“Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech in the UN demonstrates that ensuring Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons is not his only goal. Netanyahu needs to make the Iranian publicly surrender, to beat them, to humiliate them. He wants to win big, to be a real man. And real men don’t only talk, real men shoot. Or at least threaten to shoot until the other side is begging, down on its knees. Netanyahu wants to see the other side on their knees. Not only Iran, but the Palestinians too … If Israel wants security, it needs to build trust with those who are our current enemies. Netanyahu cares far too much for our pride and honor and far too little for our safety. Mister Prime Minister, one doesn’t achieve peace or security with pride or honor. Peace and security are achieved through negotiations. It is time we give up victimhood and take responsibility for our safety and well-being. Time to support negotiations with Iran and to sign a peace and security agreement with the Palestinians,” – MK Merav Michaeli.
Tag: Iran
The Best Of The Dish This Weekend
.@netanyahu Here are my #Jeans and #Western music you idiot. pic.twitter.com/pxv2hqv8WV
— Sallar (@sallar) October 6, 2013
Like many of you, I bet, I took cover this weekend, after a politically terrifying week. Except there is no cover, as today, Speaker Boehner insisted he’d keep the entire federal government shut down and default on the nation’s debt unless the president agreed to suspend universal healthcare and agree to some kind of entitlement reform with no new revenue. He seemed to think this was a routine kind of thing, rather than a completely unprecedented act of economic terrorism to subvert our system of government. But, hey, he’s not in charge is he? No one is.
Meanwhile, Bibi Netanyahu tried to reach out to Iran’s people – who all want a nuclear program – with his trademark charm. His money quote:
“If the people of Iran were free, they could wear jeans, listen to Western music and have free elections.”
For the general response, see above, and here. Does Netanyahu know that Iranians have Twitter? Or does he really believe it’s 1938 again?
Meanwhile, several gems from the weekend: this face; Oakeshott’s description of religion; why Kubrick is so much greater an artist than King (Aaron and I watched The Shining and Room 237 last night); the joy of poetry for children.
The most popular post? Why They’ll Die On This Hill, made more relevant by this chilling piece in the NYT. The second? The Nullification Party, amplified today by the great Colbert King.
See you in the morning.
The GOP Just Took The Pressure Off Iran
Rogin and Lake point out that, with the shutdown underway, the offices that enforce our sanctions on Iran are empty:
Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said Iran could capitalize on the lack of monitoring and sanctions enforcement to replenish its coffers and advance its nuclear program while no one is looking.
“If the lights are not on, then the Iranians will engage in massive sanctions busting to try to replenish their dwindling foreign exchange reserves,” he said. “If you don’t have the resources to investigate, identify, and designate the tens of billions of dollars of Iranian regime assets, then you’ve extended the economic runway of the Iranian regime and increased the likelihood that they could reach nuclear breakout sooner rather than later.”
Netanyahu’s Move?
The far right government of Bibi Netanyahu has found itself somewhat isolated recently as it demands not just a monopoly of nuclear weaponry and near-monopoly of chemical weapons in the Middle East, not just continued illegal settlement of the West Bank, not just military aid from the US, but also regime change and war against Iran for enriching any uranium at all. The demands are so out of line with the NPT and with the Obama administration the Israeli government must surely fear it is losing the initiative for another war in the Middle East.
This is particularly so, it seems to me, because the Syria chemical weapons episode revealed how difficult it would be to get any clear American support for a pre-emptive war against Iran over allegations of potential WMD development. The Congress was clearly about to veto any such war against Assad even after the use of chemical weapons and after the deaths of 100,000 civilians. What chance is there that Israel and its proxies could easily authorize a new war against merely alleged nuclear weapon development in a regime that has recently declared itself eager to cooperate with the West? AIPAC has a lot of influence, and fear-mongering about Iranians is a rich vein to mine in the American psyche, but the odds of a war against Iran must look lower to Netanyahu right now, as his desperate and utterly exhausted speech at the UN revealed.
So what to do? Launch a war and deny it. Openly assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists, assuming no one in the West will even call you out. And now, a new provocation:
Mojtaba Ahmadi, who served as commander of the Cyber War Headquarters, was found dead in a wooded area near the town of Karaj, north-west of the capital, Tehran.
Five Iranian nuclear scientists and the head of the country’s ballistic missile programme have been killed since 2007. The regime has accused Israel’s external intelligence agency, the Mossad, of carrying out these assassinations.
Ahmadi was last seen leaving his home for work on Saturday. He was later found with two bullets in the heart, according to Alborz, a website linked to the Revolutionary Guard Corps. “I could see two bullet wounds on his body and the extent of his injuries indicated that he had been assassinated from a close range with a pistol,” an eyewitness told the website. The commander of the local police said that two people on a motorbike had been involved in the assassination.
