Category: US foreign policy

The Biden factor: Iraq, Palestine– and Israel

Breaking news: late Wednesday evening in Cairo, Abu Mazen and his buddies at the Arab League decided there will be no ‘proximity talks’ between the PLO and Israel.
I’m kind of interested in the way Abu Mazen is getting Amr Moussa to front for him these days. It does indicate a serious lack of his own confidence in the depth of his support among Palestinians… But that matter is tangential to the main story here, which is–
The Amazingly Unsuccessful ‘Diplomatist’ Joe Biden!
Biden, lest we forget, is the man who in an interview with George Stephanopoulos last July, publicly gave Israel carte blanche to attack Iran whenever it wanted.
Biden was also, back in the pre-2003 day, one of Ahmed Chalabi’s main supporters in the U.S., and an enthusiastic backer of the idea of partitioning Iraq.
Since he became Vice-President, Biden has had a role “orchestrating” Washington’s Iraq policy on behalf of the president… Well, we’ve seen how that’s been going… To be fair, that is not as horrendously badly as it might have been going… But it hasn’t been going brilliantly, either– certainly not as brilliantly as most of the US MSM have been saying.
Biden has not done a particularly good job there, I think.
But he has really been bombing in Palestine.
Yes, of course we can and should lay the primary blame for what’s been happening in Jerusalem this past couple of days squarely on the Israeli government, the body that greeted Biden, on his first visit to Israel as vice-president, with not one but two announcements about the construction of new settler housing.
Notable that Yossi Sarid writes in Thursday’s Haaretz that,

    Don’t believe Benjamin Netanyahu for one moment when he says he “never knew” [about the 1,600 new settler housing units announced Tuesday.] The Jerusalem planning committee is only too aware of what the bosses want, and the government has decided to step up construction in greater Jerusalem. Dispossession and taking possession, kicking out and moving in – that’s what it’s all about.

Sarid also gave us these additional details about Biden’s time in Israel:

    This is one visit Joe Biden will not quickly forget. First he was compelled to sit through 25 minutes of an annoying speech in his honor by our president. Shimon Peres really believes that he is the destination for pilgrims from all over the world who drink in his musings and are intoxicated by his vision.
    Later, Biden was given a certificate memorializing his mother, but the glass broke. Once again, Bibi didn’t pay attention, leaned on it and shattered it. No fear, his speeches have always diverted attention from such mishaps. And finally, to add a finishing touch of infuriating disgrace, the Haredi neighborhood Ramat Shlomo was dumped on the vice-presidential head.
    Truth be told, the Obama administration just about asked for this slap. In Jerusalem, the lesson has been learned that the White House doesn’t fulfill its obligations – it just goes through the motions by issuing insincere rebukes.

Insincere rebukes, indeed.
Juan Cole and Pat Lang, two very seasoned analysts of Middle eastern dynamics, are just two of the people who say that, on hearing of the new settlement construction, Biden should simply have ordered up his plane and left Israel, rather than sitting there, going through the rest of the charade of the visit, while saying something on the record about how the Obama administration “condemns” the new construction.
I’m assuming Biden decided on this course of action after consultation with Washington. (He took 90 minutes to decide what to do.) Do he and his boss the Prez have no idea how disgusted most of the people in the world are with the fact that, though from time to time Washington might say something critical of Israel– meantime Washington never holds Israel to serious account, for anything, including “grave breaches of international humanitarian law” like implanting its settlers into occupied territories?
And the U.S. Congress continues to shovel money to Israel. U.S. diplomacy continues to get completely bent out of shape by defending Israel’s actions in every international forum, at every turn, and by zealously pursuing Israel-driven agendas throughout the entire Middle East, including with regard to Iraq and Iran.
And these actions by the administration and Congress put the lives of U.S. service-members deployed around the world, often in pursuit of Israel-driven agendas, in significant additional risk.
Regarding Biden, Pat Lang has this intriguing little vignette in his latest post:

    I was in Biden’s senate office on one occasion when Biden’s Zionism boiled over in a truly repulsive display of temper. I was there with my Arab employer to visit the senator… The Arab made some pro forma positive reference to the “peace process.” Biden flew into a rage, grew red in the face and shouted that this was an insincere lie and that his guest knew that it was only Arab stubbornness that prevented “little Israel’ from living in peace. His “guest” sat through this with what dignity he could manage. I would have walked out on him if I had been alone.

