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.

Don’t Jump the Gun on IAEA’s Iran Report is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

• How to identify as a leftist totalitarian.
• How to reinforce the status quo in the Middle East peace process.
• How to learn and understand the Founders’ intent for the United States.
• How to save billions of dollars annually and reduce the deficit:

Friday Links is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

• 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?

Tuesday Links is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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:

• On the issue of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, Americans are at present reluctant to resort to a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, preferring economic sanctions and diplomacy.  [Only 18 percent support a strike.]

• Very strong majorities do not think it is likely that a military strike would cause Iran to give up trying to have a nuclear program. They also think a strike would likely result in retaliatory attacks against U.S. targets in neighboring states as well as in the United States itself.  [28 percent say it is "not at all likely" and 48 percent say "not very likely" that striking would lead Iran to give up trying to have a nuclear program.]

• If all efforts fail to stop Iran, Americans are about evenly divided on whether to conduct a military strike. [47 percent would favor a strike, 49 percent would oppose.  This surprised me a lot.]

• If Iran were to allow UN inspectors permanent and full access throughout Iran to make sure it is not developing nuclear weapons, a slight majority of Americans believe that Iran should be allowed to produce nuclear fuel for producing electricity. [52 percent would support, 45 percent would oppose, which reflects a slight shift away from allowing Iran enrichment from the findings in 2008.]

But perhaps most striking were these findings, which I would imagine will cause heartburn for Binyamin Netanyahu:

[Americans] also appear to be very wary of being dragged into a conflict prompted by an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. In this survey, conducted in June 2010, a clear majority of Americans (56%) say that if Israel were to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iran were to retaliate against Israel, and the two were to go to war, the United States should not bring its military forces into the war on the side of Israel and against Iran…

[...]

Americans continue to show wariness about defending Israel from an attack by its neighbors. Despite an increase in the percentage of Americans who think military conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors is a critical threat (from 39% in 2008 to 45% today), Americans are divided on using U.S. troops to defend Israel if it were attacked by “its neighbors” (50% opposed, 47% in favor, see Figure 52). This question was also asked with a slightly different wording in surveys from 1990 to 2004 (if Arab forces invaded Israel). In none of these surveys was there majority support for an implicitly unilateral use of U.S. troops.

Food for thought.

Striking Findings from the New Chicago Council Public Opinion Survey is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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.

Is Newt Gingrich Drawing on Camus or Carl Schmitt? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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.

Robert Wright on Being–and Not Being–”Pro-Israel” is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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.”

This is a pretty straightforward guilt-by-association argument: The American Conservative doesn’t meet Chait’s definition of pro-Israel, therefore, for that magazine to praise J Street tarnishes its pro-Israel bona fides.  Same story with John Mearsheimer and Steve Walt.

First, the person at TAC who’s been praising J Street has a name: Scott McConnell.  Scott has a PhD in history from Columbia, and is the current editor-at-large (previously the editor) of the magazine.  I don’t know in great detail Scott’s views on Israel, but I think it’s fair to say that he thinks it’s very important for America, for Israel, and for the Palestinians to get a two-state solution set up, and sooner rather than later.  He also believes, I think, that in order for this to happen, Washington will have to put pressure on both Israel and the Palestinians to give up things they don’t want to give up.  The same view is held by Mearsheimer and Walt.  So the allegedly guilty parties’ view is certainly less zero-sum than Chait’s (would Chait characterize himself as “anti-Palestinian,” I wonder?), maybe even positive-sum.  But I don’t think that receiving praise from a person with such views on the matter necessarily should serve to taint J Street’s pro-Israel bona fides.

But beyond this, is guilt-by-association really something that Chait wants to engage in at all?  For instance, Chait’s boss at The New Republic, Martin Peretz, wrote last March that Mexican people suffer from “congenital corruption” and possess “near-tropical work habits.”  (The piece is no longer available on TNR‘swebsite, but the passage in question can be found here.)  Should we be asking what Chait’s views on Mexicans are, since he is a writer at TNR under Mr. Peretz?  When Peretz suggested two days ago that President Obama’s views on foreign policy are infused with an ideological narrative, and “Obama’s narrative is assumedly third world, maybe just by dint of his skin complexion,” should we be asking Chait to clarify his views on African-Americans?  Finally, although I’m no expert on Mr. Peretz’s views on Arab people, those who’ve paid closer attention make a good case that he has said some reasonably provocative things about them, as well.  Should Chait be brought in for questioning on these matters?

If people only wrote for magazines every word of which they agreed with, few people would write for magazines.  Even if people took the much more modest step of steering clear of writing for magazines that regularly publish offensive material like the above, consumers of magazines like The New Republic would suffer.  But the fact that Chait doesn’t feel the need to distance himself from Mr. Peretz’s various racial foibles ought to raise either questions about his views on Mexicans, blacks, and Arabs, or else questions about his standing to level charges of guilt by association.

