Category: US foreign policy

WaPo’s Kessler pulls punches on Ross

The WaPo’s Glenn Kessler had an article today in which he deals with the topic of Dennis Ross’s objectivity and the appropriateness of having this person, of all available people, acting as Sec. Clinton’s adviser on Iran and Gulf affairs.
It is good and notable, I guess, that this topic can even be raised by a journo in the MSM. For many years, almost no-one in the MSM would have dared even mention the criticisms that have surfaced against a leading Jewish-American public figure like Ross, for fear of being labeled anti-Semitic.
However, Kessler considerably pulls his punches in the article.
He makes no mention of the many questions that have been raised about Ross’s competence to arrive at any judgments about decisionmaking in Iran, a very complex country of whose affairs he has never previously demonstrated any detailed knowledge.
Though Kessler does mention Ross’s role as co-author with another WINEP person of the new book “Myths, Illusions and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East”, he doesn’t mention the fact that the book argued strongly against a key proposition propounded by his principals in the administration: namely that there is a strong link between Iran policy and Arab-Israeli peacemaking.
Also, in the book, Ross and Makovsky express a hard line toward Iran that can give the Iranian government ample reason to believe that a US leadership guided by Ross’s advice may only be undertaking diplomatic overtures to Tehran as a ruse, preparatory to launching a further escalation of its attacks against the Islamic Republic.
Finally, though Kessler does mention Ross’s role as a co-founder of a very hawkish US group called United Against Nuclear Iran, he mysteriously makes no mention of Ross’s just-relinquished role as founding President of the Jerusalem-based Jewish People’s Public Policy Institute (JPPPI). According to reports in the Israeli press, while Ross was still its president JPPPI was “tasked” by the Israeli government with doing some important strategic planning on its behalf.
Kessler also writes in deadpan vein, “Ross has written that his admiration for Israel has not hurt his effectiveness as a negotiator.” But he has apparently been quite unable to find a single Arab or Muslim person to corroborate that statement!
That part is pretty hilarious.
But I wish Kessler and his editors had been braver and published much more of the material that I am sure they have to hand that strengthens the judgment that this man is a quite unsuitable pick for the Iran-affairs advisory post in Hillary Clinton’s State Department.
Addition, 11:20 a.m.: I just read the article in the paper edition. It is still always easier for me to read texts on paper! What struck me on this read was this framing Kessler made in his fourth para of what “the issue” is around Ross:

    Ross is undertaking this assignment amid questions in Washington about whether he has sufficient clout in the nascent Obama administration. And in the Middle East, many officials view him as too pro-Israel, raising concerns about whether he is the right person for the job of coaxing the Islamic Republic of Iran.

I would say that seriously mischaracterizes the concerns here in Washington DC. Some people here doubtless have questions about whether he has enough clout in the administration– but I can tell you that many others– perhaps an even greater number!– question whether he too much clout. Worries on that score are not, as Kessler’s framing would have you believe, limited to the Middle East.

Newsweek: “Everything you know about Iran is Wrong”

Check out the June 1st Iran-focused issue of Newsweek, which audaciously proclaims, Everything you know about Iran is wrong. (unless, of course, you’re a regular jwn reader)
In editor Farheed Zakaria’s opening “bombshell,”

“Everything you know about Iran is wrong, or at least more complicated than you think. Take the bomb. The regime wants to be a nuclear power but could well be happy with a peaceful civilian program.”

Zakaria then briefly outlines why the Iranians might just be ready, for rational reasons on their own terms, to cut a nuclear deal. (See also Newsweek’s short interview with the IAEA’s Mohamed El-Baredei)
Along the way, Zakaria challenges a particularly virulent form of extremism, not in Iran, but within current Israeli propaganda about Iran:

“Iranians aren’t suicidal…. In an interview last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the Iranian regime as “a messianic, apocalyptic cult.” In fact, Iran has tended to behave in a shrewd, calculating manner, advancing its interests when possible, retreating when necessary….
[But] One of Netanyahu’s advisers said of Iran, “Think Amalek.” The Bible says that the Amalekites were dedicated enemies of the Jewish people. In 1 Samuel 15, God says, “Go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”

