Category Archives: Iran deal

American generals and admirals lobbying for Israel against Iran deal

Given the uncritical admiration many Americans have for men in military uniforms, it wasn’t surprising to see the White House’s effort to promote the Iran deal enlisting support from three dozen retired senior military officers who released an open letter earlier this month.

Gen. James “Hoss” Cartwright, U.S. Marine Corps, who served as the eighth Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff until his retirement in 2011, and his colleagues, called the agreement “the most effective means currently available to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.”

The voices of those in uniform can be trusted to put America first — at least that’s supposed to be the value of getting political support from a bunch of former generals.

But given the degree to which the Iran deal has been turned into a partisan issue, and given the Republican tilt of the military, it’s not surprising that another letter would follow, this time carrying the signatures of nearly 200 retired generals and admirals who oppose the deal. Shameless in making hyperbolic assertions, this letter claims that Iran has been waging war against the United States for the last 36 years!

And whereas the concern of the former letter was focused squarely on U.S. national security interests, the preeminent security concern of the larger group of former generals and admirals is not that of their own nation, but that of Israel.

“Removing sanctions on Iran and releasing billions of dollars to its regime over the next ten years is inimical to the security of Israel and the Middle East,” the letter states.

In Washington DC, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) is an organization whose mission is the promotion of “a strong U.S. security relationship with Israel.”

To that end, JINSA spares no expense in trying to persuade retired American generals and admirals that Israel’s security interests should remain uppermost in their minds and thus it instituted an annual Generals and Admirals Program to Israel.

A few years ago, Jason Vest reported:


The bulk of JINSA’s modest annual budget is spent on taking a bevy of retired US generals and admirals to Israel, where JINSA facilitates meetings between Israeli officials and the still-influential US flag officers, who, upon their return to the States, happily write op-eds and sign letters and advertisements championing the Likudnik line.

Naturally, when it comes to opposition to the Iran deal JINSA is manning the front lines.

But here’s what’s noteworthy about the latest exercise in letter writing designed to put Israel’s interests first when crafting U.S. foreign policy: a large majority of JINSA’s advisory board members who are retired generals and admirals, did not sign the letter opposing the Iran deal.

The board includes 36 such figures and yet only eight of them were signators.

It’s hard to say how many of the non-signers made an active choice not to sign. Even so, JINSA’s leaders would surely have expected more solid support on this issue.

What this lack of solidarity most likely illustrates is that the divide between those who support or oppose the Iran deal has virtually nothing to do with objective assessments about the national security interests of the U.S., Israel or any other nation.

The opponents to this deal are in fact opponents of any deal with Iran.

And the suggestion that standing with Israel necessitates standing against the deal, is an equation that can be seen as false not only among the deal’s strongest advocates but probably even many of JINSA’s own advisory board members.

Facebooktwittermail

There may be reasons for hope in the Middle East

Henri J. Barkey and David F. Gordon write: The winds of change are unexpectedly blowing through the Levant.

In the aftermath of the Iran nuclear agreement, there was a broad expectation, both in the region and beyond, that sectarian tensions and conflict would intensify and deepen the proxy battle between Iran and Saudi Arabia. In the United States, even some strong supporters of the nuclear deal emphasized that Washington needed to respond aggressively to the inevitable push by Tehran to expand its regional influence at the expense of traditional U.S. allies.

What we are seeing on the ground, however, looks quite different. There is an increasing possibility for new geopolitical alignments throughout the region. The confluence of the growing fear in both Saudi Arabia and Iran of the threat posed by Islamic State; the weakening of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria; Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s policy shift to cooperate with the United States in Syria, and Moscow’s and Washington’s growing shared interests in steering the Saudi-Iran rivalry onto a less escalatory path, while also creating a broad coalition against Islamic State, is creating real political fluidity. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Prominent Iranians launch campaign calling on Congress not to kill Iran deal

The Guardian reports: Dozens of high-profile Iranians, many of whom have been jailed for their political views, launched a video campaign calling on the American people to lobby Congress not to jeopardise the landmark nuclear agreement.

The campaign includes messages from celebrated film-maker Jafar Panahi, Nobel peace prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, and British-Iranian activist Ghoncheh Ghavami.

Many of the campaign’s participants have been persecuted in Iran for their beliefs or activism, sentenced to lengthy prison terms or even solitary confinement. But they have expressed support for the Vienna nuclear agreement struck in July between Iran and the world’s six major powers, calling it a good deal which could avert threats of war.

Mohammadreza Jalaeipour, one of the organisers of the campaign, said the video was intended to show “that those who have paid the highest prices for the cause of democracy and human rights in Iran are supporting the deal”.

The video messages were gathered, to show to the world “that not only the overwhelming majority of Iranians, but also almost all the leading human rights and pro-democracy activists, prominent political prisoners and the independent voices of Iran’s society are wholeheartedly supporting the Iran deal,” the activist, who spent five months in solitary confinement in Iran, said. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

How the Iran deal will pass — and why it should

Fred Kaplan writes: It’s looking more and more like Benjamin Netanyahu committed a strategic blunder in so ferociously opposing the Iran nuclear deal and in rallying his American allies to spend all their resources on a campaign to kill the deal in Congress.

If current trends hold, the Israeli prime minister and his stateside lobbyists — mainly AIPAC — are set to lose this fight. It’s politically risky for Israel’s head of state to go up against the president of his only big ally and benefactor; it’s catastrophic to do so and come away with nothing. Similarly, it’s a huge defeat for AIPAC, whose power derives from an image of invincibility. American politicians and donors might get the idea that the group isn’t so invincible after all, that they can defy its wishes, now and then, without great risk.

