A viral video calling on world leaders to a “set the red line” to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon has garnered over 1.3 million YouTube views thanks to a savvy social media campaign on Facebook and Twitter.
It’s been promoted by conservative bloggers and Washington-based organizations like [...]]]>
A viral video calling on world leaders to a “set the red line” to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon has garnered over 1.3 million YouTube views thanks to a savvy social media campaign on Facebook and Twitter.
It’s been promoted by conservative bloggers and Washington-based organizations like the Republican Jewish Coalition and The Israel Project. But the 15-minute-long film is leading some experts to question the filmmaker’s message.
The video is part of an “independent, not-for-profit project designed to harness the global voice of humanity for the purpose of a peaceful solution to prevent a nuclear Iran,” say the film’s two principals, Banafsheh Zand and Shraga Simmons, on their website, settheredline.com.
Zand, who narrates the film, was born in Iran and fled the country during the Iranian revolution in 1979.
Her father, Iranian journalist Siamak Pourzand, committed suicide in 2011 after having been imprisoned since 2001 for writing articles critical of Iran’s political leaders.
Set The Red Line’s narration offers a list of reasons why Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program must be stopped, including that “Iranian leaders are on a messianic warpath with the ultimate goal of hastening the Mahdi, the messianic Twelfth Imam, to usher in an era of global Islamic domination.”
“Iran has a plan to take over the world, and they view the United States as the ‘Great Satan,’ which must be destroyed,” Zand warns in the film.
“The Iranian regime will push war because that is [their] mandate and they’ve said it everyday and if westerners think that that regime can be deterred … then they will be in for a surprise because that regime has no intention of giving up its nukes,” Zand told The American Independent in an email.
The film endorses ongoing diplomatic efforts to find a peaceful solution to tensions over Iran’s nuclear program but urges viewers to support a “backup solution” should diplomacy fail.
“We must continue and even intensify the various diplomatic methods that world leaders have worked so hard to implement. But the reality is that Iran’s nuclear clock is ticking faster than the diplomatic clock,” says Zand in the film. “So we need an effective and reliable backup solution. It’s called the Red Line.”
Viewers are urged to participate in a social media campaign to push world leaders to lay down the “red line,” defined in the film as “world leaders make a pronouncement outlining a clear and unambiguous set of criteria that will serve as fair warning to Iran that crossing this line will trigger a devastating military response.”
“Pragmatically, the red line puts us in a much better position of going up against a non-nuclear Iran than having to face the certainty of war against a genocidal and nuclear Iran,” says Zand later in the film.
“The red line is specifically and only for the purpose of getting world leaders to pressure the Iranian regime to give up their nuclear weapons. I do not support any external military action on Iran,” Zand told TAI.
“Why would anyone attack a country whose people loath it?” Zand asked TAI. “Why would anyone attack a country with suicide bombers deployed around the world?”
“The Khomeinist regime totally intends to kill Westerners, Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs because they believe that they (the Shia Twelvers) are the ‘anointed’ ones and … they believe that it is the duty of all Muslims to die in the name of the Islamic pole that the Khomeinists have decided to head,” said Zand to TAI. “[T]hat regime openly says that it is Muslim duty to die, as collateral damage and that Sunnis have no say in the matter.”
Simmons told TAI that “military action should only be a last resort, when sanctions, diplomatic isolation and negotiations have failed to stop the regime.”
In interviews with TAI, experts questioned the approach outlined in the film.
“The video is conveniently vague so we never know to whom we’ll leave it to draw this red line. The US? Israel? The United Nations Security Council?” said Iran expert and author Barbara Slavin. “All we’re told is that it has to happen before Iran develops nuclear weapons. If Iran crosses this line it triggers a devastating response, say the filmmakers. This sounds more like an argument for war than an effort to prevent it.”
Matt Duss, a policy analyst at the liberal Center for American Progress, also criticized the film.
“Like most of the most hawkish arguments about Iran it’s plagued by a fundamental contradiction,” said Duss. “One is this claim, which is highly arguable, that Iran’s leaders are determined to destroy the west and this is a non-negotiable element of their extremist Muslim beliefs; and we must set a red line. These two things are contradictory. If Iran’s threat to destroy the west is nonnegotiable then why would they take a red line seriously?”
He added, “There’s this idea that Iran’s leaders are all apocalyptic crazies looking to trigger the return of the Shiite messiah, but there’s little evidence to suggest these beliefs drive Iranian policy.”
Zand, speaking in the film, says that Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, the UAE, and Iraq “would all fall like dominoes” if faced with an aggressive, nuclear-armed Iran.
But, according to Slavin, “there is absolutely no indication that there would be regime change in any of these places.”
“If Iran got a nuclear weapon the Saudis and all the countries across the Persian Gulf would probably shore up their alliances with the US even more and there would be a vigilant effort to contain Iran,” Slavin went on to add.
Set The Red Line garnered over one million YouTube views thanks to an effective social media campaign, said the film’s director.
