Zbigniew Brzezinski and William Odom - A Sensible Path on Iran - washingtonpost.com

 

A Sensible Path on Iran

By Zbigniew Brzezinski and William Odom

Tuesday, May 27, 2008; Page A13

Current U.S. policy toward the regime in Tehran will almost certainly result in an Iran with nuclear weapons. The seemingly clever combination of the use of "sticks" and "carrots," including the frequent official hints of an American military option "remaining on the table," simply intensifies Iran's desire to have its own nuclear arsenal. Alas, such a heavy-handed "sticks" and "carrots" policy may work with donkeys but not with serious countries. The United States would have a better chance of success if the White House abandoned its threats of military action and its calls for regime change.

Consider countries that could have quickly become nuclear weapon states had they been treated similarly. Brazil, Argentina and South Africa had nuclear weapons programs but gave them up, each for different reasons. Had the United States threatened to change their regimes if they would not, probably none would have complied. But when "sticks" and "carrots" failed to prevent India and Pakistan from acquiring nuclear weapons, the United States rapidly accommodated both, preferring good relations with them to hostile ones. What does this suggest to leaders in Iran?

To look at the issue another way, imagine if China, a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a country that has deliberately not engaged in a nuclear arms race with Russia or the United States, threatened to change the American regime if it did not begin a steady destruction of its nuclear arsenal. The threat would have an arguable legal basis, because all treaty signatories promised long ago to reduce their arsenals, eventually to zero. The American reaction, of course, would be explosive public opposition to such a demand. U.S. leaders might even mimic the fantasy rhetoric of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regarding the use of nuclear weapons.

A successful approach to Iran has to accommodate its security interests and ours. Neither a U.S. air attack on Iranian nuclear facilities nor a less effective Israeli one could do more than merely set back Iran's nuclear program. In either case, the United States would be held accountable and would have to pay the price resulting from likely Iranian reactions. These would almost certainly involve destabilizing the Middle East, as well as Afghanistan, and serious efforts to disrupt the flow of oil, at the very least generating a massive increase in its already high cost. The turmoil in the Middle East resulting from a preemptive attack on Iran would hurt America and eventually Israel, too.

Given Iran's stated goals -- a nuclear power capability but not nuclear weapons, as well as an alleged desire to discuss broader U.S.-Iranian security issues -- a realistic policy would exploit this opening to see what it might yield. The United States could indicate that it is prepared to negotiate, either on the basis of no preconditions by either side (though retaining the right to terminate the negotiations if Iran remains unyielding but begins to enrich its uranium beyond levels allowed by the Non-Proliferation Treaty); or to negotiate on the basis of an Iranian willingness to suspend enrichment in return for simultaneous U.S. suspension of major economic and financial sanctions.

Such a broader and more flexible approach would increase the prospects of an international arrangement being devised to accommodate Iran's desire for an autonomous nuclear energy program while minimizing the possibility that it could be rapidly transformed into a nuclear weapons program. Moreover, there is no credible reason to assume that the traditional policy of strategic deterrence, which worked so well in U.S. relations with the Soviet Union and with China and which has helped to stabilize India-Pakistan hostility, would not work in the case of Iran. The widely propagated notion of a suicidal Iran detonating its very first nuclear weapon against Israel is more the product of paranoia or demagogy than of serious strategic calculus. It cannot be the basis for U.S. policy, and it should not be for Israel's, either.

An additional longer-range benefit of such a dramatically different diplomatic approach is that it could help bring Iran back into its traditional role of strategic cooperation with the United States in stabilizing the Gulf region. Eventually, Iran could even return to its long-standing and geopolitically natural pre-1979 policy of cooperative relations with Israel. One should note also in this connection Iranian hostility toward al-Qaeda, lately intensified by al-Qaeda's Web-based campaign urging a U.S.-Iranian war, which could both weaken what al-Qaeda views as Iran's apostate Shiite regime and bog America down in a prolonged regional conflict.

Last but not least, consider that American sanctions have been deliberately obstructing Iran's efforts to increase its oil and natural gas outputs. That has contributed to the rising cost of energy. An eventual American-Iranian accommodation would significantly increase the flow of Iranian energy to the world market. Americans doubtless would prefer to pay less for filling their gas tanks than having to pay much more to finance a wider conflict in the Persian Gulf.

