The vote in the United Nations General Assembly on the Palestinian application for non-member status is a foregone conclusion. They’re going to win and it’s not really going to matter much, at least in the short term. Nonetheless, the decidedly warped world of diplomacy around the Israel-Palestine conflict has managed to [...]]]>
The vote in the United Nations General Assembly on the Palestinian application for non-member status is a foregone conclusion. They’re going to win and it’s not really going to matter much, at least in the short term. Nonetheless, the decidedly warped world of diplomacy around the Israel-Palestine conflict has managed to give us a small degree of drama around the bid, which is also illustrative of why there seems to be so little hope for change.
I posted a draft of the resolution on my blog earlier this month. You can see the final version here (pdf). There is simply nothing there that anyone with even the mildest interest in resolving the conflict could have the slightest objection to. This says a lot about where Israel and the US stand. No, the drama lies outside, with the Israeli-US-UK efforts to scuttle the initiative.
It’s been clear for quite some time that the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was not going to back down from bringing this resolution to the UNGA. At this stage, any threatening actions by Israel or the US could cause the PLO’s collapse, which Israel very much wants to avoid. So they had no way to stop the initiative from going forward and instead tried to change the substance of the resolution.
That, too, failed, but the changes they tried to make are instructive. Israel wanted to change or insert three conditions, none of which made any sense for the Palestinians. The US took the three conditions whole cloth and tried to convince the Palestinians to insert them. When that failed, it was passed off to the UK, who could offer the Palestinians something the US could not — namely, a yes vote on the UNGA resolution if they agreed to these conditions. Based on various reports, it seems that the Palestinians simply wanted to end the debate and went ahead and submitted the proposed resolution to forestall further discussion of it.
So, all the attempts at change seem to have failed. But the truth is that there is very little here for Israel to be worried about, at least for the time being. And this is why their reaction, as well as those of the US and UK, are all very telling. Let’s look at the three conditions Israel wanted to insert:
- 1. Israel wanted the resolution to state that the Palestinians would not seek membership in the International Criminal Court (ICC). Had the Palestinian Authority (PA) agreed to this, it would have sacrificed the one tangible benefit it gets from the General Assembly’s recognition of its non-member status. The other benefits are a matter of prestige and hopefully some diplomatic weight. But this is something the Palestinians can actually use at some point. Israel does not want to answer to the ICC, a court in which it is not a member, but whose decisions can make Israel more uncomfortable and give weight to protest movements, especially in Europe, where there is much more regard for international law than in the United States.
- Indeed, had the PA agreed to something like this, the reaction in the West Bank might have been as bad as if they had agreed to withdraw the resolution altogether. That issue only gets magnified in the wake of Hamas emerging from the latest Israeli bombing campaign in Gaza not only alive, but strengthened politically and with a ceasefire whose terms are surprisingly favorable to the government of Gaza.
- I strongly suspect that while the possibility of Palestine going to the ICC is probably the single most vexing aspect of this move in Israel’s eyes, they also probably knew that this was a non-starter, and perhaps didn’t even really want the PA to agree, as it might have spelled doom for the quisling Authority. In any case, it was a foregone conclusion that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would refuse Israel’s condition.
- 2. Israel wants a clause stressing that this is a symbolic decision that grants no sovereignty over the West Bank, Gaza Strip or East Jerusalem. This was just an attempt at bullying. The UNGA resolution is, by definition, symbolic. It does not carry the weight of law, but merely expresses the view of the GA, as far as such weighty matters as sovereignty are concerned. Yes, specific statuses in the GA can allow the Palestinians access to certain international bodies, but there is no recognition of sovereignty here, nor could there be.
- Israel wants this kind of statement to blunt the impact of the resolution in the diplomatic field, but really it wouldn’t do much of that either. It was just a way to diminish the Palestinians’ claim on paper, and more than anything else, it was a lead-in to the one thing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu really hoped to get out of this.
- 3. Israel wants any decision to include a Palestinian commitment to renewing direct negotiations with Israel without preconditions. This has become Netanyahu’s Holy Grail. He would love nothing more than the continuing sham “peace process” to drag on while settlements expand. But he also knows too much had already been discussed in the Oslo process, and fears, perhaps with some reason, that US President Barack Obama might eventually press for an endgame along the lines of the Clinton Parameters. Even if he doesn’t, Bibi doesn’t want to maintain the framework of withdrawal from more than 90% of the West Bank and some sort of sharing of East Jerusalem.
- For Netanyahu, “no preconditions” is a mantra, but one which means something very different than what the term implies. “No preconditions” means starting from absolute zero from the Palestinian point of view. It means no presumption that the 1967 borders are the starting point for discussion, or that there is any legitimate Palestinian claim to East Jerusalem. It means forgetting the Oslo Accords, other than perhaps the lines that Netanyahu wants to hold talks with the starting point at the facts on the ground. Those facts involve the settlements, including those in East Jerusalem that cut the city off from the rest of the West Bank and hemmed Bethlehem in, among other Palestinian towns. They include separation between the West Bank and Gaza and no presumption that they must be rejoined.
- Within that framework, any land Israel surrenders, any settlement or outpost Israel evacuates, is a “concession” to the Palestinians and more than that, a gift and symbol of Israeli largesse. Given not only Netanyahu’s right-wing orientation, but the even more radical rightward tilt of his party and, even more, his coalition, this is the only way he could sit and talk with the Palestinians, even if it is just for show.
- In other words, no preconditions means no to any Palestinian conditions at all and yes to plenty from the Israelis.
Ultimately, Israel knew it would have to tolerate this Palestinian move. It really couldn’t even respond to it without risking its West Bank subcontractor whose demise would mean that Israel would have to foot much more of the bill for its occupation. So, they tried to get the one thing they thought they had at least an outside shot at: talks without preconditions.
Israel’s failure to achieve that goal is not surprising. But the buy-in Netanyahu got from both the US and UK is something we should all be looking at. Abbas didn’t break off talks with Netanyahu on principle, or even because of settlement expansion itself. He broke them off because he knew that, after 17 years of negotiations in the shadow of expanding settlements, the clock had expired and the Palestinian people would no longer tolerate such a state of affairs. The peace process had been exposed as a sham to cover an entrenching occupation, and only a complete halt to settlement construction would allow Abbas to come back to the table without seriously risking the existence of the PA.
Maybe the US and UK knew that Abbas would not accept the “no preconditions” condition and that’s why they felt comfortable pressing for it. But I doubt it. Both countries simply want to see talks resume, fearing the stalemate and vacuum diplomatic silence produces while Hamas continues to establish itself as the more credible Palestinian leadership body.
And what choice do the US and UK have? The same choice they’ve always had, the same one that was always the only way this was ever going to be resolved: pressure both sides — but especially the powerful and comfortable one, Israel — to make the deal. (Pressure on Israel has been totally absent, while both the US and UK are quite practiced in pressuring the Palestinians). Remind them that the exports they both depend on, the cooperation they both need, will no longer be so forthcoming if they don’t achieve a lasting peace.
And, of course, that is an option that neither country is willing to take for no good reason other than domestic politics. This isn’t about forcing anything on anyone. Israel and the Palestinians are perfectly free to choose their own course, but if they choose one that is contrary to US or UK interests, those countries can also choose not to do business with them. This wouldn’t exactly cripple either nation, but domestic politics continue to rule the day, and the craven leaderships in both countries cannot even conceive of such actions.
]]>When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the U.N. General Assembly last month that Iran’s nuclear programme was unlikely to breach his “red line” for presumed military action until next spring or summer, many observers here looked forward to some relief from the nearly incessant drumbeat for war by U.S. [...]]]>
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the U.N. General Assembly last month that Iran’s nuclear programme was unlikely to breach his “red line” for presumed military action until next spring or summer, many observers here looked forward to some relief from the nearly incessant drumbeat for war by U.S. neo-conservatives and other hawks.
But even as the Barack Obama administration and its Western European allies prepare a new round of sanctions to add to what already is perhaps the harshest sanctions regime imposed against a U.N. member state, the war drums keep beating.
Earlier this week, Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham said he is working on a new Congressional resolution he hopes to pass in any lame-duck session after the Nov. 6 elections that would promise Israel U.S. support, including military assistance, if it attacks Iran.
And after the new Congress convenes in January, he suggested he would push yet another resolution that would give the president – whether the incumbent, Obama, or his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney – broad authority to take military action if sanctions don’t curb Iran’s nuclear programme.
“The 30,000-foot view of Iran is very bipartisan,” he told the Capitol Hill newspaper, ‘Roll Call’.
“This regime is crazy, they’re up to no good, they are a cancer spreading in the Mideast. …Almost all of the Democrats and Republicans buy into the idea that we can’t give them a nuclear capability,” he said.
While Graham, who succeeded last month in pushing through the Senate – by a 90-1 margin – a resolution ruling out “containment” as an option for dealing with a nuclear weapons-capable Iran, disclosed his new plans, the CEO of the influential foreignpolicy.com website published an article in which he claimed that the U.S. and Israel were actively considering a joint “surgical strike” against Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities.
Citing an unnamed source “close to the discussions”, David Rothkopf, a well-connected former national security official under President Bill Clinton, claimed that such a strike “might take only ‘a couple of hours’ in the best case and only would involve a ‘day or two’ overall,” using primarily bombers and drones.
Such an attack, according to “advocates for this approach” cited by Rothkopf, could set back Iran’s nuclear programme “many years, and doing so “without civilian casualties”.
In an echo of the extravagant claims by neo-conservatives that preceded the attack on Iraq, one “advocate” told Rothkopf such an attack would have “transformative outcome: saving Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, reanimating the peace process, securing the Gulf, sending an unequivocal message to Russia and China, and assuring American ascendancy in the region for a decade to come.”
Rothkopf’s article spurred a flurry of speculation about his source – at least one keen observer pointed to Israeli Amb. Michael Oren, a long-time personal friend who has kept up his own drumbeat against Iran on the op-ed pages of U.S. newspapers.
It also caused consternation among most informed analysts, if only because of the Obama administration’s not-so-thinly-veiled opposition to any military strike in the short- to medium term and the Pentagon’s preference, if it were ordered to attack, for a broad offensive likely to stretch over many weeks.
“The idea that the American military would agree to any quick single strike seems fantastical to me,” said Jon Wolfsthal, a non-proliferation expert who served in the Obama White House until earlier this year. “Should we decide to go, I believe U.S. military planners will – rightly – want to go big and start with air defence and communication suppression. This means many hundreds of strikes and a lot of casualties.”
Meanwhile, the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), a think tank that has issued a succession of hawkish reports by a special task force on Iran since 2008, released a new study here Thursday on the potential economic costs – as measured by the likely increases in the price of oil – of a “nuclear Iran”.
The 47-page report, “”, appeared intended to counter warnings by other experts that an Israeli or U.S. attack on Iran would send oil prices skyward – as high as three times the current price depending on the actual disruption in oil traffic – with disastrous effects on the global economy.
“In the public debate during the last year, a recurring concern has been the economic risks posed by the available means for preventing a nuclear Iran, whether tough sanctions or military action,” it began. “Such risks are a legitimate concern.”
“…Inaction, too, exposes the United States to economic risks,” the task force, which includes a number of neo-conservative former officials of the George W. Bush administration, noted.
The report provides a variety of possible scenarios and estimates the probabilities of each. It stressed that a “nuclear Iran” – which went undefined in the report but which one task force staffer described as the point at which Tehran’s neighbours, notably Saudi Arabia and Israel, were persuaded that it either had a weapon or its acquisition was imminent – would “significantly alter the geopolitical and strategic landscape of the Middle East, raising the likelihood of instability, terrorism, or conflict that could interrupt the region’s oil exports”.
“It’s hard to imagine Iran with a nuclear umbrella as behaving more responsibly than they do today,” said Amb. Dennis Ross, a task force member who served as President Barack Obama’s top Iran adviser until late last year.
And while Washington would probably try to persuade Saudi Arabia not to go nuclear itself, that would prove unavailing, according to Ross, who quoted King Abdullah as telling him, “If they (the Iranians) get it, we get it.”
“Our analysis indicates that the expectation of instability and conflict that a nuclear Iran could generate in global energy markets could roughly increase the price of oil by between 10 and 25 percent,” according to the report.
If actual hostilities broke out between a nuclear Iran and Saudi Arabia or Israel, the price could far higher, particularly in the event of a nuclear exchange, the report found. It rated the chances of an Iran-Israel and an Iran-Saudi nuclear exchange at 20 percent and 15 percent, respectively, within three years of the perception that Iran had become a nuclear state.
Whether these latest efforts by hawks to maintain the momentum toward confrontation with Iran will succeed remains to be seen.
While both presidential candidates have stressed that they are determined to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear status, the emphasis for now should be placed on sanctions and that a military attack should only be considered as a last resort.
At the same time, a war-weary U.S. public shows little enthusiasm for the kind of resolution sought by Graham in support of an Israeli attack on Iran.
In a survey of more than 700 respondents concluded by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), a week ago, 29 percent said Washington should discourage Israel from taking such action, while 53 percent said the U.S. should stay neutral. Only 12 percent said the U.S. should encourage Israel to strike.
]]>As Iran faces economic unrest, discussion is intensifying over the impact sanctions are having on Iran’s economy.
But experts doubt that the current situation portends the end of the Iranian regime or Iranian capitulation to Israeli and Western-led demands that it change its nuclear stance.
“You have now a market [...]]]>
As Iran faces economic unrest, discussion is intensifying over the impact sanctions are having on Iran’s economy.
But experts doubt that the current situation portends the end of the Iranian regime or Iranian capitulation to Israeli and Western-led demands that it change its nuclear stance.
“You have now a market that is under a lot of tension” which has “created a big economic crisis for the government”, said Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, a professor of economics at Virginia Tech, during a meeting here Wednesday at the Wilson Center.
But Salehi-Isfahani added that there is a “lot of misunderstanding about the currency system in Iran”, noting that people are confusing it with huge devaluations that occurred in East Asian countries and Zimbabwe.
“Iran is nothing like that,” he said.
While expressing varying views about the severity of Iran’s economic problems, the Wilson Center’s panelists agreed that it’s still able to manage its ailing economy and the resulting unrest.
“Iran has a lot of experience with sanctions. In fact, what they did immediately is open up the books from the 1980s about how to deal with a currency crisis,” he said.
Demonstrators clashed with police outside Tehran’s central bazaar on Wednesday during protests about the Iranian currency’s declining value. The rial has lost an estimated 80 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar in the last year.
Ali Vaez, a senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group, told IPS that “the regime is likely to nip it in the bud to prevent (the protests) from snowballing.”
“Although it’s not clear if there will be more protests, one thing is certain: Iran will experience a much more securitised environment in the run-up to the 2013 presidential elections,” he said.
Iranians are also struggling with rising inflation and unemployment amid escalating U.S.-led sanctions linked to the Islamic Republic’s controversial nuclear programme.
Iran maintains that its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful but Western countries led by the U.S. claim that Iran is working towards achieving nuclear weapon-making capability.
Israel has been pushing the Barack Obama administration to move its previously stated “red line” on Iran, a nuclear weapon, to preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons capability, something which Israel claims would seriously endanger its existence and the stability of the surrounding region.
“I’ve been speaking about the need to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons for over 15 years…I speak about it now because the hour is getting late, very late,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his speech at the 67th annual U.N. General Assembly meeting last week.
Already under six rounds of sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council, Iran saw Western sanctions tighten markedly this year with an EU ban on Iranian crude oil purchases going into effect in July.
U.S. sanctions are also increasingly targeting banks that deal with Iran’s central bank, thereby seriously impeding Iran’s ability to conduct international transactions and trade.
Sanctions have not yielded tangible progress toward a diplomatic solution over Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions, but the protests Wednesday and protests in July in the northeastern city of Nishapur over the rising price of chicken – a main food staple for the Iranian working class – indicate that segments of Iranian society will express their dissatisfaction when faced with serious pressure.
“The chicken prices got the government’s attention,” said Salehi-Isfahani, adding that the “government made a wise move in trying to stabilise the chicken market and not worry about the dollar.”
“The aim of sanctions is to raise pressure against the regime in order to solve the nuclear crisis in a peaceful manner,” Alireza Nader, a senior international policy analyst at the RAND Corporation, told IPS.
“But as we’ve seen, sanctions are also leading to major unrest in Iran and weakening the regime at home and abroad,” he said.
Bijan Khajehpour, an Iranian businessman and specialist on the Iranian economy, explained during the Wilson Center event that a number of factors have been harming Iran’s economy.
“It’s not just the sanctions…Iran’s economic developments have been undermined by sanctions, subsidy reforms, mismanagement and corruption,” he said.
“The degree of instability has reminded many citizens of the days of the Iraq-Iran war” and “public anger is reflecting itself in sporadic unrest, strikes, blogosphere protests and critical comments by artists,” he said.
But Khajehpour disagrees with reports suggesting that the Iranian economy is collapsing. “The current deterioration of the Iranian economy is less a period of economic collapse and more a period of economics adjustment,” he said.
“The citizens are suffering, but the macro economy could potentially benefit,” said Khajehpour, noting that sanctions which have impeded Iran’s ability to purchase the equipment it needs to develop key industries have forced it to produce them itself.
Khajepour added that, “The future story of Iran is in (its gas industry),” which is projected to grow over the next five years despite sanctions.
“The additional gas capacity will generate the potential of investments in gas-based industries with export potential,” said Khajehpour.
Suzanne Maloney, another panelist and Iran analyst at the Brookings Institute, said it’s “incredible and tragic” that “Iran’s economic horizons are more limited today than the last 50 years.
“There are huge constraints on Iran’s growth and development and that presents tremendous political vulnerabilities,” she said.
“Sanctions are working, but we’re not getting anywhere on the nuclear programme and that cannot be lost on anyone,” she said.
Michael Singh, the managing director of the Washington Institute, echoed the consensus among a number of well-known neoconservative analysts Wednesday by writing that more aggressive pressure and punitive measures are needed to change Iran’s nuclear calculus.
“Rather than hoping that giving current sanctions “time to work” will force Iran back to the negotiating table, the United States and our allies should add further pressure to the regime and the elites who comprise it, including through additional targeted economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation, bolstering the credibility of our military threat to the regime, and support for the Iranian opposition,” he wrote in an op-ed for Foreign Policy.
According to Trita Parsi, the president of the National Iranian American Council, more pressure alone will not bring about favourable results. “I don’t find it likely that the regime will capitulate due to the sanctions as long as sanctions relief is not part of the mix,” he said.
“The possibility that sanctions will lead to general regime change exists, but the question is what type of regime change would the devastation of the Iranian economy generate?” Parsi asked.
]]>This was the best of weeks; this was the worst of weeks. I am referring to last week’s ministerial meeting at the UN General Assembly – and of course I’m exaggerating.
For all who want to see Iran’s nuclear quarrel with the West resolved peacefully Prime Minister Netanyahu’s appearance before the [...]]]>
This was the best of weeks; this was the worst of weeks. I am referring to last week’s ministerial meeting at the UN General Assembly – and of course I’m exaggerating.
