by Eli Clifton
Washington’s premiere hawkish think tank is funded by a small handful of Republican mega donors, according to a just-published tax filing. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), which employs some of the most consistent advocates of crippling sanctions and hyping threats of military action against Iran, receives [...]]]>
by Eli Clifton
Washington’s premiere hawkish think tank is funded by a small handful of Republican mega donors, according to a just-published tax filing. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), which employs some of the most consistent advocates of crippling sanctions and hyping threats of military action against Iran, receives the majority of its funding from Home Depot funder Bernard Marcus, hedge funder Paul Singer and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.
FDD’s President Clifford May tells me his organization has “both Republicans and Democrats among its donors and we are proud of our work with policymakers on both sides of the aisle.”
That might be true. But the fact remains that as of 2011, the FDD has been highly dependent on some of the Republican party’s most committed donors.
My full write up on the FDD’s hyper-partisan underwriters can be read at Salon.com. The FDD’s 2011 “Schedule A”, which shows the organization’s largest donors from 2008 to 2011, can be viewed below.
]]>Lobe Log publishes Hawks on Iran every Friday. Our posts highlight militaristic commentary and confrontational policy recommendations about Iran from a variety of sources including news articles, think tanks and pundits.
William Kristol & Jamie Fly, Weekly Standard: Neoconservative pundit William Kristol who cofounded such jewels as the [...]]]>
Lobe Log publishes Hawks on Iran every Friday. Our posts highlight militaristic commentary and confrontational policy recommendations about Iran from a variety of sources including news articles, think tanks and pundits.
William Kristol & Jamie Fly, Weekly Standard: Neoconservative pundit William Kristol who cofounded such jewels as the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) and who serves on the board of the hyperbolic Israel advocacy group, the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) tries to pressure the President into bringing the U.S. closer to war with Iran with ideologue in arms, Jamie Fly: (Jim Lobe has the story.)
President Obama says a nuclear Iran is unacceptable. The real and credible threat of force is probably the last hope of persuading the Iranian regime to back down. So: Isn’t it time for the president to ask Congress for an Authorization for Use of Military Force against Iran’s nuclear program?
Instead of running away from it, administration officials could be putting the military option front and center and ensuring it is seen as viable. And if the administration flinches, Congress could consider passing such an authorization anyway.
And here is Mitt Romney’s response to the article from CBS’s “Face the Nation“:
…I can assure you if I’m President, the Iranians will have no question but that I would be willing to take military action, if necessary, to prevent them from becoming a nuclear threat to the world. I don’t believe at this stage, therefore, if I’m President, that we need to have war powers approval or a special authorization for military force. The President has that capacity now.
Former Senator Charles Robb (D-Va): Testifying at this week’s Armed Services Committee hearing titled “Addressing the Iranian Nuclear Challenge: Understanding the Military Options” was former Senator Charles Robb who now co-chairs the Bipartisan Policy Center’s (BPC) Task Force on Iran. Robb mainly reiterated recommendations from a BPC report released in February. According to BPC staffers, “only the credible threat of force, combined with sanctions” affords “any realistic hope of an acceptable diplomatic resolution.” Unsuprisingly, “force” is the key to successful diplomacy:
There are three primary components of a credible military threat: an effective information and messaging strategy, economic preparations and credible military readiness activities. Undertaking these steps would boost the credibility of the military option, thereby strengthening the chance for sanctions and diplomacy to succeed in bringing about a peaceful resolution to the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program.
What exactly is the BPC? Jim Lobe has the scoop:
We’ve been covering BPC’s work on Iran pretty intensively both on IPS and Lobelog since the fall of 2008 when it issued its first Iran report whose primary author, as I understand it, was Michael Rubin (and Dennis Ross was on the task force that produced it).
The staff director for their Iran reports is Michael Makovsky whose RightWeb profile was updated just two months ago.