Assuming that the vignette’s true– and I tend to trust Lang on that– it reveals quite a few disturbing things about Biden. Not just the guy’s knee-jerk pro-Israelism, which is endemic just about everywhere in Congress, with a few notable exceptions. But also his evident lack of any diplomatic skills. I mean, why fly into a pro-Israeli rage like that if an Arab guest should happen to mention the “peace process”? What on earth good was he hoping to achieve by doing that? Nothing that I can think of– except to vent his own feelings.
… And meanwhile, George Mitchell, Mr. “Senior Peace Envoy”, has completely dropped off the map.
It is honestly not clear to me at all, right now, what it is that Obama and his people are hoping to achieve in the Arab-Israeli arena. Their entire “peace diplomacy” is in shambles. It’s as if Obama really doesn’t care any more about any of the lofty– but oh-so-important– goals he articulated back in the first days and weeks of his presidency. But he should realize that letting his “peace diplomacy” fall into disarray, as he has now done, is something that will have consequences far, far beyond Israel and Palestine. And quite possibly, more rapidly than anyone in Washington realizes.

Obama, Biden cave to Netanyahu

So Vice-President Biden arrives in Israel– and the very same day the Israeli government announces it will build 112 new apartments in the settlement of Beitar Illit.
This despite PM Netanyahu’s “pledge” to halt the building of settlements in the West Bank (outside of East Jerusalem) for ten months– and despite the Israeli government’s broader commitment to halt all settlement construction under the 2002 Road Map.
Does Biden get on the next plane out of the country the moment he heard of the Beitar illit plan?
No.
The Israeli defense ministry said building the 112 apartments was needed “to plug a potentially dangerous 40-yard gap between two existing buildings.”
But oh my gosh! I understand that there are still a few other places in the West Bank where there are gaps between one settlement building and another… Or– even more dangerous!– gaps between one settlement and another! Evidently all these “gaps” need to be built on immediately! How can the settlers possibly be secure at any point before the whole occupied West Bank is covered with their apartment blocks???
(Irony alert.)
Honestly, if the Obama administration accepted this form of argumentation, as apparently it did, then it is being run by people who are either extremely stupid or irresponsible to the point of criminality.
I’m trying to get my head around why they feel they need to cave so completely to the Netanyahu government. It cannot only be the prospect of the upcoming mid-term elections here in the U.S. Could it be that Netanyahu is threatening that, unless the US goes along with his plans in the West Bank, then he cannot be responsive to the requests they make of him for restraint regarding Iran?
If so, this is outrageous blackmail. Obama and Biden should call Netanyahu on it immediately.

Malley & Harling on M.E. regional dynamics

Further to what I blogged here (and here) yesterday about the ever-shifting dynamics within the Middle East, Rob Malley and Peter Harling have an elegant op-ed in the WaPo today that picks up on many of the same themes.
Malley and Harling are both M.E. analysts for the International Crisis Group– Malley being in charge of their M.E. division and Harling their analyst for Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.
They start off with this:

    Much as he would like to disentangle himself from his Middle East inheritance, President Obama is having a rough time doing so. The obvious legacy is an unwanted war in Iraq and a bankrupt Israeli-Arab peace process. But equally constraining is a popular way of conceiving of the region — divided, schematically, between militants beholden to Iran and moderates sympathetic to the United States. While there is some truth to this construct, it assumes a relatively static landscape and clear fault lines in a region that is highly fluid and home to growing fragmentation. By disregarding subtle shifts that have occurred and awaiting tectonic transformations that won’t, this mind-set risks missing realistic opportunities to help reshape the Middle East.