Zbigniew Brzezinski was national security adviser in the Carter administration and is the author, most recently, of "Second Chance." William Odom, a retired Army lieutenant general, is a former director of the National Security Agency. Both are affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Zbigniew Brzezinski and William Odom - A Sensible Path on Iran - washingtonpost.com

Israel banging (U.S.) war drums - Middle East Times

 

Israel banging (U.S.) war drums

By MEL FRYKBERG (Middle East Times )

Published: May 20, 2008

U.S. President George W. Bush rides an Israeli-made bicycle presented to him by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on May 15. Bush was on a three-day visit to Israel to mark and celebrate the 60th anniversary of the country's foundation. (Balkis Press/ABACAPRESS.COM via Newscom)

JERUSALEM -- During the visit of U.S. President George W. Bush to Israel last week, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ensured that the Iranian nuclear dossier would be one of the main items on the discussion agenda. The prime minister urged Bush that further action was necessary to thwart what Israel and many in the West perceive as a rising threat to their national security: Iran's nuclear program.

According to a spokesman for Olmert, both countries agreed on the need for "tangible action" to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

"We are on the same page. We both see the threat.... And we both understand that tangible action is required to prevent the Iranians from moving forward on a nuclear weapon," Olmert spokesman Mark Regev told the Israeli daily Ha'aretz.

Regev described diplomatic efforts so far to exert pressure on Iran as "positive," but added, "It is clearly not sufficient and it's clear that additional steps will have to be taken."

Asked about the option of using military force, Regev said: "Leaders of many countries have talked about many options being on the table and, of course, Israel agrees with that."

Following the discussions and the mutual conclusions reached between Israeli officials and Bush, the officials expressed their full satisfaction with the talks saying that Bush had asserted that his statements on the subject would be backed in practice.

The Israelis had presented Bush with what they claim is "evidence", in the form of data, of an existential threat that Iran poses to the Jewish state. They hope that this will strongly influence the U.S. administration on Bush's return after he promised to discuss the issue with security officials.

This had followed talks Olmert had had with Bush last year during a visit to the United States where the Israeli premier had expressed concern and disappointment over a National Intelligence Estimate's report by U.S. intelligence which had stated that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program.

Award winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersch first disclosed details of U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley misleading reporters by stating that Bush had first been briefed on the intelligence report on Nov. 28 last year.

In fact, Bush had known about the report's assessment at least two days earlier when he had discussed it in private with Olmert, according to Hersch.

This has led some commentators to comment that Israel and the United States are in cahoots with regard to setting the stage for a possible military strike on Iran by building an atmosphere which would justify such a strike.

However, several political analysts interviewed for this report told the Middle East Times that they do not believe Iran poses an existential threat to either Israel or the United States. They added that there are diplomatic means at the disposal of the two countries which would weaken Iran's influence and those of its proxies in the region.

These proxies: Syria, Hezbollah – and Hamas which has received both financial and military support from Iran – are regarded as a major threat by Israel.

Moshe Ma'oz an Israeli professor emeritus of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and senior fellow at the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, said he doubted very much that Iran would attack first and would only counterattack if hit first.

"Furthermore, Iran could use blocking the Straits of Hormuz, thereby threatening the West's supply of oil, as leverage without having to resort to nuclear weapons as a first resort as this would ensure mutual destruction," Ma'oz told the Middle East Times.

He also explained that there was some justification for Iran's nuclear program after the unprovoked attack by Iraq in the 1980s. There is also Iran's legitimate fear of an attack by the United States, especially in light of the invasion of Iraq on false pretexts of weapons of mass destruction.

The key to a diplomatic breakthrough is weakening Iran's influence through its proxies in the region, Syria and Hezbollah. Syria's ties to the Shia crescent of Iran and Hezbollah could be broken if there was serious intervention by Washington in regard to pressuring Israel to return the Golan Heights.

"Syria uses this alliance to strengthen its hand politically against the regional hegemony of a Sunni leadership comprising Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and the Gulf states, as well as a way of pressuring Israel to return annexed land," explained Mo'az.

He added that weakening this crescent was possible, as the countries of the crescent had common interests; but also significant differences based on national interests, as opposed to the establishment of a new Islamic caliphate.

Samir Awad, the chairman of the Faculty of Law & Public Administration at Birzeit University's Political Science Department on the West Bank, concurred, and told the Middle East Times that weakening the crescent would also involve Israel establishing quiet on its northern borders by reaching a deal with Hezbollah.

This would include a comprehensive prisoner swap and the return of the Shebaa farms, as Israelis have no religious or ideological ties to Lebanon, Awad explained.

But the danger remains in the U.S. administration being more interested in the Sunni alliance exerting pressure on Syria than coaxing the latter away from the Shia crescent, Awad said.

And as the United States appears disinterested in exerting real pressure on Israel to return Syrian land, cease settlement building and land expropriation in the West Bank, or to discuss the right of return of Palestinian refugees and East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state, Hamas continues to grow stronger.

Simultaneously, while both Israel and the United States continue to up the ante and rhetoric against Iran, the banging of war drums grows louder.