Makovsky, brother of David at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), not only served at one time in the IDF, but also was a West Bank settler, according to reports. When I asked him directly about a month ago whether those reports were accurate, he abruptly terminated an otherwise relatively cordial conversation about his service in the Feith’s Office of Special Plans in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. If those reports are indeed true, and, to my knowledge, he’s never denied them, one has to ask how someone who presumably supports Israeli settlements in occupied territory could become Foreign Policy Director of something called the “Bipartisan Policy Center”.
When they unveiled their last report in February you can read my synopsis here, Robb and Sen. Coates presided. I wrote about their first report in 2008.
Interestingly, several of the key players on the Iran task force at BPC were invited to a Foundation for the Defense of Democracy (FDD) retreat in the Bahamas back in May 2007, entitled “Confronting the Iranian Threat: The Way Forward”. In addition to Makovsky, Rademaker was invited, as were Michael Rubin and Air Force Lt. Gen. Chuck Wald (ret.), who has been a major contributor to the Iran task force and co-written op-eds about its work with Robb and Coates. Precisely who turned up there, I don’t know, but Wald told me at the time that he wasn’t able to attend. I wrote about the invitation on Lobelog at the time. You can find it here. It was kind of a who’s who among the neo-con hawks: Bret Stephens, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Michael Ledeen, etc. etc.
Congress, Foreign Policy: Josh Rogin reports on a bipartisan letter spearheaded by Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Roy Blunt (R-MO) that was sent out last Friday by 44 senators calling on the President to cease diplomatic efforts if the Iranians don’t submit to 3 U.S. demands, as well as continue the relentless sanctions regime and ramp up the military option:
“On the other hand, if the sessions in Moscow produce no substantive agreement, we urge you to reevaluate the utility of further talks at this time and instead focus on significantly increasing the pressure on the Iranian government through sanctions and making clear that a credible military option exists,” they wrote. ”As you have rightly noted, ‘the window for diplomacy is closing.’ Iran’s leaders must realize that you mean precisely that.”
Salon’s Glenn Greenwald responds:
This implication is clear: a military attack by the U.S. on Iran is at least justified, if not compelled, if a satisfactory agreement is not quickly reached regarding Iran’s nuclear program. At the same time, the letter itself virtually ensures no such agreement is possible because the conditions it imposes as the “absolute minimum” are ones everyone knows Iran will never agree to (closing the Fordow facility and giving up its right to enrich uranium above 5 percent). It also declares that it is not only Iran’s possession of a nuclear weapon that is “unacceptable” — diplomatic code for “we’ll go to war to stop it” — but its mere “capability” to build one.
As does the Washington Post’s hawk-in-chief Jennifer Rubin who applauds the increasingly militaristic trend in Congress and the fact that it’s “unlikely the Iranians will agree to any of those conditions” in the letter while yet again agitating for the U.S. to wage war on Iran (emphasis mine):
But those crippling sanctions have come very late as Iran compiles a sufficient stockpile of enriched uranium to make multiple bombs. We are drawing close to the point when Obama will face the choice he has tried to avoid: Act militarily, support the Israelis’ military action or accept the “unacceptable,” a nuclear-armed revolutionary state sponsor of terror? And as we arrive at that point it becomes clear that the only reason for Israel (with fewer military capabilities than the United States) to act militarily rather than the United States would be that the president, even on the most critical national security threat of our time, won’t lead.
Yet despite all the huffing and puffing that Rubin does on a weekly basis about the “threat” the U.S. faces from Iran, just this February Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, testified that “Iran is unlikely to initiate or intentionally provoke a conflict.” Add to that the top U.S. intelligence official James Clapper’s reiteration that Iran has not made a decision to build a nuclear bomb and that diplomacy and sanctions–as opposed to the militaristic measures that Rubin advocates–remain the most effective means of dissuading the Iranians from going nuclear.
Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post: What sanctions good for according to Rubin (forget that diplomacy mumbo jumbo):
We should, of course, move forward on sanctions insofar as they may undermine the current regime and push segments of the population in the country to align themselves with the Green Movement.
