Is Our "Diplomacy President" Heading the U.S. Toward War With Iran?
Is Obama's Iran policy doomed to failure? Despite the president's promise to pursue “honest” negotiations with the Islamic Republic, is he actually following the advice of a senior advisor who instead believes that showing a willingness to negotiate is simply a tactic to build support for a war against Iran?
Serious concerns about Obama's approach are already being voiced by prominent pro-engagement Iran experts who are generally sympathetic to Obama's foreign policy ideas. In a NY Times Op-Ed, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett put forth a disturbing thesis: “President Obama's Iran policy, in all likelihood, has already failed.” Meanwhile, Gary Sick writes on his new blog site, “The Leverett article is a timely cautionary note, which reminds us that we need to watch the new administration with a careful and critical eye.” While Sick pleads for greater patience in assessing Obama's Iran performance, the Leveretts and Sick share deep concern over the appointment of veteran diplomat Dennis Ross as a figure shaping Obama's Iran approach.
Flynt Leverett and his wife Hillary, who say they voted for Obama, are former National Security Council staffers who dealt with Iranian affairs and have maintained direct communications with Iranian officials since leaving government service. While applauding Obama's symbolic outreach to Iran since taking office, they argue that he is now “backing away from the bold steps required to achieve strategic Nixon-to-China-type rapprochement with Tehran.”
The Leveretts say Obama “has done nothing to cancel or repudiate” Bush's covert program to destabilize Iran. Moreover, they add, Obama is refusing to pursue a “grand bargain,” i.e., “a comprehensive framework for resolving major bilateral differences and fundamentally realigning relations.” Instead, they say, Obama's “approach to Iran degenerates into an only slightly prettified version of George W. Bush's approach — that is, an effort to contain a perceived Iranian threat without actually trying to resolve underlying political conflicts.” They cite their belief that Obama's team is buying into the “delusion” of creating a grand anti-Iran alliance of Arab states and Israel, and worry that Obama is already putting a “deadline” for successful talks. The problem, they argue, is that getting Iran policy right “would require a president to take positions that some allies and domestic constituencies won't like”—an apparent reference to Israel and its supporters in the U.S. What is needed, they conclude, is “strategic vision, political ruthlessness and personal determination.”
The Leveretts single out their deep concern over the “disturbing” role that Dennis Ross may be playing in developing Obama's Iran policy. Ross, it will be recalled, served as a Middle East envoy in various Republican and Democratic administrations, and was presiding over years of Israeli-Palestinian mediation when the negotiations collapsed with the outbreak of a Palestinian uprising in 2000.
They complain that Ross has long been an advocate of “engagement with pressure”—a strategy for showing a willingness to negotiate with Tehran mainly in order to win over broader regional and international support for intensifying economic pressure on Iran. The Leveretts damningly quote Ross from a conversation they held with him before Obama's election. Why negotiate with Iran if you believe that such talks will probably fail? “Because, he told us, if Iran continued to expand its nuclear fuel program, at some point in the next couple of years President Bush's successor would need to order military strikes against Iranian nuclear targets,” the Leveretts wrote. “Citing past ‘diplomacy' would be necessary for that president to claim any military action was legitimate. Iranian officials are fully aware of Mr. Ross's views — and are increasingly suspicious that he is determined that the Obama administration make, as one senior Iranian diplomat said to us, ‘an offer we can't accept,' simply to gain international support for coercive action.”
Gary Sick, also a former NSC staffer serving several presidents up to Reagan, questions some of the Leveretts' assumptions. He says Obama was correct not to rush into talks with Iran during the Iranian presidential election season. He also says you shouldn't confuse the desirable outcome of talks with the negotiating strategy to get there; that if a “grand bargain” is the ultimate goal, it doesn't necessarily mean that you commence negotiations by putting the whole package on the table at the start. Sick also questions whether Obama has really set the deadline that the Leveretts fretted about. Referring to Obama's recent comments after meeting Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu last week, Sick writes: “Although he appreciated the danger of indefinite talk with no action, he rejected the idea of an ‘artificial deadline.' Obama is very careful with his use of words, and it is important to pay attention to what he actually says, rather than the words that advocates on various sides may try to put in his mouth. That was no deadline.”
