Michael Isikoff reports: Speaking firms representing ex-FBI Director Louis Freeh and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Hugh Shelton have received federal subpoenas as part of an expanding investigation into the source of payments to former top government officials who have publicly advocated removing an Iranian dissident group from the State Department list of terrorist groups, three sources familiar with the investigation told NBC News.

The investigation, being conducted by the Treasury Department, is focused on whether the former officials may have received funding, directly or indirectly, from the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK, thereby violating longstanding federal law barring financial dealings with terrorist groups. The sources, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity, said that speaking fees given to the former officials total hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“This is about finding out where the money is coming from,” an Obama administration official familiar with the probe said. “This has been a source of enormous concern for a long time now. You have to ask the question, whether this is a prima facie case of material support for terrorism.”

Freeh and Shelton are among 40 former senior U.S. government officials who have participated in a public lobbying campaign – including appearing at overseas conferences and speaking at public rallies – aimed at persuading the U.S. government to remove the MEK from the terror list.

Mohammad Javad Larijani, a senior aide to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, describes what Iranian leaders believe is a close relationship between Israel’s secret service, the Mossad, and the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK, which is considered a terrorist organization by the United States.

Vali Nasr writes: Last week, President Barack Obama skillfully shifted the debate on Iran, pushing back against “idle talk of war” and making the case for diplomacy.

To make it work, the U.S. now needs a clear road map to show allies and the American people how serious and sustained talks with Iran can bear fruit.

Since November, the administration’s policy of applying pressure to compel Iran to negotiate has rushed instead toward conflict. A worrying International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran’s nuclear activity in that month prompted a new round of crippling sanctions against Iran’s central bank and oil industry. Iran responded by threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz and cut off oil sales to parts of Europe. Israel and the U.S. administration’s Republican critics concluded that the one- two punch of sanctions and talks wasn’t working, and it was time to go to war.

The president stood his ground to get the pressure-and-talk strategy back on track, and there are some hopeful signs that he did the right thing. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei endorsed Obama’s defense of diplomacy, describing the U.S. president’s talk of a window of opportunity as “good words.” He also repeated his 1995 fatwa that building nuclear weapons is a “great sin.”
Clear Signal

This was meant as a clear signal to the international community that Iran would not cross Obama’s red line. Equally important, Khamenei’s intervention put an end to talk inside Iran that the country should now build nuclear weapons to protect itself against further Western pressure and any potential military attack. The fatwa and a straightforward letter from Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, declaring Iran’s readiness to resume talks has given the U.S. administration hope that this time, diplomacy may succeed. After all, the environment for the talks today is better than at any other time since Obama took office in 2009. Economic pressure on Iran is cutting to the bone, and a grave crisis looms if things don’t change.

At the same time, Iran’s parliamentary elections on March 2 to some extent repaired the political damage that Khamenei suffered in the 2009 election fiasco, when Iranian authorities jailed opposition leaders and violently suppressed large-scale protests against ballot-box fraud. The appearance of normality on voting day this month and the mandate Khamenei received when his supporters trounced those of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have left the supreme leader stronger. Ahmadinejad’s drubbing means there is now only one decision maker in Tehran — and to everyone’s relief, it is not Ahmadinejad. [Continue reading…]

Tony Karon writes: Such is the chasm between Washington and Tehran that last week’s comments by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei on President Barack Obama’s recent speech verged on geopolitical flirting: “We heard two days ago that the U.S. president said that (they) are not thinking about war with Iran,” said Khamenei. “These words are good words and an exit from delusion.” He also spoke of a “window of opportunity” for a diplomatic solution to the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program — echoing President Obama’s sentiments in his address to the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Nobody expects that the exchange marks the beginning of a beautiful friendship, of course, but both sides may have reasons to at least keep the other interested in a protracted courtship.Obama had certainly issued something of a diplomatic come-on, noting appreciatively in an interview with The Atlantic that the Supreme Leader had reiterated just weeks ago that nuclear weapons are “a sin against Islam” and that Iran doesn’t want them. “The point is that for them to prove to the international community that their intentions are peaceful and that they are, in fact, not pursuing weapons, is not inconsistent with what they’ve said,” Obama said. “So it doesn’t require them to knuckle under to us. What it does require is for them to actually show to the world that there is consistency between their actions and their statements.”