So far, so– generally– good. But I think they’re too kind to the Obama-ites (and their predecessors) by saying “there is some truth to this construct.”
Where, really, is there any “truth” in it?
The main problem with the way Malley and Harling describe the “bipolar” frame that just about all of official Washington applies to its analysis of the Middle East is that they do not mention the role of Israel and its entire, unquestioning cheering section inside the U.S., who between them are the main ideological enforcers of this frame. “Moderates”, within this frame, is nearly always code for “does not challenge Israel on anything, whether through inclination or by being in thrall to the power of U.S. Congress’s purse”, while “militants” is code for “is sometimes willing to criticize Israeli policies.”
Really, the way these issues are discussed, and largely “understood” (or more accurately, mis-understood) among members of the Washington power elite is that, for Middle Eastern governments or other actors to be thought of as “pro-American” (i.e. “moderate”) they must not openly challenge Israel on anything. Therefore, when an actor, such as, for example, the Turkish or Saudi government, starts to criticize an Israeli policy they are immediately vilifed within the Washington DC Beltway as being irredeemably “anti-Israeli” and very often “anti-Semitic” to boot… But either way, no longer “moderate”.
And that is the extent of what passes for “analysis” in nearly all of Washington.
Malley and Harling are right to note that the strictly bipolar “moderates versus militants” frame is no longer useful. But they fail to spell out:

    1. That actually, though they seem to ascribe it to Pres. G.W. Bush, it goes back a lot longer that– back, at least, through the Clinton presidency (during part of which, Rob Malley worked in the White House.)
    2. That this frame never has been useful, either analytically or as a guide to wise policy. The “fluidity” and political dynamism they describe as being “new” within the M.E. regional system has always been there. Use of the bipolar frame has always been an obstacle to sound understanding and sound policy.
    3. That you can’t truly understand the way the bipolar frame “works”, politically, unless you make clear that, when applied at the regional level (as opposed to, for example, within Iraq), it really is all about Israel; and it has almost nothing to do with whether the actors in question are “pro-American” in the content of their policies, or not. Once again, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are key examples. Turkey, for goodness sake, is a member of NATO and has troops risking their lives alongside the U.S. troops in Afghanistan (unlike many other NATO members; and completely unlike Israel!) So how come Turkey nowadays gets labeled by many in DC as problematic and “possibly anti-American”? Answer: It is all about Israel. Malley and Harling fail to make that clear.

I think I also disagree to some extent with their description of the way they see the “relevant” competition in the region today.
This, they say,

    is not between a pro-Iranian and a pro-American axis but between two homegrown visions. One, backed by Iran, emphasizes resistance to Israel and the West, speaks to the region’s thirst for dignity and prioritizes military cooperation. The other, symbolized by Turkey, highlights diplomacy, stresses engagement with all parties and values economic integration. Both outlooks are championed by non-Arab emerging regional powers and resonate with an Arab street as incensed by Israel as it is weary of its own leaders.