Sick, though, shares the Leveretts' concern about Dennis Ross's approach, citing his alleged shortcomings at some length:
Dennis Ross started about three years ago to refashion himself from a Palestinian-Israeli maven into an Iran expert. Over that period he wrote a number of papers and op-eds, and he participated as a signatory in other studies and web sites – all of which fit the pattern identified by the Leveretts as favoring lip service to negotiations while insuring failure.
Until just before he was nominated for his present position, Dennis Ross was, among other things, the chair of the Israeli-based Jewish People Policy Planning Institute which is supported by the Jewish Agency and which produces “professional strategic thinking and planning on short and long-term issues of primary concern to the Jewish People, with special attention to critical choices that have a significant impact on the future.” He was for seven years, quite simply, an informal (but well paid) policy planner for the Israeli government, writing policy papers for the president of Israel, among others. That his policy positions parallel those of the Israeli government should surely come as a surprise to no one. That he favors a pro forma attempt at negotiations with Iran, followed by far more severe sanctions or even military action if and when they fail, should also not be a surprise to anyone who reads the Israeli newspapers.
True, that's a pretty worrying background for an Obama advisor if the president is sincere about trying to reach out to Iran's government. But Sick argues that it is not at all clear that Ross has the key role the Leveretts attribute to him.
Sick explains that “there is an emerging Washington parlor sport of trying to figure out who is actually driving U.S. policy on Iran… There have been a number of leaks and un-sourced press reports claiming that Ross is functioning as the principal manager of the Iran policy review. A lot of those reports read as if they might have originated with Ross himself, who originally proclaimed himself a kind of Iran policy czar and who clearly aspires to that role. However, when the United States met with the other major powers on the subject of Iran in London recently, Washington was represented by Undersecretary of State Bill Burns and Ross was nowhere in sight… The real question is whether Dennis Ross is actually in charge of U.S. Iran policy.”
Sick is less concerned about the appointment of the more-hawkish-than-Obama Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, arguing that it's part of the psychological “game” that Iran plays, too; “The tough words of Secretary Clinton could be regarded as a positive factor, if only to let Iran know that there is opposition inside the administration to any easy deal and they should not expect a pushover.”
Yet, the Leveretts do raise a hugely important question about whether the appointments of Clinton and Ross will leave Obama with an “incoherent” Iran policy. If Obama is sincere when he tells Iran's leaders that he is “committed to diplomacy…that is honest and grounded in mutual respect…and to pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran and the international community,” that is simply not consistent with the appointment of a top advisor who favors “lip service to negotiations while insuring failure.” The danger is that if Obama can't figure out whether he wants to truly engage or fight, he risks the same policy drift that has pushed the U.S. and Iran closer and closer to armed conflict. Policy drift eventually enabled the hawks to trump the doves in America's march to war in Iraq in 2003. Obama says the “buck stops here” in the Oval Office, but will it already be too late once it does?
Sick is sensible to conclude, however, that “before we give up on Obama's negotiating approach, I suggest that we wait until there are actually some negotiations. Let us not start at the end of the process but rather at the beginning, where we (and the Iranians) still find ourselves.”
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
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After nearly 30 years of failed regime-change and isolation oriented US policies towards Iran, America now finds itself in a position where it needs Iran more than Iran needs the US. While we were busy listening to Israeli lobbyists, who have been demonizing Iran for well over a decade now (namely, to distract from their own Palestinian conflict and to ensure Israel's supremacy as the US' number one ally in the region), Russia and China were investing several billions into Iran's energy and military infrastructure. Europe, thanks to American led anti-Iranian efforts over the last decade, also finds itself in a similar quagmire. Already, it is at the whim of the Russian bear, who supplies Europe with most, if not all, of its natural gas. Indeed, Russia and Iran combined hold well over 50% of the world's natural gas reserves. The decision to antagonize and demonize Iran, a country whose revolution was based on the fact that the Europeans and Americans were interfering with the country's politics for over a century, has turned into a lost opportunity for Europe and the Americans as far as their energy and geo-political needs go. A great article regarding this issue can be found here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pye-ian/bishop-to-queen-4-recaptu_b_207771.html
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More importantly, we must ask, is what Israel's role really is in the nuclear stand-off with Iran. Here, we have a country that not only has a 60 year history rife with wars and aggression with the only illegal, unmonitored arsenal of nuclear weapons in the Middle East trying to tell a legal signatory of an internationally accepted treaty that it has no right to peaceful nuclear technologies. The top echelons in Israel don't really believe Iran is an existential threat ( http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1081651.html ) while Netanyahoo, Israel's insane PM, continues to rant that Iran is the second coming of the Nazis - something Tony Karon, a TIME journalist, writes is contradictory to the view held by the 20,000+ Jews living happily in Iran ( http://www.tonykaron.com citing http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/opinion/23cohen.html ).
