Both sides have reportedly agreed that the talks will not take place until after the presidential election, a senior administration official was quoted as saying. The Iranian [...]]]>
Both sides have reportedly agreed that the talks will not take place until after the presidential election, a senior administration official was quoted as saying. The Iranian representatives have told their US counterparts, who are not identified in the article, that they want to know who wins the election.
News of the alleged agreement — a result of intense, secret exchanges between American and Iranian officials that date almost to the beginning of President Obama’s term — comes at a critical moment in the presidential contest, just two weeks before Election Day and the weekend before the final debate, which is to focus on national security and foreign policy.
…. Within the administration, there is debate over just how much uranium the United States would allow Iran to enrich inside the country. Among those involved in the deliberations, an official said, are Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, two of her deputies — William J. Burns and Wendy Sherman — and key White House officials, including the national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, and two of his lieutenants, Denis R. McDonough and Gary Samore.
…. A senior American official said that the prospect of direct talks is why there has not been another meeting of the major-powers group on Iran.
The Times asserts that the Government of Israel was made aware of the initiative but suggested it was unhappy.
Israeli officials initially expressed an awareness of, and openness to, a diplomatic initiative. But when asked for a response on Saturday, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael B. Oren, said the administration had not informed Israel, and that the Israeli government feared Iran would use new talks to “advance their nuclear weapons program.”
“We do not think Iran should be rewarded with direct talks,” Mr. Oren said, “rather that sanctions and all other possible pressures on Iran must be increased.”
Two former officials interviewed by the Times, former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns and Amb. Dennis Ross (from the Obama White House, now with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy) — both of whom were closely involved in the sanctions and diplomatic debates over Iran at various times over the last eight years, offered qualified support for such an initiative after the election — regardless of who wins the November election. Both have indicated that a deal could be done that would permit Iran to continue enriching uranium at levels under five percent in exchange for the strictest possible inspection regime and resolving all outstanding questions posed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about alleged research, testing and other work related to possible military uses of nuclear energy. The existing sanctions regime would be eased in phases as the nuclear deal was implemented.
The White House, though, swiftly denied the veracity of the Times‘s reporting:
It’s not true that the United States and Iran have agreed to one-on-one talks or any meeting after the American elections. We continue to work with the P-5 on a diplomatic solution and have said from the outset that we would be prepared to meet bilaterally. The President has made clear that he will prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and we will do what we must to achieve that. It has always been our goal for sanctions to pressure Iran to come in line with its obligations. The onus is on the Iranians to do so, otherwise they will continue to face crippling sanctions and increased pressure.
That statement was quickly corrected by the White House when it added a “+1″ to the P-5, thus ensuring that Germany still felt part of the group.
Oddly, a self-described Iranian defector, who has made somewhat bizarre charges against the Islamic Republic in the past, published a news story alleging in the far-right website WorldNet Daily that President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei were on the verge of a cutting deal on the Iran’s nuclear program. The story also asserted that Iran is still testing nuclear weapons components and is very close to developing a nuclear warhead. Neither the US nor the Israeli intelligence communities has made a similar claim. Also dubious was his claim that Washington would quickly ease sanctions, as the president lacks the legal authority to lift sanctions enacted by Congress.
]]>The New York Times reports that despite US reluctance to arm Islamist actors in Syria, that’s happening as the US does little to vet the actions of its partners Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Though the amount of aid flowing to the badly-equipped rebels is still relatively small as other on-the-ground [...]]]>
The New York Times reports that despite US reluctance to arm Islamist actors in Syria, that’s happening as the US does little to vet the actions of its partners Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Though the amount of aid flowing to the badly-equipped rebels is still relatively small as other on-the-ground reports have reiterated, the Times suggests that unless the US takes a more direct route, the situation will come to favor the Islamists:
“The opposition groups that are receiving the most of the lethal aid are exactly the ones we don’t want to have it,” said one American official familiar with the outlines of those findings, commenting on an operation that in American eyes has increasingly gone awry.
The United States is not sending arms directly to the Syrian opposition. Instead, it is providing intelligence and other support for shipments of secondhand light weapons like rifles and grenades into Syria, mainly orchestrated from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The reports indicate that the shipments organized from Qatar, in particular, are largely going to hard-line Islamists.
Jackson Diehl, the Washington Post‘s editorial pages hawkish deputy editor, expanded on the argument that Obama’s skittishness is leading the US to disaster in Syria. Diehl has been a forceful advocate of non-engagement with Assad since before the Syrian uprising began, and has called for more assertive US policy to help remove Assad from power:
…. Obama rejected suggestions by several senators that he lead an intervention. Instead he committed a second major error, by adopting a policy of seeking to broker a Syrian solution through the United Nations. “The best thing we can do,” he said last March, “is to unify the international community.”
As countless observers correctly predicted, the subsequent U.N. mission of Kofi Annan was doomed from the beginning. When the White House could no longer deny that reality, it turned to an equally fantastical gambit: Vladimir Putin, it argued, could be persuaded to abandon his support of Assad and force him to step down. The nadir of this diplomacy may have been reached on June 30, when Clinton cheerfully predicted that the Kremlin had “decided to get on one horse, and it’s the horse that would back a transition plan” removing Assad.
