Don’t Jump the Gun on IAEA’s Iran Report
It is unfortunate that an analytic frenzy has begun over a report that has not yet been published. It is impossible to analyze the contents of the IAEA report on Iran until we can read it.
Even absent the document itself, however, two points bear repeating. First, even if the cultivated panic surrounding the report’s release is well founded, the suggestion that a military strike against suspected nuclear weapons sites in Iran would solve the problem lacks strong support. The net effect of such an action is difficult to judge beforehand. However, military action seems certain to convince the Iranian leadership that the United States and Israel are implacable aggressors. We should also wonder whether purchasing a delay in Iran’s nuclear program would be worth the cost of making its government—and possibly its people—absolutely certain that the only way to stop aggression against it is the acquisition of a nuclear weapon.
Second, while the consequences of military action are uncertain, so too would be the consequences of a nuclear Iran. These consequences would be different for the United States than for Israel. While one hesitates to advise the Israelis on their national security policies, the nature of the relationship between the United States and Israel means that Israeli action would likely implicate the United States. And it is far from clear that the Israeli leadership believes the Obama administration holds any cards that it could play to constrain Israeli behavior. For this reason, Washington may not hold its regional destiny in its own hands.
Tuesday Links
- A bombing campaign by either Israel or the United States would rally the Iranian people to support an otherwise unpopular and incompetent regime.
- What else will it take to rally the so-called fiscal hawks to the cause of reducing spending, balancing the budget, and averting national bankruptcy?
- Senator Franken’s Pay for War Resolution is a superficially a step in the right direction; but when it comes to war, the Senate could probably easily rally a 60-vote supermajority to override any offset requirements.
- It should be easy to rally around Paul Ryan’s Medicare choice plan, since seniors will lose benefits in the long run anyway.
- Tax reform proposals are rallying back on both sides of the aisle–will any of them stick?
Striking Findings from the New Chicago Council Public Opinion Survey
I was privileged last night to get an advance look at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ new study on public opinion. I was struck by several things.
First, the report reflects a strong desire to get our own house in order. Asked the question whether it “is more important at this time for the United States to fix problems at home or address challenges to the United States from abroad,” a stunning 91 percent selected the former, with only 9 percent pointing to the latter. (In 2008 the numbers were 82-17.)
That said, there is not as much appetite for cutting the defense budget as I would like to see:
When asked whether defense spending should be expanded, kept about the same, or cut back, 43 percent of Americans prefer to keep spending about the same as it is now, a steady position since 2004, with 30 percent saying expand and 27 percent saying cut back. At the same time, Americans do recognize the need for moderation if federal budget cuts are necessary to reduce the deficit. When asked whether the defense budget should be cut along with other programs in an effort to address the federal budget deficit, a majority (58%) favors at least some cuts—less than other programs (29%), about the same as other programs (20%), and greater than other programs (9%). A substantial number (41%), however, say defense should not be cut at all. Along with the 29% who say it should be cut less than other programs, there is a considerable majority that clearly sees defense spending as a high priority.
Second, the report does a good job of highlighting the fact that although a historically high number of Americans (49%) agree with the idea that America should “mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own,” this is not, as it is frequently advertised, “isolationism.” One needs to define what “our own business” is before one can characterize such a belief.
But perhaps the most striking findings, to my mind, pertained to the U.S.-Israel relationship. On a general question regarding whether various other countries are “very important” to the United States, Israel fell 7 points from the 2008 figure (from 40 percent to 33 percent), but every country except China suffered a decline, except Iraq, South Korea, and Turkey, which stayed the same. But the report asked a number of specific questions pertaining to Israel–and U.S. policy toward Iran–that produced answers that were surprising to me:
Is Newt Gingrich Drawing on Camus or Carl Schmitt?