Israel banging (U.S.) war drums - Middle East Times

Worldview: Bush slams the talks his team fosters | Philadelphia Inquirer | 05/18/2008

 

Worldview: Bush slams the talks his team fosters

By Trudy Rubin

Inquirer Opinion Columnist

I guess President Bush must think Defense Secretary Bob Gates is an appeaser of terrorists. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, too. And U.S. Ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker, as well.

What else is one to conclude from the president's remarks Thursday at the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem, where he proclaimed: "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them." After a reference to Nazi tanks rolling into Poland, the president continued: "We have an obligation to call this what it is - the false comfort of appeasement."

No doubt Bush's jab was aimed at Sen. Barack Obama, who has called for unconditional talks with Tehran. Yet Bush's own team seems as interested in broad talks with Iran as the senator from Illinois.

Last week, Gates told the American Academy of Diplomacy: "We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage with respect to the Iranians and then sit down and talk with them."

In January, Rice - speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland - said that, if Tehran would halt its uranium-enrichment program, she'd meet her Iranian counterpart "any place, any time, anywhere to talk about anything." And Crocker, on instructions from Washington, has held three meetings with Iran's ambassador to Baghdad.

So is the president going to oust his top foreign policy team? Of course not. In a stunning display of chutzpah, Bush compares Obama to Neville Chamberlain, but hasn't banned his own team from talking with representatives of Iran.

What makes the president's remarks even more hypocritical is the abject failure of his own Iran policy. No one has strengthened Iran's hand more in the Mideast than George W. Bush.

The Bush team totally failed to foresee that the ouster of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein - the two key enemies of Iran's ayatollahs - would make Tehran the strongest player in the region. Nor did the U.S. team grasp how much influence Iran would inevitably wield with a Shiite-led government in Iraq.

In 2003, when the United States was operating from strength and Iran's leadership was more moderate, senior officials in Tehran put out feelers for negotiations. The Iranians were willing to include their stance toward the Jewish state on the agenda. These overtures were ignored by the administration.

"One of the questions that I think historians will have to take a look at," Gates said last week, "is whether there was a missed opportunity at that time." Instead, Bush talked of the "axis of evil" and Iran regime change.

Since then, with the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president, Iran's position has hardened. Its support for Hezbollah and Hamas gives it huge and disturbing influence in Lebanon and Gaza. Iran has continued enriching uranium, which most experts say they believe is aimed at giving it the capacity to make nuclear weapons. And soaring oil prices have made it more resistant to international economic sanctions.

Bush has backed himself into a corner where U.S. options and leverage are shrinking. The U.S. military dreads the war option - bombing Iranian military or nuclear-enrichment facilities. Why? Because it would only delay, not end, Iran's nuclear program, while strengthening the regime and radical Islamists in the region. It would also undermine our position inside Iraq.

Faced with this impasse, Bush did an Obama last year - he OKd the concept of U.S. talks with Tehran. But he did it in a halfhearted way bound to fail.

Talks for talks' sake mean nothing. The only talks that make sense would be those that figured out what we had that Iran wanted. In other words, a serious economic and diplomatic package that would test whether there are still pragmatists in the regime who want to integrate Iran into the wider world.

Obviously, U.S. security concerns would be on the table: the nuclear issue, Israel, Lebanon and Iraq. But, as Gates put it cogently last week: "If there's going to be a discussion, then they need something, too. We can't go to a discussion and be completely the demander with them."

Maybe such talks would go nowhere. Maybe what could have worked in 2004 is no longer possible, and the next president will have to abandon that option. But we will never know until we try.

That's what Obama has recognized.

What's so bizarre about Bush's high moral dudgeon on Iran talks is that he abandoned this principle when it came to North Korea. After years of a failed policy that enabled leader Kim Jong Il to produce more nuclear weapons, Bush finally opted for talks that have produced some results. This although Kim is a mass murderer whose policies have starved hundreds of thousands to death.

Sen. John McCain's outrage over the idea of Iran talks is equally hypocritical. He managed last week to put forward a dream of how he would "win" the Iraq war by 2013 that never mentioned Iraq's Persian neighbor. Yet there is no way Iraq can be stabilized and U.S. troops withdrawn safely without the cooperation of Tehran. McCain is fooling himself and the public if he thinks he can avoid the issue of talks.

If McCain is elected, he'll quickly realize that force cannot be his only option with Iran. As Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said recently to the Washington Post: "I'm a big believer in resolving this [the Iran issue] diplomatically, economically and politically." Mullen said the military aspect, while important, should be an option of "last resort."

My bet is that McCain would quickly shift positions in office. After all, he once said we had to deal with Hamas, even though he now tries to push the canard that Obama sympathizes with Hamas.