Such soothing words across the epic divide are hardly naive: Both men are well aware of the difficulty they’ll face in securing any rapprochement, and neither may be particularly interested in a long-term relationship. Obama emphasized that Iran would have to earn the trust of the international community regardless of its statements, and his Administration also painted Khamenei’s comments on nuclear weapons being “sinful” as if they had come in response to the growing pain inflicted by sanctions. (In fact, Khamenei was simply reiterating a position he’d first publicized in an August 2005 fatwa.) Khamenei scolded Obama for suggesting that sanctions would bring Iran to its knees, and warned that Iran would not bow under pressure and threats.

The fact that both sides are expressing some openness to tamping down tensions — and plan to resume nuclear talks through the format of the P5+1, a group comprising the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia that negotiates nuclear issues with Iran — has certainly reassured oil markets, which fell last week on the news of renewed negotiations after being ratcheted up by war talk. Curiously enough, though, whereas Iran is typically accused of “playing for time” at the negotiating table, this time around the P5+1 may have their own reasons for taking things slowly. While Iran is steadily acquiring the technological capability that would enable it to create a bomb, Western powers don’t believe Tehran is racing to build nuclear weapons. And they have become increasingly concerned in recent months about stopping Israel from launching a potentially disastrous war by bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities.

What was initially described as an operation designed to foil a “major terror attack” is now being described as a “mini-drill” in preparation for an Israel attack on Iran, Reuters reports.

Israel has emerged from the past few days of fighting with Palestinians in Gaza more confident that its advanced missile shield and civil defenses can perform well in any war with Iran.

Describing how the flare-up in violence had provided an impromptu opportunity to test out Israel’s defenses, one Israeli official said on Tuesday it gave useful indicators for any potential conflict with Tehran: “In a sense, this was a mini-drill,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“There are significant differences, of course, but the basic principles regarding the ‘day after’ scenarios are similar,” the official added, alluding to Iran’s threat to respond to any “pre-emptive strike” on its nuclear facilities by firing missiles at Israel.

Employing a similar doctrine of pre-emption against Palestinians, Israel killed two senior militants in a Gaza air strike on Friday, accusing them of planning a major attack on its citizens through the territory of neighboring Egypt.

Subsequent violence killed another 23 Palestinians and wounded three Israelis before a truce took hold on Tuesday.

That southern Israel weathered the scores of short-range rockets coming in from Gaza, with sirens summoning around a million citizens to cover and the Iron Dome aerial shield providing extra protection, was savored – warily – by Israeli defense officials.

“The Israeli home front has shown once more that it can deal with the challenges,” the armed forces’ commander, Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz, told reporters.

Though he described the cumulative threat from surrounding armies and guerrillas as “significant and abundant”, Gantz said: “I am convinced that our enemies understand the balance we have between a comfortable defense capability and our offensive capabilities, which we will use as required.”

In a debate which has been dominated by Israel’s security concerns, Peter Beaumont poses a question that too few analysts ask: What does Iran really want?

Writing in 2009, Kayhan Barzegar, an expert on Iran who has taught both in Tehran and in the US, described what he called the “paradox of Iran’s nuclear consensus“. He was attempting to lay bare the complex and competing historical, political and strategic considerations behind the theocratic regime’s nuclear decision-making processes.

Referencing two centuries of internal criticism of Iran’s failure “to acquire substantial power, influence and wealth”, Barzegar cites more recent history that has persuaded many Iranians, not least in the country’s elites, that the west, and Britain and America in particular, have long conspired to throw obstacles in the way of Iran’s development both economically and as a major regional player.