Zakari gently notes that, “were the president of Iran and his advisers to have cited a religious text that gave divine sanction for the annihilation of an entire race, they would be called, well, messianic.”
They’d also be prosecuted by Alan Dershowitz, John Bolton and friends for “incitement to genocide.” They might also be called…. jihadis.
My favorite article in the Newsweek collection is sub-titled, “A Journey through the Heart of Iran” by Hooman Majd. (author of “The Ayatollah Begs to Differ.”) Many of his vignettes remind me of my own journeys inside Iran last decade — many of which are found in “The Iranians.” Majd is quite right to observe that:

Continue reading “Newsweek: “Everything you know about Iran is Wrong””

My IPS piece on Netanyahu’s big meeting with Obama

… is here. Also here.
What I didn’t have the space to put in there were two things:
1. My judgment (as explored here before now) that Bibi might well throw out the bone of saying he’s prepared to engage with the idea of a Palestinian state… as a way of demonstrating his “flexibility”. But that he would still hedge this apparent acceptance of the idea around with so many caveats that it would be worthless and above all time-wasting. (As was the case in the 1990s when he finally agreed to make the “concession” of meeting with Arafat, etc.)
2. My disgust at the way so many western analysts and journos just lazily accept and perpetuate the US/Israeli spin that “the Arab world” is more concerned about the Iranian “threat” than they are with Israel and Palestine. In the case of the vast majority of Arab governments this simply isn’t so. Imagining that it is simply plays into Netanyahu’s “Iran first” agenda.

Advancing Security and Opportunity — US Style

The military effort to “advance security and opportunity, so that Pakistanis and Afghans can pursue the promise of a better life” is accelerating in both countries. It sounded good when President Obama said it at the White House:

    We meet today as three sovereign nations joined by a common goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda and its extremist allies in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their ability to operate in either country in the future. And to achieve that goal, we must deny them the space to threaten the Pakistani, Afghan, or American people. And we must also advance security and opportunity, so that Pakistanis and Afghans can pursue the promise of a better life.
    . . .But we must also meet the threat of extremism with a positive program of growth and opportunity. And that’s why my administration is working with members of Congress to create opportunity zones to spark development. That’s why I’m proud that we’ve helped advance negotiations towards landmark transit-trade agreements to open Afghanistan and Pakistan borders to more commerce.
    Within Afghanistan, we must help grow the economy, while developing alternatives to the drug trade by tapping the resilience and the ingenuity of the Afghan people. We must support free and open national elections later this fall, while helping to protect the hard-earned rights of all Afghans. And we must support the capacity of local governments and stand up to corruption that blocks progress
    . . .we must stand with those who want to build Pakistan. And that is why I’ve asked Congress for sustained funding, to build schools and roads and hospitals. I want the Pakistani people to understand that America is not simply against terrorism — we are on the side of their hopes and their aspirations, because we know that the future of Pakistan must be determined by the talent, innovation, and intelligence of its people.

Continue reading “Advancing Security and Opportunity — US Style”

Baskerville Q&A with Thomas M. Ricks

At the end of this morning’s entry about the centennial of Iran’s “American martyr,” I noted that Dr. Thomas M. Ricks was to discuss his forthcoming book about Howard Baskerville via a live global chat, hosted via the US State Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs. While the technology apparently didn’t cooperate, I am grateful to receive a raw transcript, prior to its formal publication.
With my own minor edits and a reordering of the topics, here are Ricks’ replies from today’s very interesting session. Topics covered include: How does Ricks know so much about Baskerville, and how is he studying him? Was Baskerville an idealist? How important was he? Might Baskerville even now be a bridge between Iran and the US?
Ricks describes his project:

[Baskerville] is the subject of my present research which should be completed this fall and resulting in a book. In doing this history work, I have come to realize how many ways we are affected by the world around us, the joys and sufferings people undergo, and the ways people solve problems. Baskerville was very affable young man and may I be so bold as to say an excellent ambassador of many of our American ideals and bravery. He truly enjoyed his life in Tabriz and lived life to its fullest.”

Question: “Is Mr. Baskerville a martyr, a hero, or an “example”?

Thomas M. Ricks: “I believe that Baskerville shows us Americans the potentially good role we as a people may pursue with the “other” people of the world. He is an excellent example, in my mind, of our own ideals (he says so himself) of commitment to just and progressive causes in the name of the majority (environmental issues, human and civil rights of women and children, etc.), rather than supporting the myriad of hard liners and global tough guys. Baskerville was motivated as much by his commitment to the Presbyterian mission spirit of public service as he was by his own reading of French and modern US history and the aspirations (and political culture) of his family and the atmosphere in the 1900s when there were so many diverse actions and political positions in the US.”

