize this, as later they tie it to major sanctions relief, which would not be granted up front anyhow. Both the authors and the administration should understand that a sliding scale of sanctions relief is likely (just as was used in the Joint Plan of Action). It would be reasonable to make some of the sanctions relief dependent upon the IAEA saying that certain questions have been cleared up and that access to the relevant documents and personnel has been achieved. But in all likelihood, the deal itself will not resolve concerns; rather, implementation of the deal will require such resolution.
• It would be nice to achieve an extraordinary inspections regime (i.e., one that goes beyond what is permitted under the Iran-IAEA Additional Protocol that Iran will ratify and implement pursuant to any comprehensive settlement) lasting 20 years or more, but that is unlikely. Signatories should understand that something in the 12-15 years range may be the best we can get.
• The idea of demanding independent P5+1 monitoring seems rather risky. If we demanded and got such a role for ourselves, then Russia, China and Germany would surely do the same. That could easily lead to a situation in which the coalition members put out differing inspection results, busting the coalition – and the prospect of renewed international sanctions – apart. A more reasonable idea might be to require that the IAEA share its inspection data with the P5+1. (Normally the IAEA does not share details of what it finds; but these inspections would be pursuant to a negotiated agreement, rather than just to IAEA-Iran safeguards agreements, so it ought to be possible to get more access than we normally get to whatever the IAEA finds.)
• More frequent access for IAEA inspectors is not a panacea. I wonder whether it might be more useful to create a registration and monitoring regime for significant centrifuge parts and assemblies (rotors, cases, I don’t know what else) so that there would be a paper trail to verify, analogous to our ability to follow the movement of Russian missiles under the New START Treaty. Giving IAEA inspectors that sort of a baseline to work from might be more useful than just letting them in more often.
• The emphasis on “snapback” sanctions in the event of an Iranian violation or noncompliance can be self-defeating. Every country makes mistakes, and every country engages in minor violations of its arms control agreements. We commit such “violations,” as do others. After all, the recent discovery of vials of smallpox virus is, in some ways, the discovery of a rather significant U.S. violation of an international commitment to have no such stockpiles other than at the CDC or at the one permitted lab in Russia. The violation was very likely inadvertent, indeed unknown to the national authority responsible for compliance; but it was still a violation, and a big one. Should the US be sanctioned for it? Similarly, in the case of the nuclear agreement with North Korea, the DPRK was not the only party that committed violations. The other countries all too often were behind schedule in their provision of assistance to North Korea. By focusing on those embarrassing but largely unintended violations of our commitments, the DPRK was able to build a case (at least in its own mind) for its own violations. So, it’s important to understand that we really want to talk about only material orsignificant violations, only violations that the US (or the IAEA or the P5+1) judges to warrant the reimposition of sanctions. Thus, while we want a regime in which, for some years, sanctions are only suspended and can be reimposed if necessary, we really want not so much a “snapback” system as an understanding among the P5+1 (and perhaps in writing) that Iran will be in a probationary period for some time and subject to renewed sanctions if there is a serious compliance concern that cannot be resolved in short order.

Photo: Secretary of State John Kerry, middle, is escorted by Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), left, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), right, before giving testimony on Capitol Hill on April 17, 2013. Credit: Gary Cameron/Reuters

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by Jim Lobe

As I’ve written in the past, I have massive amounts of newspaper, magazine, and other assorted clippings in file cabinets that stretch virtually from one end of the IPS office in the National Press Building to the other. Some of it dates back to 1975, the fateful [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Jim Lobe

As I’ve written in the past, I have massive amounts of newspaper, magazine, and other assorted clippings in file cabinets that stretch virtually from one end of the IPS office in the National Press Building to the other. Some of it dates back to 1975, the fateful year I started clipping about international events. While I’ve purged them from time to time over the years, I’m now doing so a bit more indiscriminately in anticipation of at least semi-retirement next year. It’s a sometimes wrenching  process, because each clipping is meticulously underlined, and many of them — there must be tens of thousands at least — actually evoke memories of periods when I thought I understood how the world — or some specific countries — worked.

In any event, as I was going through my “Congress-Demos” in my Iraq file drawer yesterday, I found a little gem of a quote by then-Rep. Mark Kirk from just after the passage of the notorious resolution that gave President George W. Bush the authority to wage war against Iraq. It’s from the October 12, 2002 edition of Congressional Quarterly Weekly:

by Jim Lobe

Seemingly overshadowed by the crisis in Crimea and the disappearance of the Malaysian airliner, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu just don’t seem to be getting the kind of momentum in their perennial jihad against Iran that they’re used to coming out [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Jim Lobe

Seemingly overshadowed by the crisis in Crimea and the disappearance of the Malaysian airliner, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu just don’t seem to be getting the kind of momentum in their perennial jihad against Iran that they’re used to coming out of AIPAC’s annual policy conference.