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Dennis Ross is no greater an Israeli-first loyalist than our other favorite quack in the State Department, John Bolton, who consistently calls for violent strikes against any nation with tanner skin than his. Hillary Clinton has made efforts in the past to remove Bolton from any Iranian issues, having found out that Bolton was actually withholding documents from key members of the Bush Administration regarding Iran that would hinder his ability to warmonger against the Persians. I believe the next step is to put pressure on Clinton to do the same to Dennis Ross, who believes Iran, a civilization many millennium old, to be a stupid child willing to exchange "chocolates and walnuts for gold" (Ahmadinejad). As dumb as Ross believes the Iranian regime to be, it is him, who in reality, is the dunce. Iran has pre-emptively called out Ross on his "brilliant" strategy. Contingency measures all but ensure that Ross' proposed sticks do nothing to Iran's well being.
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And not for nothing, but what is the point of announcing a policy of carrots and sticks in the press as if the Iranians cannot pick up a newspaper and read these ill intentions well before they are implemented? Better question: what gives America the right to sanction Iran? Where is the REAL evidence?
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Obama should take note: the world scoffs at Israeli policy and any alignment of that policy with ours would be damning to America's image abroad. While Netanyahoo continues to openly disobey American demands to stop expanding settlements and to deal with the Palestinians genuinely, Iran releases Saberi and unblocks Facebook, showing in actions that they are ready to be a real American ally, unlike Israel, which has been sucking on our blood and tax money without doing us any favors in return.
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Luckily, opponents of Israeli lobbyist groups, like the National Iranian American Council, have been somewhat successful at stopping the AIPAC monster from controlling our mindless politicians (as we saw with the abandonment of legislation aimed at blockading Iran's ports and starting a war). Therefore, these efforts should be doubled. Especially at a time when there is a rift between Israel and the US regarding Israel's illegal and colonialist settlements. Here is how:
Step 1 - Examine the facts at http://www.ifamericansknew.org
Step 2 - Figure out who your elected officials are at: http://capwiz.com/niacouncil/dbq/officials/
Step 3 - Call them (leave a message or, preferably, ask to speak to him/her directly); write them (as a follow-up to the phone call); and/or visit them!
Step 4 - Follow up every week or two to make sure your issue is on your official's priority list.
Step 5 - Tell all of your colleagues to do the same and re-paste this information all over the internet for others to see!
Also, check out http://www.endtheoccupation.org for detailed information about settlement expansion in Israel and alternative means of ending these inhumane, colonialist policies.
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This will teach Israel to deal with its problems rather than continuing its murderous policies under the cover of distraction from a so-called "Iranian Threat" that doesn't really exist. -
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Before Nixon could go to China, he had to dump the influence-peddling pro-Taiwan lobby.
It remains to be seen whether Obama can similarly dump the highly-influential pro-Israeli lobby. I doubt he can -- other presidents have tried and failed. If he can't then don't expect much improvement in US-Iran ties since the Israelis clearly want to spark a war instead. Obama is after all just one player in forming US foreign policy.
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[...] leggi [...]
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I am an American Jew and I stand against AIPAC and its control of American politicians and policies against American and humanitarian interests.
http://stopaipac.org/index.htm -
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If previous posts on this blog are any indication, we are only about 15 or 20 minutes away from someone insinuating that Israeli agents are secretly holding Ross' wife hostage so he does the zionists' bidding, and moreover, there is proof that the Mossad swapped Obama's daughters with Israeli stunt doubles and will only free them if the president agrees to sacrificing arab babies.
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I do not agree with everything any lobbyist says, but occassionally we have to assume that the president of the US may actually agree with the stances espoused by members of a lobby - Israeli or otherwise. -
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otrain - That's hypothetical nonsense! From what I've read here, people have had very valid points. The only ones with crazy rants were people like yourself who stood for Israeli policy in the face of obvious wrongdoing. Obama has made clear that he does not agree with Netanyahu on virtually any of his policies. Do you need Hillary Clinton to knock on your door and maniacally laugh in your face before you realize this?
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What points?