“It was very grassroots, which to me is a huge success,” said Simmons. “Thousands of individuals sent the film out to their private email lists and posted on Facebook. We also contacted approximately 1,000 ‘Facebook administrators’ whose groups deal with issues of foreign affairs. I know for certain that a number of very large Facebook groups (with a million followers) promoted it to their lists.”
The Israel Project, “a one-stop source for detailed and accurate information about Israel and the Middle East,” according to its website, promoted the film both on its website andon Twitter.
Twitter accounts belonging to the Republican Jewish Coalition and a Fox News Produceralso promoted the film.
Neither Simmons nor Zand is new to political activism.
Simmons is senior editor of Aish.com, the online outreach arm of the Orthodox Jewish organization Aish HaTorah. His blog posts frequently criticize what he sees as biased reporting by journalists covering Israel.
Simmons accused CBS’s 60 Minutes of “further demonizing Israel and eroding its support in the West” after the show aired a segment examining the treatment of Palestinian Christians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
In a November 18, 2012, post — written during the Israel Defense Forces’ “Operation Pillar of Defense” in the Gaza Strip — Simmons criticized CNN’s Zain Verjee’s “horribly biased” interview of Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev. Verjee asked about reports of children wounded by Israeli airstrikes and questioned how the IDF’s actions help bring peace to the region.
Verjee “sounds like she’d be more comfortable on Hamas TV,” wrote Simmons.
Simmons emphasized that his work on Set The Red Line was conducted independently from his job at Aish HaTorah.
“It happens that I am employed as an editor at the Aish.com website,” said Simmons. “I knew that the credibility of the message required full independence, so I took a full leave of absence from that position to enable me to make the film independently, without any organizational involvements whatsoever.”
Zand explained to TAI that she and Simmons spoke on Skype about making the film and shortly thereafter she was flown to Israel to narrate the film.
“I don’t even know what Aish HaTorah is,” said Zand. “We both agree Iran is out of order and intends to kills westerners and Israelis. Neither one of us want war.”
Tax disclosures show that from 2005 to 2010, Simmons served as secretary of Honest Reporting, a group that characterizes itself as “monitor[ing] the news for bias, inaccuracy, or other breach of journalistic standards in coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict.”
Honest Reporting apparently participated in the release of Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against The West, a 2005 film that compared the rise of radical Islam to the rise of Nazism in the 1930s.
The film’s website warns, “As we sleep in the comfort of our homes, a new evil rises against us. A new menace is threatening, with all the means at its disposal, to bow Western Civilization under the yoke of its values. That enemy is Radical Islam.”
“[Honest Reporting] now denies any involvement in the production of ‘Obsession.’ But its website promoted it as an Honest Reporting project in 2005, the year it was first released,” reported Sara Posner in a 2008 Jewish Week article.
As Posner reported, an archived version of the Honest Reporting website from June 14, 2006, shows Obsession listed as an “affiliate” project. The site also declared at the time: “HonestReporting’s ‘Obsession’ Wins Award at WorldFest Independent Film Festival.”
The film gained mainstream attention after 28 million DVDs were distributed to swing-state voters via newspaper inserts and bulk mailings before the 2008 U.S. presidential election.
Set The Red Line was Zand’s first collaboration with Simmons but not her first foray into political advocacy.
Her LinkedIn profile states that from February 2010 to October 2012, the month Set The Red Line was released, she worked as a consultant at Iran180, a group that “demand[s] a 180 by the Iranian government on their pursuit of nuclear weapons and the treatment of their citizens,” according to its website. Iran180’s outreach director, Chris DeVito, told TAI that Zand no longer works with the organization.
DeVito declined to offer a detailed opinion on the film but stated, “There are elements of the narrative that are extremely important and entirely valid.”
It’s the holidays and unfortunately not all the hawks took a break from agitating [...]]]>
It’s the holidays and unfortunately not all the hawks took a break from agitating for confrontation with Iran. Here’s to giving all we’ve got in the New Year to working for peaceful means of conflict resolution.
*This week’s essential reading is “Hawks who learned Nothing” in Salon. Matthew Duss of the Center for American Progress reminds us that many of the same people who pushed for war with Iraq are calling for escalation with Iran.
Mainstream Media and Pundits:
Wall Street Journal: The hawkish editorial board says yet again that war is the answer (emphasis is mine):
The Hormuz threat is another opportunity to set boundaries on Iran’s rogue behavior. Washington, along with London, Paris and Riyadh, should say plainly that any attempt to close or disrupt traffic through the strait would be considered an act of war that would be met with a military response…
The article ends by echoing Bush-era preemptive war rhetoric:
Would the U.S. dare resist Iranian aggression if it meant putting American forces at risk of a nuclear reprisal? Better to act now to stop Iran before we have to answer that terrible question.