It’s true that the more than 10,000 AIPAC activists sent to Capitol Hill to lobby their representatives immediately after the conference May 4 should have been pleased by the House’s passage a day later by a 410-1 margin of the U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership Act. It’s been a major priority for the group since last year and one that authorizes $1.8 billion dollars in additional U.S. weapons shipments to Tel Aviv, which already receives on average of about three billion dollars in annual U.S. military aid. It also opens the possibility that Israelis wishing to come to the United States would not require a visa.

But AIPAC’s and Netanyahu’s top priority — getting a new Kirk-Menendez sanctions bill against Iran enacted — clearly moved out of reach six weeks before the conference when all but 16 Democratic senators refused to sign on as co-sponsors and buck their president who had pledged to veto any such bill on the grounds that it risked undermining ongoing nuclear negotiations with Iran. With Plan A thus scuttled, AIPAC moved to Plan B, a non-binding resolution that would lay out conditions — several of them clearly unacceptable to Tehran — for any comprehensive deal with Iran which, if not included as part of the deal, would result in Congress’s refusal to fully lift U.S. sanctions. In that case, too, the White House made its strong opposition clear, and the effort quickly collapsed.

That left Plan C — a (necessarily non-binding) letter from lawmakers to Obama — laying out what conditions its authors expected to be included in any final agreement with Iran over its nuclear program. As I described last week, there were actually two letters, both approved by AIPAC: a Menendez-Graham version in the Senate whose harsh tone and demands (a final deal “must require”, etc.) no doubt more accurately reflected the views of both AIPAC’s leadership and Netanyahu than the softer version (“We are hopeful that a permanent diplomatic agreement will require” etc.) that was co-authored by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Minority Leader Steny Hoyer. Both letters were ambiguous on key points — to what extent would Iran’s existing nuclear program have to be dismantled and specifically whether a limited uranium enrichment program would be deemed acceptable  – and thus subject to different interpretations.) When the House version was subsequently endorsed by Senate Armed Services Committee chair Carl Levin (and, as I understand it, has since gained the support of more than 20 other Democratic senators, including most of the leadership) precisely because it appeared to give the administration more diplomatic space to negotiate a deal, AIPAC’s leadership was reportedly caught once more on the backfoot. Of course, as I noted last week, the White House still opposes both letters, but the fact that AIPAC’s plans 1, 2, and its preferred version of 3 have all been set back must give the administration considerable satisfaction. (I heard — but cannot confirm — that, at the conclusion of a White House meeting with top AIPAC officials back in early January, one of them told a senior administration official point-blank, “You have to know that we’re going to beat you on this.”)

AIPAC has kept silent on the number of senators who have signed either letter. At first I understood they were trying to persuade senators to sign the Menendez-Graham version only and actively lobby them against the Cantor-Hoyer-Levin letter. But that then embarrassed their allies in the House, so the group began asking — with some success — senators to sign both letters, thus contributing to the growing  impression on Capitol Hill that the nation’s most powerful foreign policy lobby simply doesn’t have its act together.

In any event, AIPAC is now actively pushing House members to sign Cantor-Hoyer, which apparently is the best it thinks it can do under the circumstances. As of Wednesday afternoon, according to AIPAC’s tally, 293 members had signed the letter, but 138 — including a surprising number of far-right Republicans, like Michele Bachmann, Joe Barton, and Louie Gohmert, who probably think AIPAC has turned way too mushy — have not. This is now ten days after the end of the AIPAC conference! For an organization whose top lobbyist less than ten years ago bragged that he could get 70 senators to sign on a napkin within 24 hours and which is used to the kind of virtually unanimous votes that took place last week for the U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership Act, this is pretty pathetic. It cannot help that AIPAC got virtually no press during its conference and has gotten some really terrible reviews in Israel, notably one by Gideon Levy (admittedly a peacenik) in Haaretz, which was reposted by M.J. Rosenberg here.

In doing so, however, the group is misrepresenting what the letter actually says. For example, AIPAC says:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) and House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) are circulating a bipartisan letter addressed to the President delineating the necessary terms for a final agreement with Iran, including dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear program.