As for Obama, he would be smarter to focus on Iran talks without preconditions, and drop talk of meeting Ahmadinejad. In the Iranian system, Ahmadinejad is not the top leader, and his inflammatory rhetoric makes it hard to contemplate a profitable tete-a-tete.

"What I have said consistently is that we should have direct talks with Iran without preconditions but not without preparation," Obama told the Inquirer editorial board last month. He spoke of starting with "lower-level diplomats" and working up "to more substantial discussions."

That is a commonsense approach that reflects America's security interests.

Bush should stop linking Obama's approach to a Munich syndrome - unless, that is, he wants to smear his own foreign policy and his own team.

Worldview: Bush slams the talks his team fosters | Philadelphia Inquirer | 05/18/2008

The New Cold War - New York Times

 

The New Cold War

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: May 14, 2008

The next American president will inherit many foreign policy challenges, but surely one of the biggest will be the cold war. Yes, the next president is going to be a cold-war president — but this cold war is with Iran.

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Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Thomas L. Friedman

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That is the real umbrella story in the Middle East today — the struggle for influence across the region, with America and its Sunni Arab allies (and Israel) versus Iran, Syria and their non-state allies, Hamas and Hezbollah. As the May 11 editorial in the Iranian daily Kayhan put it, “In the power struggle in the Middle East, there are only two sides: Iran and the U.S.”

For now, Team America is losing on just about every front. How come? The short answer is that Iran is smart and ruthless, America is dumb and weak, and the Sunni Arab world is feckless and divided. Any other questions?

The outrage of the week is the Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah attempt to take over Lebanon. Hezbollah thugs pushed into Sunni neighborhoods in West Beirut, focusing particular attention on crushing progressive news outlets like Future TV, so Hezbollah’s propaganda machine could dominate the airwaves. The Shiite militia Hezbollah emerged supposedly to protect Lebanon from Israel. Having done that, it has now turned around and sold Lebanon to Syria and Iran.

All of this is part of what Ehud Yaari, one of Israel’s best Middle East watchers, calls “Pax Iranica.” In his April 28 column in The Jerusalem Report, Mr. Yaari pointed out the web of influence that Iran has built around the Middle East — from the sway it has over Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, to its ability to manipulate virtually all the Shiite militias in Iraq, to its building up of Hezbollah into a force — with 40,000 rockets — that can control Lebanon and threaten Israel should it think of striking Tehran, to its ability to strengthen Hamas in Gaza and block any U.S.-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian peace.

“Simply put,” noted Mr. Yaari, “Tehran has created a situation in which anyone who wants to attack its atomic facilities will have to take into account that this will lead to bitter fighting” on the Lebanese, Palestinian, Iraqi and Persian Gulf fronts. That is a sophisticated strategy of deterrence.

The Bush team, by contrast, in eight years has managed to put America in the unique position in the Middle East where it is “not liked, not feared and not respected,” writes Aaron David Miller, a former Mideast negotiator under both Republican and Democratic administrations, in his provocative new book on the peace process, titled “The Much Too Promised Land.”

“We stumbled for eight years under Bill Clinton over how to make peace in the Middle East, and then we stumbled for eight years under George Bush over how to make war there,” said Mr. Miller, and the result is “an America that is trapped in a region which it cannot fix and it cannot abandon.”

Look at the last few months, he said: President Bush went to the Middle East in January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went in February, Vice President Dick Cheney went in March, the secretary of state went again in April, and the president is there again this week. After all that, oil prices are as high as ever and peace prospects as low as ever. As Mr. Miller puts it, America right now “cannot defeat, co-opt or contain” any of the key players in the region.

The big debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is over whether or not we should talk to Iran. Obama is in favor; Clinton has been against. Alas, the right question for the next president isn’t whether we talk or don’t talk. It’s whether we have leverage or don’t have leverage.

When you have leverage, talk. When you don’t have leverage, get some — by creating economic, diplomatic or military incentives and pressures that the other side finds too tempting or frightening to ignore. That is where the Bush team has been so incompetent vis-à-vis Iran.

The only weaker party is the Sunni Arab world, which is either so drunk on oil it thinks it can buy its way out of any Iranian challenge or is so divided it can’t make a fist to protect its own interests — or both.

We’re not going to war with Iran, nor should we. But it is sad to see America and its Arab friends so weak they can’t prevent one of the last corners of decency, pluralism and openness in the Arab world from being snuffed out by Iran and Syria. The only thing that gives me succor is the knowledge that anyone who has ever tried to dominate Lebanon alone — Maronites, Palestinians, Syrians, Israelis — has triggered a backlash and failed.