The WSJ’s logic with respect to Iran’s behavior is curious. Iran is accused of being irrational and having a “tantrum” but it’s unlikely that it would close the Strait or threaten to do so without feeling seriously threatened itself. It’s worth keeping in mind that Iran has had more than 30 years to block this vital supply route and has never done so.
Washington Post: Jennifer Rubin (who almost always quotes the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies when writing about Iran) does three things in this blog post. First she criticizes Leon Panetta for making “a mess of things” by expressing U.S. reservations about going to war with Iran. Then she asserts that there is only two options with Iran: punitive sanctions or war. Finally she repeats an argument regularly touted by pro-Israel hawks: the U.S. needs to save Israel from itself by preemptively going to war with Iran:
Ironic, isn’t it, that Obama should find himself in the same predicament as his predecessor: Preemptively strike a rogue regime or run the risk of regional and global catastrophe? There is one big difference, however. In Obama’s case, the Israelis will act if we don’t. And the margin for error, the degree of risk Israel is willing to incur, is much smaller than for us. Its existence and the entire Zioinist concept of a safe refuge for Jews is at stake.
Rubin also says “it’s impossible to know with certainty what the Iranians are up to” and yet she continues to make the case for confrontation. Like Iran’s authoritarian adjudicators, Rubin seems to be using guilty until proven innocent logic.
New York Times: John Vinocur’s alarmist article suggests war with Iran is just on the horizon. He quotes the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’s Mark Dubowitz who provides a quickly approaching deadline for sanctions (which he’s been aggressively pushing for) even though all success stories took years to bear results. Moreover, while analysts and Israeli officials doubt Israel’s strike capability and Israeli officials say an Iranian nuclear weapon does not pose an existential threat, Vinocur still suggests that Israel would go to war with Iran alone (by going over Iraq’s unsecured airspace!):
By some time next June, said Mr. Dubowitz, “If there’s no impact on Iranian oil revenue, then you’re at the end of the sanctions road.”
That’s 2012 ticking. The volume changes over the weekend.
With the end of 2011, the United States no longer holds responsibility for policing Iraqi airspace. Iraq has no replacement aircraft for now, and the shortest route for long-range Israeli F15Is to attack Iran’s nuclear sites will be wide open to them beginning Sunday.
Fox News: This panel discussing the Strait of Hormuz situation features Charles Krauthammer (who made last week’s posting) and Chuck Lane of the Washington Post. Their basic argument: impose a crippling embargo and more sanctions on Iran and go to war with it if it reacts by doing one of the only things it can do. Interestingly, Krauthammer admits that the Iranian government is reacting rather than acting unprovoked and is “weak”:
It’s doing it because the Obama administration is on the verge of imposing very serious sanctions on Iran which will essentially shut down at least gradually its oil exports and the Europeans are considering a boycott. That will really hurt the Iranian economy. The regime is already a weak one and worries about that, so it’s threatening.
Daily Beast/Commentary: Matthew Kroenig, the Georgetown Assistant Professor who wrote a poorly argued warmongering piece in Foreign Affairs (see responses here, here and here) finds fame with Eli Lake and Evelyn Gordon.
Past and Present U.S. Officials:
John Yoo: In case you missed it, the George W. Bush administration official who authored the infamous “torture memos” invokes Iraq war logic while pushing for war with Iran in the National Review. Writes Jim Lobe:
…his “case” for attacking Iran strikes me as extremely weak unless you believe, as his aggressive nationalist and neo-conservative colleagues do, that Washington can really do just about anything it likes and should, in any event, not be bound by silly concepts or institutions like international law or the UN Charter. Hence, his argument for ignoring the UN Security Council:
Just as national governments claim a monopoly on the use of force within their borders and in exchange offer police protection, the U.N. asks nations to give up their right to go to war and in exchange offers to police the world. But the U.N. has no armed forces of its own, has a crippled decision-making system, and lacks political legitimacy. It is contrary to both American national interests and global welfare because it subjects any intervention, no matter how justified or beneficial, to the approval of authoritarian nations.
John Bolton: George W. Bush’s UN ambassador is a favorite of Fox News and journalists soliciting a bellicose view from a former official. This week Bolton told Fox’s Jon Scott that the U.S. would crush Iran if it blocked the Strait of Hormuz while making some questionable claims:
Bolton: I’ve had many conversations with military officials here in this country over the years and it’s not bluster and it’s not boast, it’s a fact that if the Iranians tried to block the Straits of Hormuz [sic] it would be a matter of 2 or 3 days before the Straits [sic] were reopened. And the damage caused to Iran would not just be to its navy which would be on the bottom of the sea, but to a lot of land-based air and air defense mechanisms.
Scott: But if I’m in the Pentagon or if I’m advising the President and I’m presented with two scenarios, one, try to go after those hardened nuclear facilities that we know exist but that are very deep underground or potentially take out their navy in one swoop and maybe some anti-aircraft and military facilities along with it, I think I’d opt for option two.