And here is her lament for what has so far been U.S. refusal to militarily strike Iran:
Given Obama’s refusal to act forcefully against Iran’s weaker, non-nuclear armed ally Syria, I strongly suspect it will be up to Israel. That would be a pitiful result of a lackadaisical American approach to our primary security threat and the ignominious end to “leading from behind.” Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, but at this point that certainly seems like the most likely outcome.
Washington Post: The Post’s hawkish editorial board calls for U.S. rejection of Iran’s right to peacefully enrich uranium (putting them in line with the Israeli position) and increasing pressure on Iran:
The Obama administration must nevertheless be prepared to take an Iranian “no” for an answer. It should resist any effort by Russia or other members of the international coalition to weaken the steps that Iran must take, or to grant Tehran major sanctions relief for partial concessions. It should continue to reject recognition of an Iranian “right” to enrich uranium.
The United States and its allies also should have a strategy for quickly and significantly increasing the pressure on the Khamenei regime if the negotiations break down. Israel may press for military action; if that option is to be resisted, there must be a credible and robust alternative.
Mark Kirk (R-Ill.): Following the Moscow talks Senate hawk Mark Kirk calls for a “final” (what happens after?) round of more sanctions on Iran:
After three rounds of meetings, Iran remains in violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions ordering it to halt all its uranium enrichment activities. The House and Senate should immediately negotiate a final Iran sanctions bill that can be sent to the President’s desk in July. This legislation should include new and tougher sanctions proposals put forward by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, including sanctions targeting Iran’s energy and financial sectors, shipping and insurance.
Jed Babbin, American Spectator: The Deputy Undersecretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush who stated in 2006 that he was “willing to kill as many people as it requires to take out Hezbollah” declares that “[d]iplomacy won’t work” with Iran so for now covert operations, particularly in the cyber realm, should be vigorously deployed through all available means including the U.S.’s vast arsenal:
]]>Expanding our cyberwar operations against Iran is one of the best options. Offensive cyberwar is far cheaper, and easier, than the defensive. We can, and should, disrupt Iranian government and military functions as often as we can. Iran is reportedly developing a new computer language to make such attacks more difficult. Our cyber warriors should be tasked to infiltrate that project and plant malicious software — “malware” in cyber jargon — to gather information from and at our command disrupt or destroy the computer networks the new system runs on.
A future president — let’s hope one will take office next year — should consider the “bad luck” option. Covert operations need not be conducted only by special operations forces, CIA agents, or computer warriors. We have a significant variety of stealthy weapons and weapon platforms. That president would have the option of making an equally large variety of Presidential Determinations authorizing the use of those weapons against Iran’s nuclear facilities and its intelligence and military centers.
Saying Iran remained his government’s biggest worry, Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon did not mention possible unilateral military strikes [...]]]>
(Reuters) – The United States and its allies have up to three years to curb Iran’s nuclear programme, which has been set back by technical difficulties and sanctions, a senior Israeli official said on Wednesday.
Saying Iran remained his government’s biggest worry, Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon did not mention possible unilateral military strikes by Israel, saying he hoped U.S.-led action against Tehran would be successful.
For as long as anyone can remember, Israel has been telling anyone who will listen (still a surprisingly large number, considering how wrong they’ve been) that Iran is around the corner from a nuclear weapons capability.
Justin Elliott was all over this ridiculousness in his excellent Salon article. And it came up at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies conference that I covered for LobeLog and Foreign Policy’s Middle East Channel.
At that conference, neoconservative Washington Times journalist Eli Lake had the best question of the whole two and a half days, on this very subject:
QUESTION: Thank you. This is a question for General Amidror.
Could you comment on why it seems Israeli estimates of the Iranian program have been one to two years away for about 10 years now?
Does this reflect the failure of your analysts or the success of your saboteurs?
Amirdror, ever the diplomatic general, answered “both.”