But the actual letter states:

We are hopeful a permanent diplomatic agreement will require dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear weapons-related infrastructure, including enrichment-, heavy water-, and reprocessing-related facilities, such that Iran will not be able to develop, build, or acquire a nuclear weapon.

Of course, AIPAC is spinning the letter in favor of its hoped-for interpretation, but there is a substantial difference both tonally and literally in what the two statements say.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu appears increasingly and openly frustrated by the lack of attention his histrionics about Iran has been getting. Last week’s seizure by Israeli commandos of the KLOS-C merchant ship in the Red Sea off the coast of Eritrea and Sudan was no doubt timed to immediately follow Bibi’s anti-Iran tirade at AIPAC and his continuing presence in the U.S. He gave vent to that frustration in Eilat this week where he keynoted the display of the captured, supposedly Gaza-bound Syrian-made M-302 rockets which, according to Israel, had been hidden aboard the vessel in Bandar Abbas under sacks of Iranian cement, by fulminating about the “hypocrisy” of the West, especially EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who was then on a visit to Tehran, in not treating the incident with the seriousness that he believed it warranted (as if, for example, there were no “hypocrisy” in a nuclear-armed non-member of the IAEA constantly complaining to the same body about Iran’s nuclear program).

Now, it may be that those rockets were intended for Gaza, although Israel has not yet disclosed any of the evidence on which it based that charge, and most experts who have addressed this issue have expressed considerable skepticism about the Israeli thesis, especially in light of Egypt’s destruction of so many of the tunnels that link the Sinai to Gaza and the military regime’s enhanced intelligence cooperation with Israel on both the Sinai and Gaza since last July’s coup d’etat in Cairo. (Given that cooperation, why wasn’t the shipment intercepted by the Egyptians when it passed through southern Egypt or the Sinai?)

Still, I’m prepared to believe that high-level IRGC hard-liners who, like AIPAC and Netanyahu, are unenthusiastic, to say the least, about Hassan Rouhani’s efforts at rapprochement with the West, may have behind such a shipment, and may even have hoped that it would be discovered, precisely in order to undermine the nuclear talks. (I think Mitchell will be writing more about this question shortly.) But what is so interesting is precisely the lack of interest in Netanyahu’s charges on the part of western — and especially U.S. — mainstream media and politicians. Granted, the Ukraine crisis and the missing airliner are taking up an awful lot of news oxygen these days, but when the Israelis shout really loud, especially about terrorism and Iran, it usually gets attention. Not this time. Writing for Al-Monitor, Ben Caspit wrote an excellent piece about this Tuesday entitled “Israel fears it has lost world attention on Iran.” It seems the world has tired of Bibi and sees him increasingly as the boy who cried wolf, as hinted at in an interesting analysis posted Wednesday by Haaretz’s editor, Zvi Bar’El.

On the other hand, consider this colloquy at yesterday’s State Department press briefing. The final sentence is a little worrisome:

QUESTION: Can we go to Iran?

MS. PSAKI: Sure.

QUESTION: Your counterpart at the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Marzieh Afkham, described the whole ship episode and the press conference that took place – the ship that was allegedly going to Hamas – as a farce. And she described it in very graphic terms like Mr. Netanyahu is trying to sort of complicate whatever efforts you’re having in the negotiations. Could you comment on that?

MS. PSAKI: I would stand by the comments I made yesterday about the ship containing Iranian weapons. I spoke extensively to that yesterday. So I don’t have any –

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. PSAKI: — I think the facts are the facts in this case.

QUESTION: So let me ask you again. You have your own evidence, your own gathered evidence that this ship was laden with arms.

MS. PSAKI: The Israelis are the lead on this.

Photo: Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahu at a press conference in Eilat regarding weapons he claims were bound for Gaza by Iranian order. Very few foreign press were reportedly in attendance.

by Jim Lobe

It’s been a difficult annual policy conference for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its hopes of getting Congress to set the toughest possible conditions on any final nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany). As readers [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Jim Lobe

It’s been a difficult annual policy conference for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its hopes of getting Congress to set the toughest possible conditions on any final nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany). As readers of this blog know, AIPAC entered the conference, which ran from Sunday through Tuesday, in a rather parlous state as a result of its worst foreign policy setback in a generation; specifically, its failure to muster nearly enough Democrats to gain a veto proof-majority in favor of the Kirk-Menendez sanctions bill that Obama had threatened to veto. Attacked by hard-line neoconservative groups on the right, notably the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) and the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) for sacrificing its devotion to Bibi Netanyahu’s jihad against Iran in the interests of bipartisanship — namely, not unduly alienating Democrats in Congress and thus bolstering J Street — the nation’s most powerful foreign policy lobby found itself in a seemingly dazed and unfamiliar defensive crouch, lacking until the very last moment a coherent lobbying agenda for the 14,000 attendees signed up for the proceedings.