Bolton: Well I’d opt for both options but I think it’s important to understand that those nuclear facilities that we know of at Natanz and Isfahan and Arak are not so deeply buried that they’re not very vulnerable, certainly to us, but even vulnerable to the Israelis as well and that really is what I think is most acute in Iran’s thoughts.
A check-in with Iran analyst Patrick Disney clarifies some misleading statements made by both Scott and Bolton. First, the Isfahan and Arak facilities are actually above ground. Second, Bolton seems to be exaggerating Israel’s strike capability. According to Disney:
Natanz is buried about 75 feet underground, but (as Matthew Kroenig said this week) could be destroyed with bunker buster bombs known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator which is capable of busting through 200 feet of concrete. So the US could destroy Natanz, but there’s a real doubt about Israel’s ability to destroy it alone, even with the bunker buster bombs that the Obama administration sent in 2009.
Disney also points out Kroenig’s problematic logic in his attack Iran piece:
]]>Kroenig said multiple times this week that one of the red lines the US should have is any move by Iran to install advanced centrifuges (whether IR-2, IR-4 or some other variant) in the Fordow facility — something that strikes me as a very low standard for triggering military action. Iran already is operating advanced centrifuges at Natanz. Iran is already operating first-generation centrifuges at Fordow. It’s unclear why the introduction of advanced centrifuges into the Fordow facility would pose such a threat as to trigger military action. Not to mention…it’s kind of bizarre to say we should attack AFTER Iran puts next-generation centrifuges into Fordow, since one of the reasons we’d be concerned about them doing so is because the facility is invulnerable to attack.
Mainstream Media and Pundits:
Washington Post: Neoconservative media spokesman Charles Krauthammer (who [...]]]>
Mainstream Media and Pundits:
Washington Post: Neoconservative media spokesman Charles Krauthammer (who argued that the U.S. had no option but to use “military force” against Iran during the middle of the Iraq War) likens the Obama Administration’s Iran policy to “appeasement”:
Obama imagined that his silver tongue and exquisite sensitivity to Islam would persuade the mullahs to give up their weapons program. Amazingly, they resisted his charms, choosing instead to become a nuclear power. The negotiations did nothing but confer legitimacy on the regime at its point of maximum vulnerability (and savagery), as well as give it time for further uranium enrichment and bomb development.
Matt Duss of the Center for American Progress explains why Krauthammer’s argument is absurd:
One can disagree with the Obama administration’s two track approach of engagement and pressure. But to describe that approach — which includes the adoption of some of the most stringent multilateral sanctions ever, successfully supporting the appointment of a special UN human rights monitor for Iran, and unprecedented defense cooperation with regional allies — as “appeasement” is to declare oneself desperately in need of a dictionary.
Even Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak disagrees with Krauthammer!
CNN: Pro-Israel Senate hawk Mark Kirk is called a “leader” by David Frum, the Iraq war-pusher who coined the infamous “axis of evil” phrase for George W. Bush. Frum applauds the Kirk-Menendez amendment to the defense authorization bill which includes sanctions against Iran’s Central Bank. The bill was approved by a 100-0 Senate vote after months of lobbying. Frum is a talented writer who knows how to sway public perception. By ending this piece with the argument that strangling sanctions are preferable to war or “nuclear terror”, he is making it seem like there are no other available options. In other words, the second to worst-case scenario is actually the best scenario. Here’s how he does it:
The utmost irony here is that detractors in the administration and in the foreign policy establishment criticize Menendez-Kirk as a form of confrontation with Iran. In reality, Menendez-Kirk is the last and best chance for regional peace: the last best hope to avoid the horrible choice of either using force to stop Iran — or acquiescing as Iran gains the power to wage nuclear terror against its neighbors and the world.
Notable analysts and former officials beg to differ, most recently evidenced by this.
Foreign Affairs: According to Matthew Kroenig, an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University, going to war with Iran is the “Is the Least Bad Option”. Harvard’s Stephen Walt thoroughly debunks Kroenig’s appallingly bad analysis here.
Wall Street Journal: Emanuele Ottolenghi of the uber-hawkish Foundation for the Defense of Democracies argues that the U.S. should wage war on Iran because Iranians are more likely to welcome foreign invasion than they they are to oppose it. Ottolenghi makes unsubstantiated assumptions such as the claim that Iran’s non-Persians would ally with their invaders over their nation. He doesn’t discuss how an attack should be carried out, or what kind of resources would be needed to maintain any supposed successes. He also ignores the financial costs for the U.S.’s economy and most importantly, the human costs for Iran, the U.S. and its allies:
American policy makers should factor in the possibility that a U.S. attack will actually accelerate regime change, not hinder it. And given that it would come on the heels of the destruction of Iran’s nuclear military program—an undeniable strategic gain—the Obama administration and its allies should have a second look.