From an Iranian point of view, there is ample evidence of this: from the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh’s government in a CIA and MI6-led coup in 1953, after he nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, to western resistance to the shah’s Esfahan steel manufacturing project to President Clinton’s killing off a $1bn deal for the US energy company Conoco to develop offshore oil fields. It is a suspicion that has been amplified by the country’s post-Islamic revolution politics.

Indeed, one of the bleakest of historical ironies is that the early revolution under Ayatollah Khomeini actually halted the western-supported civil nuclear programme in place under the shah and it was only persuaded that it needed to acquire nuclear weapons technology because of Iran’s massive losses in the war with Iraq, then supported by the US, which saw Iran targeted with chemical weapons.

Glenn Greenwald writes: We now have an extraordinary situation that reveals the impunity with which political elites commit the most egregious crimes, as well as the special privileges to which they explicitly believe they — and they alone — are entitled. That a large bipartisan cast of Washington officials got caught being paid substantial sums of money by an Iranian dissident group that is legally designated by the U.S. Government as a Terrorist organization, and then meeting with and advocating on behalf of that Terrorist group, is very significant for several reasons. New developments over the last week make it all the more telling. Just behold the truly amazing set of facts that have arisen:

In June, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its 6-3 ruling in the case of Holder v. Humanitarian Law. In that case, the Court upheld the Obama DOJ’s very broad interpretation of the statute that criminalizes the providing of “material support” to groups formally designated by the State Department as Terrorist organizations. The five-judge conservative bloc (along with Justice Stevens) held that pure political speech could be permissibly criminalized as “material support for Terrorism” consistent with the First Amendment if the “advocacy [is] performed in coordination with, or at the direction of, a foreign terrorist organization” (emphasis added). In other words, pure political advocacy in support of a designated Terrorist group could be prosecuted as a felony — punishable with 15 years in prison — if the advocacy is coordinated with that group.

This ruling was one of the most severe erosions of free speech rights in decades because, as Justice Breyer (joined by Ginsberg and Sotomayor) pointed out in dissent, “all the activities” at issue, which the DOJ’s interpretation would criminalize, “involve the communication and advocacy of political ideas and lawful means of achieving political ends.” The dissent added that the DOJ’s broad interpretation of the statute “gravely and without adequate justification injure[s] interests of the kind the First Amendment protects.” As Georgetown Law Professor David Cole, who represented the plaintiffs, explained, this was literally “the first time ever” that “the Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment permits the criminalization of pure speech advocating lawful, nonviolent activity.” Thus, “the court rule[d] that speech advocating only lawful, nonviolent activity can be made a crime, and that any coordination with a blacklisted group can land a citizen in prison for 15 years.” Then-Solicitor-General Elena Kagan argued the winning Obama DOJ position before the Court.

Whatever one’s views are on this ruling, it is now binding law. To advocate on behalf of a designated Terrorist group constitutes the felony of “providing material support” if that advocacy is coordinated with the group. [Continue reading…]

Before this interview aired, the snippets that were being used to promote it focused on two points: that Dagan was attempting to slow down Netanyahu’s rush to war and that he recognizes the Iranians as rational actors.

It turns out he has a much more mixed message. Dagan’s is like Gingrich’s “anti-war” message: there’s not much point bombing nuclear facilities when the real goal should be regime change.

As for Iranians being rational actors, Dagan says “maybe not exactly rational based on what I call Western thinking,” and that “they invented what I call the bazaar culture of negotiations.”

In response to the question, why can’t Israel and the world live with a nuclear Iran if they are rational, Dagan’s answer is because Iran is bent on Israel’s destruction. Predictably, Lesley Stahl fails to ask the utterly obvious follow-up question: how could a nuclear-armed Iran risk its own destruction by attacking a much more heavily armed Israel?

Worst of all, Dagan alludes — with a grin — to Israeli support for Iran’s pro-democracy movement. This is plain stupid. What better way is there to undermine the movement than to hint that it’s getting Israeli support.