That was bad enough. But the Russian takeover of Crimea made things worse. The event dominated the news throughout the conference, making it virtually impossible for AIPAC to break through the blanket TV news coverage of the Ukrainian crisis. Even Netanyahu’s belligerent remarks delivered to the conferees Tuesday morning, designed to psyche them up for their subsequent shleps up to Capitol Hill, were relegated to the inside pages of major national newspapers.

Even the weather refused to cooperate. The snowfall that blanketed the area Sunday night and Monday morning effectively shut down the government and downtown, closing Congressional offices, making it highly inconvenient — and, in many cases, impossible — for the usual overwhelming majority of members of Congress, who customarily make cameo appearances at the conference to ensure their good standing, to get to the convention center, and generally cast a wintry pall over the three-day proceedings.

(And then, as if to add insult to injury, on Tuesday, the same day that Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu keynoted the conference, The Hill newspaper, which basically ignored the proceedings throughout, featured a flattering full-page profile of Jeremy Ben-Ami, while the even more influential Politico published an op-ed entitled “Why AIPAC Needs to Get With the Peace Program” by the J Street founder and president. Ouch!)

Ultimately, aside from Netanyahu’s belligerence (a embarrassingly amount of which was directed against the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement), what did AIPAC get on the Iran front? Although the smoke has not yet completely cleared on that question, it seems they got some form of its Plan C (after losing on Plan A — the Kirk-Menendez bill — and never getting any lift from Plan B, a non-binding resolution laying out impossible conditions for a final agreement) — a Congressional letter that the group helped to draft.

There are now, however, two such letters that are being circulated in Congress for signature — one hard-line version supposedly co-written by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Robert Menendez that clearly AIPAC and Netanyahu would prefer; the second, a softer one co-authored by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer. The question is, which version (both have been cleared by AIPAC) will get the most support on Capitol Hill?

As I’ve pointed out, both versions are ambiguous on key points, notably on the critical issue of whether Iran will be permitted — at least by Congress as a condition for lifting sanctions as part of any final agreement between the P5+1 — to maintain a limited uranium enrichment program on its own soil. The best analysis of the difference in both letters and the context in which they have been drafted and presented was provided yesterday in a statement by the National Iranian American Council’s (NIAC) policy director (and fellow-Seattle native), Jamal Abdi. Here it is:

…NIAC has serious concerns with the language in the Senate letter regarding demands for a final deal. NIAC outlined its position on what principles should guide Congressional action regarding U.S.-Iran diplomatic efforts in a recent letter to Congressional leadership that was signed by forty organizations. That letter urged that Congress uphold the JPOA [Joint Plan of Action agreed between the P5+1 and Iran last Nov 24], not issue demands on negotiations that contradict the interim terms or the terms outlined for a final deal in JPOA, and that Congress work with the Administration regarding the need to eventually lift sanctions.The House letter meets those standards. NIAC has minor concerns with the House letter, but will not oppose it and commends the efforts of those in the House who succeeded in securing a more balanced letter.

Unfortunately, the Senate letter does not meet those standards and NIAC therefore opposes the Senate letter.

The Senate letter uses new language to offer old ultimatums that will complicate ongoing negotiations, box-in U.S. negotiators, signal that the U.S. would violate the terms outlined in the JPOA, and serve as an invitation to hardliners in Iran to issue similar escalatory demands that will narrow options for compromise. Sections of the letter will be construed to rule out any final deal in which Iran retains a civilian enrichment program, in contradiction of the Joint Plan of Action. This, in combination with demands regarding dismantlement of infrastructure and facilities, and requiring the deal to have regional implications beyond its scope, can only interfere with the work of U.S. diplomats to resolve key concerns at the negotiating table.

NIAC urges that the Administration and Congress coordinate closely regarding ongoing negotiations and work towards the shared goal of preventing a nuclear-armed Iran and averting a disastrous war. NIAC urges that members of the Senate abstain from signing onto the Menendez-Graham letter and instead consider language that supports the ongoing negotiations towards a final deal instead of adding unnecessary complications.

Thus, in NIAC’s opinion, the House letter is preferable for understandable reasons, although the group doesn’t support it.