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More on Jane Harman, high-ranking pro-Israel mole?

Just how deeply have the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC and its longtime backers and contacts in the Israeli securocracy wormed their way into the heart of US national decisionmaking? Considerable new evidence on this is provided in this important piece of reporting by Congressional Quarterly‘s Jeff Stein yesterday. (HT: The Arabist.)
Stein’s important scoop is about a series of moves that the high-ranking and strongly pro-Israeli California Congresswoman Jane Harman made in response to a telephonic appeal from an un-named “suspected Israeli agent” that she intervene politically to get the Justice department to reduce the charges against the two accused AIPAC spies, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman.
Stein writes,

    Harman was recorded saying she would “waddle into” the AIPAC case “if you think it’ll make a difference,” according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript.
    In exchange for Harman’s help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections, which the Democrats were heavily favored to win.
    Seemingly wary of what she had just agreed to… Harman hung up after saying, “This conversation doesn’t exist.”

Ah, but what she didn’t know was that the call was being wiretapped and recorded under the NSA’s wiretap program… And now, someone has leaked the transcript of that call to Stein.
Jane Harman is no ordinary member of congress. She was at the time, as the Stein piece notes, poised to become the leading Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, and thus privy to many kinds of intelligence that are not shared with ordinary members of congress– far less the citizenry.
It also meant she had powerful working relationships with members of the US securocracy and growing input into their decisions.
After the NSA overheard her saying she would intervene to try to save Rosen and Weissman’s skins, they and CIA head Porter Goss opened an investigation into her actions (the previous wiretap having been only into the conversations engaged in by her interlocutor.)
Stein writes:

    And they were prepared to open a case on her, which would include electronic surveillance approved by the so-called FISA Court, the secret panel established by the 1979 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to hear government wiretap requests.
    First, however, they needed the certification of top intelligence officials that Harman’s wiretapped conversations justified a national security investigation.
    Then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss reviewed the Harman transcript and signed off on the Justice Department’s FISA application. He also decided that, under a protocol involving the separation of powers, it was time to notify then-House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Minority Leader Pelosi, of the FBI’s impending national security investigation of a member of Congress — to wit, Harman.
    Goss, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, deemed the matter particularly urgent because of Harman’s rank as the panel’s top Democrat.
    But that’s when, according to knowledgeable officials, Attorney General Gonzales intervened.
    According to two officials privy to the events, Gonzales said he “needed Jane” to help support the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was about to be exposed by the New York Times.
    Harman, he told Goss, had helped persuade the newspaper to hold the wiretap story before, on the eve of the 2004 elections. And although it was too late to stop the Times from publishing now, she could be counted on again to help defend the program.
    He was right.
    On Dec. 21, 2005, in the midst of a firestorm of criticism about the wiretaps, Harman issued a statement defending the operation and slamming the Times, saying, “I believe it essential to U.S. national security, and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities.”
    Pelosi and Hastert never did get the briefing.

(The irony there was that Harman intervened strongly to defend the very wiretapping program that– whether she knew it at the time or not– had started to establish a pretty strong record of her own misdeeds.)
A year later, in November 2006, the Dems won control of the House– and Jane Harman, by then the Minority (Democratic) Leader on the Intelligence Committee was on the point of becoming its Chair. However, something evidently happened at that point that persuaded the powerful Pelosi that this would be a bad idea. Stein does not say what that something was. Rep. Sylvestre Reyes (Texas) became Chair instead.
Today, indeed, Harman is no longer even on the House Intelligence Committee.
This indicates to me that the extreme permeability to Israeli influence of many of the US’s leading national-security decisionmaking bodies that we saw during the early years of the Bush administration (and before that, during much of the Clinton administration) has slowly started to be rolled back in the past 2-3 years.
That early-Bush-era permeability– as manifested in the extremely strong influence of hawkish pro-Israelis in the Rumsfeld Defense Department, in Cheney’s office, and also, certainly in Congress– helped to feed completely skewed disinformation into the pre-2003 decisionmaking process over Iraq, and thus played a huge role in jerking our government into launching that mega-lethal and extremely ill-considered military aggression.
Now, today’s big “question” is whether the US will either launch a military attack against Iran or give Israel the permission it certainly needs if it is to use US assets and support to do launch one in its own name.
Might US decisionmaking once again be so permeable to Israeli disinformation and manipulation that Washington could get jerked into launching or allowing another ill-considered war– one that, this time, would draw our already overstretched military directly into a shooting war with a non-trivial and extremely sensitively located regional power?
This clearly is something that all US citizens have a strong interest in preventing. So the more we know about previous attempts by the Israeli securocrats to distort our country’s security-affairs decisionmaking, the better.
Huge kudos to CQ for publishing this story. I hope we see a lot more reportorial resources devoted to follow-up stories about all aspects of it.
But one last big question: Why, once again, do we see the WaPo and the NYT completely ignoring this important story, which CQ broke yesterday and should therefore have been in today’s editions of both papers?