The first thing I note here is that the regional visions promulgated by the governments of Turkey and Iran are not as diametrically opposed as Malley and Harling make them out to be. Turkey certainly “speaks to the region’s thirst for dignity”, just as much as Iran does; and Iran “values economic integration”, and “highlights diplomacy” just as much as Turkey does– though many of its attempts to act on these precepts have, of course, been intentionally stymied by the U.S.
Also, Turkey and Iran have excellent working relations with each other. So if there is some “competition” between the visions promulgated by these two governments– as I believe there is– still, this “competition” is very far from being the kind of manichean, “with us or against us” form of competition that too many Americans lazily think is the only kind of competition there is.
In fact, there seem to me to be to be only two significant respects in which the policies of the two governments differ: (1) the way that each of them tries to push forward its explicitly Islamist agenda in domestic affairs– “softly” in the case of Turkey’s AK Party, and “harshly”, in the case of Tehran; and (2) the way that each of them chooses to deal with Israel– again, “softly” vs. “harshly.”
Now I recognize that, for citizens of a majority-Muslim country in the region like Syria, Jordan, or Iraq, the domestic agendas pursued by Ankara and Tehran provide two very different models of modernization, and that having those two different models is valuable and important. But note that, in international affairs, it is really only regarding Israel that these two governments have deep differences… So there, once again, if there is “competition”, it is all about Israel.
I wish Malley and Harling had spelled that out, too.
Look, I have huge respect for both Rob Malley and Peter Harling, both of whom I am proud to think of as my friends. But I don’t think they do the American public whom, presumably, they were hoping to address in this op-ed much good if they pussy-foot around the big Israeli elephant in the “room” of Middle Eastern regional dynamics, and of U.S. policy within the region, in the way they have in this article.
Yes, they’re quite right to argue that the “moderates vs. militants” frame used in Washington is analytically empty of content, inaccurate, and useless… and diplomatically counter-productive, as well. But if they want to provide a frame that is more useful, both analytically and as a guide to policy, then they need to clearly identify the highly politicized source of the vacuity of the “moderates vs. militants” frame that is currently in use in Washington; and by identifying that source spell out that Israel itself (along with its many acolytes in Washington) is a major player that has a strong effect on the politics of the region.
A more useful “frame”, it seems to me, would therefore be one that places the ruling elite of Israel (of all parties) and their allies in Washington at one pole of the region’s dynamics, and the government of Iran at the other, and then arrays the region’s many other actors in the multi-dimensional space between them– that is, not simply on a unidimensional straight line. This frame should also make explicit the fact that many of the other actors in the region, including Turkey, some European powers, other P-5 member states, and Saudi Arabia, also have varying amounts of power to attract other actors towards them, as well…
Bottom line: the region is not now (and never has been) simply “bipolar”, but is multi-dimensional. And though there are two largely competing “super-poles” of influence within it, these are not “Iran and the United States”, and not “Iran and Turkey”, but rather, “Israel and Iran”. (And note that under both the Malley/Harling schema and mine, the U.S. administration gets reduced to the role of something of a secondary actor.)

Martin Indyk’s ‘conversion’

Back in the late 1980s, when I was working in Washington as a writer/researcher on the Middle East, with several years of experience as a Beirut-based correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor and other serious MSM outlets, and two books (on the PLO and Lebanon) already to my name, there was another researcher in town, about my age, who was much better plugged-in to the corridors of power and to sources of seemingly endless funding than I was. His name was Martin Indyk. He hadn’t actually done any major writing or research projects by then. But oh, he had been deputy research director at AIPAC! (Working for the infamous Steve Rosen.) And he parlayed that into getting funding from some big California-based money people to set up his own, always staunchly pro-Israeli “think tank”, the so-called Washington Institute for Near East Policy…
Like me, Indyk had been born in England. He arrived in Washington via a childhood and education in Australia. I came via my seven years of on-the-ground-experience in Lebanon and other Arab countries. Then in 1993, on the eve of Bill Clinton’s inauguration as president, Indyk received extraordinarily rapid naturalization as a U.S. citizen and immediately went to work in Clinton’s White House as his senior adviser on Middle East policy.
You see, when it comes to the pro-Israeli crowd, having other nationalities or dual or triple nationalities is an easy-come-easy-go business inside the U.S. political elite. Australian to American? No problem– provided you’re well-connected with the pro-Israeli in-crowd, like Indyk. American to Israeli? Again, a matter of moments if you happen to be long-time “American” scholar turned suddenly Israeli diplomatic rep, Michael Oren.
At the time, when I wrote something about the rapidity of Indyk’s acquisition of U.S. citizenship, he picked up the phone and started screaming at me, accusing me of being an “anti-Semite.” “Oh,” I asked him, “I assume we are talking on the record here?”
He slammed down the phone. What a baby he was. I don’t think we’ve spoken since then.
So… Indyk went on to have a long and notable career working in the Clinton administration, first as the top “Middle East expert” in the Clinton White House and then as Clinton’s ambassador to Israel. He later wrote about those years in his stunningly mis-titled book Innocent Abroad: An Intimate History of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East. (The title is inaccurate in many ways… “Innocent”?? “Peace” diplomacy?? But it is also stunningly inappropriate. I mean, would anyone really want an “innocent” to be advising the president on an area as important as the Middle East?)
While working for the Clinton administration, Indyk bore a huge degree of responsibility for many outstandingly bad policies, including:

