Report Takes Fresh Look at Iranian Regime, Challenges U.S. Assumptions - washingtonpost.com

 

Report Questions Conventional Wisdom About Iranian Regime

An Iranian soldier stands guard as other troops in camouflage march during an Army Day ceremony outside Tehran. (By Hasan Sarbakhshian -- Associated Press)

By Walter Pincus

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

"Tehran feels vulnerable, both from outside and from within."

That is just one of a handful of intriguing findings in a study released by the Rand Corp. last week that challenges conventional American thinking about the Iranian regime.

The U.S. Air Force Directorate of Operational Plans and Joint Matters sponsored the study, given Iran's apparent drive to develop nuclear weapons and the likelihood that the United States would use air power as a "first resort" military response to meet that threat.

Faced with that situation, the report's authors decided to take a fresh look at what could be expected from Iran over the next decade, measured against not only the country's military and economic strengths and religious influence but also its "serious liabilities and limitations."

U.S. policies over the past nine years eliminated the most serious threat to Iran, Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, and an American-led coalition has been fighting against the Taliban, another potential enemy of Iran. Still, there remains "a myriad of threats and vulnerabilities that challenge Iran in the current strategic environment," according to the Rand report.

"We found significant barriers and buffers to Iran's strategic reach rooted in both the regional geo-politics it is trying to influence and in its limited conventional military capacity, diplomatic isolation, and past strategic missteps," the report says.

The study calls attention to sectarian violence and Sunni-inspired terrorism in two key Iranian provinces, Khuzestan and Baluchistan, where opposition exists against the Shiite regime in Tehran. In addition, the report says that Tehran's religious hierarchy is worried about theological and political challenges emerging from Shiite seminaries in Iraq.

"The Shiite learning centers of Najaf and Karbala [in Iraq] long dominated Shiite discourse before being suppressed by Baathist regimes," according to the study. They are reemerging and have the potential to overshadow their Iranian counterparts in Qom, the seat of Shiite scholarship. The study notes that many Shiites in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, for example, "look to the seminaries in Najaf, particularly Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, instead of the Iranian Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] for spiritual and political guidance."

And although Iran has supported Shiite militant groups in Iraq, the report says, "Iranian funds and military assistance are not essential to the survival of major Shiite political factions." Instead, some of the groups receiving aid from Tehran are "promoting an image of Iraqi nationalism for domestic support and thus prefer to maintain a degree of separation from Tehran."

Iran has long provided financial and military aid to Islamist groups such as Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The study, however, raises doubts that in the event of a U.S. attack against Iran, "the willingness of these groups to retaliate purely in the service of Tehran should not be assumed as automatic." The report's authors conclude that "it is best to conceive of Iran as exerting influence over its Shiite allies, but not control."

The study also questions conventional wisdom about Iran's military capabilities. Iranian leaders have created a multilayered military, in part because of a relatively weak army "mired down in conventional doctrine because of bureaucratic inertia in procurement and frequent infighting." Its equipment is aging and poorly maintained.

Iran's overlapping security structure "is beset with factionalism," according to the study. Decision making requires consensus among competing groups that consist of the office and associates of Khamenei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the military and intelligence communities, and finally the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The Revolutionary Guard provides much of the support to Hamas, Hezbollah and other militant groups outside Iran. It also has major missile weaponry and a network of businesses, making it a player in foreign policy and domestic politics.

But there is frequent squabbling between the Revolutionary Guard and conventional forces, according to the study. Beyond these groups are the bonyads, charitable trusts that control almost 40 percent of Iran's wealth and support Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guard; the bazaari business community; and the religious sector. The factionalism of this system leads to inconsistencies in the approach toward the United States but at the same time makes it difficult for Iran to change course rapidly, the study says.

Despite Iran's rhetoric, the study concludes that Tehran does not seek to enlarge its territory or force its brand of Islamic revolution on its neighbors. Instead, the report cautions that "the ideology and bravado of Iran's President Ahmadinejad and its religious leader Ayatollah Khamenei mask a preference for opportunism and realpolitik -- the qualities that define 'normal' state behavior."

Report Takes Fresh Look at Iranian Regime, Challenges U.S. Assumptions - washingtonpost.com

ElBaradei: Iranians "Are Not Fanatics" | Newsweek International | Newsweek.com

 

Samuel Kubani / AFP-Getty Images

ElBaradei in March 2008

Mohamed ElBaradei: ‘They are not Fanatics’

The director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency on what it's like to negotiate with the Iranians.