Back to Yaalon’s latest prediction. Reuters puts Israel’s Deputy PM’s views in context:
Yaalon had previously been hawkish on Iran, saying Israel, believed to have region’s only nuclear arsenal, should attack Iran rather than see it get the bomb.
All the prognosticating makes me want to take odds. But I’m afraid Yaalon might get the wrong idea if I asked, “Who wants to take this action?”
]]>I won’t bother going over her recommendations and rebutting them, because so many have already done it for me:
Matt Duss at the Wonk Room, whose entire post is a definite must-read:
What’s Farsi for ‘Cakewalk’?
…Maybe there are Iranian democrats who support the U.S. bombing their country, I’d love to hear from them. But I think we’ve gotten far too casual about proposing these sorts of attacks. If we’re going to talk about it, let’s at least talk about it seriously, recognizing that very many people will very likely die. They deserve a lot better than than you know, if everything goes just right, it just might work!
Rubin wants the United States to make human rights a central theme in its Iran policy — and to indiscriminately assassinate civilian scientists.
…The “car accident” line in her post is a clear reference to the bombing of two scientists’ cars last month in Tehran. Here is a BBC account of those attacks, carried out by unknown men on motorbikes. One of the scientists was killed and one was wounded. Both of their wives were also reportedly wounded. Another nuclear scientist was killed in a similar bombing earlier this year.
No one has argued that any of these men could be considered combatants. It’s also still unclear who was behind the attacks, though Iran has accused the United States and Israel of having a role. But even the U.S. State Department referred to these attacks as acts of terrorism, which would make them antithetical to any serious concept of human rights.
At Mondoweiss, Philip Weiss picks up on this same inconsistency, but has a broader point about the Post:
The Washington Post has replaced the American Enterprise Institute as the primary hub of neoconservative arguments for U.S. aggression in the Middle East. AEI served a Republican administration, and cannot perform that role for Democrats. So the Post is now doing the job, percolating militarist ideas for the Obama administration. Old wine in a new bottle. Jennifer Rubin is the latest hire, fresh from Commentary magazine, arguing for an attack on Iran…
Later on Weiss comes back to the issue, and points us to a Huffington Post piece by David Bromwich, who calls it “barbarous dialect”:
There was nothing like this in our popular commentary before 2003; but the callousness has grown more marked in the past year, and especially in the past six months. Why?
Bromwich focuses on President Barack Obama’s decision to assassinate a U.S. citizen who preaches violent extremism against the U.S., and the fact that even the president can joke about “drone strikes” — that is, shooting missiles down on villages from on high. Bromwich:
]]>A joke (it has been said) is an epigram on the death of a feeling. By turning the killings he orders into an occasion for stand-up comedy, the new president marked the death of a feeling that had seemed to differentiate him from George W. Bush. A change in the mood of a people may occur like a slip of the tongue. A word becomes a phrase, the phrase a sentence, and when enough speakers fall into the barbarous dialect, we forget that we ever talked differently.
The first is a timeline of the U.S. [...]]]>
The first is a timeline of the U.S. campaign. The latest salvo is the WikiLeaks cables, but Elliott begins in 1993 with a Washington Post piece called: “Israel seeking to convince U.S. that West is threatened by Iran.” Overall, the timeline is illuminating (although as Elliot says, “subjective”), especially in light of the recent claims by neoconservatives and their hawkish pro-Israel allies, in the wake of WikiLeaks revelations, that the campaign to attack Iran is not really about Israel. This is of course based based on the premise that a handful of Arab autocratic dictators also think it’s a good idea. Israeli figures, hawkish U.S. Jewish groups and neoconservatives pervade the list of historic items, especially in the early years of the campaign.
The second story relates to the first in that many of the figures in this two-decade campaign have been wrong, wrong, wrong about Iranian nuclear development. It’s a wonder the press still buys their analysis, given the neoconservative propensity to seek out information (and only that information) bolstering their talking points. headline of Elliott’s headline says it all: “Israel on Iran: So Wrong for So Long — The extremely long history of incorrect Israeli predictions about when Iran will obtain a nuclear bomb.”