    1. The administration’s complete failure to follow up on the diplomatic opening the Norwegians handed them on a plate with the Oslo Accords; and Washington’s complete failure, in particular, to hold both parties to the accord accountable for working in good faith to meet the deadline specified in it of May 1999 for completion of a final peace agreement.
    With Indyk’s advice constantly ringing in his ears– and all his own insecurities as a young president who had weaseled his way out of military service in the 1970s– Clinton stayed trapped in a posture of complete subservience to Israel’s older, much more experienced, and battle-hardened Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He never put an ounce of pressure on him. Rabin took his time implementing Oslo… and made numerous fatal concessions to the settlers along the way. But Clinton (and Indyk’s) adoration and provision of huge financial and diplomatic benefits to Israel continued unabated.
    Only in his very last months in office– ways after the 1999 deadline had come and gone– did Clinton even start to stir himself to mention the idea of a final peace agreement. It was ways too late. The Second Intifada broke out… Oh, and Clinton then sided completely with the even more dreadful (but also “battle hardened”) Ehud Barak as they came out of the failed Camp David talks in 2000 and jointly blamed Yasser Arafat for its failure…
    Thanks for all the “advice” you gave along the way there, Martin Indyk!!
    2. In early 1993, the U.S. was still dealing with the aftermath of the it first war in the Persian/Arabian Gulf, the 1991 “liberation” of Kuwait. People in the US policy elite were debating what the correct U.S. “posture” in the Gulf area should be. Indyk’s signal contribution to that was to successfully persuade the president that the posture should be one of “dual containment”– containment, that is, directed against both Iraq and Iran. In both cases, that meant ratcheting up the sanctions that had long been in place against those countries. In the case of Iraq, the sanctions maintained throughout the entire Clinton presidency were so draconian that they resulted in the otherwise preventable deaths of around 500,000 of Iraq’s most vulnerable citizens, and the destruction of most of the country’s previously well-developed social and economic infrastructure… Not so “innocent” there, either, Martin Indyk…

Well, I could write about many more of the nefarious episodes in this man’s past… But now, I have to take a deep breath and recognize that he has recently, uh, been undergoing something of an interesting conversion in his attitudes and behaviors.
Here he is now, on the board of the generally excellent “New Israel Fund”, and defending it quite robustly (here, for an Australian audience) from the slings and arrows being sent its way by Gerald Steinberg and other representatives of Israel’s new hard right.
I welcome Martin Indyk to the ranks of reason and good values that he seems to edging toward, at this point. I don’t, however, think anyone should give him a free pass for his past record. The Clinton years, and the role he played in them, still need to be quite honestly examined.

Hillary’s war-drums on Iran; Russia unwilling?

Hillary Clinton was on Capitol Hill today, telling US lawmakers that,

    “Iran has left the international community little choice but to impose greater costs and pressure in the face of its provocative steps… We are now working actively with our partners to prepare and implement new measures to pressure Iran to change its course.”

However, there has all along been considerable doubt whether China will go along with such measures, at the U.N. Then, there’s Russia…
Until today, U.S. spinmeisters had been expressing some confidence that Russia would join the “twist the screws tighter” policy. But today, Xinhua reported from Moscow that,

    Russia will honor a contract to deliver its advanced S-300 air defense systems to Iran after resolving a series of problems, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday.