By Christopher Dickey | NEWSWEEK

Published May 23, 2009

From the magazine issue dated Jun 1, 2009

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As head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei has spent the past 11 years trying to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons. The Nobel Peace Prize winner recently spoke to NEWSWEEK'S Christopher Dickey about his intense, often frustrating dialogue with the Iranians—and with the Americans. Excerpts:

ElBaradei: Iranians 'Are Not Fanatics'

President Barack Obama addressed a conciliatory video message to Iran two months ago, but the dialogue seems to have gone very quiet since then. Why do you think that is?
Obama does not talk "carrot and stick"—which, it's been said, is a policy suitable for a donkey but not for a proud nation. He talks about mutual respect. And you have no idea, when he said for the first time, as an American president, "the Islamic Republic of Iran," how well that was received by the Iranians. But that has not been followed up by negotiations because the Americans are going through a review of their policy. And the Iranians are not in a rush because they are going through an election and because, as very good bazaaris, they want to know the outcome of the [U.S.] review.
The election of Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel's Prime Minister has complicated matters. He's left open the possibility Israel will attack Iran's nuclear facilities.
Unfortunately, we have to keep saying what we have been saying for years (and being vilified for it by the neocons): there is no military solution. There is only a diplomatic solution. Israeli President Shimon Peres made the point that you cannot bomb the knowledge [of Iranian nuclear scientists]. I wish that sort of thing had been said three years ago.

Had the Bush administration been more flexible, do you think it could have had a deal to freeze the Iranian enrichment program in its experimental phases?
There is no way you are able to deny them the knowledge. But if they do not have the industrial capacity, they do not have weapons. It is as simple as that. I have seen the Iranians ready to accept putting a cap on their enrichment [program] in terms of tens of centrifuges, and then in terms of hundreds of centrifuges. But nobody even tried to engage them on these offers. Now Iran has 5,000 centrifuges. The line was, "Iran will buckle under pressure." But this issue has become so ingrained in the Iranian soul as a matter of national pride. They talk about their nuclear program as if they had gone to the moon. And they also understood—unfortunately, not wrongly—that if you have the know-how, you're still kosher within the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. And yet you are sending a message: I can do this; I have bought myself an insurance policy, and you don't want to mess with me.

When the United States issued its national intelligence estimate in 2007 indicating that Iran had halted its nuclear-weapons program in 2003, that came as something of a shock at the IAEA, which hadn't known about the program in the first place.
We could not have detected that weapons program. We are not an army that can barge in without notice. [The Americans] claim that there are [Iranian] blueprints showing how to put nuclear payloads into one of their Shahab-3 missiles, as well as plans for how to detonate a nuclear weapon—there is no way I would have discovered that, somewhere in some small lab on someone's computer.

You focus on actual nuclear material. But the Americans have supplied the IAEA with the documents in question. The Iranians insist they are fake and refuse to talk about them.
A lot is in documents which we cannot share with the Iranians because of the need to protect sources and methods. Iran says, how can I tell you if it is fake or authentic if I am not getting a copy? So in many ways it's like a merry-go-round.

Tell me a little more about the Iranians' bargaining style.
The Iranians have always been extremely well briefed on the details. They know what they want. They are excellent on the strategic goals, excellent on waiting for the right price. I don't want to make them sound like superhumans; you do see a lot of infighting among them. And part of it is about who is going to get credit for finally breaking out of this 30 years of fighting and confrontation with the United States. Everybody is positioning himself to be the national hero who would finally put Iran back onto the world map as part of the mainstream. They are not like the stereotyped fanatics bent on destroying everybody around them. They are not.

© 2009

ElBaradei: Iranians "Are Not Fanatics" | Newsweek International | Newsweek.com

New York Times Falsifies Obama-Netanyahu Meeting

 

by Prof. David Bromwich

Global Research, May 19, 2009

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The New York Times assigned to the story a campaign-trail reporter, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, whose political perceptions are bland and whose knowledge of Israeli-American relations is an antiseptic zero. At the newspaper of record, a thing like that does not happen by accident. They took the most anxiously awaited meeting with a foreign leader of President Obama's term thus far, and buried it on page 12. The coverage of a major event, which the same newspaper had greeted only the day before by running an oversize attack-Iran op-ed by Jeffrey Goldberg, has officially now shrunk to the scale of a smaller op-ed.

What is more disturbing and far more consequential is that the Times made this meeting into a story about Iran. They read into Obama's careful and measured remarks exactly the hostile intention toward Iran and the explicit deadline for results from his negotiations with Iran that Obama had taken great pains to avoid stating. Obama's relevant remark was this:

My expectation would be that if we can begin discussions soon, shortly after the Iranian elections, we should have a fairly good sense by the end of the year as to whether they are moving in the right direction and whether the parties involved are making progress and that there's a good faith effort to resolve differences. That doesn't mean every issue would be resolved by that point, but it does mean that we'll probably be able to gauge and do a reassessment by the end of the year of this approach. "Shortly after," "fairly good sense," "the right direction," "good faith effort," "probably," "by the end of the year." This was a language chosen deliberately to cool the fever of Netanyahu and his far-right War Coalition in Israel. But Stolberg, writing for the Times, converts these hedged and vague suggestions into a revelation that Obama for the first time seemed "willing to set even a general timetable for progress in talks with Iran."