“Lebanon is not a place anyone can control without a consensus, without bringing everybody in,” said the Lebanese columnist Michael Young. “Lebanon has been a graveyard for people with grand projects.” In the Middle East, he added, your enemies always seem to “find a way of joining together and suddenly making things very difficult for you.”

The New Cold War - New York Times

Gates: U.S. Should Engage Iran With Incentives, Pressure - washingtonpost.com

 

Gates: U.S. Should Engage Iran With Incentives, Pressure

 

» Links to this article

By Karen DeYoung

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 15, 2008; Page A04

The United States should construct a combination of incentives and pressure to engage Iran, and may have missed earlier opportunities to begin a useful dialogue with Tehran, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday.

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"We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage . . . and then sit down and talk with them," Gates said. "If there is going to be a discussion, then they need something, too. We can't go to a discussion and be completely the demander, with them not feeling that they need anything from us."

In the meantime, Gates told a meeting of the Academy of American Diplomacy, a group of retired diplomats, "my personal view would be we ought to look for ways outside of government to open up the channels and get more of a flow of people back and forth." Noting that "a fair number" of Iranians regularly visit the United States, he said, "We ought to increase the flow the other way . . . of Americans" visiting Iran.

"I think that may be the one opening that creates some space," Gates said.

The Bush administration has said it will talk with Iran, and consider lifting economic and other sanctions, only if Iran ends a uranium enrichment program the administration maintains is intended to produce nuclear weapons, a charge Iran denies. Although the U.S. and Iranian ambassadors to Baghdad met three times last year for discussions on Iraq, Iran has refused to continue that dialogue.

Others, including Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who is running for president, have said that talks with Iran on a range of issues might be useful.

Gates publicly favored engagement with Iran before taking his current job in late 2006. In 2004, he co-authored a Council on Foreign Relations report titled "Iran: Time for a New Approach." At the time, he explained yesterday, "we were looking at a different Iran in many respects" under then-President Mohammad Khatami. Tehran's role in Iraq was "fairly ambivalent," he said. "They were doing some things that were not helpful, but they were also doing some things that were helpful."

"One of the things that I think historians will have to take a look at is whether there was a missed opportunity at that time," Gates said. Khatami was replaced in 2005 by hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Gates was also a member of the bipartisan 2006 Iraq Study Group, which advocated reaching out to Iran. He resigned from the group when President Bush nominated him as defense secretary in November that year; the report was published on Dec. 6, the day of his confirmation.

The administration charges that Iran is now deeply engaged in training and arming Shiite militias fighting U.S. troops in Iraq. In his remarks yesterday, Gates said evidence to that effect is "very unambiguous."

But, he said, "I sort of sign up" with New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, who wrote yesterday that the "right question" for the United States is not whether to talk with Iran but "whether we have leverage or don't have leverage."

"When you have leverage, talk," Friedman advised. "When you don't have leverage, get some -- by creating economic, diplomatic or military incentives and pressures that the other side finds too tempting or frightening to ignore. That is where the Bush team has been so incompetent vis-à-vis Iran."

A number of senior U.S. military officials have emphasized the need for robust diplomacy toward Iran, while not ruling out the use of force. "I'm a big believer in resolving this diplomatically, economically and politically," Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a recent interview with The Washington Post. "The military aspect of this, which I think is a very important part of the equation and must stay on the table," Mullen said, is an option of "last resort."

Gates said yesterday that the U.S. military remained "stretched" by deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, although he said that all service branches had met their recruitment and retention goals last month. "There is no doubt that . . . we would be very hard-pressed to fight another major conventional war right now," he said. "But where would we sensibly do that, anyway?"

Future conflicts, Gates said, will be asymmetric. "Other countries are not going to come at us in a conventional war."

Gates: U.S. Should Engage Iran With Incentives, Pressure - washingtonpost.com

Pastor who backed McCain apologizes for remarks | Reuters

Hagee apologizes to catholic for cal.ling them "great whole" but stands on his view about Muslims and Islam

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) - A Texas evangelical leader who endorsed Republican presidential candidate John McCain earlier this year has apologized for anti-Catholic remarks that angered Church members and embarrassed McCain's campaign.

John Hagee, pastor of the 19,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, wrote a letter of apology to the Catholic League on Monday for comments in which he called the Church "apostate" and likened it to the "great whore" in a passage of the Bible.

Hagee's comments, which circulated on the Internet, drew comparisons with the controversy surrounding Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama over statements by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

McCain, who accepted Hagee's endorsement before the Texas primary in March, had faced a call by Catholic League President William Donohue to repudiate the pastor, who, he said, had "a history of denigrating the Catholic religion."