Andrew Sullivan points us to this report that Newt Gingrich is going to tell an audience at AEI that the Obama administration is engaging in “willful blindness” and “self-deception” about the threat posed to the United States by Islam. In the wake of his remarks urging the United States to emulate Saudi Arabian standards of religious freedom, Gingrich has promised to deploy “the lessons of Camus and Orwell” to illuminate our present predicament.
“Evading the confrontation with Evil may bring a second Holocaust. The mistakes made by the White House will exact a terrible price.”
What’s interesting is that this sort of thing is a long-standing trope in Gingrich’s rhetorical repertoire, although he has reserved it mostly for Israeli audiences. In 2007, Gingrich went to Israel and informed a group gathered at the Herzliya Conference that Israel was facing the prospect of a “second Holocaust.” Perhaps drawing on the lessons of Habermas, Gingrich explained that
We don’t have right language, goals, structure, or operating speed, to defeat our enemies. My hope is that being this candid and direct, I could open a dialogue that will force people to come to grips with how serious this is, how real it is, how much we are threatened. If that fails, at least we will be intellectually prepared for the correct results once we have lost one or more cities.
This year, Gingrich published a commentary in a right-wing Israeli tabloid owned by Sheldon Adelson repeating these arguments, with the paper promising readers that
The behavior of the Obama administration regarding Iran and terror is characterized by a complete disconnect from reality. Gingrich, a prominent Republican Party leader, warns that the Western Elites are evading a confrontation with Evil and that the flight from reality could bring a second Holocaust to the Jewish People. An alarm bell, before it’s too late.
Israel faces a range of important international security problems. Israelis have much more reason to be concerned about their national security than do Americans. And it’s entirely reasonable that people would disagree about the nature and breadth of the threats to Israel, let alone what to do about them. But this sort of thing is absolutely irresponsible. I find it striking that Gingrich has repeatedly lectured Israeli audiences and informed them–presumably based on his knowledge as a Washington insider–that his own government’s policy threatens a second Holocaust on the Jewish people. Is this a view he really holds? If so, I would think he would be much more alarmed than he is acting at present.
While Gingrich is claiming that his current proclamations are grounded in Orwell and Camus, it seems to me that his overall Friend-Enemy politics of late owe a good bit to Carl Schmitt.
Robert Wright on Being–and Not Being–”Pro-Israel”
The U.S.-Israel relationship has been in the news a lot lately. First, Israel humiliates the American Vice President by announcing an expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem during his trip to that country. Then, Gen. Petraeus states in congressional testimony [.pdf] that the Israel/Palestine imbroglio “foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel,” which in turn creates a dynamic where “Al Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support.”
For those with interest in the subject, Robert Wright’s piece on the New York Times’ website may be of interest. Wright looks at how chauvinistically Gary Bauer, Max Boot, and Abraham Foxman define “pro-Israel” and writes
If Israel’s increasingly powerful right wing has its way, without constraint from American criticism and pressure, then Israel will keep building settlements. And the more settlements get built — especially in East Jerusalem — the harder it will be to find a two-state deal that leaves Palestinians with much of their dignity intact. And the less dignity intact, the less stable any two-state deal will be.
As more and more people are realizing, the only long-run alternatives to a two-state solution are: a) a one-state solution in which an Arab majority spells the end of Israel’s Jewish identity; b) Israel’s remaining a Jewish state by denying the vote to Palestinians who live in the occupied territories, a condition that would be increasingly reminiscent of apartheid; c) the apocalypse. Or, as Hillary Clinton put it in addressing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference on Monday: “A two-state solution is the only viable path for Israel to remain both a democracy and a Jewish state.”
So, by my lights, being “pro-Israel” in the sense embraced by Bauer, Boot and Foxman — backing Israel’s current policies, including its settlement policies — is actually anti-Israel. It’s also anti-America (in the sense of ‘bad for American security’), because Biden and Petraeus are right: America’s perceived support of — or at least acquiescence in — Israel’s more inflammatory policies endangers American troops abroad. In the long run, it will also endanger American civilians at home, funneling more terrorism in their direction.