In fact, as any reader of the transcript may judge, President Obama sounded a more urgent note about the progress Israel ought to make in yielding what it long has promised to the Palestinian people. Palestine was the proper name that dominated Obama's side of the news conference. In the Times story, by contrast, the word Iran occurs three times before the first mention of "Palestinians." Iran is mentioned twice more before the words West Bank are uttered once.

Regarding the necessity of a Palestinian state, President Obama was explicit:

We have seen progress stalled on this front, and I suggested to the Prime Minister that he has an historic opportunity to get a serious movement on this issue during his tenure. And when Netanyahu said the Israeli attitude toward Palestine would completely depend on the details of progress toward securing Iran against the acquisition of a single nuclear weapon, Obama replied that his view was almost the reverse. In a leader as averse as Barack Obama to the slightest public hint of personal conflict, this was a critical moment in the exchange; how far, a reporter asked Obama, did he assent to the Netanyahu concept of "linkage" -- the idea that first the U.S. must deal with Iran, and a more obliging Israeli approach to Palestine will surely follow. Obama answered:

I recognize Israel's legitimate concerns about the possibility of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon when they have a president who has in the past said that Israel should not exist. That would give any leader of any country pause. Having said that, if there is a linkage between Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, I personally believe it actually runs the other way. To the extent that we can make peace with the Palestinians -- between the Palestinians and the Israelis -- then I actually think it strengthens our hand in the international community in dealing with a potential Iranian threat. This was a reluctantly formulated but direct and inescapable inversion of the Netanyahu doctrine on linkage. Not a trace of it appears in the Times account.

Finally, Gaza was much in President Obama's mind and on his conscience at this meeting; so much so that he broke decorum and stepped out of his way to mention it:

The fact is, is that if the people of Gaza have no hope, if they can't even get clean water at this point, if the border closures are so tight that it is impossible for reconstruction and humanitarian efforts to take place, then that is not going to be a recipe for Israel's long-term security or a constructive peace track to move forward. And yet not a word from Stolberg and the Times about these words of Obama's on Gaza. Nor was any analytic piece offered as a supplement -- the usual procedure in assessing an event of this importance.

To sum up, what happened at the meeting can be judged plainly enough by the news conference that followed. Binyamin Netanyahu tried to make it all about Iran. Obama declined, and spoke again and again about the importance of peace in the entire region, and the crucial role that Israel would have to play by freezing the West Bank settlements and negotiating in good faith to achieve a Palestinian state.

Let us end where we began, with Barack Obama on the good of peaceable relations with Iran, and the New York Times on the importance of thinking such relations are close to impossible.

President Obama: "You know, I don't want to set an artificial deadline."

Now the Times headline: "Obama Tells Netanyahu He Has a Timetable on Iran." And the Times front-page teaser for their A12 story: "Obama's Iran Timetable."

The decision-makers at the New York Times are acting again as if their readers had no other means of checking the facts they report. They are saying the thing that is not, without remembering that the record which refutes them has become easily and quickly available. A great newspaper is dying. And on the subject of Israel, it is doing its best to earn its death-warrant.
David Bromwich is Professor of Literature at Yale

New York Times Falsifies Obama-Netanyahu Meeting

CIA chief: 'Big trouble' if Israel attacks Iran alone - Haaretz - Israel News

 

CIA chief: 'Big trouble' if Israel attacks Iran alone

By Haaretz Service

Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Leon Panetta said in remarks published Tuesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows that if Israel were to independently attack Iran it would lead to "big trouble."
Panetta told political quarterly Global Viewpoint on Monday that it is clear that Israel is concerned about the possibility of Iran producing nuclear weapons, but added that Israel's security would be better served if the government worked together with international powers to curb the threat.
"The threat posed by Iran has our full attention," Panetta said. "Iran is a destabilizing force in the Middle East. Even though the administration is moving toward diplomatic engagement with that country, no one is naive about the challenges."

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Panetta continued, "The judgment of the U.S. intelligence community is that Iran, at a minimum, is keeping open the option to develop deliverable nuclear weapons. It is our judgment that Iran halted weaponization in 2003, but it continues to develop uranium enrichment technology and nuclear-capable ballistic missiles."
Assessing Iran's intentions is a top priority, according to Panetta, who said, "The last thing we need in the Middle East is a nuclear arms race."
An Israeli official said on Tuesday that Israel will be forced to take on Iran's contentious nuclear program alone once U.S. President Barack Obama's overture for dialogue with Tehran fails.
The official was quoted by Channel 10 as saying that Obama's insistence on engagement with Iran would force Israel to make a "difficult decision" on the matter by the end of 2009.
Netanyahu and U.S. lawmakers said earlier Tuesday that Israel and the United States had agreed that Iran must not be allowed to continue its developing its nuclear capabilities.