And yesterday, China itself reiterated its calls that the Iranian nuclear-program crisis be addressed through stepped-up diplomacy, not confrontation.
Clinton probably feels herself under some pressure from the success that AIPAC, the very powerful America Israel Public Affairs Committee, has had in its massive, well-funded campaign to get legislators to adopt resolutions mandating unilateral U.S. sanctions on Iran in the event Iran refuses to dance immediately to Uncle Sam’s tune on the nuclear issue.
These resolutions have two harmful effects. They would unilaterally penalize U.S. businesses at a time that businesses elsewhere continue to trade with Iran. And they restrict the administration’s ability to commit fully to the pursuit of foreign policy, which is, of course, a responsibility reserved to the administration under the U.S. Constitution.
But hey, why should AIPAC care about mere inconveniences like that!

Fareed Zakaria calls it right on Iran, Israel

Thank goodness for Fareed Zakaria’s voice of sanity on Iran, at the WaPo today!
Zakaria strongly criticizes Sarah Palin and those many other influential voices in the US who are now baying louder than ever for a U.S. (or Israeli) military strike on Iran.
A military strike, he writes,

    would most likely delay the Iranian program by only a few years. And then there are the political consequences. The regime would gain support as ordinary Iranians rally around the flag… The regime would foment and fund violence from Afghanistan to Iraq and across the Persian Gulf. The price of oil would skyrocket — which, ironically, would help Tehran pay for all these operations.
    It is important to recognize the magnitude of what people like Palin are advocating. The United States is being asked to launch a military invasion of a state that poses no imminent threat to America, without sanction from any international body and with few governments willing to publicly endorse such an action. Al-Qaeda and its ilk would present it as the third American invasion of a Muslim nation in a decade, proof positive that the United States is engaged in a war of civilizations. Moderate Arab states and Muslim governments everywhere would be on the defensive. And as Washington has surely come to realize, wars unleash forces that cannot be predicted or controlled…

Actually, I think Zakaria doesn’t make the case as strongly as he could. He makes no mention at all of international law or Just War theory, for example. Both those extremely weighty bodies of thinking– along with common sense– proclaim a strong injunction against the launching of wars that are not “justified” by rock-solid bodies of evidence. Just War theory also requires an extensive calculation of the expected costs and benefits of any war, as well as a determination that all non-violent options have been exhausted.
Indeed, by not clearly naming the launching of a military strike as an act of war, Zakaria muddies the waters considerably.
A military attack against another state is indeed an act of war. And any such an act thereby provides every justification needed under international law for the state that is attacked to counter-attack. An Iranian counter-attack against the numerous U.S. military facilities, and their supply lines, that are currently strung out in very vulnerable ways along Iran’s eastern, western, and southern (sea) boundaries would not just be “the fomenting of violence”, as Zakaria describes it. They would also be acts of war.
So the U.S. would indeed find itself enmeshed in a third war in distant Asia. And this time, unlike in Afghanistan in 2001 or in Iraq in 2003, it would be at war against a capable, intact state that has significant networks of allies and trading partners amongst the other states in the United Nations.
So it is not just that “Al-Qaeda and its ilk would present it as the third American invasion of a Muslim nation in a decade”… This would actually be the third war the U.S. has launched against a Muslim country in a decade.
So Zakaria is significantly down-pedaling the enormity of what an unprovoked and unjustified “military strike” against Iran would actually be, and would be seen as, by the vast preponderance of the international community.
Nonetheless, his column redeems itself if only for the calm, matter-of-fact way he refers to the long-existing reality of Israel’s nuclear arsenal.
He writes,

    An Iran with nuclear weapons would be dangerous and destabilizing, though I am not as convinced as some that it would automatically force Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey to go nuclear as well. If Israel’s large nuclear arsenal has not made Egypt seek its own nukes — even though that country has fought and lost three wars with Israel — it is unclear to me why an Iranian bomb would.