I have been and remain skeptical that Washington could successfully force a deal on the Israelis and Palestinians. To my mind, neither side seems willing to make the sorts of very painful concessions that would be necessary for peace. I think that the big problem the I/P dispute presents for the United States is less inherent in the conflict than it is in the fact that the United States has placed itself in a position, as George Kennan wrote, where “each [side] has the impression that it is primarily through us that its desiderata can be achieved, with the result that we are always first to be blamed, no matter whose ox is gored; and all this in a situation where we actually have very little influence with either party.”
But as long as we’re implicated in this sorry affair, we ought to be throwing our weight around to try to push both parties in the directions we think they ought to go. As Wright writes, smiling and nodding no matter what Israel does isn’t friendship.
The New Republic and Guilt by Association
I watched with interest the J Street debate between Matt Yglesias and The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait over the question “what it means to be pro-Israel.” Matt’s a very efficient thinker, and Chait’s a particularly sharp debater. I witnessed him slug it out at length in a debate with David Boaz a while back, not something I’d like to do.
Chait made a straightforward argument: to be pro-Israel, someone has to accept two premises. First, one has to believe that historically, Israel is the more sympathetic party in the Middle East. Second, one has to believe that the U.S. should not be even-handed in the Middle East, but rather should be on Israel’s side.
But what was most interesting about his argument was his accusation of guilt by association against J Street. It was a problem, Chait argued, that J Street had been embraced by people who did not meet his definition of pro-Israel. Chait rang the alarum that “The American Conservative magazine, which was founded by Pat Buchanan, …has been saying nice things about J Street.” In addition, “the famous Walt and Mearsheimer have been saying extremely nice things about J Street — embracing J Street.”
Could the U.S. Stop Israel from Bombing Iran?
Last night, Chris Matthews presided over an odd, staccato interview with AEI’s Michael Rubin and Time magazine’s Bob Baer that was enough to make one feel sorry for the interviewees. Matthews was wildly whipping questions at Rubin and Baer, but they both did an admirable job returning Matthews’ volleys.
One interesting topic that came up was whether the Obama administration should discourage Israel from attacking Iran. Rubin and Baer agreed that at this point an Israeli attack would be unhelpful and should be discouraged, but Baer noted that our ability to prevent such an attack is “zero.” They agreed that the likelihood of an Israeli strike in the next year was “greater than 50-50″ and Rubin suggested that the Israeli timeline for an attack was “months if not weeks.”
Why We Shouldn’t Bomb Iran–From an Unlikely Source
Many of the same people who were telling us what a cakewalk invading Iraq would be are now lobbying to bomb Iran. They assure us it would be another cakewalk which would restore American prestige around the world. Indeed, North Korea and other rogue states would come groveling.
Right.
But an unusual opponent of launching another war has emerged. Reports the Jerusalem Post:
There is no viable military option for dealing the Iranian nuclear threat, and efforts by the Israeli government and its supporters to link that threat to progress in peace with the Palestinians and Syria are “nonsense” and an obstacle to the Arab-Israeli and international cooperation essential to changing Iranian behavior.
That’s the conclusion of Keith Weissman, the Iran expert formerly at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), speaking publicly for the first time since the government dropped espionage charges against him and his colleague, Steve Rosen, earlier this month.
There’s no assurance an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities – even if all of them could be located – would be anything more than a temporary setback, Weissman told me. Instead, a military strike would unify Iranians behind an unpopular regime, ignite a wave of retaliation that would leave thousands dead from Teheran to Tel Aviv, block oil exports from the Persian Gulf and probably necessitate a ground war, he said.
“The only viable solution is dialogue. You don’t deal with Iran with threats or preaching regime change,” said Weissman, who has lived in Iran, knows Farsi (as well as Arabic, Turkish and French) and wrote his doctoral dissertation at the University of Chicago on Iranian history. That’s where the Bush administration went wrong, in his view.