CIA chief: 'Big trouble' if Israel attacks Iran alone - Haaretz - Israel News

Obama Steers Toward Endless War With Islam by Michael Scheuer -- Antiwar.com

 

In just over 100 days, President Obama is on the verge of ensuring that militant Islam’s war on America will be waged for decades to come and its forces will never suffer manpower or money shortages. How did he accomplish so much in some little time? He simply behaved as all U.S. political leaders behave; that is, as an ignorant and arrogant interventionist.

Let us take the ignorant part first. Since Jan. 20, Obama and his band of Israel-Firsters have shown the Muslim world – moderate, conservative, radical, and fanatic – that George W. Bush was no one-off fluke, that Democrats intend to wage war on Islam just like the Republicans. How so? Well, look at Obama’s decisions and actions. They can only be explained by accepting that the new president is ignorant of our Islamist foes, either by choice or because the ability to read is not required to graduate at Harvard.

For 13 years, Osama bin Laden, his lieutenants, their allies, and numerous anti-Islamist commentators across the Middle East have patiently, repeatedly, and explicitly explained to the bipartisan U.S. governing elite and its media and academic acolytes that the Islamists attacking America do not give a tinker’s damn about its lifestyle, liberties, freedoms, or elections. Orally and in print, U.S. leaders have been told what motivates the Islamists’ war on America is the U.S. government’s foreign policies in the Muslim world. Foremost among these are U.S. support for Muslim tyrannies, the U.S. military’s presence in Muslim lands, and unqualified U.S. support for Israel.

And what have Obama and his advisers done with this excellent intelligence about enemy motivation, which, by the way, comes straight from the horse’s mouth? Well, they clearly ignored it, and by deciding to operate in an intelligence-free environment Obama has acted in a way that will intensify and prolong the Islamists’ war against the United States. How so?

• On the tyranny front, Obama chose to go to Turkey for his first visit to the Muslim world. That country is formally governed by an Islamic party, but it is actually ruled by a thoroughly Westernized general staff ready to pounce on and dismantle the Islamic regime if its gets too religiously ambitious. Needless to say, Turkey is regarded by many Muslims as having long ago sold its Islamic soul by joining the "Christian" NATO alliance.
• Obama then proceeded to acknowledge America’s oil vassalage to Saudi Arabia when, on being introduced, he bowed to Saudi King Abdullah, the master of the Saudi police state. The president also chose to speak his first televised words to Muslims in an interview on al-Arabiya television, the mouthpiece of the Saudi tyranny.
• Obama next said that he will go to Egypt to address Muslims in a speech he promised during the presidential campaign. This visit will show Obama prating about the glories of secular democracy and the peacefulness of Islam while standing cheek-by-jowl with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, chief warden of the Muslim world’s premier police state.
• On the military side, Obama has announced plans to send 21,000 more U.S. troops to what Muslims call "the defiant land of jihad, Afghanistan." The arrival of those troops – too few to win but enough to slow our defeat – will be portrayed by al-Jazeera, the BBC, and especially the Saudis’ anti-American shills at al-Arabiya as a brutal re-invasion of Afghanistan.
• Obama was silent while Israel invaded and wrecked Gaza last winter; has appointed an IDF veteran as his chief of staff – think of the espionage potential in that move; has watched the proliferation of Israeli settlements; and has re-imposed sanctions on Syria and kept war with Iran on the front burner. His Justice Department has also exempted from prosecution Israel-First Americans and their agents in the Congress.

Like former president Bush, then, Obama has kept himself ignorant of the Islamists’ motivation and is playing directly into their hands; indeed, bin Laden, with all his road-building skills, could not pave a smoother path to hell for America. In taking this tack, Obama also displays the abiding arrogance that permeates our governing elite, an attitude that causes them to believe that both Muslims and Americans are stupid. If you doubt this, listen to the sophomoric words of White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs as he tries to make sure that no one looks behind the curtain of Mubarak’s tyranny when Obama speaks in Egypt:

"[T]his isn’t a speech to leaders. This is a speech to many, many people and a continuing effort by this president and this White House to demonstrate how we can work together to ensure the safety and security and the future well-being through hope and opportunity of the children of this country and of the Muslim world."

Well, Mr. Gibbs, as one of Obama’s predecessors once said, you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Elected on a pledge to end Bush’s wars, Obama has instead ensured their extension by actions sure to further inflame Islamists and, indeed, most Muslims governed by royal, military, or elected-for-life tyrants. As it becomes clear that Obama’s administration is miring America deeper in a war with Islam that benefits only Israel, he and his advisers will repeat the mantra long intoned by Israeli politicians: "We tried our best to better relations with Islam, but we were rebuffed and so now Americans must soldier on in endless wars." This will be a lie. Obama may use softer rhetoric, but he is loyal to the status quo interventionism Washington practices no matter which party holds power.

