By Wayne White
It is probably inaccurate to take the State Department to task in isolation as having made the decision to delist the Mujahadeen-e Khalq (MEK) from the US foreign terrorist organizations (FTO) list. State is the cabinet department that must officially announce (or take formal action related to the [...]]]>
By Wayne White
It is probably inaccurate to take the State Department to task in isolation as having made the decision to delist the Mujahadeen-e Khalq (MEK) from the US foreign terrorist organizations (FTO) list. State is the cabinet department that must officially announce (or take formal action related to the US court challenge), but that does not mean the State Department did in fact make this decision on its own. In fact, with a history of being a sort of weak sister in foreign policy decisions with some consistency since the Kennedy Administration (and at least two administrations prior to that in the 20th Century), most foreign policy decisions of any importance have been made by the White House, with other key players like the National Security Council, in some instances the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community, as well as influential members of Congress often carrying more weight than — or at least as much as — State when all is said and done.
Under Hillary Clinton, the State Department surely has become a more important player than it was, say, when Colin Powell was so consistently bypassed or ignored under the first George W. Bush Administration. Still, the Administration (comprising a foreign policy team on which State frequently is but one voice) makes the final call on most important decisions, regardless of what bureaucratic mouthpiece must pronounce the result. So, it is often the White House where the proverbial buck stops. Indeed, burnt into my memory are plenty of times when I was in State/INR and the Department was being hammered by the media and various informed observers for making an unfortunate decision, when all around me — often all the way up to the Secretary’s suite on the 7th Floor — officials at State were seething over how their opinion to the contrary had been ignored by this or that Administration.
Second, this decision comes in the context of an especially hotly contested US presidential election campaign (often called by insiders — and for good reason in many instances — the foreign policy “silly season” because of statements and decisions that might have gone differently had campaign pressures been absent). Making decisions that appear in any way favorable to the Iranian regime are a hard sell in a political Washington flush with various powerful constituencies favorable to Israel or hostile to a regime perceived widely as aligned against the US and various US interests. But entering the last & most critical 6-7 weeks of the presidential election campaign (and the ongoing & controversial Iran/Nuclear standoff), there doubtless were some within the Administration worried about the potential adverse political blowback of sustaining the MEK listing. This blowback could include accusations from the Romney camp that the US was being “soft on Iran”, that the White House was allegedly “weak” in standing up to “terrorist threats” overall (in this case, the regime in Iran), and that it was blocking efforts by an anti-regime Iranian group.
I opposed this decision because of what I know about the MEK. Nonetheless, I also can imagine how campaign-focused Administration officials might have imagined something like this being raised by Gov. Mitt Romney in next week’s presidential debate, knowing that in a time-compressed debate the President would have been hard put to argue the merits of the case once he had been accused of holding back what could be characterized by his opponents as a group opposed to Iran’s clerical regime — one that had supposedly gathered “valuable” intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program. Most American voters haven’t a clue as to what the MEK is, let alone its many unsavory and violent activities (as well as its bizarre internal dynamics), and all they would pick up on are loaded phrases like “anti-regime Iranian group,” “soft on Iran” and so on.
Mind you, I am not making excuses for the Obama Administration concerning this decision, but let us also not neglect the pressures from other quarters — many of them hostile to the Administration politically — that might well have figured into a decision that almost certainly was to some degree “political” and not determined solely on the merits of the case.
- Wayne White is a Policy Expert with Washington’s Middle East Policy Council. He was formerly the Deputy Director of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research’s Office of Analysis for the Near East and South Asia (INR/NESA) and senior regional analyst. Access Mr. White’s Lobe Log article archive here.
]]>These are the same allegations that Dennis Ross, Obama’s top National Security Council official for [...]]]>
These are the same allegations that Dennis Ross, Obama’s top National Security Council official for Iran policy, pushed back against in his talk yesterday at a U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) event.
In the Leveretts’ piece, they cite a Huffington Post article by Reza Marashi, who just joined the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) as research director after four years in the State Department’s Office of Iranian Affairs:
It should now be clear that U.S. policy has never been a true engagement policy. By definition, engagement entails a long-term approach that abandons “sticks” and reassures both sides that their respective fears are unfounded. We realized early on that the administration was unlikely to adopt this approach. [...]
Moreover, as the leaked cables show, the highest levels of the Obama administration never believed that diplomacy could succeed. While this does not cheapen Obama’s Nowruz message and other groundbreaking facets of his initial outreach, it does raise three important questions: How can U.S. policymakers give maximum effort to make diplomacy succeed if they admittedly never believed their efforts could work? …And what are the chances that Iran will take diplomacy seriously now that it knows the U.S. never really did? The Obama administration presented a solid vision, but never truly pursued it.
This is pretty damning stuff from a guy who just left the Obama State Department. He was on the inside. And the Leveretts are feeling vindicated:
This, of course, provides additional powerful and public confirmation—from inside the Obama Administration—for our argument, in a New York Times Op Ed published in May 2009, that the Obama Administration’s disingenuous approach to dealing with Iran had already betrayed the early promise of President Obama’s initial rhetoric about engagement.
They mention that Ross was quite displeased with what they then had to say, and he let them know. The Leveretts note that Ross had Ray Takeyh, then his assistant at the State Department, push back against the notion that Obama’s “extended hand” to Iran was a checklist item for building international backing for more pressure on Iran, and possibly eventually military strikes. Takeyh called the idea “wrong and fraudulent.”
The Leveretts want to know what Takeyh thinks now:
]]>In light of the Wikileaks cables and Mr. Marashi’s public confirmation that the Obama Administration was, in fact, pursuing engagement to pave the way for more coercive options, including expanded sanctions, we ask Ray Takeyh: who was perpetrating a fraud with regard to the underlying intent of the Administration’s Iran policy?
Guardiano, a contributor to neoconservative blogs and former Marine, derides Donilon’s ability to competently focus on Iran:
Donilon may not know [...]]]>
Guardiano, a contributor to neoconservative blogs and former Marine, derides Donilon’s ability to competently focus on Iran:
Donilon may not know much, but he possesses the surefire cockiness of a lifelong pol; and he is determined to set policymaking in a far-left direction.
Thus, according to the New York Times, Donilon “has urged what he calls a ‘rebalancing’ of American foreign policy to rapidly disengage American forces in Iraq and to focus more on China, Iran and other emerging challenges.”
But of course, China isn’t killing our soldiers and Marines; Iraqi Islamic extremists are. Iran also has American blood on its hand; however, there is absolutely no reason to think that Donilon has even the foggiest notion about how to address this problem. And, if the past is prologue — and it is — his dovish instincts are not reassuring; they are cause for alarm.
Other publications and journalists think little will change.
Ben Smith, Glenn Thrush, and Laura Rozen write at Politico:
Former and current administration officials say that that Jones’s long-anticipated departure won’t have much impact because Donilon and National Security Council chief of staff Denis McDonough — who has just been elevated to Donilon’s old job — were running things anyway.
At Slate, Fred Kaplan added that “Donilon has been de facto national security adviser for many months now, while Jones has been, to a startling degree, a West Wing wallflower.”
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