Some key quotes from the panel included Saban Center director Kenneth Pollack calling for the U.S. to hold Israel back from any “rush action” while the Middle East is in a state of turmoil:
This hasn’t been about Israel. And the most important thing for the Israelis to do is to not make it about Israel. There are a lot of things that the government of Israel could do right now that would be extraordinarily unhelpful. Unhelpful to the events playing out in the region and ultimately unhelpful to the future and security of the state of Israel.
It would be driven by the fear, the siege mentality. It’s one of our roles as the United States, and their great ally and friend, to help them through this period without taking rash action that will ultimately be to the detriment of Israel and the U.S. and to the benefit of Iran.
I think the Iranians would like nothing more than to see the Netanyahu government take a series of rash steps that would infuriate the Arab populations.
This theme — that hardliners in Iran, not to mention other Arab leaders facing citizen uprisings, will benefit from aggressive behavior on the part of Israel — was recurring during the panel’s discussion.
Pollack also addressed the argument that democratic revolutions in the Middle East can be hijacked, saying:
We need to be alive to the possibility that these revolutions can come off the rail, that there are spoilers out there who look to take advantage of it. Iran is one that is unquestionably trying to do just that. What we have to do is make it hard for Iran to do it and help our allies in Israel not become spoilers themselves.
Heather Hurlburt, executive director of the National Security Network, added her own warning: that the U.S. must be careful not to fall victim to Islamophobic fear-mongering as popular democracy movements sweep across the Middle East.
You are seeing at every level people who conflate the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Al Qaeda as if they were all one thing whose primary purpose is to blow us up in our supermarkets. That is the rhetoric we’re going to be confronting here in Washington.
The New York Times’s Roger Cohen emphasized that the constant predictions that Iran is on the precipice of producing a nuclear weapon (with many of the deadlines already having passed) has been highly inaccurate:
We’ve had a lot of predictions that [Iran would be producing nuclear weapons] and the fact is it hasn’t happened.
And
The Iranians have been messing around with this nuclear program for forty years! What are they doing?
The discussion about Iran tended to focus on what the democratic uprisings in Iran and elsewhere will mean for Israel and its fear of an Iranian nuclear weapon. The panelists admitted that Iran had lost its position on the front pages of newspapers and, as breaking news emerges from the Middle East on a daily basis, the Obama administration’s focus on Iran’s nuclear program will be diminished.
Pollack observed:
]]>A lot of the people who previously spent all their time working on Iran, trying to craft these sanctions, trying to bring all these other countries aboard against Iran are now spending 24 or 25 hours a day doing nothing but working on Bahrain, Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, etc… Iran is very much on the backburner at the moment in the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon.
The voices making comparisons with 1979 have failed to understand the seeds of the Islamic revolution, nor do they seem to recognize that today’s Egyptian uprising is a non-ideological movement. As someone who conducted research on the Brotherhood in Egypt for many years, I predicted 10 years ago that the only alternative to Mubarak would be a more democratic state run by the Brotherhood; I have been surprised at just how minimal a role the Brotherhood has played so far — not only in the street movement, but in the consciousness of the young people in Tahrir Square.
Abdo points to grievances voiced by pro-democracy supporters which have included the corruption, cronyism, and economic stagnation under the Mubarak government. Notably absent has been any strong ideological beliefs other than a call for democracy and demands that Hosni Mubarak step down.
The Muslim Brotherhood, despite constant mention on neoconservative-aligned blogs, has had remarkably little visible presence in Tahrir Square. Indeed, the movement for democracy in Egypt may have passed by the Brotherhood.
Abdo observes:
If anything, this is a bittersweet moment for the Brotherhood. Although Mubarak appears on his way out, the movement seems to have missed the historical moment when it could have captured a powerful place in the corridors of power. That window began closing in 2005, after the Brotherhood captured 88 seats in the Egyptian parliament only to be targeted aggressively and largely suppressed by Mubarak’s security services ever since. During these intervening years, a new Egyptian generation has arisen that is more secular, more worldly, and not loyal to any particular organization or movement. Though the Brotherhood, in the long term, may still prove to have a profound role in a new Egypt; after all, the skills and tools it takes to start a revolution are rarely those needed to finish it. Ask the Mensheviks and Lenin.
Abdo concludes that while the Brotherhood may or may not have a significant role in a new government, the end of Mubarak’s thirty years in office will have long-term geostrategic consequences for the U.S. and Israel, as Egypt, in all likelihood, will seek a closer relationship with its Arab and Muslim neighbors.
]]>Rather than reaching for false analogies between Iran of 1979 and Egypt today, Western leaders should accept the fact that any new Egyptian government is unlikely to support policies the United States has promoted for 30 years, regardless of whether the Muslim Brotherhood has a small or large share in a new government. The time has come for the West to acknowledge that Egyptian society opposes the country’s 1979 peace agreement with Israel, resents the United States’ close relationship with the Jewish state (a country most Egyptians loathe), and has been historically prepared to end the country’s reliance on U.S. aid. In fact, Mubarak’s image as a puppet of the United States has for years been a political liability.
Her comments, says NSN, are part of an attempt to treat Iran as a “political football to scare [...]]]>
Her comments, says NSN, are part of an attempt to treat Iran as a “political football to scare voters and intimidate policy makers into taking military action against Iran.” The report counters her statements with those of former civilian and military Pentagon officials and former Foreign Service officers who all think such an attack would be a disaster. (We referred to NSN’s list here).
From the NSN report (with my emphasis):
Today, on a Newsmax broadcast, Sarah Palin proclaimed that allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons would result in a battle between good and evil, leading to “Armageddon.” Palin’s remarks are the most recent in a litany of bellicose rhetoric made by extreme conservatives about how to deal with Iran. Yet despite the attempts to use Iran as a political football to scare voters and intimidate policy makers into taking military action against Iran, national security experts and military leaders disagree with such an approach. In addition, the voters aren’t buying this argument, as a recent poll showed that only two in ten Americans would go to war with Iran if that country tested a nuclear bomb. [...] Nonetheless, despite the fact that the Obama administration’s dual-track approach towards Iran of sanctions and diplomacy is beginning to bear fruit, the loudest conservative voices continue to be the most militant ones. However, policymakers should be wary of these arguments during this election season, as we have seen them before in the context of Iraq, where the most militant rhetoric won out during the midterm congressional campaign season of 2002. A skeptical eye needs to be drawn towards those who would use military action against Iran as a political tool rather than treating it as the serious national security issue that it is.
[...] “We have to realize that at the end of the day that a nuclear weapon in [Iran's] hands is not just Israel’s problem or America’s problem – it is the world’s problem,” [Palin] said. “It could lead to Armageddon. It would lead to World War III that could decimate so much of this planet.”
At last week’s “War With Iran?” conference at Columbia University, I asked if either side in the nuclear stand-off — the Iranian leadership or the U.S. administration — was capable of cutting a nuclear deal while facing domestic political constraints. John Limbert, a former Iranian hostage who went on to serve as a Foreign Service officer and an Obama administration State Department official, responded that Iran is not an election issue. He cited the attempts of both Hillary Clinton (in the primaries) and Sen. John McCain (in the general election) to score points against Obama on the issue, noting that both failed and Obama won.
Limbert might be right. But it looks like Iran hawks won’t stop trying to make war with Iran a politically polarizing issue.
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