The New Republic and Guilt by Association is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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.”

Zbigniew Brzezinski recently broached the subject of Israeli overflight of Iraqi airspace in an unfortunately provocative manner, telling the Daily Beast that the United States ought to make clear to the Israelis that there was a real danger of “a Liberty in reverse,” meaning the prospect that Israeli aircraft overflying Iraq may find themselves under fire from the United States, the de facto owners of Iraqi airspace.  (The Iraqi government that we have helped obtain power almost certainly would be under great pressure to respond militarily to Israeli overflight.)  Neoconservatives predictably pounced on this framing.

Readers interested in the technical questions surrounding a potential Israeli strike can find an optimistic assessment here. [.pdf] But this larger issue of whether the United States could stop Israel from doing something contrary to American interests reminded me of this passage George Kennan wrote about U.S. involvement in the Middle East more generally in 1977.  In The Cloud of Danger, Kennan called on U.S. policymakers to

bring about an early clarification–not just vis-a-vis the Israelis themselves but also vis-a-vis the Arabs–of the limits of our responsibility for Israeli policy.  We have allowed the impression to become established throughout the entire region that we have it in our power to make the Israelis do almost anything we want, and that this being the case, we are really responsible for Israeli policy.  This assumption is reflected in a host of Arab statements.  It is, of course, wholly incorrect.  Not only can we not dictate to the Israelis, who are very well aware of the strength of their bargaining power vis-a-vis us, but it is a real question whether we ought to do it even if we could.  (More about that in a moment.)

[...]

[W]e have allowed ourselves to be maneuvered into a position where each of the two parties believes it can use us for its own ends, where each 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.  Seldom, surely, can a great power have got itself into a more unsound and unnecessary position.

I stand firmly with [George] Ball on the need for an attempt to reach an understanding with the Soviet Union with relation to the larger problems of the region, but not on the details of a possible Arab-Israeli settlement.  That, it seems to me, should be left for direct negotiation between Israel and her Arab neighbors.  Our own role should be confined to assuring that the Israelis are strong enough militarily so that the idea of crushing them by force of arms does not offer promising prospects to anybody, and so that they have an adequate measure of bargaining power in any negotiations on these subjects they may enter into.  But we should not try to tell them, or the Arabs, what the terms of a settlement should be.  It is they, after all, not we, who would have to live with any settlement that might be achieved.  Many of us can think, I am sure, of concessions which, in our personal opinion, it would be wise for the Israelis to make; but for the United States government to take the responsibility of urging them to make such concessions is quite another matter.  There are many who would think, for example, that it would be wise for them to give up the Golan Heights.  They may of course be right.  But how can we be sure?  What would our responsibility be if we urged this upon them and it turned out to be disastrous?

A couple of thoughts.  First, obviously the repeated references to “the Arabs” reflect the book’s authorship pre-1979.  Second, Kennan is clearly uncomfortable with a situation in which a foreign country, fairly pursuing what it perceives to be its own interests, can pull America along for the ride.  (This is a mainstream position in U.S. views of Israel today: the idea that the United States should write Israel a blank check and allow that country to do what it may, with lockstep American support.)  Third, and I think most interesting, is Kennan’s discomfort at the prospect of directing Israel’s foreign policy ourselves.  (This is an increasingly mainstream position in the foreign-policy debate today, where U.S. analysts decide that they can perceive Israeli interests better than the Israelis can, so we should intervene and pressure them to act as we think they should.)

Kennan recognized that the Israelis, unlike the United States, live in a rough neighborhood and that they simply have different national interests than we do.  But the idea that we ought to demand various concessions from the Israelis, or attempt to dictate their foreign policy to them, appears to have horrified Kennan.  Decisions about Israeli security could have serious consequences for the people who live there, and for Kennan this seems to have been a strong argument for putting the weight of costs and benefits squarely on the shoulders of the Israelis themselves, beyond the (unlikely, even in 1977) prospect of Israel being militarily overrun.

To listen to the Matthews-Baer-Rubin discussion today, the Israelis are preparing to do something contrary to U.S. national interests about which we can do nothing.  As Kennan wrote, “Seldom, surely, can a great power have got itself into a more unsound and unnecessary position.”

Could the U.S. Stop Israel from Bombing Iran? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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.

Why We Shouldn’t Bomb Iran–From an Unlikely Source is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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.

Reports the New York Times:

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.

Refusing to talk to Iran had similar consequences.  Washington refused to engage Syria, even though Israel was willing to talk to Damascus.  The Bush administration further tightened the embargo against Cuba, again achieving nothing.  The administration also continued the Clinton administration’s policy of estranging Russia by expanding NATO ever closer to Moscow, incorporating countries that are security black holes, offering geopolitical conflicts with no corresponding military benefits.

In the midst of all this, the GOP in both the executive and legislative branches led a sustained assault on civil liberties and limited, constitutional government even when doing so did nothing to forestall another terrorist attack.