Hagee said in the letter to Donohue made public on Tuesday that he now had an "improved understanding of the Catholic Church" and expressed his "deep regret" for any comments Catholics had found hurtful.

McCain welcomed Hagee's apology, telling reporters at a campaign stop in North Bend, Washington, that "whenever someone apologizes for something they did wrong, then I think that that is a laudable thing to do."

Since accepting Hagee's endorsement, McCain has distanced himself from some of the preacher's remarks, including labelling as "nonsense" a statement by Hagee that God punished New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina for planning a gay pride parade.

At the start of this year's primary nominating season, the Arizona senator had limited support among Christian conservatives, an influential bloc in the Republican Party.  Continued...

Pastor who backed McCain apologizes for remarks | Reuters

Babylon & Beyond : Los Angeles Times : IRAQ: The elusive Iranian weapons

 "Not once did Bergner point the finger at Iran for any of these weapons and munitions"

There is simple solution : from now own instead of saying weapons are made in Iran, they should say weapons are supplied by Iran

IRAQ: The elusive Iranian weapons

There was something interesting missing from Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner's introductory remarks to journalists at his regular news briefing in Baghdad on Wednesday: the word "Iran," or any form of it. It was especially striking as Bergner, the U.S. military spokesman here, announced the extraordinary list of weapons and munitions that have been uncovered in recent weeks since fighting erupted between Iraqi and U.S. security forces and Shiite militiamen.

Among other things, Bergner cited 20,000 "items of ammunition, explosives and weapons" reported by Iraqi forces in the central city of Karbala;  an additional Karbala cache containing 570 explosive devices, nine mortars, four anti-aircraft missiles, and 45 RPGs; and in the southern city of Basra alone, 39 mortar tubes, 1,800 mortars and artillery rounds, 600 rockets, and 387 roadside bombs. Read his remarks here.

Not once did Bergner point the finger at Iran for any of these weapons and munitions, which is a striking change from just a couple of weeks ago when U.S. military officials here and at the Pentagon were saying that caches found in Basra in particular had revealed Iranian-made arms manufactured as recently as this year. They say the majority of rockets being fired at U.S. bases, including Baghdad's Green Zone, are launched by militiamen receiving training, arms and other aid from Iran.

Today brought fresh attacks, including an unusual barrage fired at a military base used by British and U.S. forces in Basra, in southern Iraq. A statement said "several" rockets hit the base during the afternoon, and that initial reports indicated two civilian contractors were killed, and four soldiers and four civilians injured.

It was the first reported attack of its kind since March 27 in Basra.

Iraqi officials also have accused Iran of meddling in violence and had echoed the U.S. accusations of new Iranian-made arms being found in Basra. But neither the United States nor Iraq has displayed any of the alleged arms to the public or press, and lately it is looking less likely they will. U.S. military officials said it was up to the Iraqis to show the items; Iraqi officials lately have backed off the accusations against Iran.

A plan to show some alleged Iranian-supplied explosives to journalists last week in Karbala and then destroy them was canceled after the United States realized none of them was from Iran. A U.S. military spokesman attributed the confusion to a misunderstanding that emerged after an Iraqi Army general in Karbala erroneously reported the items were of Iranian origin.

When U.S. explosives experts went to investigate, they discovered they were not Iranian after all.

Iran, meanwhile, continues to seethe after an Iraqi delegation went to Tehran last week to confront it with the accusations. It has denied the accusations, and it says as long as U.S. forces continue to take part in military action in Iraq's Shiite strongholds, it won't consider holding further talks with Washington on how to stabilize Iraq.

—Tina Susman in Baghdad

Photo: Made in Iran? Not necessarily. Iraqi forces prepare to detonate weapons found earlier this month in Karbala. (Army Sgt. 1st Class Tami Hillis)

Babylon & Beyond : Los Angeles Times : IRAQ: The elusive Iranian weapons

Can P5+1 Offer Break Iran Nuclear Stalemate? - by Trita Parsi

 

Can P5+1 Offer Break Iran Nuclear Stalemate?

by Trita Parsi

The P5+1 – the permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany – will present Tehran with a secret incentive package in the next few days to convince Iran to suspend its enrichment program and enter negotiations.

There is little doubt that Tehran will reject the offer since it crosses its red line – suspension of enrichment – but the question is why such an offer is being made at this time, even though reinvigorating talks is in and of itself much needed.

The nuclear offer coincides with an escalation of rhetoric between Washington and Tehran over allegations of Iranian meddling in Iraq. Following several stark comments by high-ranking U.S. military officials, the new buzz in the beltway is that Iran "is killing American soldiers" – a clear casus belli if proven true.

From Senate staffers to think-tank pundits, fear of a military confrontation between Iran and the U.S. is quickly rising once more.