Given Elliott went to the trouble of researching and putting together this timeline documenting repeated Israeli miscalculations, why not quote from him a bit:
Elliot:
According to various Israeli government predictions over the years, Iran was going to have a bomb by the mid-90s — or 1998, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2005, and finally 2010. More recent Israeli predictions have put that date at 2011 or 2014.
None of this is to say that Iran will not at some point get a nuclear weapon — though the Iranian government has maintained that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. That said, Iran has not fully cooperated with international inspectors. But even assuming that Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon, estimates still vary widely on when it will reach that goal.
So what the below timeline should show us is a few things: making accurate predictions about the future is difficult; the Israelis are almost certainly not always offering good-faith assessments of intelligence on Iran; and reporters and the public should demand evidence for assertions about an Iranian nuclear program, whomever the source.
Both timelines are well worth reviewing. You can see the campaign-for-war timeline and the timeline of Israel’s sloppy predictions at Salon.
]]>[...S]avvy people-in-the-know should start getting accustomed to the idea. In other words, a preemptive strike on Iran should be seen not as a remote or far-fetched possibility, but rather as something that is just ‘business-as-usual’ in the Middle East strategic environment. If you talk about going to war often enough and for long enough, people get used to the idea and some will even begin to think if it is bound to happen sooner or later, than ”twere better to be done quickly.’
Watch the Colbert clip:
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Jeffrey Goldberg | ||||
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In between chortling about the “existential threat” to Israel posed by Iran, Goldberg fails to mention that the threat is not actually as simple as Goldberg or Colbert make it out to be. “One plus one equals two with the Israelis,” said Goldberg. “‘We can’t let this country develop a nuclear weapon if they seek our destruction.” Colbert chimes in, “For some reason they’re paranoid about people wanting them dead having a nuclear bomb.”
But in his Atlantic piece, even Goldberg acknowledged that the threat to Israel was not as simple as, like he put it on Tuesday, “one plus one equals two”:
Israeli policy makers do not necessarily believe that Iran, should it acquire a nuclear device, would immediately launch it by missile at Tel Aviv. [...]
The challenges posed by a nuclear Iran are more subtle than a direct attack, Netanyahu told me. [...]
Other Israeli leaders believe that the mere threat of a nuclear attack by Iran — combined with the chronic menacing of Israel’s cities by the rocket forces of Hamas and Hezbollah — will progressively undermine the country’s ability to retain its most creative and productive citizens.
The last point was made to Goldberg by Ehud Barak. It was a particularly convoluted threat, as pointed out by Salon‘s Justin Elliot, who noted that the idea behind Barak’s thesis undermines basic tenets of Zionism.
]]>At the core of Bayefsky’s reasoning is her claim that the project’s chairman, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf was photographed with a representative of the Iranian government in 2008 at a Cordoba Initiative event in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
From this single photograph Bayefsky draws the following conclusions:
The Iranian connection to the launch of Cordoba House may go beyond a relationship between Rauf and Larijani. The Cordoba Initiative lists one of its three major partners as the UN’s Alliance of Civilizations. The Alliance has its roots in the Iranian-driven “Dialogue Among Civilizations,” the brainchild of former Iranian President Hojjatoleslam Seyyed Mohammad Khatami. Khatami is now a member of the High-level Group which “guides the work of the Alliance.” His personal presidential qualifications include the pursuit of nuclear weapons, a major crackdown on Iranian media, and rounding up and imprisoning Jews on trumped-up charges of spying. Alliance reports claim Israel lies at the heart of problems associated with “cross-cultural relations,” since the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” and “Israel’s continuing occupation of Palestinian and other Arab territories … are primary causes of resentment and anger in the Muslim world toward Western nations.”
Never mind that recent polling confirms the fact that the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a primary cause of resentment and anger in the Muslim world toward the U.S.. Bayefsky is clearly suggesting that a moderate, mainstream group of Muslims can’t possibly build a community center without subversive Iranian connections.
