Weekly Reads/Watch:
News: U.S. Iran Hawks in Congress in Some DisarrayWeekly Reads/Watch:
UANI, Wall Street Journal: You can argue that sanctions aid diplomacy, certainly, that’s the broken record we’ve been hearing for years. But the reverse argument–that sanctions can lead to war or fail to prevent it while harming the sanctioned country’s population–is equally valid or more so when we consider the case of Iraq. Enter United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI), a private sanctions-enforcement group that strives to market itself as bipartisan but includes several prominent Iran hawks and neoconservatives on its advisory board. It believes Iran is led by “radical rulers seeking nuclear weapons” and “threatening the world”, so surely they would agree that a seriously threatened Iran might fight for its life in aggressive ways when being strangled? Yet there’s no acknowledgement of that in a WSJ op-ed penned by a number of well-known hawks from UANI urging “liked-minded nations” to “immediately…deliver a potentially decisive economic blow to the regime” by “passing the most robust sanctions against Iran in history.” They are not convinced that this extremely confrontational approach will bring about positive results, but say it’s a final step that needs to be taken before war:
… it’s common sense that before undertaking military action against a country, we should first try to dissuade it from its current course by applying decisive economic pressure. Doing so will show the regime that the world is serious and committed, willing to do whatever it takes to stop Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Dan Shapiro/Shmuel Bar, New York Times: At a time when hopes are high for any kind of diplomatic progress with Iran and the West, Dan Shapiro, the U.S.’s ambassador to Israel, reminded the world that the military option is not only on the table, “necessary planning” has also been done “to ensure that it’s ready.” That wasn’t adequate for Shmuel Bar, director of studies at the Institute for Policy and Strategy in Herzilya, also quoted in the NYT piece:
“Saying it is not enough,” Mr. Bar said. What would have more significant effect, he said, is to show actual preparations for a military option by, for example, increasing deployment in the Persian Gulf.
“What actually the U.S. administration is doing is blowing hot and cold,” said Mr. Bar, who previously worked as an intelligence officer in the Israel Defense Force and in the prime minister’s bureau. “Actions do speak louder than words. The actions say the U.S. has a very strong aversion to any kind of military action.”
Mr. Bar pointed to a recent post on the Web site of the Iranian supreme leader that he described as “an analysis of why the U.S. cannot and will not go to war.”
“That is their candid evaluation of the situation,” he said. “When the Iranians see this, they say the Americans are doing everything they can to prevent Israel from attacking.”
Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post: Never one to be shy about her militant support for Israel, the Washington Post blogger paints a picture of the people who are pushing for hawkish measures against Iran in Washington (be sure to read Jim Lobe’s report for context) and reinforces her hawkish views at the same time. First is a quote from a regular source on her blog, Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who warns against the potential easing of crippling sanctions during negotiations:
As eager, however, as President Obama is for a deal that will get Iran off the front pages — and all but eliminate the possibility of an Israeli strike ahead of the November election — he cannot take the political risk of offering too much relief for too few concessions. Once sanctions start to unravel, the fear of U.S. penalties that held them together will become difficult to reestablish, and the multilateral sanctions regime — the centerpiece of the president’s Iran strategy — will be gone. This may also persuade the Israelis that the time for diplomacy has passed, and only military action can stop Iran’s development of nuclear weapons.
She then gratefully reminds us that Congress is pushing confrontational measures against Iran in spite of the “wimpy” U.S. President. (Thanks to Israel lobby organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee):
Precisely because Congress feels Iran is engaged in a rope-a-dope game and/or Obama will make a foolhardy deal that fails to halt the Iranian nuclear weapons program, efforts are underway to craft maximalist sanctions in advance of May 23. The House passed such a bill by a lopsided vote of 410-11.
But the problem is that some people want to prevent bills that bring the U.S. closer to war with Iran from being passed:
The Senate is a different matter. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) who says he is in favor of sanctions could have put the House bill on the floor and given it an up or down vote. Instead he opted for a watered down version of the bill. He entertained language from isolationist Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) that would specifically state the bill was not an authorization for use of force. He then proceeded to shut Republicans out of the process.