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Scott's claim that Obama's plan is "DOOMED TO FAILURE". I mean really, I know that there's not much of a bottom in terms of analytical quality expected by TIME's bloggers, but seriously, the idea that President Obama's strategy has "Already failed" is a notch below even the weak wall slop that we've come to know and love.
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This isn't the first blog rant against Obama's team, and hardly will be the last. But given Scott's hysteria on the subject one would agree with Otrain about something more nefarious than Washington DC, parlour speculation. -
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jacobblues - For someone that finds TIME's blogs to be so woefully inadequate, you never cease to show up here and rant in a condescending manner trying to discredit the author without any significant or meaningful contribution of your own. A little absurd, don't you think?
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Here's a couple of pearls (directly quoted) from my boy persianadvocate in response to Tuesday's article:
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"It's no coincidence Israel is under every stone overturned in the Middle East."
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"A hallmark of Israeli policy is to create dissent and fraction amongst enemies... One should ask: who would like Hezbollah and Hariri to never become allies? Probably the same people seeking to put spokes in the wheels of other relations being bettered, such as between Syria and the EU and Iran and the US. Duh, Israel."
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As long as we don't let actual facts get in the way of a good story, sure, that sounds valid. These quotes and the hundreds of others like it on this blog are the kind of irrational paranoia that has fed anti-semitism for the past one to two thousand years. Somehow there is always a man behind the curtain and he is always a jew.
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I am far from an advocate of the UN as a fair and unbiased observer, primarily because their reports are almost ALWAYS one-sided against Israel. If even the UN believes that some combination of Syria and Hizballah were likely involved in killing Hariri, it seems convenient for now to be the one time where anti-Israel writers/bloggers/etc. cry foul about one of the UN's reports. -
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Actually, what Nick said was totally correct. Are you now denying agreed upon facts that Israel funded, at one point, Hamas to offset the PLO-Fatah and now they are doing the exact opposite?
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I think you are assuming that you are somehow more credible than anyone else on this forum. From what I see, you are now dragging an entirely different blog into this one in an attempt to discredit someone who hasn't even posted here yet. Are you afraid he might be telling the truth? Seems so. Thanks for that. -
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Daniel:
Thank you for the informative site. I am a JStreet member and find that AIPAC has steered itself into policies that involve lying and manipulating the truth in order to better Israel (or so they think) to everyone else's detriment. This is not what Judaism is about. I am ashamed that they are using my religion to enact their warmongering policies. I hope more people leave AIPAC for JStreet!
JacobBlues and Otrain:
Do you have any point to make? You seem to always reject what other people say, but never make any rational or cogent arguments of your own. Also, don't just rant, show us proof! Thanks. -
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While I enjoy a good pissing contest as much as the next guy, what I am getting at is that nobody in this conflict is 100% right or 100% wrong. Israel isn't totally blameless, but not everything that goes wrong in the world is Israel's fault either.
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My point was not one of credibility, my point was that people around here are big fans of hyperbole (personally, I prefer sarcasm).
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You seem like a real peach though, we should totally get together and burn some Israeli flags or hang George Bush in effigy. -
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It is not Netanyahu that is salivating to attack Iran. More than three quarters of the Israeli public are frightened by the existential threat Iran poses to Israel and want their government to destroy or disable Iran's nuclear weapons capabilities. Tzipi Livni, who lost to Netanyahu, and who publicly declares her support for a two State solution, would act no differently towards Iran than Netanyahu would and no Israeli leader, from the far right or even the far left, would act differently about the threat Iran is to the existence of the State of Israel. All Israeli's from all political spectrums agree on the threat Iran poses, and if you know anything about Israeli politics you cannot normally get people from your own party to agree with you, let alone almost every other political party. To make the absurd comment that Iran's threat is being fabricated by the Israeli right wing totally ignores the feelings of the overwhelming majority of Israeli citizens and the reality on the ground.
Iran has not only threatened to wipe Israel off the map.
Iran arms, trains, and funds Hamas which has murdered hundreds of Israelis in restaurants, supermarkets, shopping malls and on busses, and has armed Hamas with the 8,000 rockets they launched at Israeli hospitals, schools, homes and cities the past three years. Hezbollah gets all of their arms and money from Iran which they used to launch more than 9,000 missiles targeted solely at Israeli cities. Iran has blown up the Jewish cultural center in Argentina and the Israeli embassy in Argentina.For anyone to dismiss the threat that Israel faces from Iran means they either are living in a fantasy world or have so much self hate about their own people and heritage that they can only find it in themselves to condemn the victim, Israel, and not the terrorists from Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah.