Needless to say, Putin did no such thing. The war went on; thousands more died. For the past three months, Obama’s policy has become a negative: He is simply opposed to any use of U.S. power. Fixed on his campaign slogan that “the tide of war is receding” in the Middle East, Obama claims that intervention would only make the conflict worse — and then watches as it spreads to NATO ally Turkey and draws in hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters.
Al Qaeda’s presence in Syria has often been cited both for and against the case for direct Western intervention. But the number of foreign fighters in Syria is not known. According to Max Rodenbeck, “by no current estimate does the number of foreign fighters in Syria — young men who mostly see themselves as part of a Spanish Civil War–style international brigade rather than as terrorist ninjas — surpass a thousand, out of at least 50,000 armed men on the rebel side.” The Times itself adds that some militias appear to be falsely burnishing “Salafist” credentials in order to woo donors.
Though non-governmental rebel advocates like the Syrian Support Group have downplayed the question of where the militias fall ideologically, the Wall Street Journal, TIME and Real Clear Politics report that rivalries among Islamist factions for arms procurement are undermining their nominal joint effort against the Syrian Army. The Times has reported before that even the rebels’ Gulf backers are starting to consider the possibility of ”blowback.”
The Times adds that even though Obama’s course is being criticized by interventionists, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has not offered the sort of direct military aid some in the Beltway would prefer:
But Mr. Romney stopped short of saying that he would have the United States provide those arms directly, and his aides said he would instead rely on Arab allies to do it. That would leave him, like Mr. Obama, with little direct control over the distribution of the arms.
Diehl also blames Obama for “reversing Bush’s policy of distancing the United States from strongmen like Assad and Hosni Mubarak.”
]]>In what is hopefully a wake-up call for US news media, the New York Time’s public editor, Margaret Sullivan, has called on the paper to challenge its sources on the vagueness of the information they provide on drone strikes:
Some of the most important reporting on drone strikes has been done [...]]]>
In what is hopefully a wake-up call for US news media, the New York Time’s public editor, Margaret Sullivan, has called on the paper to challenge its sources on the vagueness of the information they provide on drone strikes:
]]>Some of the most important reporting on drone strikes has been done at The Times, particularly the “kill list” article by Scott Shane and Jo Becker last May. Those stories, based on administration leaks, detailed President Obama’s personal role in approving whom drones should set out to kill.
Groundbreaking as that article was, it left a host of unanswered questions. The Times and the American Civil Liberties Union have filed Freedom of Information requests to learn more about the drone program, so far in vain. The Times and the A.C.L.U. also want to know more about the drone killing of an American teenager in Yemen, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, also shrouded in secrecy.
But The Times has not been without fault. Since the article in May, its reporting has not aggressively challenged the administration’s description of those killed as “militants” — itself an undefined term. And it has been criticized for giving administration officials the cover of anonymity when they suggest that critics of drones are terrorist sympathizers.
Americans, according to polls, have a positive view of drones, but critics say that’s because the news media have not informed them well. The use of drones is deepening the resentment of the United States in volatile parts of the world and potentially undermining fragile democracies, said Naureen Shah, who directs the Human Rights Clinic at Columbia University’s law school.
“It’s portrayed as picking off the bad guys from a plane,” she said. “But it’s actually surveilling entire communities, locating behavior that might be suspicious and striking groups of unknown individuals based on video data that may or may not be corroborated by eyeballing it on the ground.”
David E. Sanger reports for the New York Times that Iran sought to use its UN venue last week to “drum up support” for a negotiating strategy of lifting sanctions in tandem with a “nine-step plan” for “gradually suspending” uranium enrichment:
The Iranian plan is based on a proposal made [...]]]>
David E. Sanger reports for the New York Times that Iran sought to use its UN venue last week to “drum up support” for a negotiating strategy of lifting sanctions in tandem with a “nine-step plan” for “gradually suspending” uranium enrichment:
The Iranian plan is based on a proposal made to European officials in July. It essentially calls for a step-by-step dismantling of the sanctions while the Iranians end work at one of two sites where they are enriching what is known as “20 percent uranium.” Only when the Iranians reach step No. 9 — after all the sanctions are gone and badly depressed oil revenues have begun to flow again — would there be a “suspension” of the medium-enriched uranium production at the deep underground site called Fordow.
US officials, though, are not having it, claiming that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is merely stalling for time and hoping to break apart international support for sanctions:
]]>…. Obama administration officials say the deal is intended to generate headlines, but would not guarantee that Iran cannot produce a weapon. “The way they have structured it, you can move the fuel around, and it stays inside the country,” a senior Obama administration official said. “They could restart the program in a nanosecond. They don’t have to answer any questions from the inspectors” about evidence that they conducted research on nuclear weapons technology, but nonetheless would insist on a statement from the agency that all issues have been resolved.
…. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made it clear that the United States had no intention of relaxing the sanctions — particularly now, just as they show the first sign of forcing Iran’s leaders to rethink the costs of their nuclear program.