Given all this, is should surprise no one that the Republicans are no longer in control of government.

The Democrats may prove to be worse on all counts. I’ve long learned not to assume that things could not get worse.  Still, it is hard to take seriously Republican demands that the American people trust them with the nation’s security.  After all, look at what the Republicans did when they actually held power.

Republicans Tell America: Trust Us with Your National Security Again is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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.

Egypt Crosses Critical Line in the Arab Sands, Labels Hezbollah ‘Terrorist’ is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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.

Muravchik responds to the argument that bombing would merely delay an Iranian nuclear capability by a period of years by saying that we’ll just keep bombing them, then:

if we bomb and do wholesale damage to its nuclear weapons program, then the clock starts running on the next round.

And I donʹt see any reason to assume that, technologically, Iran is going to beat us in the next round. That is, they will be trying to find new ways to fortify and hide and whathave‐you, their rebuilt nuclear weapons program, if, in fact, they do attempt to rebuild it.

And we, in turn, will move forward with developing better bunker‐busting bombs or whatever else we need, and with additional intelligence, to find out where those things are and to have the capability to hit them …

Note in that last paragraph that we’re supposed to accept, arguendo, perfect intelligence and military technology endowed with borderline-magical powers.  This is a variant of the “I don’t know, the military will have to figure that stuff out” argument.

Elliott Abrams, freshly minted as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, argues that if Iran acquires nuclear weapons and is poised to cause trouble in the Middle East, it’s possible that the countries in that region will lay down and decline to defend themselves:

if the Arab states look at Iran growing in power and see that what the United States has done, to prevent it from going nuclear, is nothing or something that failed, itʹs not at all clear that they will then further side with the United States against Iran, they may appease Iran.

Abrams then reaches for a 2003-vintage “greet us as liberators” selection, proposing that the Iranians might thank us for bombing their country by overthrowing their government for us:

we are not talking about the Americans killing civilians, bombing cities, destroying mosques, hospitals, schools. No, no, no – weʹre talking about nuclear facilities which most Iranians know very little about, have not seen, will not see, some quite well hidden.

So they wake up in the morning and find out that the United States if attacking those facilities and, presumably with some good messaging about why weʹre doing it and why we are not against the people of Iran.

Itʹs not clear to me that the reaction letʹs go to war with the Americans, but rather, perhaps, how did we get into this mess? Why did those guys, the very unpopular ayatollahs in a country 70 percent of whose population is under the age of 30, why did those old guys get us into this mess.

When Indyk protests that this reasoning didn’t pan out terribly well for the Israelis in Gaza recently, Abrams shrugs that he’s “not persuaded” that Gazans blame Israel for the IDF killing between a thousand and two thousand Palestinians during their incursion.

Then Muravchik reaches for the trump card: “our talks with North Korea have completely failed but if we bomb Iran they may well succeed the next day.”

It goes on and on like this.  If you’re interested in these type of arguments, I’d encourage you to pick up a copy of Jack Snyder’s Myths of Empire.  These sorts of arguments are literally straight from the pages of Myths, a book where Snyder attempts to generalize the “myths” that empires endorse as they overexpand.

The State of Play in the Bomb-Iran Debate is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Hoping to derail the re-election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President Obama today gave an unprecedented appeal to the Iranian people in a special video message. In it, he offers a “new beginning” of engagement to end the nearly 30 years of hostile bilateral relations. 

This video comes less than a month after the administration wrote a letter to the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i, who, as opposed to Ahmadinejad, truly controls the apparatus of government and has the final say on the country’s nuclear ambitions. Khamene’i sent a congratulatory letter to Obama after he won the presidency. 

My colleague, Justin Logan, has written extensively on U.S. policy toward Iran, such as here and here, to name a few. He argues — and I agree — that U.S. policymakers must press for direct diplomacy with the Iranian leadership and have a plan “B” in case that diplomacy fails.

In response to those (usually neoconservatives) who fear Israel will be wiped off the map, Logan argues persuasively that attempting to deduce Iranian intentions from public statements is not helpful in ascertaining whether the clerical regime values self-preservation. Instead, we must evaluate what the regime has done when confronted with overwhelming force. For example, rather than wage the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) to the bitter end, Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini, one of Iran’s most radical Ayatollahs, saved his country from more suffering by accepting a disadvantageous ceasefire with Saddam Hussein.

Overall, the track record of Iranian behavior shows pragmatism and calculating temperament when attempting to advance their interests in the region. As I’ve written here, occasionally the interests of Tehran and Washington have overlapped, most recently when Iran quietly supported America’s effort to oust the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Thus, it would be prudent for Washington to engage Tehran and allow it to produce uranium and plutonium if the regime agrees to IAEA safeguard regulations in compliance with United Nations resolutions.

National self-preservation has figured prominently in modern Iranian diplomacy. President Obama and his subordinates appear to understand that. Hopefully, this new strategy will work.

A Far Cry from ‘Axis of Evil’ is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog