Obama Mideast Watch: "Where's Dennis?"

 TIME's Massimo Calabresi filed an interesting update from Washington concerning Barack Obama's Middle East team. He writes that when the President made a show of being present at the State Department on his second full day in office for the rolling out of super envoys to the the Middle East and South Asia, one prospective appointee was notably absent  from the proceedings:  Dennis Ross.

 "Where's Dennis?" is the question being asked in Beltway diplomatic circles, Calabresi says, and it's being asked by foreign policy elites in the Middle East as well.  Indeed, it is becoming a very intriguing question.

 Ross, after all, spent 12 years as Middle East envoy during the Bush 41 and Clinton administrations, enthusiastically campaigned for Obama despite his Clinton connections and has been rumored to be in line for a major foreign policy position in the Obama administration.  That prospect has been controversial. Not all Middle East hands in Washington are enthralled with Ross's record, and out here in the region itself he is widely distrusted. Nonetheless, there's been a steady drum roll since Obama's victory in November that Ross was in consideration for everything from reprising his role as Arab-Israeli mediator to being Obama's guru on Iran. 

 Or, to hear some tell it, Ross was due to become Obama's supremo-in-chief for the entire region, working as Hillary Clinton's "top" Middle East advisor, on the peace process as well as Iran, in a job "designed especially for him" and with a 7th floor office a little ways from that of the Secretary of State. 

 In a long insidey-sounding Jan. 8 Brand X piece, for example, Michael Hirsh wrote that when Obama's  national security team would "hit the ground running" after the inauguration, "one man who will probably be running ahead of the pack is Dennis Ross.... it is reassuring to know that Ross will be back..."

 Hirsh may have based his assumptions on a memo circulated within the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the pro-Israel think tank that Ross has served in senior positions for many years when he was out of government. The memo, issued by WINEP's chairman and executive director, announced Ross's appointment before Obama could have a chance to do so. (Hirsh reported that "the Obama transition team indicated the release of the announcement was premature.")

 Here's the WINEP  memo, as Politico reported here:

To: Members of the Board of Trustees
From: Chairman Fred Lafer, President Howard Berkowitz, and Executive
Director Robert Satloff
Re: Ambassador Dennis Ross to Join Obama Administration

We are delighted to share the news that Ambassador Dennis Ross, counselor and Ziegler Distinguished Fellow at The Washington Institute, has accepted an invitation to join the Obama administration as ambassador-at-large and senior advisor to Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton.

In that seventh-floor job, designed especially for him, Ambassador Ross will be the secretary's top advisor on a wide range of Middle East issues, from the Arab-Israeli peace process to Iran. Ambassador Ross will not reprise his previous role as special Arab-Israeli peace envoy, a post that will be held by someone else; rather he will be working closely with both the special envoy and the secretary. Ambassador Ross is expected to take his post immediately after inauguration.

We know you share our pride in Ambassador Ross's achievements, which reflect not only his outstanding contribution to U.S. foreign policy, but also the Institute's unique role in supporting those who can advance peace and security in the Middle East.

 If Ross was due "to take up his post immediately after the inauguration," then nobody's made it clear why he was not present at the State Department ceremony on Jan. 22. Or, two weeks later, after Obama Middle East envoy George Mitchell has already completed a tour of the region, why there's still no official announcement about what job he'll get. 

 Calabresi's story cites "sources who have spoken with [Ross] recently" offering two different but not necessarily incompatible explanations. The first suggests that the WINEP memo overreached and that the intention was to limit Ross's role to Iran duties. "He's frustrated," Calabresi quotes one person who spoke with Ross. TIME's reporter indicates that Ross's title and responsibilities still haven't been agreed on, notwithstanding WINEP's premature announcement. 

 The other explanation, according to the story, is that Ross is indeed quietly working away on Iran issues, but the administration is saving the announcement of his portfolio until it figures out its Iran policy. "He's on board," Calabresi quotes another Ross friend saying. "It would be the height of folly to roll out Dennis [now] ... There's just a lot of very careful and, I would say, quiet spadework to be done [first]."

  Looks like we'll have to wait and see what the final explanation is.  Given the mystery surrounding Ross in D.C., here's some educated conjecture I've been hearing from a variety of my contacts in diplomatic and Middle East policy circles. Take it for what it's worth.

 One view is that Ross will not get the supremo role that WINEP announced, for two reasons. First, there are already too many Middle East supremos in the Obama administration. Hillary Clinton is a political heavy weight who quit the Senate to become secretary of state, not to become Ross's secretary. Vice President Joe Biden is another political heavy weight who spent years as the ranking Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee. Peace envoy George Mitchell is yet another political heavy weight, having been Senate majority leader and then broker of the Northern Ireland peace accords. Then there's Gen. James L. Jones Jr., Obama's national security advisor in the White House, no big pol, but a four-star general and deep thinker who has recent experience in the Middle East. As for the other reason, Obama perhaps signaled it in choosing Mitchell to be his Arab-Israeli mediator: Obama, the thinking goes, has decided to employ a more distinctly even-handed approach to the Middle East conflict, and Ross is widely seen as having favored an approach that tilted strongly toward Israel.

 Another view is that Obama is having trouble, too, giving Ross the Iran portfolio. The reason is that the two men may have strikingly different approaches to the question of how to handle the Islamic Republic--differences in temperament if not also in substance. As a candidate all the way up to his comments as commander in chief at the State Department on Jan. 22, Obama is on record boldly favoring a conciliatory olive branch to Iran--albeit one that takes some tough bottom lines regarding Iran's behavior in the Middle East. While Ross has publicly supported Obama's "carrots" to Iran, he takes a more hawkish stance when it comes to "sticks" like sanctions and possible military action to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Ross, for example, has called for negotiating with Iran only once hard-hitting new sanctions are placed on "the Iranian oil and natural gas sectors, commerce with Iranian banks, and all credit guarantees to their companies doing business in Iran." Last year, Ross was part of the Bipartisan Policy Center report that prominently endorsed aggressive tactics against Iran. "If negotiations fail, the report advises the U.S. to pursue more aggressive tactics, including possibly blockading Iran's gasoline imports and eventually its crude oil imports," the BPC said. "If all other approaches – diplomatic, informational, and economic – are unsuccessful, the Task Force recognizes that the new President will have to weigh the risks of failure to set back Iran's nuclear program sufficiently against the risks of a military strike. The Task Force agrees that a military strike, relying mostly on air power, is a feasible option and must remain a last resort to turn back Iran's nuclear development." 

 Given the enormous importance of Iran in the Middle East's Great Game, and the strategic interests at stake and the political risks involved in Obama's bold reach-out to Tehran, the thinking goes, it would be problematic to appoint an envoy who does not completely see eye to eye on Iran with the White House.

  My contacts do believe, incidentally, that the WINEP memo is essentially correct even if it overstated things: Ross will become Clinton's advisor on all things Middle East. Will the job have substance to it, or will the Beltway insiders and Middle East foreign policy elites continue to ask the question, "Where's Dennis?"

 --By Scott MacLeod/Cairo