The only redeeming aspect of Obama’s 100-plus-day foreign-policy debacle is that his deceit is about played out. He will fool no Muslims. His courting of Westernized Turkish generals, bowing to King Abdullah, and joining Mubarak in a cheer for freedom will tell Muslims all they need to know about U.S. intentions in their region. Likewise, Obama’s expanding war in Afghanistan and his kowtowing to Israel and American Israel-Firsters will give the lie to his claim that Washington is now an honest broker in the Middle East.

Americans will be slower off the mark than Muslims, but they will soon see that Democrats share the Republicans’ eagerness to wage unnecessary wars at the cost of their children and taxes. The inevitable need for more troops and money to stave off U.S. defeat in Afghanistan, the increased Islamist attacks on U.S. interests at home and abroad, and – most of all – the unraveling of "success" in Iraq (which, in turn, will prevent a U.S. withdrawal that would be lethal to Israel) will be seen by Americans for what they are: the price of an ignorant, arrogant interventionism that is ruining not only America’s economy and domestic cohesion, but their kids’ future prosperity and security. At this point, a long overdue foreign-policy debate can begin. It will give Americans a last chance to realign the republic’s foreign policy with the tenets of Washington’s Farewell Address and, in so doing, forever break the corrupting power of the Israel-Firsters, individuals who Washington uncannily described in 1796 as "ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens … [who] betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country."

Pray to God this occurs before a cynical, racist Benjamin Netanyahu presents Obama with a fait accompli that drags 300 million Americans into Israel’s war against Iran.

Obama Steers Toward Endless War With Islam by Michael Scheuer -- Antiwar.com

U.S.-RUSSIA JOINT THREAT ASSESSMENT ON IRAN

 

GROUNDBREAKING U.S.-RUSSIA JOINT THREAT ASSESSMENT ON IRAN

EWI Contact: Sarosh Syed, New York

19-May-2009, New York, NY -

NEW YORK. May 19. The EastWest Institute (EWI) released today a U.S.-Russia joint threat assessment on Iran’s nuclear and missile potential. More than a year in the making, the report was produced by a team of Russian and American scientists and experts brought together by EWI.  “The EastWest Institute is proud to have facilitated such an unprecedented effort,” said John Edwin Mroz, President and CEO of the EastWest Institute. “We hope that this joint threat assessment by Russians and Americans will serve to inform a more collaborative and robust response to the Iranian program.”

Click here to download the U.S.-Russia Joint Threat Assessment on Iran's nuclear and missile potential (367K PDF)

The report finds that Iran could produce a simple nuclear device within one to three years. It could develop a nuclear warhead for ballistic missiles in six to eight years. It further finds that Iran will not be able, for at least ten to fifteen years, to independently master the technologies necessary for advanced intermediate-range ballistic missiles or intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Those timetables could be accelerated, the report notes, if Iran were to receive substantial outside help. While stressing that they do not know Iran’s political intentions, the report’s authors call on the U.S. and Russia to explore cooperative responses if Iran should try to “break out” as a nuclear power.

“It wasn't easy to produce a report both sides could agree on,” said Grigory Chernyavsky, Chairman of the Committee of Scientists for Global Security and Arms Control and one of the Russian contributors to the report. “But the final result provides a solid technical base for decision-making.”

The report’s participants warn that European missile defenses will not provide dependable protection against an Iranian threat if and when it emerges. They suggest that an effective response requires cooperation between Russia and the U.S. on missile defense, avoiding the kind of tensions that have arisen over the planned deployment of a U.S. missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

"The important thing is for the U.S. and Russia to cooperate in resolving the urgent crisis arising from the Iranian program," said David Holloway, one of the contributors to the report and a faculty member at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.

The idea of conducting the joint threat assessment on Iran first surfaced on October 27, 2007, when EWI convened a meeting of its U.S.-Russia Group on Counter-terrorism and Strategic Security in Moscow. The U.S. team was led by retired General James L. Jones and the Russian team by Ambassador Anatoly Safonov, Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation.

The conclusions and recommendations in the report are the group’s own—EWI was pleased to convene the group and provide the space and resources for them to do their work, but did not exercise editorial control of the contents.

Click here to download the U.S.-Russia Joint Threat Assessment on Iran's nuclear and missile potential (367K PDF)

Contacts:
Sarosh Syed, +1-646-662-1913, ssyed@ewi.info
Jean Dumont de Chassart, +32 (2) 743-4610, jdc@ewi.info

The following technical addenda are the contribution of Dr. Theodore Postol,
Professor of Science, Technology, and International Security at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. These addenda do not necessarily
represent the views of the other members of the study group. For additional information about the addenda, please contact Ted Postol at postol@mit.edu

• Technical Addendum On Defense Against Iranian Ballistic Missiles (2.7MB PDF)
• Technical Addendum On Iran's Ballistic Missile Program (2.8MB PDF)

http://www.ewi.info/announcements/news/index.cfm?title=News&view=detail&nid=716&aid=7722

Op-Ed Columnist - Iran and Israel - NYTimes.com

 

Iran and Israel

By ROGER COHEN

Published: May 17, 2009

RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA — A story is doing the rounds in Washington about an Arab ambassador whose view of Barack Obama’s overtures to Iran is: “We don’t mind you seeking engagement, but please, no marriage!”