She writes:
In addition, a Weekly Standard article in July suggested that the idea of building an Islamic memorial in lower Manhattan may have originated back in 2003 with two Iranian brothers: M. Jafar “Amir” Mahallati, who served as ambassador of the Iranian Islamic Republic to the United Nations from 1987 to 1989, and M. Hossein Mahallati.
The anti-Muslim campaign that is coming to a head in Manhattan is the product of years of grassroots efforts (see Justin Elliot and Alex Kane‘s excellent pieces on the origins of the campaign) to delegitimize and undermine Muslim Americans. But this attempt by Bayefsky to link the Cordoba Initiative with Iranian influences is particularly disturbing.
Implied in her article — in which she concludes ominously, “The unanswered questions keep mounting,” — is that the Cordoba Initiative, acting as an Iranian agent, is seeking to bring U.S. enemies — as Bayefsky would no doubt label Iranians — on to the “hallowed ground” of the World Trade Center site.
From this the reader can conclude that:
1.) Iran is an existential threat whose operatives seek to spread Iranian influence through community centers in Manhattan, and;
2.) Mainstream, moderate organizations of Muslims simply don’t exist. They can’t help but form links with subversive elements seeking to destroy the United States and Israel.
The intolerance directed toward the Park 51 Community Center, in combination with the United States and Israel’s increasingly troubling trajectory of policies towards Iran, has the potential to leave a lasting impact upon U.S. attitudes towards Muslims both domestically and around the world.
]]>“On Point” host Tom Ashbrook asked tough questions of Goldberg, confronting him with critics like Glenn Greenwald. Goldberg fired back that Greenwald had retracted his criticisms, thereby dismissing his arguments. In fact, [...]]]>
“On Point” host Tom Ashbrook asked tough questions of Goldberg, confronting him with critics like Glenn Greenwald. Goldberg fired back that Greenwald had retracted his criticisms, thereby dismissing his arguments. In fact, no such retraction happened. Greenwald points out that this was not just some lapse in memory about an event that happened long ago, but that it was a “complete fabrication” about commentary written last week (in Greenwald’s updates, you’ll find much of the back and forth between the two).
The accumulation of the small mistakes is troubling, given the prominence of Goldberg in the U.S. debate. This is even the case if his newest “article hews to a strictly reportorial perspective,” as his colleague James Fallows said. Errors of fact, no matter how small, are “reportorial” errors. Muddled reportage was a major disaster in the lead up to the Iraq War.
Goldberg himself has maintained that he was right about ties between Saddam and al-Qaeda-linked groups, but he stands corrected in his accusation that Saddam was actively trying to weaponize aflatoxin (unless he cares to respond). As Ken Silverstein pointed out way back in ’06, Saddam’s regime had looked into the cancer-causing poison, but hadn’t pursued it. Goldberg nonetheless stated as fact that Saddam had a “weaponization” program twice in the run up to the war — once on Slate and once on CNN.
Silverstein even points to this amazing line: Critics of the Iraq war plan have “limited experience in the Middle East (Their lack of experience causes them to reach the naive conclusion that an invasion of Iraq will cause America to be loathed in the Middle East, rather than respected).”
Are readers really expected, after the disaster that was Iraq, to wipe Goldberg’s slate clean? And even if they do, how many more little mistakes will Goldberg make before everyone realizes he’s walked them into another big one?
UPDATE (8/21/10): In the original version of this piece, I erred in reading Goldberg’s assertion on “All Things Considered” as a new break. I thought when he was talking about U.S. officials going to China to warn of Israeli unpredictability, Goldberg was conflating two events — namely the separate April trips by U.S. and Israeli officials, where opposite messages were delivered inre: China’s energy stability.
I was wrong. Goldberg was likely talking about a late 2009 trip by Dennis Ross and Jeffrey Bader where they did just that. A reader pointed me to multiple stories that said as much. My apologies.
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