On balance, I’d say it might have been better if Dagan had maintained Mossad’s code of silence.

Jasmin Ramsey writes: As media reports continue to imply that a military confrontation with Iran is closer than ever, rhetoric demonizing the Iranian government is rampant, particularly among Israeli leaders and most Republican presidential candidates — so much so that former Israeli Mossad director Efraim Halevy recently complained that Mitt Romney is “making the [Iran] situation worse” with his statements.

So it should come as no surprise that according to a 2012 Gallup poll, Iran is Americans’ “least favored nation” and has consistently ranked unfavorably since 1989. Gallup is not specific about why an overwhelming majority of respondents have such a low “overall opinion” of the Islamic Republic, but they suggest that “heavy scrutiny and criticism from the West over its nuclear programs” sheds light on American reasoning. Alarmist notions about Iran’s foreign and nuclear policy that spread through the media perpetuate a negative image that is oftentimes inaccurate–and help pave the path to war, which experts say would have disastrous consequences for Israel, the broader Middle East and the U.S.

AlterNet decided to look at 10 myths about Iran, many of them created by these alarmist notions—and explain why they’re dead wrong.

1. Iran does not have a nuclear weapon.

According to the Iranian government, the International Atomic Energy Agency and American intelligence assessments, the common assumption that Iran already has a nuclear bomb is wrong. Even Israeli intelligence agrees.

Yet 71 percent of Americans said “Yes” to the question, “Do you think Iran currently has nuclear weapons, or not?” in the last poll to ask that question. The question was asked a little over two years ago and public opinion could have become more accurately informed. Then again, when widely read newspapers like the Wall Street Journal publish weekly pieces suggesting that “evil” Iran is “building a nuclear bomb” (while justifying terrorism against Iranian citizens), and when Republican presidential contenders like Mitt Romney write that Iranian “Islamic fanatics” are “racing to build a nuclear bomb,” the truth can understandably become muddied for the average person. [Continue reading…]

Boaz Atzili writes: For half a century now, Israel’s regional nuclear monopoly has been its “Samson option,” the one weapon it can threaten to use if all else fails and Israel faces a real existential threat. As a scholar concentrating on the Middle East conflict, and also as a native of Israel, I am not comforted by the nuclear security blanket under which I was born.

Now that this monopoly is facing an increasingly possible challenge from Iran, Israel should reconsider its nuclear supremacy – as far fetched as this may sound. The argument in favor of such a radical shift is not moral, but strategic. Israel may well be better off in a Middle East with no nuclear powers than in one with – potentially – several of them.

Iran, too, would have its own reasons to support such an arrangement. And a secure path to a “no nukes” zone may be found not in dismantling Israel’s arsenal, but in relocating it.

In the face of an apparently fast-advancing Iranian nuclear project, the two options mostly discussed are sanctions and military attack. Neither is very appealing. The first is unlikely to halt the Iranian program and the second will only postpone it temporarily while possibly creating a regional conflagration on a large scale.

When Israel developed its own nuclear program, apparently in the late 1950s, it made much strategic sense. Israel was a small country, with very limited human and material resources, surrounded by hostile neighbors. Nuclear arms could provide the ultimate guarantee of security.

But Israel is no longer so vulnerable. True, much of the region is still hostile (despite peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan). Yet Israel holds a profound conventional superiority over any potential rivals – a superiority that makes a nuclear-free Middle East a strong and effective second-best option after a nuclear monopoly.