Past and Present U.S. Officials:
Washington Times: Retired Navy Adm. James “Ace” Lyons advocates three positions on Iran. First, the U.S. should make “regime change in Iran the official policy of the United States Government.” Second, the U.S. should wage war on Iran. Third, the U.S. should delist the anti-Iranian cult, the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK) from its foreign terrorist organizations list.
This week Lyons advocated the first two positions while endorsing strangling sanctions against Iran. He also said the U.S. should support the Syrian opposition–not because massive human rights abuses are being committed against them–but because the overthrow of the Syrian government would eliminate a key Iranian ally.
]]>Today, National Review Online‘s David French leapt to the defense of Spencer and Horowitz. His aim is to show that far from being Islamophobic, they and their allies are simply applying the same standards to Islam that we would apply to any other religion. To do so, he resorts to a familiar kind of thought experiment, asking how we would respond if Christians posed the same sort of threat to the U.S. that Muslims ostensibly pose.
But French’s “thought experiment” is perhaps more revealing that he intended. Its astonishingly hyperbolic portrayal of the extent of the “Christian” (i.e. Muslim) threat only reinforces the conclusion that he and his allies hold a hysterical and alarmist view of Islam.
French’s imaginary account of the “Christian” menace is too long to reproduce in full here — read the full post for that — but the gist is: “Christians” (i.e. Muslims) have launched 10,000 terrorist attacks against the United States in the span of a decade. They control five states “in whole or in part,” having wrested sovereignty away from the U.S. government, and are fighting a violent insurgency to take control of California. Anti-blasphemy laws are enforced “at rifle point,” members of other religions are crushed under tanks, and the last synagogue closes as Jews have been expelled from the United States.
Clearly, French expects readers of this fantasy to nod in knowing recognition. How clever, they are meant to think to themselves — he’s precisely described the Muslim threat to America! And to be sure, much of what he describes is modeled on recent events in various Middle Eastern countries.
But for the thought experiment to make sense — and for his defense of Horowitz, Spencer et al to hold water — one must believe that these events are a plausible account of the threat posed to America by radical Islam. And here the paranoia on display becomes so over-the-top as to be laughable.
After all, have Muslims launched 10,000 terrorist attacks in America? Have they launched 1,000? Have they launched 100? Do radical Muslims control five American states, “in whole or in part”? Do they control a single state? Do they control a single county? Has a Muslim anti-blasphemy law been passed by even a single jurisdiction in the United States? Has even a single Christian or Jewish religious congregation been forced out by Muslims? (This last notion is especially ironic, since French’s allies have been dedicated to preventing Muslims from opening mosques throughout the country.)
There is nothing wrong, of course, with faulting the governments of many Muslim-majority countries for their illiberal practices. But to suggest, as French seems to, that Muslims are on the verge of imposing an Islamic Republic in America is frankly insane. (Once again the Bircher parallel holds: it was perfectly justifiable to denounce the brutality of the Soviet regime, but it was lunatic to suggest that a Soviet takeover of America was imminent.)
French may have intended to clear Horowitz and Spencer from the charge of Islamophobia. Instead, he has given yet another demonstration of the depths of anti-Muslim paranoia prevailing on large segments of the right.
]]>The two main problems with Ayalon’s analysis is that he seems not to have actually read the WikiLeaks cables—which offer ample evidence confirming the centrality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the minds of Arab leaders—or bothered to understand how promoters of linkage define the concept.
(Matt Duss has an excellent post up on the Wonk Room that covers many of the same problems with Ayalon’s rather selective (when not downright misleading) interpretation of WikiLeaks and linkage.)
Linkage, as defined by Gen. David Petraeus last March, is [my emphasis]:
The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR. Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas.
Rather conveniently, Ayalon’s definition of linkage misinterprets the concept and fails to address the concerns raised by Petraeus and members of the Obama administration who have endorsed the idea. Matt Duss accurately describes Ayalon’s description as “an obvious strawman.”
While right-wing blogs, political pundits, and columnists quickly embraced the talking point that WikiLeaks showed an Arab world that is deathly afraid of Iran’s nuclear program — but didn’t have much to say about the Arab-Israeli conflict — an actual reading of the cables suggests a very different message.
Here are a set of excerpts from WikiLeaks that show Arab leaders endorsing the concept of linkage (the Petraeus definition, not the Ayalon one) in the most blunt way possible.
The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan, in a December 9, 2009 meeting with the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman:
Emphasized the strategic importance of creating a Palestinian State (i.e., resolving the Israeli- Palestinian conflict) as the way to create genuine Middle Eastern unity on the question of Iran’s nuclear program and regional ambitions.
A cable from the U.S. embassy in Amman, written shortly after the end of the Gaza War in January 2009, reads:
Speaking to PolOffs [political officers] in early February 2009, immediately after the Gaza War, Director of the Jordanian Prime Minister’s Political Office Khaled Al-Qadi noted that the Gaza crisis had allowed Iranian interference in inter-Arab relations to reach unprecedented levels.