For all who want to see Iran’s nuclear quarrel with the West resolved peacefully Prime Minister Netanyahu’s appearance before the Assembly was a god-send. This, surely, was the moment when he finally lost all credibility. Not only did he flirt with the grotesque by producing a ridiculous comic-book drawing of a bomb, he also implied that for the umpteenth time he had miscalled the imminence of an Iranian Armageddon.
Yet something tells me we have not heard the last from Mr. Netanyahu. Like Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, he bounces back from making a fool of himself. At home in recent weeks he has been severely criticised for his misjudgements by Israel’s equivalent of the Great and the Good. Yet it seems his convictions remain intact.
And no doubt he will continue to be taken seriously by the mainstream media. When reporting on Iran the media like to recall – despite evidence to the contrary – that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. In future they ought to recall, when reporting the premonitions of Mr. Netanyahu, that his years in office have unbalanced him. But of course they won’t.
And so Mr. Netanyahu will continue to create political difficulties for all those who are trying to devise sensible solutions to a very difficult problem.
At least we can be confident that, if Mr. Obama is re-elected, he will not allow himself to be influenced by this hysteria. Twice this year the President has demonstrated that he has the measure of his Israeli “ally”. Last week, in his intervention before the Assembly, he made clear that he draws the line, sensibly, at Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons and not, as Mr. Netanyahu wants, at the acquisition of a weapons capability, long since a fait accompli, in any case, so far as the production of fissile material is concerned.
As for the worst – well, actually, the disappointing – I am thinking of a paper produced by Stephen Hadley and published by Foreign Policy on 26 September. The title was promising: Eight Ways to deal with Iran. But the contents could have been written in 2003. One peruses in vain for evidence that lessons have been learnt from the last nine years of Western dealings with Iran over its nuclear programme.
Instead, Mr. Hadley offers us strategic and tactical options that are familiar and stale, the same mix of carrots and sticks that have failed to deliver a solution because Iranians, as they like to remind us, are not donkeys. They are men as we are – men who understand the importance of maintaining self-respect and who know their rights.
The flawed nature of Mr. Hadley’s vision is apparent early on. He asserts that action is needed to stop Iran:
- - pursuing weapons of mass destruction
- supporting terrorists
- intervening in the internal affairs of neighbours
- infringing the freedom and human rights of the Iranian people
- and denying these people the right to a democratic future.
The extent to which Iran is guilty of these abuses could be questioned. So could the right of other states to put a stop to some of them. The sole point I want to make is that many other states, some of them on friendly terms with the US, are engaging in one or more of these practices; so why single out Iran for special treatment? Is the core issue the enforcement of international norms or the punishment of dissent?
One is hardly surprised to discover, on turning to option 6, a military strike, that Mr. Hadley makes no mention of the legal obstacles to attacking another state. To expect him to be familiar with UN Security Council resolution 487, which condemns military attacks on nuclear facilities as a violation of norms of international conduct and a threat to the nuclear safeguards regime, may be unreasonable. But can he really have spent all those years in the White House without reading the UN Charter?
Nor does he mention the highly toxic nature of the uranium gases that an attack on Iran’s plants would release into the atmosphere. Or the risk retaliation could pose for Saudi desalinated water supplies.
He suggests the US could avoid being seen as responsible for an attack. I suggest that, if Iran’s facilities are attacked, large parts of the world won’t wait for evidence or an avowal before determining responsibility. They’ll be as sure they know who’s responsible as is Mr Netanyahu when, within half an hour of a terrorist outrage, he proclaims Iran’s guilt.
In short, it appears Mr. Hadley has not seen that we need to break out of the mind-set which has doomed efforts to resolve this problem since 2003. We need policies which will minimise the risk that Iran will be tempted to exploit a dual-use capability which is not outlawed by the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. We need a diplomacy that addresses this motivational element in the threat equation, not least by recognising that Iran is entitled to have national interests and that double standards weaken global governance.