Romesh Ratnesar writes: The economic case against war is strong. Jitters about instability in the Middle East have caused the price of Brent crude to rise some 9 percent since the beginning of the year. Even a limited conflict with Iran—the second-largest oil producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, after Saudi Arabia—would jack up insurance premiums on oil tanker traffic through the Persian Gulf. Iran exports 2.5 million barrels per day, and OPEC lacks the spare capacity to make up for the likely loss of Iranian supply in the event of an attack, according to Robert McNally, president of the Rapidan Group, an energy consulting firm. That’s a formula for an oil shock far more painful than what global consumers are currently experiencing. “What we see now is a market that is very fearful and very tight,” says McNally, a former senior director for international energy at the National Security Council. “In those conditions, it doesn’t take much to send the cost of oil soaring.”
[…]
If the U.S. attacks, “the Iranians might feel they have less to lose” by retaliating aggressively, says Michael Makovsky, foreign policy director of the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. Tehran might attempt to sabotage oil facilities in Saudi Arabia and southern Iraq, launch missiles into Israel, or deploy small attack vessels to harass tankers in the Arabian Sea. The nightmare scenario would be a move by Iran to choke off access to the Strait of Hormuz—most likely by unleashing its stockpile of 2,000 mines—through which as much as 40 percent of the world’s seaborne oil travels. The U.S. has warned that such a step would provoke an all-out assault on Iran’s military. Would Tehran take that risk? “If Iran concluded its regime were threatened, it might try to make the conflict as big as possible, as quickly as possible, to bring other powers in to mediate,” says McNally.

An analysis by the Rapidan Group predicts that a targeted airstrike on Iran, followed by a token Iranian response, would cause oil prices to jump $23 a barrel before settling back down. (As of March 6, Brent crude was trading at $122 a barrel.) A more protracted conflict, if it involved even a brief closure of the strait, might cause oil prices to spike by more than $60 a barrel. “It would be the biggest geopolitical disruption in the history of the global oil market,” McNally says. Ed Morse, global head of commodities research at Citigroup (C), estimates that if oil were to reach $150 a barrel, the U.S. would lose two percentage points in economic growth, enough to turn the nascent recovery into a recession.

The Associated Press reports: Iran’s top leader Thursday welcomed comments by President Barack Obama advocating diplomacy and not war as a solution to Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, a rare positive signal in long-standing hostile transactions between Tehran and Washington.

The report on Iran’s state television quoted Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as praising a recent statement by the U.S. president saying he saw a “window of opportunity” to use diplomacy to resolve the nuclear dispute.

Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters in Iran, told a group of clerics: “This expression is a good word. This is a wise remark indicating taking distance from illusion.”

It is one of the rare cases in which Iran’s top leader praised an American leader.

Haaretz reports: Most Israelis believe that if the United States does not attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, Israel must no try to do so alone, according to a Haaretz poll.

The Haaretz-Dialog poll, conducted under the supervision of Prof. Camil Fuchs of Tel Aviv University on Sunday and Monday during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, also showed that the prime minister’s Likud party would win big in the next election, taking between 35 and 37 seats.

Likud, the rest of the right wing and the ultra-Orthodox parties would get between 71 and 74 mandates. Under such a scenario, only Netanyahu would be able to form a government.

However, Netanyahu, who returned to Israel on Wednesday, is facing a complex political situation.

On the one hand, he and his party seem to be in top political form. On the other, 58 percent of those polled opposed an Israeli strike on Iran, without U.S. backing.

Thus it seems Netanyahu has not convinced those for whom he has been repeatedly threatening Tehran.

AFP reports: An Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would only set back Tehran’s programme by a couple of years, the head of a respected London-based think-tank said Wednesday.

International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) head John Chipman said an Israeli attack against Iran was unlikely this year, following US assurances this week to Israel that it would not rule out military action.

Only the United States could conduct a serious campaign against Iran’s nuclear facilities, he said.

Furthermore, a pre-emptive Israeli strike could backfire because it is likely to push the Tehran regime to accelerate its nuclear ambitions, warned the IISS director-general at the release of its annual “Military Balance” report.

Western powers suspect Iran is seeking to build a nuclear bomb, a charge denied by Tehran which says its atomic programme is for purely civilian purposes.

“My judgment is that an Israeli attack on Iran of an overt kind is unlikely this year,” Chipman told a news conference on the annual assessment of the global military power balance.