Now, the latest interesting development is that Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin, who was among the first of the senior Democrats to speak out against the Kirk-Menendez bill, has endorsed the House (Cantor-Hoyer, or C-H) letter and proposed it as a substitute in the Senate for the (Menendez-Graham, or M-G) letter. My understanding is that Levin believes that, despite its ambiguity, the House letter gives the administration the room it needs to negotiate a final agreement that would presumably permit some limited enrichment. If, as expected, other Senate Democrats, such as Banking Committee Chair Tim Johnson and Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein, follow suit, the chances are pretty good that he can get the backing of the majority caucus (although bringing around the 16 Democrats who co-sponsored the Kirk-Menendez bill will be a challenge). And, with Cantor as the chief Republican sponsor of the C-H letter, it’s almost certain that a majority of the House will sign onto that. Especially because, like the tougher M-G letter, the C-H letter has also been blessed by AIPAC.

Thus, as recently three weeks ago, AIPAC was still lobbying hard in the Senate for the Kirk-Menendez sanctions bill, which was clearly designed by its drafters to sabotage the JPOA. When it failed to win at that, it tried briefly to get a resolution that would have set out conditions — known to be unacceptable to Tehran — that a final deal with Iran would have to incorporate, but the Democratic caucus would not go along. Twice rejected, it has been forced to settle for a letter and could very well wind up with the weakest one currently on the table. (See update below)

Moreover, the difference between Netanyahu’s maximalist position — no uranium enrichment, no centrifuges, no nothing — and the House letter endorsed by AIPAC is quite large, and Bibi must be rather upset by the gap. Indeed, his strongest supporters here are very upset.

Now, it bears mentioning that the White House, fearful of their effect on the negotiations and feeling perhaps a bit triumphant after frustrating AIPAC so badly over the last couple of months, opposes both letters, which could prove problematic if and when a final agreement with Iran is reached. While Obama can use his executive authority to ease or waive many sanctions, some sanctions can only be lifted by an act of Congress. Moreover, if Obama relies on his waiver authority, there’s no guarantee that his successor, who could even be a Republican, will continue waiving. As the NIAC statement warns “It is critical that Congress work with the Administration to ensure necessary authorizations are in place to enable nuclear-related sanctions to be lifted, as outlined by the JPOA. Those authorizations do not currently exist.” Thus, the administration’s opposition to Congress expressing its views on the subject could have the perverse effect of alienating key lawmakers whose support will eventually be required to fully implement a final agreement — a point made in an ironic tweet (“Pro-Israel and Pro-Iran Lobbies Agree: Iran Cannot Lift Sanctions Without Congress”) by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ (FDD) Mark Dubowitz, who has long favored waging “economic warfare” against Tehran.

UPDATE: In the battle of the two letters on the Senate side, I understand that the Menendez-Graham version has currently fetched more signatures by a margin of 34-11. The 34 on the M-G side consist of 25 Republicans and 9 Democrats, while the 11 signatories to the Levin (or Cantor-Hoyer) substitute are all Democrats. Two Democrats who did not co-sponsor the Kirk-Menendez bill have signed both letters. I’ve been told that AIPAC is now actively lobbying against the Cantor-Hoyer version, despite the fact that it cleared the letter before the co-authors circulated it. If you have a preference, you should probably call your senator’s office. 

by Jim Lobe

First, it wanted the Senate to pass a binding bill (Kirk-Menendez, or S. 1881) that was certain to sabotage the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany). When that stalled in mid-January at only 59 co-sponsors, all but [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Jim Lobe

First, it wanted the Senate to pass a binding bill (Kirk-Menendez, or S. 1881) that was certain to sabotage the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany). When that stalled in mid-January at only 59 co-sponsors, all but 16 of whom were Republicans, it initiated discussions about a non-binding resolution essentially endorsing Kirk-Menendez and laying out the conditions for a final “acceptable” agreement with Iran that was also certain to be rejected by Tehran.

It seems now that AIPAC, whose annual policy conference got underway Sunday and is scheduled to last through Tuesday despite ominous warnings of a new winter storm that may limit its 14,000 attendees’ lobbying capabilities, has been reduced to rounding up senators willing to sign a letter to Obama that softens or eliminates some of its previous language but suggests that some of its key demands — most notably, the abandonment by Iran of all uranium enrichment — may still be a sine qua non for Congressional acquiescence to lifting sanctions if and when a final agreement is reached. Gaining as many signatures on that letter as possible is now the top priority in AIPAC’s legislative agenda (although it will also continue pressing lawmakers to co-sponsor or otherwise support S. 1881).

The proposed letter is currently signed by six senators divided in equal parts between Republicans and Democrats. On the Republican side are Lindsey Graham, who’s been wanting to attack Iran for a really long time now; Mark Kirk; and Kelly Ayotte. On the Democratic side are Robert Menendez, Charles Schumer, and Christopher Coons. Of course, Kirk, Menendez, and Schumer were the three out-front and public co-sponsors of what became know as the Kirk-Menendez bill, while the three other letter signers also became co-sponsors. And, of course, Graham’s co-sponsorship, coupled with his long history of war-mongering, makes it difficult for the letter’s Democrats to indignantly insist, as they have in the past, that the letter is designed to reduce — rather than increase — the chances of war. (H/T to Ali)

One has to believe that if AIPAC could’ve gotten one of the Democrats who didn’t co-sponsor S. 1881, they would have preferred him or her to be among the original signatories of the letter. Their absence suggests that the group could run into similar resistance among Democrats even with a much toned-down letter. Indeed, a failure to get more than 59 senators to sign on to a mere letter — which, as I understand it, the administration still strongly opposes due to the baleful impact it could have on the P5+1 negotiations (both on Rouhani’s position and in light of the rapidly rising tensions with Russia over Ukraine ) — would constitute another very serious and highly embarrassing setback for AIPAC amid reports that some of its dissatisfied far-right backers are now mulling the possibility of creating a new lobby group.

But the letter appears to be part of a strategy to overcome that 59-senator threshold. By first asking recalcitrant Democrats to co-sponsor Kirk-Menendez, AIPAC knows it will likely be turned down, at least at this point. But then, by making a second “ask” — to sign a more innocuous-sounding letter — it no doubt believes that a number of Democrats who are uncomfortable about rebuffing AIPAC and/or not sounding “tough” on Iran and/or vesting complete confidence in Obama’s diplomacy strategy at a moment when it is under attack from the right over Ukraine, Syria, etc. etc., will go along in hopes that the Israel lobby will give them a gold star for campaign contribution purposes and not darken their doorway for at least a few months. It seems like a sound strategy, and, if successful, it would help demonstrate to AIPAC’s donors that its effectiveness has not diminished too much, in spite of its recent defeats.

Several points about the letter deserve highlighting:

First, AIPAC has dropped the “wag the dog” provision that called on Washington to provide all necessary help, including military support, to Israel in the event that its leaders felt compelled to attack Iran’s nuclear program. It also forgoes explicit military threats. And, of course, it is non-binding.

Second, it is ambiguous at best about whether its signers find acceptable any final agreement that permits Iran to engage in any uranium enrichment. Its ruling out any recognition of a “right to enrichment”; its demand that such an agreement preclude any “uranium pathway to a bomb;” and its insistence that any agreement cannot lead to any enrichment elsewhere in the region suggest that its authors have not given up on Israel’s “zero-enrichment” position, a stance that the administration and Tehran and Washington’s P5+1 partners all believe is completely unrealistic.

On the other hand, the assertion that there is “no reason for Iran to have an enrichment facility like Fordow” is more intriguing, depending on how you interpret its meaning. It may mean that the enrichment facility at Natanz is kosher, in which case it accepts future Iranian enrichment and demands only that an underground facility like Fordow, which is far more difficult to attack, be dismantled. Or it may mean that it objects to Fordow simply because it is an enrichment facility, thus making Natanz equally objectionable. Indeed, the ambiguity may be deliberate on AIPAC’s part, designed to appeal to those senators who choose to believe that the letter gives the administration the flexibility to accept a limited enrichment program, when, in fact, the letter’s intention is to reduce or eliminate that flexibility.

Third, the letter’s demand that any final agreement “must dismantle Iran’s nuclear weapons program” is tendentious  and provocative, not to mention factually inaccurate, simply because neither U.S. nor Israeli intelligence believes that Tehran has made a decision to build a weapon. What we know — and the Iranian authorities admit — is that it has a nuclear program with elements that could contribute to building a bomb, IF and only IF a decision is made to do so. So how do you dismantle a nuclear weapons program if your intelligence agencies believe there is no such thing?

You may see other problems with the language, the ambiguities of which, as noted above, may be intended to rope senators back into the AIPAC fold and get them to sign on to a letter that could be used against them in the future if they try to stick to the administration’s determination to exhaust diplomatic options. Much will now depend on the attitude taken by both the administration and the ten Democratic Senate chairs who came out early and strongly against a vote on Kirk-Menendez.