]]>Jeffrey Lewis provides a thorough analysis of Benjamin Netanyahu’s graphic aid and theory presented at the 67 UN General Assembly last week and explains why attacking Iran militarily based on the Israeli Prime Minister’s red line is problematic and counterproductive:
…The Prime Minister’s remarks betray a conviction that just [...]]]>
Jeffrey Lewis provides a thorough analysis of Benjamin Netanyahu’s graphic aid and theory presented at the 67 UN General Assembly last week and explains why attacking Iran militarily based on the Israeli Prime Minister’s red line is problematic and counterproductive:
]]>…The Prime Minister’s remarks betray a conviction that just as Iran produced a large amount of UF6 enriched up to 5% before starting to use some of it to make UF6 enriched up to 20%, it will in due course start producing UF6 enriched up to 90%. Bibi’s goal comes down to not to getting salami-slicedto weapons-grade uranium, as Joshua would put it. For that purpose, a line simply needs to be drawn at some distinct and recognizable point.
The liabilities of the Netanyahu theory
So what’s the problem? The short version is that committing to use force prior to an Iranian attempt to make weapons-grade uranium is a very dangerous idea. There’s basically no chance that bombing will stop the Iranian nuclear program. But it might spur Iran to take its bomb program off the back burner, speeding up the weapons timetable. As Joshua put ita couple of years back:
It’s often asserted, with an air of worldy maturity and sobriety, that a resort to arms will only provide a few years’ breathing room…. The truth is closer to the opposite.
Here’s how Jeffrey put it recently:
The benefit of a strike is an induced pause in the program — more or less what we have now[,] though imposed through force. The question is whether an airstrike creates more delay than the current indecision of the Supreme Leader. So far, I think, the best answer has been no…
It’s gratifying to see, in Sunday’s New York Times, that this message is finally starting to creep into broader awareness, a mere five years since the 2007 NIE.
- Washington Post: In an article focused on President Barack Obama’s address to the UN, Scott Wilson leads with Obama’s reaction to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s insinuation that the U.S. government played a role in the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. Obama told BBC Persian, which broadcasts into Iran, Ahmadinejad’s remarks were “offensive”, “hateful” and unacceptable: ”Particularly for him to make the statement here in Manhattan, just a little north of Ground Zero, where families lost their loved ones, people of all faiths, all ethnicities who see this as the seminal tragedy of this generation, for him to make a statement like that was inexcusable.”
- Huffington Post: In a Q&A with Shaun Jacob Halper, leading non-proliferation expert Mark Fitzpatrick says he is convinced that Iran wants a nuclear weapons “capability” if not the weapons themselves. Fitzpatrick answers questions on whether there is a legal and moral double standard applied to the nuclear programs of Israel and Iran (legally, says Fitzpatrick, Israel is not party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but morally the answer is more murky); grades Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on how they deal with Iran (both A’s); and on the viability of a sanctions regime and negotiations. While Iran does not have an “apocalyptic worldview” and is not “irrational,” he’s not sure if the Iranians are “appeasable” if the desire for “a nuclear weapons capability [is] more than anything else.” He concludes, “And if so than no, they are not appeasable.”
- National Review Online: Anne Bayefsky, a senior fellow at the neoconservative Hudson Institute, compares the speeches of Ahmadinejad and Obama at the UN General Assembly. She writes Obama extended his hand for diplomacy with Iran and used his speech to corner Israel. “Ahmadinejad got the message,” she contends, adding that “Israel is vulnerable with President Obama in office, and Iran has no serious reason to believe that hate and terror will be on the losing end any time soon.” She said the speeches demonstrate that Obama “does not understand the threat facing America and the world from Iran,” and that “Ahmadinejad, therefore, took the opportunity provided by the U.N. to slam the door once more in President Obama’s face.”