Brilliant! He gives us a helpful reminder that, indeed, Israel really is the only state in the region that has any nuclear weapons– but he inserts that reminder as a sub-clause into his counter to the oft-cited “argument” about the expected proliferatory effects of Iran acquiring any kind of nuclear-weapons capability.
Israel’s large, existing, and very powerful nuclear arsenal is always the elephant in the room of any discussion in the U.S. about nuclear weapons in the Middle East. In just about every area of discourse in the U.S. power elite– both inside and outside government– there is nearly always a complete taboo on mentioning it, or taking it into any account at all.
So huge kudos to Zakaria for mentioning it. (And yes, the argument he made there about the prospects for onward proliferation is a good one.)
He also makes a very solid argument that– contra all those who say there is something uniquely disturbing about the prospect of the ‘mad mullahs of Tehran’ getting a nuclear weapon– in fact, Iran’s clerical elite is “canny (and ruthlessly pragmatic)” … and therefore, subject to the same calculi of deterrence as any other state power.
So how long will it be till the war-mongers start baying for Zakaria’s blood, as well, I wonder?

Hillary’s contortions on Iran

I don’t know if the Cirque du Soleil is accepting new applicants for starring roles, but Hillary Clinton certainly seems to have been going through great contortions in the arguments she’s been trying to make about Iran in recent days.
In the “Townterview” (!) that she held in Qatar yesterday, she was very evidently trying to build a case for U.S. intervention– quite possibly, including forced regime change– in Iran, based on the allegedly anti-democratic nature of recent developments in that country.
This was a supplement to the arguments the U.S. government has made for many years now, that it must “keep on the table” the “option” of launching a war against Iran based on the Tehran government’s alleged violations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT.)
Sound familiar?
Of course it is. This kind of slippery bait-and-switch regarding the casus belli on the basis of which Washington plans to launch a war of aggression against another sovereign country is exactly what we saw from George W. Bush (and his dreadful poodle, Tony Blair), in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq.
Then, as now, when it seemed that the arguments about the alleged “necessity” of going to war based solely on the arguments made about WMDs seemed unconvincing to many around the world (including the U.S.’s own citizens), the U.S. administration used feats of rhetorical legerdemain to try to claim that, well, just in case the WMDs arguments weren’t convincing enough, well then, how about those arguments concerning democratization and human rights?
What did Hillary actually say in Qatar?
She said,

Continue reading “Hillary’s contortions on Iran”

More signs of Mitchell’s sidelining

There’s been quite a bit of talk in the conference here about the way that George Mitchell has either been sidelined or has for other reasons faded from the scene. Of course, it’s not just Mitchell that has been sidelined, it’s the whole justice-based and vigorous U.S. pursuit of peace that his appointment back in January 2009 seemed to promise.
So today the NYT tells us that Sec. Clinton and three of her top aides are fanning out to the Middle East in a concerted campaign to–
…make a push for Palestinian-Israeli peace? No!
Rather, they’re trekking out to try to line regional leaders up behind the latest step in the (AIPAC- and Likud-driven) campaign to ratchet the pressure up inexorably against Iran.
And who are these envoys?
Well, there’s Hillary herself, who’s going to Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Then, there’s her Under-Secretary for political affairs, Bill Burns, who’s going to Syria.
And there are her two Deputy Secretaries, for Policy and Administration… James Steinberg (Policy) will be going to Israel, and Jacob Lew (Administration) will be going to Israel, Egypt, and Jordan.
And when was the last time we heard any major news about George Mitchell? (Yawn.)

A Grave View of US-Iran Relations

In some countries, mine included, today is remembered as “Veterans’ Day” or “Armistice Day.” Juan Cole sensibly wrote earlier today that “The most patriotic way to honor future veterans of foreign wars is not to create any unnecessarily.”
Fellow “Wahoo” and good friend Barin Kayaoglu, writing in the Turkish Weekly, goes a step deeper in considering the state of US-Iran nuclear negotiations.
Barin neatly anticipates the standard arguments from partisans on both sides, accusations of intransigence vs. bullying, terrorism vs. imperialism, then arguments over what to do, of all the reasons to be hard-headed, to fight the “necessary war.”
Barin trumps such verbal combat by considering the stakes from a very different vantage point, that of the grave. He takes us to the two sprawling national cemeteries of America and Iran, Arlington and Behesht-e Zahra. I’ve been to both; somber places where the two nations, where families, mourn their losses, the lives cut short. Barin concludes:

“The graves of fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters at these places are somber reminders of the real price of war.
So before Iranian and American policy-makers make up their mind about the next step, it would be humane for them to spend some time at Behesht-e Zahra and Arlington. Nothing can bring back the dead. But there is no good reason to start another Middle East war that would create new ones.”

Well said Barin. Amen.

Nozette: Pollard, 2.0?

So, Obama’s Justice Department has finally decided to play some degree of hardball with Israel?
Back in May, Obama’s Justice Department decided to back down on the indictment against AIPAC’s Steve Rosen.
Last month, Obama’s special peace envoy, George Mitchell, apparently decided to back down on pushing Netanyahu for “the settlement freeze.”
So make no mistake: This decision that the Justice Department announced today, to issue an indictment against a US citizen who was apparently quite ready to betray US national secrets to someone he thought to be an agent of the government of Israel, is a big development.
The Department of Justice website tells us that,

    A criminal complaint unsealed today in the District of Columbia charges Stewart David Nozette, 52, of Chevy Chase, Maryland, with attempted espionage for knowingly and willfully attempting to communicate, deliver, and transmit classified information relating to the national defense of the United States to an individual that Nozette believed to be an Israeli intelligence officer. The complaint does not allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf committed any offense under U.S. laws in this case.
    Nozette was arrested earlier today by FBI agents and is expected to make his initial appearance tomorrow in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.
    “The conduct alleged in this complaint is serious and should serve as a warning to anyone who would consider compromising our nation’s secrets for profit,” said David Kris, Assistant Attorney General for National Security.
    “Those who would put our nation’s defense secrets up for sale can expect to be vigorously prosecuted,” said Channing D. Phillips, Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. “This case reflects our firm resolve to hold accountable any individual who betrays the public trust by compromising our national security for his or her own personal gain.”
    …According to an affidavit in support of the criminal complaint, Nozette received a Ph.D. in Planetary Sciences from MIT in 1983, and worked at the White House on the National Space Council, Executive Office of the President, in 1989 and 1990. He developed the Clementine bi-static radar experiment that purportedly discovered water on the south pole of the moon. Nozette also worked at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from approximately 1990 to 1999 where he designed highly advanced technology. At the Department of Energy, Nozette held a special security clearance equivalent to the Defense Department Top Secret and Critical Nuclear Weapon Design Information clearances. Department of Energy clearances apply to access to information specifically relating to atomic or nuclear-related materials.
    … According to the affidavit, on Sept. 3, 2009, Nozette was contacted via telephone by an individual purporting to be an Israeli intelligence officer, but who was in fact an undercover employee of the FBI (UCE). During that call, Nozette agreed to meet with the UCE later that day at a hotel in Washington D.C. According to the affidavit, Nozette met with the UCE that day and discussed his willingness to work for Israeli intelligence.
    Nozette allegedly informed the UCE that he had, in the past, held top security clearances and had access to U.S. satellite information. Nozette also allegedly said that he would be willing to answer questions about this information in exchange for money. The UCE explained to Nozette that the Israeli intelligence agency, or “Mossad,” would arrange for a communication system so that Nozette could pass information to the Mossad in a post office box. Nozette agreed to provide regular, continuing information to the UCE and asked for an Israeli passport…

So, the formerly “permeable membrane” between the US strategic-scientific community and the Israeli strategic-scientific community, that had benefitted the Israeli community so much over the past 16 years, suddenly doesn’t look quite so permeable any more?
Interesting.
Significant too, of course, that the DOJ statement spelled out that, “The complaint does not allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf committed any offense under U.S. laws in this case.”
Also significant: that Nozette’s main motivation seems to have been monetary.
And of course, this:

    The public is reminded that a criminal complaint contains mere allegations and that every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

Absolutely. (I mean, isn’t that the same rule the US government applies when deciding whom to snuff out in the drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan??)