“President Bush’s demand that Iran halt all nuclear enrichment before we would talk with the regime was an excuse not to talk at all,” Weissman said. “And the administration’s preaching of regime change only made the Iranians more paranoid and told them there was no real desire to engage them, only demonize them. The thing they fear most is American meddling in their internal politics.”
His arguments would have had no effect on the previous administration. But his judgment offers powerful and welcome backing for President Barack Obama, who seems determined to pursue diplomacy.
Republicans Tell America: Trust Us with Your National Security Again
The Republican Party hasn’t been doing well as of late. A botched governing majority, a lost reputation, two lost legislative elections, two lost congressional majorities, a lost presidential election, a lost Pennsylvania senator, and no relief in sight. So what does the GOP congressional leadership do? Play the national security card.
Stymied in so many of their efforts to put President Obama and Democrats on the defensive, Republicans are returning to national security, an issue that has served the purpose well for them in the past.
Trying to raise doubts about Mr. Obama’s ability to protect the nation, they have raised the specter of terror suspects transferred from the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to prisons in American communities, issued warnings that the release of memorandums detailing secret interrogation methods has put Americans at risk, and presented a video montage ending with the Pentagon in flames on Sept. 11, 2001, and the question, “Do you feel safer?”
“I think what I’m trying to do here,” Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader, said in defending the video he and fellow Republicans have been circulating, “is push the administration to tell us, What is the overarching strategy to take on the terrorists and defeat them and to help keep America safe?”
I have a lot of bad things to say about both parties on foreign as well as domestic policy. But it’s hard for me to imagine the previous eight years of Republican governance as a golden era for national security. First there was 9/11. Perhaps it is too much to expect the Bush administration to have prevented the terrorist atrocity, but the administration did nothing over the Clinton administration to improve American defenses to prevent such attacks.
Then there was diverting troops and attention from Afghanistan before that war was finished, to invade Iraq. The Iraq debacle occupies a category all its own. Policy towards North Korea was spectacularly misguided and incompetent: refusing to talk to the North for years as it generated nuclear materials, before rushing to embrace Pyongyang while offering few immediate benefits to entice the North to change its behavior. The results of this strategy were, unsurprisingly, negligible.
Egypt Crosses Critical Line in the Arab Sands, Labels Hezbollah ‘Terrorist’
The designation of Hezbollah as a terrorist group by Egypt highlights a fault line developing in the Middle East over relations with Israel and the United States.
On the one hand, there are those who favor negotiations to resolve the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians. These countries include, most prominently, Egypt and Jordan, which both have signed treaties with Israel. Saudi Arabia also has promoted a negotiated solution.
Iran and Hezbollah, on the other hand, have emphasized what they call “resistance,” which means the use of arms to wrest territory from Israel ‘s control. The admission by Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, that one of the people Egypt arrested was supplying arms to Hamas on Hezbollah’s behalf indicates that Hezbollah’s “resistance” is not limited to Lebanese sovereign territory.
Although Egypt’s action is directed against Hezbollah (and, by extension, Iran), it also carries a warning for the United States and Israel. The “resistance” argument is gaining ground in the Middle East. If it is to be successfully countered, negotiations need to deliver something tangible for the Palestinians—and soon. Otherwise, the regional governments who favor negotiation will find their arguments undercut, which could not only jeopardize hopes for Middle East peace, but might also threaten their own stability.
The State of Play in the Bomb-Iran Debate
Via Philip Weiss, I see that last week Karim Sadjadpour and Martin Indyk debated Elliott “Get Down Out of Those Trees and Be Democrats” Abrams and Joshua Muravchik on the proposition: “America cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran and must go to any lengths to prevent it.” It’s a topic that’s been of interest to me for some time now.
Indyk and Sadjadpour acquitted themselves rather well, but it made me chuckle to see Abrams and Muravchik throwing some very familiar-smelling handfuls of argument into the discussion. I thought it might be worth passing a few of them along.
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