P U L S E

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and American President Obama

While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other factions of his government continue their violent, inflammatory rhetoric against Iran, some interesting articles are appearing in mainstream publications providing evidence-based arguments against military action.  Indeed, analysts contend that an attack on Iran would inevitably result in detrimental blowback, with the negative consequences far outweighing any alleged benefits.

The Washington Post’s national security journalist Walter Pincus accordingly examines one of several studies by the Rand. Corp (sponsored by The U.S. Air Force Directorate of Operational Plans and Joint Matters) which disproves conventional thinking about Iran. 

Pincus highlights areas of the report which show that Iran is understandably feeling vulnerable on the political world stage and that:

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.”

Read the rest of Pincus’s article here.

Further to this is former National Security Council staff members Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett’s important and well-written op-ed in The New York Times entitled “Have We Already Lost Iran?” 

The Leveretts express disappointment over recent developments and events which they believe have seriously harmed the diplomatic process that Obama started with Iran.  Mistakes include appointing pro-war Hillary Clinton who has expressed willingness to “totally obliterate Iran” as Secretary of State and Dennis Ross as special adviser for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia.  The Leveretts note that Ross is only interested in pursuing diplomacy with Iran so that it can be used as evidence that alternative methods were used when (not if) the President decides to launch an attack on them.

In conversations with Mr. Ross before Mr. Obama’s election, we asked him if he really believed that engage-with-pressure would bring concessions from Iran. He forthrightly acknowledged that this was unlikely. Why, then, was he advocating a diplomatic course that, in his judgment, would probably fail? Because, he told us, if Iran continued to expand its nuclear fuel program, at some point in the next couple of years President Bush’s successor would need to order military strikes against Iranian nuclear targets. Citing past “diplomacy” would be necessary for that president to claim any military action was legitimate.

Throughout their article the Leveretts correctly point out that the Iranians can see through every superficial move that is made in the guise of pursuing diplomacy and that Americans shouldn’t expect much in the way of negotiations or concessions if this continues.  Iran must be respected and recognized as a regional player because it is one.  Sanctions and deadlines are counterproductive and the Obama Administration needs to abandon the Bush Administration’s policies on Iran if it wants diplomacy to succeed.  They conclude:

To fix our Iran policy, the president would have to commit not to use force to change the borders or the form of government of the Islamic Republic. He would also have to accept that Iran will continue enriching uranium, and that the only realistic potential resolution to the nuclear issue would leave Iran in effect like Japan — a nation with an increasingly sophisticated nuclear fuel-cycle program that is carefully safeguarded to manage proliferation risks. Additionally, the president would have to accept that Iran’s relationships with Hamas and Hezbollah will continue, and be willing to work with Tehran to integrate these groups into lasting settlements of the Middle East’s core political conflicts.

Read the rest of their article here.

Finally, foreign correspondent Roger Cohen (who has been vehemently critcized by pro-Israel groups for reports he issued following a visit to Iran) has a piece in The New York Times emphasizing how important it is for America’s young president to distinguish American policy from Israeli policy due to diverging interests.  Cohen lists 3 points which the Obama Administration needs to focus on if they truly desire diplomatic success with Iran:

The first is that if Obama allows the Israeli agenda on Iran to be become America’s, his outreach is dead.  I don’t know if Israel is bluffing about bombing Iran — nobody does — but one thing is clear: Netanyahu’s bellicosity is as unrelenting as his desire to distract attention from stillborn Palestine

The second imperative is that the sanctions game be revealed for an empty farce.  There will be no “crippling sanctions” — Hillary Clinton’s phrase — because China and Russia have their own interests in Iran.

The third imperative is for Obama to shift from what Nader Mousavizadeh of the International Institute for Strategic Studies recently called a “mix of rhetorical innovation and policy continuation” to new thinking on Iran freed of carrot-and-stick redundancy.

Read the rest of Cohen’s article here.

It is however important to note that not everything is in the hands of President Obama and that the Left and other progressives should not get side-tracked by focusing all their attention on him.  Indeed, those gunning for war with Iran come mainly from Pro-Israel groups and it is also important to note that the Israel Lobby is a huge but vastly underestimated force in American politics that has been influencing policy (which has often been antithetical to American interests) for decades.  If Americans don’t want a third bloody war on their hands, if they care about the well-being of Israel, if they don’t want oil prices to rise and if they want peace and stability in the middle east, then they need to start paying attention to The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. 

The new American and Israeli governments have opposing views over Iran.  There is accordingly no better time than now to become educated about the forces advocating for military action against Iran and to decipher whose interests this monumental mistake would be serving if it was put into action.