The Arab governments of the Gulf States, as well as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudia Arabia would welcome an Israeli effort to destroy Iran's nuclear weapon capability and to absurdly claim that such an attack will inflame these governments against Israel is a laugh. These same governments publicly lambasted Israel in 1981 when Israel destroyed Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor at Osirak but were all privately glad, as they were when Israel destroyed Syria's nuclear reacter last year. Iran is not an Arab country and the Arab world is steadfast against Iran's hegemony in the Middle East, with the only exception being Iran's friend Syria, which also is a dictatorship that does not allow freedom of the press or speech, and like Iran, imprisons anyone who dare criticize or question their government.
The number one priority of any leader is not healthcare or the economy but the security and safety of their people. This is not the cold war with Russia where two sane countries were rushing to build arms. You have one country rushing to build a nuclear weapon that has not only armed terrorists to the teeth that have conducted dozens of suicide bomb attacks and launched thousands of missles at Israeli cities, but has blown up emnbassies and Jewish sites in South America, and is run by a messianic group of mullahs who sent hundreds of thousands of unarmed teenagers running into Iraqi minefields to their deaths. Such a country has no regard for the lives of others, let alone their own people. And, perhaps Mr. Cohen forgets, of the 4,200 men we have lost in Iraq, according to the U.S. Defense Department, hundreds have been been killed or maimed for life by bombs and weapons supplied to the Iraqi insurgents from Iran. Iran is up to no good and unlike the 1930's and the 1940's when the world stood by silently and let six million Jews be led to their deaths there is a government in Israel and people of Israel who are loudly declaring, never again!
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The proof for any of the propaganda the last poster just submitted? It's non-existent! I categorically reject almost every line of that post. Shame on you! Apparently, you have no problems with using the Shoah as a means of fear-mongering. Is nothing sacred to you? I am ashamed to be a Jew this day. Shame on you!!!!
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D-bone. I suppose you are cool with other posters comparing Gaza to a concentration camp, Israel to Nazis, and this latest conflict to the Holocaust though. Glad you have your priorities straight.
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All I am saying is have equal outrage regardless of whether the poster is pro-Israel or anti-Israel. -
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Well, for the record, I did actually submit a very lengthy comment which is currently awaiting approval due to its length alone. I will say, however, that I feel somewhat accomplished if the regular peanut gallery are coming here to rant about me before I even show up in order to try to impeach me in advance. I guess I am a threat to them
An Iranian threat! *snickers* BOOGEY BOOGEY BOOGEY! :p
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MJKoch,
Thanks for resorting to the regular method of verbal diarrhea without substance. Now, please allow me to respond to your opinions (they are not facts) with some factual-based arguments and hopefully you can respond in kind.
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1 - You say that Netanyahu is not alone in "salivating" over an Iran attack, but that the majority of the Israeli citizenry, including Tzipi Livni, feel as though a nuclear Iran is a genocidal threat. Let's start with Livni. She admitted, behind closed doors, that a nuclear Iran was no threat to Israel in October, 2007. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/916758.html . Netanyahu's war minister, Ehud Barak, also does not believe Iran to ACTUALLY be an existential threat. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1081651.html . So, here we have the two runner ups to the PM position secretly confiding that they don't actually believe in an Iranian threat. So what gives? Analysts agree, Israel's main issue is that they will lose regional supremacy to Iran as well influence with their main ally, US, if Iran goes nuclear. They also believe Israel is using the so-called "Iranian Threat" as a means of diverting from the Palestinian issue. Obama was not fooled, arguing that it is the Palestinian issue that must be resolved first before tending to Iran.
2- You say that Iran has threatened to wipe Israel off the map. In fact, you are referring to the myth perpetuated about Ahmadinejad's 2005 speech. Not only mistranslated, but taken out of context as well. Why would Ahmadinejad also refute any such intent by Iran to attack Israel on PressTV when asked about this quote directly? http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=62989§ionid=351020101 . He does not seem like a man who is scared of being called the next Hitler because of his criticism of Israel's government. Also, as Roger Cohen of the NY Times pointed out, Iran's 25,000+ Jews disagree with you and Netanyahu. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/opinion/23cohen.html
3- You say Syria had a nuclear reactor -- this was never proven. Show proof. I'm sure CNN would love to break that story if you have more PROBATIVE evidence than several intelligence agencies combined.