 

Earl Wilson/The New York Times

Roger Cohen

It’s sometimes hard to know if the Arabs or Israelis are more alarmed — or alarmist — about Iran’s nuclear program and regional ambitions.

A comment a few months back from an Iranian official to the effect that the small desert kingdom of Bahrain was historically a province of Iran sent fears of exportable Shia revolution into overdrive in Sunni Arab capitals. Iran apologized, but the damage was done.

After Iran’s American-aided push into Iraq through the establishment of a Shia-dominated government there, the Bahrain talk set frayed Arab nerves on edge. Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, called on Arab states to “deal with the Iranian challenge.”

The mistrust has a long history. Arabs and Persians enjoy cordial enmity; the cultural rivalry between the Sunni and Shia universes dates back a mere 1.5 millennia or so, to the battle of Karbala in 680 and beyond.

But recent developments have envenomed things to the point that Arab diplomats troop daily into the State Department to warn that the U.S. quest for détente with Tehran is dangerous.

That point will be made with vigor by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he meets with President Obama Monday. After all, when Israelis and Arabs make common cause, surely the danger is real.

Obama should be skeptical, for reasons I will explain. But first those Arab fears.

The Saudis have been incensed by how U.S. policy has favored “the Persians” — as they refer to them — by removing Iran’s Sunni Taliban enemy in Afghanistan and ending Sunni dominance of Iraq. Despite U.S. prodding, the Saudis have not named an ambassador to Iraq and view the prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, as an Iranian pawn. Their strategic goal remains an “Iraq that comes back to be a solid Arab country,” as one Saudi official put it to me.

They also express frustration at the U.S. failure to rein in Israel, whose wars against Hezbollah in 2006 and Hamas in Gaza have stirred growing support for these Iran-backed movements. Anger on the Arab street is easily exploited by Iranian leaders using insurgent rhetoric.

With a significant Shia minority, Saudi Arabia — like Kuwait and Bahrain — believes Iran is inciting these communities to rebellion. It’s not uncommon to see posters of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Iran-backed Hezbollah, in Shia homes. Shiites, in turn, say Iran’s rising influence is used to justify oppression.

When popular rage rises, the region’s Arab autocrats look in the mirror and see the Shah. They don’t want a rerun of Tehran 1979.

“The Arabs are very worried that, for expediency’s sake in Iraq or Afghanistan, we’ll cut some deal with Iran that will leave Tehran as the regional hegemon,” one U.S. official told me.

It’s not going to happen. Washington and Tehran are a long way from even starting bilateral talks. Differences are such that any deal would take time.

What’s really at issue here is that neither Israel nor the Arabs want a change in a status quo that locks in Israeli regional military dominance and the cozy relationships — arms deals, aid and all — that U.S. allies from the Gulf to Cairo enjoy.

American interests are, however, another story. They are not served by having no communication with Iran, the rising Mideast power; nor by the uncritical support of Israel that has allowed West Bank settlements to grow and peace to fade; nor by relationships with Arab states that comfort stasis.

The Arab arguments over Iran are weak. It is precisely U.S. non-engagement that has led to Tehran’s rising power. So it makes sense to change policy. Only within an American “grand bargain” with Iran will a solution to the nuclear issue be possible.

Given that a Mideast peace is inconceivable without Iran because of its influence over Hamas and Hezbollah, it is in the Arab interest that the United States attempt to bring Iran “inside the tent.” Outside it will make trouble.

Moreover, the Arabs themselves have engaged. The Saudis have normal if strained diplomatic relations with Iran.

So here’s what Obama should say to Netanyahu when he says Arab states have identical fears over Iran:

“We’re aware of this, Mr. Prime Minister, which is why we sent Defense Secretary Robert Gates and others to reassure Arab allies. But the U.S. interest is not served by the Mideast status quo. Our interest lies in new region-wide security arrangements that promote a two-state peace, end 30 years of non-communication with Iran, and ultimately afford Israel a brighter future. You can’t build settlements and expect Iran’s influence to diminish.”

When Netanyahu demurs, Obama should add: “And you know what the Arabs tell me in private? That Israeli use of force against Iran would be a disaster. And that it’s impossible to tell Iran it can’t have nukes when Israel has them. They say that’s a double standard. And you know what? They may have a point.”

Readers are invited to comment at global.nytimes.com/opinion

Op-Ed Columnist - Iran and Israel - NYTimes.com

Aipac's hidden persuaders | Richard Silverstein | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

 

Aipac's hidden persuaders

The Israel lobby is aiming to soften up US public opinion for an attack on Iran. Americans should resist its propaganda

Comments (303)

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• guardian.co.uk, Friday 15 May 2009 14.00 BST

Despite the ballyhoo of the recent Aipac national policy conference in Washington, when Israel-US bonds were feted, relations between the two countries are currently more strained than at any time since 1991. That was when the elder George Bush, as US president, fiercely lobbied Yitzchak Shamir to join in the Madrid peace conference. Relations then reached their nadir when James Baker uttered his infamous remark about Israel's American-Jewish supporters: "Fuck the Jews, they don't even vote for us."