An April 2, 2009 cable from Amman repeated the Jordanian position:
Jordanian leaders have argued that the only way to pull the rug out from under Hizballah – and by extension their Iranian patrons – would be for Israel to hand over the disputed Sheba’a Farms to Lebanon.
It went on:
With Hizballah lacking the ‘resistance to occupation’ rationale for continued confrontation with Israel, it would lose its raison d’etre and probably domestic support.
And a February 22, 2010, cable describes UAE foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nayan as he warns a Congressional delegation against a military attack on Iran, led by Nita Lowey:
The cable remarks that bin Zayed:
Concluded the meeting with a soliloquy on the importance of a successful peace process between Israel and its neighbors as perhaps the best way of reducing Iran’s regional influence.
During a February 14, 2010, meeting with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, Qatar Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al-thani suggested one reason that Israel might be hyping the threat of a nuclear Iran.
The cable summarizes bin Khalifa as saying:
[The Israelis] are using Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons as a diversion from settling matters with the Palestinians.
Ayalon twisting the definition of linkage and misstating the messages contained in the WikiLeaks cables is indicative of the increasing desperation that the Israeli right-wing must be experiencing as authoritarian Middle Eastern governments, that have helped Israel maintain the status quo, are under increasing pressure to make democratic reforms. There’s no guarantee that the governments in Middle Eastern capitals will be as cooperative in helping Israel maintain its occupation of the West Bank or its siege on Gaza in the future. The time for Israeli hardliners to face their nation’s political realities and make difficult but necessary concessions may be drawing closer. Danny Ayalon is choosing to ignore the shifting political winds.
]]>Just look at some of the Americans who took [...]]]>
Just look at some of the Americans who took the trip this year: Noah Pollak, Jennifer Rubin (whose trip was paid for by Pollak’s organization), Judith Miller, Scooter Libby, Danielle Pletka, Reuel Marc Gerecht, and so on and so on.
Duss tells it better than I could. Marvel at the madness:
To be sure, drumbeating on Iran still dominated the official conference agenda. But, as if to demonstrate that everyone has limited bandwidth for worry, almost every discussion eventually circled back to Egypt. There was growing anxiety that while Israel continued to confront the threat from the East—the growth of a “poisonous crescent” (as one member of the Israeli government put it to me) consisting of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Lebanon—the peace on its western border could no longer simply be taken for granted. Egypt was raining on everything.
The drummers were already going to have trouble keeping the beat in the wake of outgoing Mossad chief Meir Dagan’s and Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon’s recent statements that efforts at sabotage and international sanctions had likely delayed an Iranian nuke for several years. Egypt only made things more complicated. Still, it was odd to hear neoconservative doyenne Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute dismiss as “propaganda” former Mossad head Efraim Halevi’s assertion that “the US and Israel are winning the war against Iran.” “If Iran is losing, I’d like to be that kind of loser,” Pletka said, reminding the audience that, “Khomeini referred to Israel as a one-bomb country.”
“What I’m saying is not propaganda,” Halevi shot back. “The danger is believing the propaganda of others.”
Now that you’ve read the excerpt, go back and read the whole thing. Really. Think about when an Israeli general says, “In the Arab world, there is no room for democracy.” Ask yourself is these are the people we should be listening to about bombing Iran.
]]>In a briefing yesterday, acting State Department spokesperson Mark Toner put an exclamation on this when he was asked if the Iranians “want a bomb or [...]]]>
In a briefing yesterday, acting State Department spokesperson Mark Toner put an exclamation on this when he was asked if the Iranians “want a bomb or not.” He redirected the reporter to somebody who might actually know: Iranian President Mahmood Ahmadinejad. “Ask Ahmadinejad,” Toner said. (The full exchange is below.)
On Tuesday, Foreign Policy‘s Josh Rogin reported that a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran had been completed and circulated among some members of Congress– The Iran hawks who spoke to Rogin spoke with certainty about Iran’s desire for a bomb.
The ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA), who hadn’t yet seen the new NIE, told Rogin: “There can be no serious doubt that Iran wants to have a nuclear weapons capability.”
But a report in the Wall Street Journal by Adam Entous on Thursday suggested that, according to the latest NIE, while Iran has been working on various components that could be synthesized into a full-blown nuclear weapons program, the regime in Tehran seems to have split over whether to work toward that goal. Entous:
The NIE’s findings suggest that, in the U.S. view, at least some Iranian leaders are worried that economic turmoil fueled in part by international sanctions could spur opposition to the regime—though officials acknowledge it is impossible for outsiders to determine the precise effect of sanctions on decision-making in Tehran.
Noting that the NIE is a consensus opinion among U.S. intelligence agencies, Entous gets this quote from an unnamed U.S. official:
“The bottom line is that the intelligence community has concluded that there’s an intense debate inside the Iranian regime on the question of whether or not to move toward a nuclear bomb,” a U.S. official said. “There’s a strong sense that a number of Iranian regime officials know that the sanctions are having a serious effect.”