It seems to me that the American president should forcefully condemn the assassination – and whoever ordered it. Governments that assassinate individuals in other countries are violating international law and setting a brutal precedent. If another country were to assassinate America’s head of cyber-warfare, would we regard it as something we should just ignore and move on from? Of course not. This is a blatant attempt to interfere with the diplomacy of the United States by using assassination as a provocation. Any government that acts in that way is no true ally of the United States.
(Photo by Abir Sultan – Pool/Getty Images.)
Can Congress Stop Peace With Iran?
Fred Kaplan suspects so:
In exchange for cutting back on their nuclear program, the Iranians will certainly demand, at the very least, a drastic easing—perhaps a lifting—of Western sanctions, which have so crippled Iran’s economy. But who takes the first step, and how big should that step and each subsequent step be? How does this process go forward in a way that builds trust, not suspicion? President Obama can lift some of the sanctions, but some of them can only be lifted by Congress. Many in Congress don’t want to solve Iran’s nuclear problem through diplomacy. First, they don’t trust Iran (not without reason). Second, they want “regime change” in Iran, and they believe (correctly) that an arms-control accord—even, or especially, one that thwarts any nuclear ambitions the regime might have—would legitimize and thus perpetuate the regime. Third, they don’t want to hand a historic foreign policy triumph to Obama.
Once again, on that final point, pure partisan spite would trump national self-interest and a president’s foreign policy power. And there is no question that AIPAC will do all it can to kill any chances for an agreement that would leave Iran as a country able to enrich uranium as is its right under the NPT. But, as Kaveh Waddell explains, the Congress isn’t the only body with sanctions in place, giving the Obama administration some lee-way for action despite the nullification-driven House and AIPAC-dominated Senate:
The myriad sanctions on the Islamic Republic originate from different actors.
The U.S. has always led the charge for economic sanctions, but since 2006, the United Nations and the European Union have also been involved in creating an international sanctions regime. This means that the U.S. would have to coordinate with the international community to provide any meaningful relief. Even within the U.S., the origin of sanctions laws varies: the current armada of sanctions is made up of 16 executive orders and nine congressional acts. Obama could annul the executive orders easily enough, but to lift the remaining, harder-hitting sanctions, he would have to go to Congress, hat in hand, at a poisonous moment in American executive-legislative relations.
Much better to get Congressional agreement. But if it’s stymied by the usual nihilism and war-mongering among the Christianists and neocons, I can see the administration easing the international sanctions it has cobbled together with our allies, and lifting those US sanctions it can do so unilaterally by executive order. The question, it seems to me, is how to time these relaxations right, in tune with greater and greater Iranian transparency, how to prevent Israel from launching a pre-emptive war, and how to prevent further sabotage from the GOP in Congress. They do not acknowledge the right of a Democratic president to enforce a duly enacted law, let alone conduct foreign policy. This will be a tight-rope to the very end. But it is not impossible.
Diplomacy Doesn’t Require Romance
Scott McConnell dreams of a “love-affair” between the US and Iran:
[I]magine: the nuclear diplomacy track gets going, and Iran makes it clear that it will trade transparency and inspections to ensure non-weaponization. Obama does what he can strip away the sanctions, encouraged by Europe, which is eager to trade and invest in Iran. And suddenly Americans realize there is this large, sophisticated Muslim country, with a large middle class and a huge appetite for American culture and business.
… My guess is that many Americans will fall in love with [Iran] —or at least with the combination of exoticism and profits that detente with Iran promises. Yes, there will be blind and naive aspects to the love—when is there not?—but it will unleash powerful forces that governments cannot control.
Millman counters:
[T]hese kinds of fantasies can be quite destructive as we approach the diplomatic process, because by raising expectations they invite the perception of failure. Our goal is not “flipping” Iran from the enemy to the allied column.
We should not be surprised or offended if Iran continues to posture against America in international forums, or even take more concrete actions to frustrate our aims in the region. We should expect them to want to drive a wedge between us and our allies, and to spin any agreement as our defeat. We should keep our eye on our primary objectives. Our goals are avoiding war and neutralizing the destabilizing threat of Iranian nuclearization. Their goals are avoiding war and ending the sanctions regime. We have concrete goals and interests, and so do they. That’s what we should be talking about – and getting to a deal on. If love follows in its season, well and good. But we don’t need it.
Larison chimes in:
I would add that the most successful negotiation between the U.S. and Iran might be one that results in an agreement that both governments can sell to their respective hard-liners as a national victory. As appealing as rhetoric about moving beyond “zero-sum” relationships may be, an enduring deal between the U.S. and Iran probably has to be one that placates enough hard-liners in both countries, and that could mean portraying the deal as a loss for the other country. As desirable as full rapprochement with Iran would be, that will likely have to wait for a later time.