If relations continue to deteriorate in coming months, we might have to go back in time to the Suez crisis of 1956 to find a time when relations were this fraught.

A case in point is Iran. That bogey-nation was everywhere at the Aipac conference. Every keynote speech – if they weren't directly written by that group's staff – seemed unmistakably scripted and "on message", dedicated to the existential threat that Iran poses not just to Israel, but the entire world.

A glossy brochure distributed at the Aipac meeting showed a map (pictured below) centred on Iran and beyond, with a dark ominous ring around Iran's neighbours and as far away as India, Russia, Africa and eastern Europe. The message: these are the countries under imminent threat of Iranian ballistic missiles.

A map contained in a brochure distributed at an Aipac meeting

The brochure copy even intimates that the next step for Iran is "building a missile with range to reach US territory". (Never mind that Iran doesn't yet have any ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear weapon, nor will it have the bomb itself for anywhere from a year to five years depending on which you source you choose to believe.)

Israel is in the midst of a massive diplomatic, political and intelligence campaign, both public and covert, that could lead – if those officials behind it have their way – towards a military strike on Iran. It is a war for the hearts and minds of Americans. Or you might call it the war before the war. In intelligence circles, this Israeli project is known as perception management and defined by the department of defence as:

Actions to convey and/or deny information … to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives and objective reasoning as well as to intelligence systems and leaders … ultimately resulting in foreign behaviours and official actions favourable to [US] objectives. In various ways, perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover and deception and psychological operations.

The Israelis are following the template of the Bush administration's run-up to the Iraq war. First, the US government advocated half-hearted efforts at diplomatic engagement. Then it ratcheted up pressure through sanctions and UN resolutions. That is where the Israeli campaign stands now.

Aipac's members carried a unified message to Capitol Hill during their lobbying of US senators and members of Congress. They demanded that Congress pass the most draconian sanctions ever proposed against Iran. They demanded that Iran be offered a limited time in which to respond to an ultimatum insisting it drop its nuclear programme.

What then? If you review Aipac's literature and the various commentaries published either by Israeli diplomats or their supporters in the US media, they don't specify what comes next. But any sensible person can guess that the final step will be war: "Israeli leaders have … hinted at pre-emptive military strikes if they decide that diplomacy has failed."

The Israelis surely know that the Obama administration will never go to war against Iran. In fact, they know that Obama would not approve of Israel doing so. But I've become convinced, in doing the research and speaking to knowledgeable sources, that Israel is prepared at some date in the near future to attack Iran itself, even against the wishes of the US.

This of course will put Obama in an untenable position: do US forces attack the Israelis (in effect defending the Iranians) and risk the fallout that would occur in relations between the Democratic administration and American Jews? Or does he allow the Israelis to carry on to their targets and bomb Iran, accepting the bloodletting and mayhem that will inevitably result? If Israel wishes for the latter outcome, they must lay the groundwork here in the US for tacit acceptance by the American people of a third-party attack on Iran.

Indeed, they are already a good deal of the way toward this goal, as the latest polling from Rasmussen Report reveals. According to it, 49% of Americans believe that if Israel attacks Iran then the US should help Israel.

Some readers may say this is alarmist. Before I learned some of the information I gathered from sources both public and not, I also would have labelled this as overly dramatic. But Israel hasn't shrunk, for example, from drafting opinion columns for US newspapers on the menace posed by Iran, and telling the editor that a local Jewish community leader would be attaching his name to it.

Within the US Israel exploits a willing circle of Likudist advocacy groups and thinktanks – such as the Washington Institute for Near East Peace, the Israel Project, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs as well as Aipac itself – that are closely scripted and co-ordinate their political message with Israeli diplomats. While some of these groups deny such a close affiliation, there is proof of scripting and amplification of the Israeli government's agenda. And of course there may be cases in which the organisations know the needs of their patron so well that they need no prompting.

In another example, Israeli diplomats monitored and encouraged a member of Congress to host an anti-Iranian conference that would advocate Israel's message of sanctions (and more).

Israel, along with enablers like Aipac, has not shrunk from hounding its critics. One peace activist in the US so angered Israeli authorities that he was driven from a job through a whispering campaign in the community, which also included a disparaging article leaked to a willing reporter.

The level of hubris necessary to pull this off is astonishing. Fresh off the dismissal of the Rosen-Weissman spy charges involving its own employees, Aipac is flexing its political muscle and reminding the world of its resurgence. It does this through a combination of manipulation, public lobbying and punishment of its enemies.