The Devil Made Us Do It

The Devil, like the Lord, works in mysterious ways.

    ARLINGTON, Wash. (AP) – A woman accused of taking more than $73,000 from the Arlington church where she was an administrative assistant blames the devil.
    Papers filed with a theft charge Wednesday in Snohomish County Superior Court say Collen R. Okeson told detectives she guessed “Satan had a big part in the theft.”

When it comes to stealing money from the peoples’ till, the United States government has its own Satan. Currently for the US it’s al-Qaeda and the guy in the cave, Osama bin Laden.
President Obama is waving the trusty 9/11 flag just as President Bush did. He mentioned al-Qaeda fifteen times in his recent Afghanistan speech, including:

    “So let me be clear: al-Qaeda and its allies – the terrorists who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks – are in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Multiple intelligence estimates have warned that al-Qaeda is actively planning attacks on the U.S. homeland from its safe-haven in Pakistan. And if the Afghan government falls to the Taliban – or allows al-Qaeda to go unchallenged – that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can.”

Continue reading “The Devil Made Us Do It”

US security mandarins urge action on Palestine peace

Two important op-eds in the major US MSM today.
In this one in the NYT, Roger Cohen reports on a new initiative in which ten significant American national-security mandarins have now spelled out the steps they urge Pres. Obama speedily to take, to win a sustainable two-state solution to the Palestine-Israel conflict.
The ten include Brent Scowcroft and Zbig Brzezinski, along with Lee Hamilton, Chuck Hagel, Tom Pickering, and other luminaries.
The web version of Cohen’s piece has a link to the PDF of the whole policy paper the ten have now handed to Obama, via group member Paul Volcker, who is a key Obama economic adviser (and former Chairman of the Fed.)
Cohen writes that he believes that the paper’s approach is also generally in line with that of national security adviser Gen. Jim Jones,who has considerable familiarity with Palestinian issues, as well as special envoy George Mitchell.
The paper urges speedy US intervention in the diplomacy including the articulation of a specifically American vision of the outcome.
It also urges what it describes as A More Pragmatic Approach Toward Hamas and a Palestinian Unity Government, as follows:

    A legitimate, unified and empowered Palestinian side to negotiate with Israel is of importance if any agreement is to be reached and implemented. Direct U.S. engagement with Hamas may not now be practical, but shutting out the movement and isolating Gaza has only made it stronger and Fatah weaker. Israel itself has acknowledged Hamas is simply too important and powerful to be ignored.
    In brief, shift the U.S. objective from ousting Hamas to modifying its behavior, offer it inducements that will enable its more moderate elements to prevail, and cease discouraging third parties from engaging with Hamas in ways that might help clarify the movement’s views and test its behavior.
    Finally, cease discouraging Palestinian national reconciliation and make clear that a government that agrees to a ceasefire with Israel, accepts President Mahmoud Abbas as the chief negotiator, and commits to abiding by the results of a national referendum on a future peace agreement would not be boycotted or sanctioned.

In his article, Cohen explains that Henry Siegman, the now London-based American figure who has organized this initiative, recently traveled to Damascus to meet Hamas head Khaled Meshaal:

    Meshal told him, and put in writing, that although Hamas would not recognize Israel, it would remain in a Palestinian national unity government that reached a referendum-endorsed peace settlement with Israel.
    De facto, rather than de jure, recognition can be a basis for a constructive relationship, as Israel knows from the mutual benefits of its shah-era dealings with Iran.
    Israeli governments have negotiated a two-state solution although they included religious parties that do not recognize Palestinians’ right to statehood.
    “But,” Siegman said, “if moderates within Hamas are to prevail, a payoff is needed for their moderation. And until the U.S. provides one, there will be no Palestinian unity government.”