Gen. David Petraeus, the new head of CENTCOM, is reportedly preparing a presentation of evidence showcasing Iran's direct involvement in the violence in Iraq. Well aware of their lack of credibility, George W. Bush administration officials are keeping a low profile and letting military officials take the rhetorical lead against Tehran.

Whether Petraeus' evidence is strong enough to convince Republicans, Democrats and Washington's European allies of Tehran's complicity in the rising death toll in Iraq remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, Tehran seems to be escalating the situation by retracting its previous assertion that an explosion in a mosque in Shiraz earlier in April was an accident. The new Iranian position reads that the explosion indeed was a bombing, conducted by exiled opposition groups supposedly supported by Washington and London.

The offer of a secret nuclear package to Tehran at the same time as a new case for war with Iran is presented may not be coincidental. But the calculation that the threat of war will compel Tehran to amend its red line on suspension has failed before and ignores the lessons Tehran drew from its earlier negotiations with Europe.

Tehran sees two key problems with the suspension precondition. First, Iran has taken away from earlier negotiations with the EU that suspension becomes a trap unless the West at the outset commits to solutions that recognize Iran's right to enrichment, i.e., that won't cause the suspension to become permanent.

Iran entered talks with Europe in 2003 under the impression that the parties would identify "objective criteria" that would enable Tehran to exercise its rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty while providing the international community with guarantees that the Iranian nuclear program would remain strictly civilian. During the course of the talks, however, Europe shifted its position. The only acceptable criteria would be for Iran not to engage in uranium enrichment in the first place, the EU began to argue.

Consequently, Tehran felt trapped since the objective had shifted from seeking a peaceful Iranian enrichment program to seeking the elimination of Iran's enrichment capabilities.

Second, the modalities of the suspension are crucial. When the EU first demanded that Iran suspend enrichment, the discussions centered on what the suspension would be linked to.

Tehran sought to link the voluntary suspension to progress in the negotiations. The argument read that the suspension should not be an open-ended commitment that could become hostage to the negotiations. For the suspension to remain in place, the EU-Iran talks needed to make progress toward the goal of finding objective criteria to guarantee the solely civilian nature of Iran's nuclear program.

The European position, however, read that the suspension should be linked to the continuation of the negotiations rather than to their progress. Since Europe's key objective was to put a stop to Iran's enrichment program, the mere continuation of talks would ensure the attainment of that goal – even if no progress was made in the talks themselves.

Not surprisingly, once Tehran accepted the European position and agreed to an essentially open-ended suspension, the ensuing negotiations produced very little movement. In the spring of 2005, Tehran presented a compromise proposal developed by Iranian diplomats and U.S. nuclear scientists through various Track-II meetings. The gist of the proposal was that Iran would limit its enrichment program to no more than 3,000 centrifuges – a number that Tehran today has moved beyond.

Feeling little pressure to make progress in the talks, the EU never responded to that proposal. Instead, the EU states presented Tehran with a counter-proposal in August 2005 that called for no Iranian enrichment. Tehran rejected that offer and restarted its nuclear program.

The new package that will be presented to Tehran reportedly demands of Iran a suspension of enrichment as a goodwill gesture for the duration of the talks – a formula not very different from the one that failed in the earlier negotiations.

Why such an offer will be made at this time remains unclear. Western diplomats admit privately that they do not expect a positive response from Iran. Indeed, Tehran will in the next 12 months be in a relatively comfortable position, according to Sir John Thomson, Britain's former UN ambassador, who together with Dr. Geoff Forden of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed an alternative strategy for dealing with Iran's nuclear program.

President Bush will be too weak to make a new strong push in the nuclear field in the seven remaining months of his administration, Sir Thomson contends. As the country's new president takes office in January 2009, he or she will need several months to put together an effective Iran strategy. To complicate matters further, the Iranians will be entering their own election season in early 2009.

These political factors provide Iran with at least another 12 months in which it essentially can continue to expand its nuclear program with impunity. This makes the recycling of a failed negotiation formula by the P5+1 all the more peculiar – there are few reasons to expect an increasingly confident Tehran to suddenly accept the open-ended suspension precondition under these circumstances.

If the aim is to break the nuclear deadlock with Iran, and not to prepare the ground for a new UN Security Council resolution or strengthen the case for military action, then a softening of the suspension demand would be useful. As former Undersecretary of State Tom Pickering pointed out at a Senate conference organized by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) in April, a suspension can be demanded of Iran once the talks have commenced – rather than as a precondition.

Many analysts argue that the insistence on this precondition has come at the expense of other valuable non-proliferation strategies. Indeed, rather than becoming cornered or contained, Tehran has utilized the absence of talks to expand its capabilities and create new facts on the ground.

"Time is not on our side," Pickering argued at the NIAC conference. If a new formula is not pursued, he said, paraphrasing Voltaire, "The perfect may become the enemy of the good on this particular issue" – meaning the insistence on an "ideal" resolution may end up achieving nothing at all.

And if the latest P5+1 package is accompanied by earlier preconditions, the perfect may set the stage for a disaster.

Can P5+1 Offer Break Iran Nuclear Stalemate? - by Trita Parsi

Ray Hanania Online -- Hillary Clinton's Iran nuclear option obliterates reason

 

Hillary Clinton's Iran nuclear option obliterates reason
By RAY HANANIA
I think I actually now prefer a president who can't properly pronounce the word "nuclear" over someone who keeps using it like the theme in a "Get Out the Vote" election strategy.
Hillary Clinton said she would "obliterate" Iran if the Persian nation were to use a nuclear weapon against Israel.
My guess is Israel can take care of itself. But vowing to "obliterate" Iran sure doesn't hurt when you face the very likely possibility that the only way to win the Democratic Party nomination is to steal it.
Clinton clearly believes she can broaden her support among Jewish voters by pandering to them, and by throwing a Barry Goldwater mushroom cloud to Republicans who think John McCain isn't quite fanatic enough.
I had to look up the word "obliterate" just to make sure I knew exactly what she meant.
It has several meanings, according to the dictionary I am sure Hillary is using, Merriam-Webster. It has a long history of applying racist definitions to Persian-looking and other Middle Easterners.
The M-W says "obliterate" means: "1a -- to remove utterly from recognition or memory; 1b -- to remove from existence, destroy utterly all trace, indication, or significance; 1c -- to cause to disappear (as a bodily part or a scar) or collapse (as a duct conveying body fluid), to remove like a "blood vessel" obliterated by inflammation; or, 2 -- to make undecipherable or imperceptible by obscuring or wearing away; or, 3 -- cancel."
I think Hillary means Option "1B," to remove from existence, destroy utterly all trace, indication or significance.
Of course, I could never read the precise style of a dictionary definition. M-W defines an "Arab" as a "vagabond," too.
The United Nations tried definition "2" on Saddam Hussein, but before they could wear away the dictator's power, President Bush, who pronounces "nuclear" as "nuke-a-ler," tried "1b" too.
That's how we got into this Iraq thing, which is a war but technically isn't a real war by Constitutional definition, I suppose, which is a conflict that has been going on for 4  and one-half years beyond the date in which we were told we had "prevailed."
Frankly, I'd prefer to apply "1b" to the Iraq War. I just want to make it go away at this point. We can't win. And I don't see how bombing Iran will help us achieve what voters have clearly asked the next president to do: Get us out of Iraq.
But to "obliterate" Iran gets Americans into a potential conflict that has a certainty of allowing them to prevail in a real way, as opposed to the White House "spin" way.
Hey. Can't get us out of Iraq. Obliterate Iran. It makes sense. Certainly more sense than even the lies we were spoon fed about Iraq in the first place.
"Obliterate" Iran and we don't have to worry about Osama Bin Laden. Rising oil prices. The collapsing home mortgage market. The recession. What to do when social security runs out?
Maybe Hillary didn't mean "obliterate."
I mean, we can give Hillary, a First Lady who couldn't remember whether or not the Serbs were firing bullets at her as she was running or walking from the helicopter during a tour of Kosovo, a little slack, don't you think?
Maybe she meant to say, "obligate," as in "We need to obligate Iran to adhere to international weapons treaties so they don't threaten to fire weapons at Israel."
Which is a good point since Iran's off-kilter President Ahmadinejad hasn't really threatened to nuke Israel.
Chances are even before Iran's nuclear plants even get close to being weapons-grade facilities, Israel, using American-made fighter jets and bombs, will probably render the nuclear centers useless.
Is Hillary trying to disparage Israel, by chance? Maybe she is trying to act the way a man acts when someone suggests that a "woman" might fight their battle for them.
This could be a maybe too sophisticated strategy to appeal to male voters. You know. The "I don't need my wife to fight my battles for me because I am a man."
Maybe Hillary meant to use the term "obfuscate" rather than "obliterate," which would make sense since she clearly has no idea how to handle foreign policy.
If the strategy of fiery rhetoric doesn't bump up the polls the way she hopes, she can always fall back on her "get out of trouble" card again, and use the "dumb blond routine."
It worked with the Kosovo bullets raining down on her head, her decision to stick it out with Bill despite his embarrassing infidelity, and the last time her polls started to slip.

Ray Hanania Online -- Hillary Clinton's Iran nuclear option obliterates reason