(Screenshot by Andrew Kaczynski, who captured the tweets before they and others were deleted from Rouhani’s account. Mackey has more: “Another of the deleted updates, captured by The Lede, described the two presidents wishing each other farewell in their own languages. Mr. Rouhani offering the American blessing, “Have a nice day!” and Mr. Obama responding with the Persian word for goodbye, “Khodahafez” —literally, “May God protect you.”)
The Thawing Of Iranian-American Relations
Trita Parsi explains the significance of last week’s Obama-Rouhani phone call:
Abbas Milani is cautiously optimistic after last week’s developments:
While Rouhani repeatedly claimed that he has unfettered authority to solve the diplomatic impasse with the U.S., attacks [against Rouhani by Iranian hardliners] on him upon his return home indicate that Khamenei wants to keep his options open. The outlines of a deal on the nuclear issue have more than once been floated by Iranian regime’s past or present officials: continue enrichment at three to five percent, stop enrichment at twenty percent, allow international control of Iran’s stockpile of twenty percent enriched uranium, and finally accommodate more intrusive inspections of all nuclear sites in return for lifting of sanctions. At the same time, for Khamenei, a sine qua non is his ability to sell the deal to the Iranians as a “victory.” The call was the first direct attempt by Rouhani to make the deal. It is as much folly not to celebrate it as something of a milestone, as it is premature to declare it a historic watershed. Only real, not imagined or promised, actions and changes determine watershed events.
Why Israel Resists Peace With Iran
#Netanyahu‘s new red line. #Iran #US #Israel pic.twitter.com/t7AsUFL2dL
— Milad Jokar (@Milad_Jokar) September 29, 2013
Daniel Levy explains Netanyahu’s thinking:
If Iran is willing to cut a deal that effectively provides a guarantee against a weaponization of its nuclear program, and that deal is acceptable to the president of the United States of America, why would Netanyahu not take yes for an answer?
The reason lies in Netanyahu’s broader view of Israel’s place in the region: The Israeli premier simply does not want an Islamic Republic of Iran that is a relatively independent and powerful actor. Israel has gotten used to a degree of regional hegemony and freedom of action — notably military action — that is almost unparalleled globally, especially for what is, after all, a rather small power. Israelis are understandably reluctant to give up any of that.
Israel’s leadership seeks to maintain the convenient reality of a neighboring region populated by only two types of regimes. The first type is regimes with a degree of dependence on the United States, which necessitates severe limitations on challenging Israel (including diplomatically). The second type is regimes that are considered beyond the pale by the United States and as many other global actors as possible, and therefore unable to do serious damage to Israeli interests.
Israel’s leadership would consider the emergence of a third type of regional actor — one that is not overly deferential to Washington but also is not boycotted, and that even boasts a degree of economic, political, and military weight — a deeply undesirable development.
How Americans And Iranians See Each Other
In our final two videos from NIAC founder Trita Parsi, he contends that the influx of Iranian-American culture is starting to help Americans better understand their alleged enemies (a recent Gallup poll found that 83% of Americans view Iran unfavorably – basically unchanged since the 1980s):
But he feels that Iranians understand Americans much better than the other way around:
Parsi’s previous videos are here. Our full interview archive is here. Speaking of American-Iranian relations, Parsi and NIAC just put out a press release responding to today’s diplomatic breakthrough:
We applaud the Presidents of the United States and Iran for the historic phone conversation, which reflects the strong mutual investment they are making into the diplomatic process. It is precisely this commitment to diplomacy that is needed to resolve the nuclear stand-off and open up the opportunity for greater reconciliation between the two countries. The institutionalized enmity that has estranged the two governments – but never the two peoples – for more than 34 years will not be undone overnight. … The Iranian-American community looks forward to this as the beginning of a brighter future that can be shared by both the American and the Iranian people.
Can Polls Of Iranians Be Trusted?
Trita Parsi says yes, and that Iranians are actually far, far more enthusiastic survey participants than Americans are:
To wit, some key points from a recent poll:
59% of Iranians expressed hope that President Rouhani would improve Iran’s relations with the international community.
And that data point would seem to back up what Parsi had to say about Iranians’ feelings about Syria:
In Iran, those who would support Bashar al-Assad’s removal from power if it would end the Syrian crisis outnumber those who would oppose it 37% to 21%. Counting only those who expressed an opinion, nearly 60% would favor Assad’s removal to end the crisis. … [And less] than one third of Iranians approve of their government’s economic support for the Assad regime while one quarter disapprove. While those Iranians who disapprove of Bashar al-Assad’s handling of the Syrian uprising outnumber those who approve of it 25% to 24%.
However, only 13% of those polled believed Assad was behind the chemical weapon attacks, while more than half remained undecided or not sure.
The Dish 