Some parts of the Group of 10’s detailed proposal seem highly unlikely to be workable, including the idea that for 15 years after the signing of a peace agreement a US-led NATO force supplemented with forces from other countries including Israel should be responsible for security in the demilitarized Palestinian state.
But the urgency expressed in the proposal and the way it proposes finding a way to include Hamas in the diplomacy both seem excellent.
… Meantime, over in the WaPo, David Ignatius has a piece on a small but significant subset of the “problem” of the US’s current stance on matters Palestinian. Namely the fact that numerous organizations based in the US and registered with US tax authorities as “philanthropies” have in fact been funneling huge amounts of money into Israel’s completely illegal settlement-building project in the occupied territories over the past decades.
As David points out, official US aid monies cannot in general be used by Israel on its settlement projects in the occupied territories. But the US “charities” that are supporting Israeli settlements get a tax break from the IRS because of their charitable status; so the amount of that tax break is in effect being contributed to the recipients by the US taxpayer.

Jewish American opinion evolving on Palestine

The progressive Jewish lobbying group J Street has published the results of a new nationwide poll it conducted of Jewish Americans between February 28 and March 8.
The poll had some encouraging results. J Street’s own press release about it highlighted the following findings:

    * American Jews remain remarkably supportive of assertive American efforts to achieve Middle East peace. The poll finds an extraordinarily strong base of 69 percent of American Jews firmly supporting active American engagement in bringing about Middle East peace, even if it means publicly disagreeing with or exerting pressure on both Arabs and Israelis, compared to 66 percent eight months ago;
    * 69 percent also support the U.S. working with a unified Hamas-Fatah Palestinian Authority government to achieve a peace agreement with Israel, even when informed that the U.S. does not recognize Hamas due to its status as a terrorist organization and its refusal to recognize Israel. Interestingly, a March poll conducted by the Truman Institute at Hebrew University reported that 69 percent of Israelis also think Israel should negotiate with a joint Hamas-Fatah government;
    * By 76-24 percent, American Jews support a two-state, final status deal between Israel and the Palestinians along the lines of the agreement nearly reached eight years ago during the Camp David and Taba talks;
    * On Avigdor Lieberman: When told about Lieberman’s campaign platform requiring Arab citizens of Israel to sign loyalty oaths, as well as his threats against Arab Members of Knesset, American Jews opposed these positions by a 69 to 31 margin. One in three believe their own connection to Israel will be diminished if Lieberman assumes a senior position in the Israeli cabinet.
    * On Gaza: While Jews rallied behind Israel and approved of Israel’s military action by a 3 to 1 margin, 59 percent still felt that the military action had no impact on Israel’s security (41 percent) or made Israel less secure (18 percent), while only 41 percent felt it made Israel more secure.

To me, the second of these findings is the most significant. It means that if Obama and his envoy sen. Mitchell move quickly and surefootedly toward including Hamas in the search for calming, de-escalation, and a speedy final resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict, he can expect to rally significant support for this approach from within the US Jewish community.
Of course, an inclusive policy such as this could also be expected to arouse the ire of most of the old hard-line organizations that like to portray themselves as representatives of the “mainstream” US Jewish community. But guess what. The “main” stream has been trickling out of its old tired stream-bed for some time now and carving out its own much more principled and humane way of looking at Middle east peace issues.
Also highly relevant in this context: The notably positive tone of Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal’s recent statements about Pres. Obama— as reported here.
I have the full text of that interview bookmarked someplace. But it is also significant that it’s being featured in that way on the pro-Hamas PIC website today.
In fact Meshaal’s reactions to Obama are much warmer than those of Iranian Supreme Guide Khamene’i.
(Some people believe– and argue– that Meshaal, being based in Damascus, is more hardline than the Hamas leaders on the ground inside Gaza or the West Bank. This is absolutely not true. In some respects he is more ready to be politically flexible than they are. Plus, he is the overall leader and inside the organization his word is the gold standard.)