A senior GOP congressional aide with close knowledge of Iran sanctions legislation told me, “Neither Leader Reid nor Chairman [Sen. Tim] Johnson’s staff ever agreed to a single meeting with Sen. [Mark] Kirk’s office to address the senator’s proposed amendment. E-mails and phone calls went unreturned for weeks. The first time Democrats ever discussed the Iran bill with Republicans was last night when Reid’s office dropped off the manager’s amendment he negotiated with himself.” The Democrats characterized the Republicans as refusing to move forward; Republicans explain they are not about to pass toothless sanctions bill that would be buried in the conference committee.
Elliott Abrams, Council on Foreign Relations: The well-known neoconservative and former key mideast advisor to George W. Bush worries that France’s new President may waiver from the confrontational path on Iran set by by former President Nicolas Sarkozy:
It is difficult to exaggerate how significant a softening of France’s hard line would be. France has been tougher than Russia and China of course, but has also stiffened the position of the “EU 3″ by being tougher than Germany and the UK. More important, it has at many junctures been tougher than the United States, sharply asking the difficult questions, highlighting logical deficiencies in arguments, and slicing through wishful thinking. If France is now to abandon this stance and simply agree with the UK, Germany, and the United States, the negotiations with Iran are more likely than ever to produce an unsatisfactory result that will be labelled adequate by its proponents.
Lindsey Graham, Fox News: Among the U.S.’s top Republican Hawks, the South Carolina senator flouted the “time is running out” card to Fox News viewers and publicly contradicted U.S. intelligence assessments showing that Iran has NOT made a decision to build a nuclear weapon. He also declared that President Obama must be more confrontational with Iran:
]]>“So President Obama, if you are listening out there, please convince the Iranians that all options really are on the table,” Graham said.
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“The only way they will stop marching toward a nuclear weapon is if they believe the regime’ life is at stake and their livelihood being at risk, and that means a strike by the United States,” the senator added.He said it’s time to tell the Iranians, “No negotiations. . . . You are not going to get to enrich uranium any more, period.”
Birnbaum interviews Bahrain’s ambassador to the U.S., Houda Nonoo, who tells [...]]]>
Birnbaum interviews Bahrain’s ambassador to the U.S., Houda Nonoo, who tells him that:
Iran has had claims in the past on Bahrain[...]
The latest was on their 30th anniversary in February 2009, where they mentioned Bahrain as the 14th province. Very similar to [Saddam Hussein's] Iraq mentioning Kuwait as their 19th province.
Nonoo, whose country is home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, pointed out that Bahrain is just 26 miles from Bushehr and “If Iran has [a nuclear] capability, nobody is going to be able to stop them.”
What exactly Nonoo thinks will be unstoppable is unclear, but Birnbaum attempts to lead her into endorsing a military strike.
According to Birnbaum she “declined to express a preference” and only said “That’s the million-dollar question.”
But that wasn’t direct enough for Birnbaum, who was doing his best to breathe life back into a story from July when the United Arab Emirate’s ambassador to the U.S. may or may not have endorsed a military strike.
What is known is that the UAE rejected the ambassador’s comments is the strongest language possible.
The Wall Street Journal wrote on July 7th:
The U.A.E.’s assistant foreign minister for political affairs, Tareq al-Haidan, meanwhile, said Mr. Otaiba’s comments were taken out of context and “are not precise,” according to a statement by the country’s official news service released Wednesday.
“The U.A.E. totally rejects the use of force as a solution to the Iranian nuclear issue,” Mr. Haidan said, adding: “The U.A.E., at the same time, believes in the need of keeping the Gulf region free of nuclear weapons.”
Birnbaum, failing to get an Arab endorsement for the military option cobbles together quotes from U.S. and Israeli-based Iran-hawks.
He interviews the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Simon Henderson who makes the following unverifiable claims:
I’ve visited Bahrain and spoken to senior Bahraini officials, and although in public they are cautious not to inflame their delicate relations with Iran, they say in private that Iran is a malevolent force against the region in general and Bahrain in particular.[...]
At the very least, they fear instability in their own country but also Iranian-supported insurrection and, in a worst-case scenario, an Iranian takeover.[...]
If they woke up tomorrow and there was smoke emerging from Natanz after a bombing raid, they would be very happy.
Shmuel Bar, director of studies at the Israel-based Institute of Policy Strategy, told Birnbaum:
They’d be very relieved despite the fallout… This is not speculation.
Birnbaum rounded out his set of interviews with a comment from John McCain. While known for his hawkish views on Iran, McCain surprisingly comes well short of endorsing a military strike.
He says:
The reality is that it may be too late to prevent the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Now, I’m not saying we should quit trying. I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to take every measure that we can. But some of these measures, I think, could have been far more effective if we’d have taken them some years ago — and I think that’s the opinion of most experts.
An article which includes claims that unnamed Arab diplomats would welcome a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities offers no verifiable evidence that this is actually the case.
Only two individuals with serious policy-shaping roles are interviewed by Birnbaum. The most he can get is an unclear statement from Nonoo that “If Iran has [a nuclear] capability, nobody is going to be able to stop them.” John McCain seemingly accepts the possibility that “the reality is that it may be too late to prevent the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons.”
While Birnbaum is eager to suggest that countries in the Arab world would welcome a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, his dependence on second-hand interviews–via U.S. and Israel based Iran-hawks–with unnamed officials may indicate how far Birnbaum must stretch to support his thesis.
]]>On Tuesday the list of voices endorsing the linkage argument grew longer. Former President Bill Clinton, as reported by the Associated Press, told an audience of Egyptian businessmen that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would “take about half the impetus in the whole world – not just the region, the whole world – for terror away” and “It would have more impact by far than anything else that could be done.”
But the long and growing list of politicians and military leaders who have endorsed the linkage concept doesn’t deter neoconservative pundits from continuing their pre-Iraq war era “reverse linkage” argument which claims that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and the stalled peace process have little role in shaping the regional dynamics.
The Hudson Institute’s Lee Smith wrote today in Tablet Magazine that Iranian support for Hezbollah plays a far greater role in the group’s rise to power than Israel’s 18-year occupation of Southern Lebanon.
In other words, what seems like Hezbollah’s war with Israel is in reality the Iranian Republican Guard’s 30-year war against almost everyone else. The Zionist entity in this contrived scenario is a little like the Washington Generals to Hezbollah’s Harlem Globetrotters—except that here it’s the eternal rival who sets the tempo and the Globetrotters who can’t get a break.
The majority of Smith’s argument is based on allegations that captured Hezbollah documents show that the militant Shi’a organization was receiving its marching orders from Tehran.
Smith wrote:
“During the 2006 war, we captured a number of Hezbollah documents, dealing with everything from religious ideology to military doctrine, the lion’s share of the important texts was clearly written by and for the IRGC and then translated into Arabic,” Shmuel Bar, a former Israeli intelligence officer, told me. “In human influence operations, Hezbollah’s modus operandi is the same as Iran’s.”
Smith omits the information that Shmuel Bar is a colleague of his at Hudson and simply mentions him as a “former Israeli intelligence officer” and “the founder of IntuView an Israeli tech firm that does automated meaning-extraction from terrorist-related documents.”
While Shmuel and his “automated meaning-extraction” system appear to offer enough evidence for Smith to conclude that, “…what seems like Hezbollah’s war with Israel is in reality the Iranian Republican Guard’s 30-year war against almost everyone else,” even he has to admit that Israeli leadership doesn’t necessarily agree with this analysis.
Smith wrote:
Even Israel’s current defense minister, Ehud Barak, argues that, “It was our presence [in southern Lebanon] that created Hizbullah”—a rationalization for his decision as prime minister to withdraw from Lebanon that dovetails perfectly with this Hezbollah info op.
The reverse-linkage argument that Israel is the victim of external, existential threats and that Israeli actions have little impact on the regional dynamics is finding fewer and fewer supporters. Smith is forced to dig deep into the Hudson bullpen to find voices that support this argument while Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak are clearly placing themselves in the realist camp.
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