As Matt Duss at ThinkProgress has hammered home again and again, the current position — ‘We just don’t know!’ — tracks perfectly with the public stances of the CIA (pdf), the UN’s atomic agency (IAEA), and serious analysts everywhere. (The most vociferous dissenters from this conventional wisdom — in Israel — have proven themselves to be less than reliable on the matter.)
Duss spoke to an Iranian-Israeli analyst who, contra his compatriots in government, took a wholly responsible stand on the subject:
“No one, absolutely nobody, perhaps not even Khamenei knows whether they will field a weapon, yet. Its all assumptions,” said Israeli analyst Meir Javedanfar, via email.
At a conference earlier this month sponsored by the National Security Network and the Center for American Progress, former intelligence analyst and Georgetown professor Paul Pillar concurred with the assessment that no decision has been made by the Iranians.
He said this supported the notion that a deal to avert the current crisis is still possible: that with real inducements of the sort not yet offered by the West, Iran could decide not to pursue weapons.
“[A deal] is still feasible,” he said. “We’re talking about an Iranian decision not yet made and influenceable by the West — including the United States — and what it does.”
***
Here’s State spokesperson Mark Toner’s full exchange on Iran’s intentions during the Feb. 17 daily press briefing:
QUESTION: Mark, is there any evidence that the –
MR. TONER: Yeah, go ahead.
QUESTION: — of a – some kind of split within the Iranian regime about the wisdom of proceeding forward with its nuclear program – the impact of economic sanctions, et cetera – is there any evidence of a schism within the regime?
MR. TONER: It’s a fair question. I don’t know or can’t speak to it authoritatively today. We’ve seen some signs that the sanctions have had some impact, and the best we can do is offer Iran a clear path forward and one that involves coming clean with the international community about its nuclear program, which would then lead to greater engagement and easing of sanctions.
QUESTION: Has the Department observed any slowdown on the part of the Iranians’ efforts to achieve a nuclear weapons capability?
MR. TONER: I can’t speak to that.
QUESTION: So in – do you have any assessment as to the desire of the Iranians to pursue a nuclear weapons capability? Does it remain your view that they are determined to achieve a nuclear weapons capability? That is the still the U.S. view, correct?
MR. TONER: The U.S. view is that Iran – that the international community has serious questions about Iran’s nuclear ambitions and has asked repeatedly, through the IAEA, through the P-5+1, for Iran to come clean, to address those concerns in a transparent way. And we continue to call on them to –
QUESTION: You don’t affirmatively believe that they are seeking a nuclear weapon?
MR. TONER: We are asking them to – again, to address the international community’s concerns about their nuclear program, about the intention of their nuclear program. But I’m not going to go beyond that.
QUESTION: Do they want a bomb or not? Do they want a bomb?
]]>MR. TONER: Ask Ahmadinejad.
When the Bush administration used the Iraq War as a vehicle to spread democratic change in the Middle East, anger with the United States on foreign policy issues — particularly Iraq and the Arab-Israeli conflict [...]]]>
]]>When the Bush administration used the Iraq War as a vehicle to spread democratic change in the Middle East, anger with the United States on foreign policy issues — particularly Iraq and the Arab-Israeli conflict — and deep suspicion of U.S. intentions put the genuine democracy advocates in the region on the defensive. The outcome has been that, every year since the Iraq War began, polls of Arabs revealed their sense that the Middle East is even less democratic than before.
As we witness the remarkable and inspiring events in both Tunisia and Egypt, one has to wonder whether these events could have taken place even earlier had there not been the diversion of the Iraq War — and whether these upheavals might have swept away Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship without shots being fired from the outside.
Even in Iran, where there is obvious public opposition to the clerical regime, as indicated by the contestation over the 2009 presidential election, one wonders whether the Iranian people might succeed if the regime were robbed of its ability to point fingers at the West.
It’s right there in the opinion section of the Washington Times, where even Frank Gaffney is zoomed in on the Muslim Brotherhood and has the decency not to mention Iran. (Gaffney’s piece is [...]]]>
It’s right there in the opinion section of the Washington Times, where even Frank Gaffney is zoomed in on the Muslim Brotherhood and has the decency not to mention Iran. (Gaffney’s piece is called “The Muslim Brotherhood is the Enemy“, and I didn’t read it, but searched it for ‘Iran’, ‘Tehran’, and ‘mullah’, and: nada.)
But not Pipes. The show must go on. (Just as Clarion Fund‘s “Iranium” premieres tomorrow.) Here’s Pipes’s lede:
As Egypt’s much-anticipated moment of crisis arrived and popular rebellions shook governments across the Middle East, Iran stands as never before at the center of the region. Its Islamist rulers are within sight of dominating the region. But revolutions are hard to pull off and I predict that Islamists will not achieve a Middle East-wide breakthrough and Tehran will not emerge as the key powerbroker.