- Commentary: Jennifer Rubin contrasts President Obama’s UN speech, which she labels “namby-pamby” for its failure to detail military options, with the current push by the far-right Christians United for Israel (CUFI) and a group of House Republicans to escalate measures — including a military strike — against Iran. CUFI’s video accuses Ahmadinejad of committing “incitement to genocide” and urges his prosecution by the International Criminal Court. (Eli has written about the hypocrisy of this tack from right-wing supporters of Israel.) The letter from Republican members of the House calls for Obama to “take whatever action is necessary to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. All options must be on the table.” Rubin laments that Obama is not taking Iran’s threats seriously and that should Israel act unilaterally against Iran, the U.S. should “stand shoulder to shoulder with Israel.”
“The United States and the international community seek a resolution to our differences with Iran, and the door remains open to diplomacy should Iran choose to [...]]]>
“The United States and the international community seek a resolution to our differences with Iran, and the door remains open to diplomacy should Iran choose to walk through it,” Obama said. “But the Iranian government must demonstrate a clear and credible commitment and confirm to the world the peaceful intent of its nuclear program.”
In a speech that focused on the Israeli-Arab conflict, Obama dedicated a scant three paragraphs to the issue that has dominated the ongoing international summit in New York.
He reasserted, as the P5+1 did on Wednesday, his desire to see a resolution to the standoff over Iran’s alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons. But Obama added that if Iran did not fulfill its responsibilities, there would be consequences, specifically mentioning the last round of sanctions in the UN Security Council earlier this summer.
Obama’s remarks on Iran:
]]>As part of our effort on non-proliferation, I offered the Islamic Republic of Iran an extended hand last year, and underscored that it has both rights and responsibilities as a member of the international community. I also said — in this hall — that Iran must be held accountable if it failed to meet those responsibilities. And that is what we have done.
Iran is the only party to the NPT that cannot demonstrate the peaceful intentions of its nuclear program, and those actions have consequences. Through U.N. Security Council Resolution 1929, we made it clear that international law is not an empty promise.
Now let me be clear once more: The United States and the international community seek a resolution to our differences with Iran, and the door remains open to diplomacy should Iran choose to walk through it. But the Iranian government must demonstrate a clear and credible commitment and confirm to the world the peaceful intent of its nuclear program.
The article at Javan, published briefly Sunday, said that Iran had [...]]]>
The article at Javan, published briefly Sunday, said that Iran had captured seven U.S. soldiers along its border with Pakistan. Though the story was taken down, with an apology to readers, the action wasn’t swift enough to prevent the story from quickly zipping around the world — and into several international news sources.
Once the story was proven to be false, Daragahi offered a take on the rumor/misinformation in his piece, on which the headline blared: “In false report of captured American soldiers, a warning to Ahmadinejad?”
Daragahi’s theory relies on the reported ties of Javan to the Revolutionary Guard Core (IRGC), Iran’s powerful ideological militia — Javad is “linked to the intelligence branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard,” Daragahi put it — and the timing, with the story coming as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad steps onto the world stage at the UN General Assembly in New York.
The version Daragahi offers:
]]>Iran watchers suspect hard-line elements within the Revolutionary Guard may have been trying to further damage an already battered and politically weakened President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during his ongoing trip to New York, where he is scheduled to address the United Nations General Assembly and give a bunch of interviews to international media, as he does to improve his domestic and international standing every year.
“The system’s enemies and ill-wishers are trying to create an adverse atmosphere against the president and to overshadow his speech at the United Nations,” Sistan-Baluchestan Governor-General Ali Mohammad Azad, an appointee of Ahmadinejad, told the official Islamic Republic News Agency.
But the publication of the report may also have served as a menacing reminder to Ahmadinejad of how boxed in he is on foreign policy.
Perhaps those powerful figures hiding in the shadows of the security apparatus want to remind Ahmadinejad that any deal he tries to cut over Iran’s nuclear program, any attempt he makes to improve ties or even reduce tensions with the U.S., and any gambit he makes to soften Iran’s image can be easily undermined with one grand stunt, such as capturing a platoon of U.S. soldiers along the Iranian border.