4 - Pretty much any Iranian ties you made to terrorism is garbage. Show me proof. And by proof, I don't mean links to news sites that offer the same quality of argument you do. I mean, sites that have REAL evidence. -
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Otrain - Obviously you don't know the difference between whoring out the Shoah to gain sympathy for something that is irrelevant to it and equating what is the moral equivalent of what the Nazis did to us to what the Israelis are doing to the people they decided to settle over in a grotesque misinterpretation of my religion. My father was a survivor and he was adamantly against the acts of the Israeli government against the Palestinians, often equating them to those acts committed upon him by the Germans. I suppose, again, you have more credibility when it comes to these things than a Jewish hero.
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Nick - Well said. I applaud you for having the energy to combat what sounds to me like a broken record of lies. Thank you for the PressTV link. I will e-mail it to my friends for distribution within Israel.
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mjkoch,
Your posting started reasonably enough, then you jump into hyperbole against Iran as if it were the Third Reich! While I believe Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, I don't buy into the idea that it is on some "messianic" mission to use them against Israel. The Mullahs are not that stupid. The nuclear weapons is for clout and influence in the middle east. You claim that Iran was responsible for terrorist attacks on Jewish cites in South America. If my memory serves me, and I admit I may be wrong, the attacks involved Sunni groups affiliated with the Palestinians. If you have proof of Iranian involvement, would you please post a link?
Just as all Israelis are concerned about Iran, all Iranians support nuclear development, even the democratic reformers. However, many Iranians are tired of support of Hizbollah and Hamas. I think you make too much of the connection between Hamas and Iran. Hamas is a fundamentalist Sunni organization, not Shiite. They clearly accept help from Iran because they have no other friends. How many times has the U.S. aided those whose interal politics we did not agree with?
One important thing, you have left out is why the Mullahs hate the Israelis. It is not because they are Jews. Iran has the largest Jewish community outside of Israel, the U.S. and Europe. It has a Jewish legislator in its parliament. Now granted, they face discrimination and suspicion for being Israeli spies, but they are not treated worse than any other minority group in Iran and given the limited nature of freedom for all Iranians, are no worse off than Israeli Arabs.
The reason the Mullahs hate Israel is because of Israel's affiliation with the Shah. It is well known Israelis trained the hated secret police of the Shah, of which I am sure some of the Mullahs suffered. So the "Zionists" are tainted with guilt by association.
Iran is not likely to attack Israel. They will use proxy armies. After all, the Islamic Republic of Iran has never invaded or attacked any other country and it will not start with Israel. It will continue to fund proxy armies like Hizbollah and Hamas to harass the Israelis and seek to gain influence in the Arab world. While you may be right that the Arab governments would love for the Israelis to take out the Iranian nuclear program, the Arab governments would fear a violent overthrow from the population they have taught to hate Israel. Therefore, they can live with a nuclear Iran instead of being overthrown.
That is what Bibi does not understand. Olmert requested permission to go over Iraq to bomb Iran, but Bush actually said "No". (I can't believe it either). The administration knew that would destablize the region, but the Israelis care little about the stability of Arab governments (with the exception of Jordan) Allowing Bibi to go after Iran would be a big mistake.
As for Dennis Ross, I used to admire him, but I have found him to be worse than useless. During the Clinton administration he basically pushed the Israeli position and sought their permission before putting any ideas forward (This is from someone who worked directly under him). I don't have any faith he would be better with Iran. However, Obama is much more attuned internationally than the Bush administration and I think he would keep Ross in check.
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MJKoch is regaling us with trivia from the hasbara arsenal.
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Let us look at a few facts:
Netanyahu presented in 1996, in a speech to the joint session of the U.S.Congress, the fundamentals of a neocon policy paper called ‘Clean Break' enthusiastically as his policy. This doctrine, tinkered together by Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser and his wife Meyraw, aimed at redrawing the map in the Middle East by ultimately getting at Iran.
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The main milestones along this path were getting rid of Saddam Husein and, subsequently, attacking Iran, after first eliminating potential proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas. Also, Israel had to make a ‘clean break' with the Oslo accords of 1993 to regain the strategic initiative.
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It looks as if Netanyahu, according to Avnery an unimaginative man mainly living on the intellectual capital, such as it is, provided by his pa, is still sticking to this script.
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There have been setbacks. Efforts to eliminate Hezbollah and Hamas or, alternatively, to provoke Iran into a first strike by attacking these alleged proxies, have thus far failed.
