P U L S E

Jim Lobe

UPDATE: The key to the neoconservatives disproportionate influence despite their small numbers has always been coordination. As Lobe reveals (and had predicted), Kristol has now been joined by Robert Kagan in calling for escalation against Iran.

The common neoconservative position back in 2003 was that the road to Jerusalem runs through Baghdad. Today they are gunning for Tehran, yet another stop on way to the ‘promised land’. But since the Washington establishment isn’t that keen to invade Iran, the neocons have figured the only way they could keep the possibility of destroying Iran alive is to push hawkish policies on Afghanistan. Withdrawal from Afghanistan will diminish the chances of action against Iran, so it becomes imperative to attack any sign of realism as ‘appeasing the terrorists’, who we are told are a threat on par with Nazi Germany. In his eagerness not to be seen as ‘idealistic’ by the likes of William Kristol, Thomas Friedman and George Packer, Obama has duly indulged in the same rhetoric (most recently in his Nobel speech). Now that he has delivered, the neoconservatives are already trying to steer the military juggernaut westward. In the following post, Jim Lobe, one of the world’s best investigative journalists, sheds light on this evolving neoconservative strategy.

(I have long maintained that had people been following Jim’s exceptional reportage in the lead up to the Iraq war rather than Chomsky’s deterministic, contranalytical, and ultimately demoralizing views, with their inevitable demobilizing effect, they may have actually done something to check the march to war).

Kristol Pivots from Afghanistan to Iran

by Jim Lobe

Now that he and presumably his friends at the Foreign Policy Initiative got a lot of what they wanted from Obama on Afghanistan, Bill Kristol is once again pivoting westward — this time to Iran, rather than Iraq — as he did eight years ago with the infamous September 20 PNAC letter. Look for more of this to come from Kristol and the neo-cons in the coming weeks, as they re-align themselves with AIPAC and like-minded groups after their three-month campaign on behalf of Gen. McChrystal and the COINistas.

As eager as he is for war with Iran — the lead editorial in the new Weekly Standard is “A Nobel War Speech? Did Obama lay the groundwork for an eventual strike against Iran?” — Kristol doesn’t ask what may be the impact on McChrystal’s efforts of war with Iran. There’s every reason to believe, at least at this point, that the Pentagon is probably the national-security institution most adamantly opposed to an attack on Iran — be it by Israel or its own forces — precisely because it would greatly complicate Washington’s position throughout the region. But that’s not the point. Now that Obama is committed in Afghanistan, the neo-con priority moves to Iran, with urgency.