“Both Israel and the United States are conscious that Israel can conduct a raid; only the United States can conduct a campaign.

“I think that it’s the latter that would be necessary in order to delay, in any meaningful way, the acquisition of a confirmed Iranian nuclear military capability.

“The judgement of most military experts is that any attack — whether a raid or a campaign — would only delay such acquisition and could, of course, incentivise the regime, once it reorganises itself, to move ever quicker towards that goal.”

Is this a denial or a non-denial that Netanyahu will be supplied with more bunker-busters?

Haaretz reports: President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not discuss in their meetings this week a reported Israeli request for advanced U.S. military technology that could be used against Iran, the White House said on Thursday.

“In meetings the president had there was no such agreement proposed or reached,” White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters. Obama and Netanyahu meet in the Oval office for two hours on Monday and then had lunch together.

Carney’s comment came after an Israeli official quoted by the Maariv newspaper earlier on Thursday indicated that Israel has asked the United States for advanced “bunker-buster” bombs and refueling planes that could improve its ability to attack Iran’s underground nuclear sites.

On Tuesday, Haaretz quoted a U.S. official as indicating that Netanyahu had asked Defense Secretary Leon Panetta for the GBU-28 bunker busting bombs as well as for advanced refueling aircraft.

The source added that Obama then instructed Panetta to start work on a request to work directly with Defense Minister Ehud Barak on the matter, indicating that the U.S. administration was inclined to look favorably upon the request as soon as possible.

However, Carney’s comments on Thursday seemed to specifically relate to those meetings participated by Obama and Netanyahu, while failing to comment about the content of other lower-level talks.

Robert Malley says that even if President Obama won this week’s argument in his ongoing struggle with Benjamin Netanyahu over how to confront Iran (a struggle that has already stymied any serious diplomacy), Obama appears to have narrowed his options so much that war may eventually be unavoidable.

For now at least, most commentators in the United States and in Israel have handed this round to Obama. He had two overriding objectives: to deflect Israeli pressure to conduct, or acquiesce in, a premature war; and to neutralize Republican criticism that he is too soft on Iran and too hard on Israel. On those fronts, one might say, mission accomplished.

But victory came at a price. In the longer run, Obama’s nuanced view and the arguments he marshaled on behalf of diplomacy may be less significant than the broader narrative in which, in order to prevail, he felt compelled to embed them. More openly than in the past, he took containment of a nuclear-armed Iran off the table — even before any serious discussion of this option has taken place and just as influential U.S. voices had begun making the case for it. More clearly than previously, he recognized Israel’s right to its own decisions; Netanyahu took the bait — or rather, grabbed it with enthusiasm, turning a banal acknowledgment of reality into an implicit license for Israel to unilaterally initiate action that will have broad and possibly dire consequences for all. And, more forcefully than before, Obama committed America to military action to halt Iran if other means fail to do so.

That day of reckoning may have been delayed. But short of a fundamental shift in U.S.-Iranian relations, it looks as though it will yet come. Israelis, not for the first time, likely are exaggerating the Iranian threat and its imminence. Yet they almost certainly are right in one respect: that sanctions could work and nonetheless fail, inflicting harsh economic pain yet incapable of producing a genuine change in Tehran’s calculus. There is no evidence that Iran’s leadership will yield to economic hardship; the outlook of its Supreme Leader rests on the core principle that the only thing more dangerous than experiencing pressure is surrendering to it. Seen through the regime’s eyes, such stubbornness is easy to understand. From its perspective, measures taken by its foes, including attacks on its territory, bolstering the arsenal of its Gulf enemies, and economic warfare, have a single purpose: namely, to topple the Islamic Republic. Under such conditions, why would the regime volunteer a concession that arguably would leave it weaker in a hostile environment? Even as he fought off the prospect of an imminent confrontation, Obama might therefore have bought himself — or his eventual successor — one down the road. For if and when sanctions fail, what alternative will there be to turn to?