Check out that deft change of subject in the first sentence!
Oh, and did you know that U.S. President Barack Obama is supporting the nasty Islamists in Egypt, the very Brotherhood that Gaffney is warning us about?
Sure, you say, democracy advocates from across the political spectrum are asking for Obama to do more to usher Egyptian dictator Honsi Mubarak out of power. But Pipes has a different story. He concludes:
Barack Obama initially reverted to the failed old policy of making nice with tyrants; now he is myopically siding with the Islamists against Mr. Mubarak.
The link for that Islamist allegation, from the version of the piece on Pipes’s hompage, goes to Obama’s catch-up speech on Thursday night after he spoke to Mubarak. Only Pipes saw the Islamist connection; he went to Harvard, you know, and runs a think tank.
But do tell, Pipes, what should Obama do?
He should emulate Bush but do a better job, understanding that democratization is a decades-long process that requires the inculcation of counter-intuitive ideas about elections, freedom of speech, and the rule of law.
If there’s any question about whether some neoconservatives are democratic opportunists for the purpose of scoring political points, that about settles it.
And the “inculcation of counter-intuitive ideas about elections, freedom of speech and the rule of law”? It seems to me that Egyptians, at this moment, are perfectly attuned to these notions. How racist.
And wasn’t the idea that all people have these aspirations at the very heart of Bush’s 2005 State of the Union? Jennifer Rubin, the neoconservative Washington Post blogger, cited that very passage in support of her hallucination “that it was the left that said that democracy was alien to the Middle East. Bush was right; they were wrong.” (Pipes may actually be on Rubin’s left.)
Elliott Abrams, too, hauled out a similar Bush passage — that everyone is ‘ready’ for democracy — when he presented his own bogus narrative that the Iraq War was being vindicated by current events. (Doesn’t Pipes read his comrades?)
Nonetheless, on Egypt: Eli Lake has a good piece on the New Republic about Bush’s failure to push for genuine reform in Egypt. We don’t really know exactly what’s going on in the White House right now, though we’re getting some hints (Mubarak will be out).
After reading Lake’s piece, what’s stands out as ironic is that Obama’s caution, at the moment, seems an awful lot like he’s already ‘emulating’ Bush. To do something about it, and call for or arrange Mubarak’s ouster, would indeed be doing a “better job” than Bush, as Pipes put it.
But Pipes can’t be bothered with details or history. It’s all about Iran.
Oh, and the guy in the Obama administration responsible for designing U.S. policy toward Iran (and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process) sits on the board of editors at Daniel Pipes’s pseudo-academic journal. How comforting is that?
]]>A recent neoconservative meme has been to assert that the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt that are imperiling dictatorial regimes owe a debt of gratitude to President George W. Bush’s efforts to bring democracy [...]]]>
A recent neoconservative meme has been to assert that the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt that are imperiling dictatorial regimes owe a debt of gratitude to President George W. Bush’s efforts to bring democracy to Iraq by making war on it.
This rather silly talking point (a partisan one, of course) has been promulgated by hard-liners like Elliott Abrams and Jennifer Rubin, and ably beaten back by Matt Duss.
But, lo, here comes Rubin and Abrams’s comrade to put them in their place: none other than Paul Wolfowitz. Rubin recently asked, ”How much did the emergence of a democratic Iraq have to do with this popular revolt in Tunisia?”
Her and Abrams’ revisionism contends that the rise of democratic Iraq was the central tenant of Bush’s unyielding campaign to invade the country. Actually, Wolfowitz tells us, it was an afterthought:
We did not go to war in Iraq or Afghanistan to promote democracy, but rather to remove regimes that were dangerous to us and to the world. Having done that, we have attempted to enable the Iraqi and Afghan people to enjoy the benefits of free and representative government.
And, in case you didn’t get the point, he adds:
It is wrong to say that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were fought to promote democracy. Whether right or wrong, they were fought to protect ourselves and others from dangerous regimes, but once those regimes were removed we could not reimpose dictators. At the same time, we did believe that peaceful democratic change, of the kind I’ve mentioned earlier, could help to change the conditions in the Middle East that were breeding terrorists and support for terrorism.
(FYI, Paul, they were wrong: The Iraqi ‘threat’ was predicated on non-existent WMDs.)
But Wolfowitz is not finished. Rubin wants to justify invasion of a country as a way of bringing about democratic reform — that’s at the heart of her Iraq revisionism and recommendations for Iran policy. For the latter, she claims that democratic aspirations of Iranians are paramount, second even to nuclear concerns (the latter merely accelerates the need for the former).
Wolfowitz, however, is not backing down, exposing Rubin’s dishonesty (as well as others) that we can somehow drop democracy bunker-busting bombs:
Support for peaceful reform by the people themselves is the right way to promote democracy, not the use of force. To repeat again, we did not go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq to promote democracy.
I look forward to Rubin and Abrams explaining away Wolfowitz’s perspective on their blogs.
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