We in the US must be prepared to resist. We must protect ourselves from Israel's propaganda offensive ginning up war with Iran. We must encourage President Obama to stay strong in his commitment to Israeli-Arab peace, whether or not Israel is a willing partner. Keeping our eyes on the prize of peace is going to be the hardest challenge of all, because the Netanyahu government is doing everything it can to divert the world's attention.

Aipac's hidden persuaders | Richard Silverstein | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Israel's Secret War With Iran - WSJ.com

 

By RONEN BERGMAN

Those who leaf through the secret files of any intelligence service know what grave mistakes bad intelligence can lead to. But they also know that sometimes even excellent intelligence doesn't change a thing.

The Israeli intelligence community is now learning this lesson the hard way. It has penetrated enemies like Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Hezbollah and Hamas. Yet despite former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's willingness to authorize highly dangerous operations based on this intelligence, and despite the unquestionable success of the operations themselves, the overall security picture remains as grim as ever.

In 2002, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appointed his friend and former subordinate, Gen. Meir Dagan, director of the Mossad. Gen. Dagan found the organization lacking in imagination and shying away from operational risks. Mr. Sharon, who knew Gen. Dagan from his days as head of a secret assassinations unit that acted against Fatah in the Gaza Strip during the 1970s, told the general that he wanted "a Mossad with a knife between its teeth."

Gen. Dagan transformed the Mossad from top to bottom and made the organization's sole focus Iran's nuclear project and its ties to jihadist organizations. He put tremendous pressure on his subordinates to execute as many operations as possible. Moreover, he built up ties with espionage services in Europe and the Middle East on top of Israel's long-standing relationship with the CIA.

In tandem with Gen. Dagan's Mossad revolution, other Israeli military intelligence has also made outstanding breakthroughs. The Shin-Bet (Israel's internal intelligence service), in cooperation with the military, has made huge strides in its understanding of Palestinian guerilla organizations.

The results have been tremendous. During the last four years, the uranium enrichment project in Iran was delayed by a series of apparent accidents: the disappearance of an Iranian nuclear scientist, the crash of two planes carrying cargo relating to the project, and two labs that burst into flames. In addition, an Iranian opposition group in exile published highly credible information about the details of the project, which caused Iran much embarrassment and led to International Atomic Energy Agency inspections.

On July 12, 2006, thanks to precise intelligence, the Israeli Air Force destroyed almost the entire stock of Hezbollah's long-range rockets stored in underground warehouses. Hezbollah was shocked.

In July 2007, another mysterious accident occurred in a missile factory jointly operated by Iran and Syria at a Syrian site called Al-Safir. The production line -- which armed Scud missiles with warheads -- was shut down and many were killed.

In September 2007, Israel destroyed a nuclear reactor built by Syria and aided by North Korea in Dir A-Zur -- despite Syria's significant efforts to keep it a secret. With indirect authorization from a very high ranking Israeli official, the CIA published incriminating pictures obtained by Israel of the site before it was bombed. These photos convinced the world that the Syrians were indeed attempting to manufacture a nuclear bomb.

In February 2008, Hezbollah's military leader, Imad Mughniyah, was killed in Damascus. In August of that year, Gen. Mohammed Suliman, a liaison to Hamas and Hezbollah who participated in the Syrian nuclear project, was assassinated by a sniper.

In December 2008, Israel initiated operation Cast Lead, which dealt Hamas a massive blow. Most of its weapons were destroyed within days by Israeli air strikes. (Israel also knew where the Hamas leadership was hiding, but since it was in a hospital Mr. Olmert refused to authorize the strike.) In January 2009, Israeli Hermes 450 drones attacked three convoys in Sudan that were smuggling weapons from Iran to the Gaza Strip.

These are all excellent achievements, but did they change reality? Mostly not.

The destruction of the Syrian nuclear reactor seems to have put a temporary end to President Bashar Assad's ambitions of acquiring a nuclear weapon. However, the public humiliation caused by the site's bombing did not sway him from supporting Hamas and Hezbollah and hosting terrorist organizations.

Even worse, the heads of Israeli intelligence are now losing sleep over recent information showing that attempts to delay the Iranian nuclear project have failed. Despite some technical difficulties, the Iranians are storming ahead and may possess a nuclear bomb as early as 2010. Hezbollah, although weakened by the 2006 war and Mughniyah's assassination, has become the leading political force in Lebanon.

On the southern front, despite the convoy bombings in Sudan, the trafficking of weapons and ammunition into the Gaza Strip continues. Hamas's standing among Palestinians has strengthened. And if a cease-fire is negotiated between Hamas and Israel it would be perceived as a victory for Hamas.

The bottom line is that excellent intelligence is very important, but it can only take you so far. In the end, it's the tough diplomatic and military decisions made by Israeli leaders that ensure the security of the state.

Mr. Bergman, a correspondent for the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, is the author of the "The Secret War With Iran" (Free Press, 2008).

Israel's Secret War With Iran - WSJ.com