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Plans to bypass these stages and get at Iran directly have stranded on the resistance of Washington. According to a long article by David Sanger in the NYT of 1/10/09,it refused last year a request from Israel for specialized bunker busting bombs and denied it permission to fly over Iraq to reach Iran's major nuclear complex at Natanz.
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The Israelis were told that the US was trying to subvert Iran's nuclear affairs by penetrating its nuclear supply chain abroad and undermining its electrical - and computer systems. There are also ongoing efforts to foment unrest within Iran by playing the ‘ethnic card'. According to the latest issue of Asia Time both the US and Israel have been stirring up the Kurds who have been waging daring cross-border attacks.
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In the past Iran has accused both the US and Israel to be behind subversive activities by the Pakistan-based terrorist group Jundallah. A joint Iranian-Pakistani operation in Pakistan's Balochistan region made this group ineffective.
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It doesn't look as if Washington is any more enthusiastic now to support a direct Israeli attack. Secretary Gates said recently that he feared the prospect of pre-emptive action against Iran as much as that of the country acquiring a nuclear weapon.
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According to a recent report by William Pfaff there is now talk in European and Arab diplomatic circles of Iran being designated a ‘civil nuclear power' that can exercise its right under the ‘Nonproliferation Treaty' to develop power for civilian uses. Iran, of course, has signed this treaty as Israel has not. The country has persistently claimed that it wants nothing more than what this Treaty should grant it.
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If those European-Arabic ideas prevail in the diplomatic campaign, whatever Iran has achieved along the military line is left in place - as ‘facts on the ground' so to speak.
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The pathetic efforts of the hasbara spreaders to convince the outside world that Iran rather than Israel is the potential aggressor have been quite ineffective.Israel's only hope is now to set a trap for Iran which might make it nominally the aggressor after which Tel Aviv can claim 'self defence' (and draw the Americans in). -
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Persianadvocate, you are quite punny sir. It was hardly a rant - plus I called you my boy, a term of endearment. I just needed an example of someone prone to hyperbole. Thanks for the assist.
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Habalicious, so basically I was right, you belive that people can invoke the Holocaust as long as you agree with their political views. What if another Holocaust survivor or his son feel differently? Are their opinions any less valid than yours or your father's? If you are going to accept someone's right to make one controversial analogy, you have to accept someone else's right to make the other as well (or if you would rather noone use the Holocaust analogy, that is fine too). I guess what I am saying is that it is tough to hear what you are saying when your horse is so high. Sorry bud, from up there you probably have a hard time seeing that there are two sides to every story. -
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Otrain is bordering on insanity right now. What the hell he is talking about is anyone's guess. Nick, any clue? Doesn't look like the blog topic to me. Now he's just going one step too far by denigrating Daniel Haber's father and his rightful stance on the Holocaust. What lows will the Zionist hasbara sink to next? Do you have any testimony from the "other side", as you say, Otrain? Daniel presented his; where is your counterargument? I see none.
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I am not riding on any high horse. In fact, it is you who are trying to show, ineffectively, that people are "prone to hyperbole" via your immature experiments here. USSLiberty, though I do not agree with him on every thing, is right here. You are way, way off topic and only serve to harass the posters here. I presented you with my father's point of view, a Shoah survivor. You show me a survivor that will directly disagree that current Israeli policies are not Nazi-like and atrocious. Israel has gone too far.
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I'm sorry, Otrain, I must have forgotten to take my "Stupid" pills so that I won't take your bait today. As I understand it, you are trying to make it seem as if I blow things out of proportion. Okay, let's do some show and tell and let the others do the talking for me! Yay! *munches popcorn*
--------------------
(1) Former IDF Captain Exposes War Crimes in Recent Gaza Strike by Israel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Pfb02bLq6o&feature=player_embedded
(2) Two Israeli Defense Force Veterans Speak Out About Israel's Atrocities:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37MFa7ZKQWo&feature=player_embedded
(3) CNN asks IDF spokesman why a 4 story hospital with no militants was decimated killing hundreds of innocent civilians in the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6fn5NZ6LBk&feature=player_embedded
(4) Gary Sick of Columbia University responds to a question from Carnegie Council Senior Fellow David Speedie on the attention given to Iran during the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign by Dennis Ross:
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25
Did you pay attention to the 4th video? It was the most relevant
But we can continue to go on tangents, too, if you'd like
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