It would have been better for Netanyahu — and for Israel — had he maybe grumbled about the Iran deal but not opposed it outright, let alone so brazenly. He could have pried many more favors from Obama in exchange for his scowl-faced neutrality. Not that Obama, or any other American president, will cut Israel off; but relations will remain more strained, and requests for other favors (for more or bigger weapons, or for certain votes in international forums) will be scrutinized more warily, than they would have been. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

World tunes out Netanyahu’s broken record on Iran

Akiva Eldar writes: It is hard to overstate the importance of the recorded confession by former Prime Minister and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, in which he reveals past discussions of a closed and confidential security forum concerning an eventual strike against Iran, aired by Channel 2 on Aug. 21. At this stage, clearing the ambiguity surrounding the plan to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities by one of its senior advocates is almost as important as renouncing Israel’s policy on its nuclear program. From Barak’s recorded comments, it appears that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu favored a military solution to the Iranian military nuclear threat over “peaceful means.” Two civilians and one military man — Ministers Moshe Ya’alon and Yuval Steinitz, members of the “Forum of Eight” and then-Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi — stopped Netanyahu, Barak and then-Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman from going to war with Iran and perhaps with the entire region. On another occasion, according to Barak, American military maneuvers conducted in the region prevented an Israeli military move against Iran.

Barak’s disclosures call into question not only the judgment of the two Israeli leaders, turning a rumor about an Israeli decision to attack Iran into a quote straight from the mouth of one of the decision-makers, but also the credibility of the incumbent prime minister. In his March 3 speech to Congress, Netanyahu declared that “no country has a greater stake than Israel in a good deal that peacefully removes this threat.” He stressed that the alternative to the “bad deal,” in his words, was not war, as the supporters of the agreement contended, but rather a “good deal.” But the problem is that according to Barak, both of them came up with the war alternative long before anyone knew the nature of the deal with Iran, and whether an agreement would be signed at all.

How did Netanyahu know on March 3 that the deal wouldn’t “be a farewell to arms … (but) a farewell to arms control, and the Middle East would soon be crisscrossed by nuclear tripwires?” In those days, the United States kept Israel out of the loop regarding negotiations after the White House accused it of “cherry-picking specific pieces of information and using them out of context to distort the negotiating position of the United States.” In reaction to April’s Lausanne understanding, Netanyahu warned that the proposed deal presents a real threat to the region and to the world and that “a deal based on this framework would threaten the survival of the State of Israel.” After that, negotiations continued for another three months, during which many drafts were prepared and endless changes introduced into central articles. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Netanyahu’s lackeys storm the airwaves in an ad war against the Iran deal

Bloomberg reports: Nationally, 14 groups have spent an estimated $14 million to run about 24,600 TV spots arguing for and against the Iran agreement in 55 local broadcast markets and national cable, ­according to data compiled by Kantar Media’s CMAG, which tracks political advertising. The largest buyer has been Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran, which was created to oppose the Iran deal by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as AIPAC. It’s spent about $9 million buying more than 15,500 TV ads in 34 local markets and on national cable. It plans to spend as much as $20 million advertising against the Iran agreement by the time Congress votes in September—far more than the $1.7 million AIPAC has spent this year lobbying Congress, its main activity. “There are still a number of undecided senators and members of Congress,” says Patrick Dorton, a spokesman for Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran. “Our goal is to educate the public and encourage the public to weigh in with their elected representatives.”

Montana saw a spike in Iran-related advertising before Democratic Senator Jon Tester announced Aug. 13 that he’d vote for the deal. More than 1,000 TV spots ran in Billings, Butte, Great Falls, and Missoula through Aug. 24, according to CMAG. Most were paid for by a group called Veterans Against the Deal, which now can shift the focus of its $1 million ad campaign more toward North Dakota. The nonprofit, created in July, has not disclosed its donors. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Sheldon Adelson and the wave of TV ads opposing the Iran deal

A recent headline at The Intercept seems to have been crafted to deceive its readers:

“Wave of TV Ads Opposing Iran Deal Organized By Saudi Arabian Lobbyist”

Parse those words very carefully, avoid the grammatical trap of assuming that a Saudi Arabian lobbyist would be Saudi Arabian, and you might grasp that the ads, though organized by the said lobbyist, may or may not have any connection to Saudi Arabia.

But most people don’t dissect headlines with such lawyerly exactness and thus wouldn’t hesitate in jumping to this conclusion:

“Saudis Financing TV Ads Opposing Nuke Deal with Iran”

That headline appears above a report appearing at the Macedonian International News Agency which is simply The Intercept report re-published without attribution.

So what’s the deception?

The ads in question are being run by a group called the American Security Initiative whose president is former Republican Senator Norm Coleman.

Coleman now works for the major lobbying law firm Hogan Lovells, where he provides legal services for the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia and legal services for other existing firm clients.

On that basis — and not much else — The Intercept’s Lee Fang has constructed a report that will lead many readers to believe the Saudis are behind the ad campaign, even though that conclusion is never spelled out. The report doesn’t make its conclusion explicit — even though it’s strongly inferred in the headline — presumably because it’s a claim for which there is no direct evidence.

But maybe it’s true. Maybe the Saudis are sinking millions of dollars into this ad campaign. It’s possible.

Yet there already is a much more plausible source for the funding for the American Security Initiative: the casino boss who bankrolls Benjamin Netanyahu, Sheldon Adelson.

The reason for believing it’s Adelson’s money rather than the Saudis’ isn’t simply because the tycoon’s opposition to the Iran deal is well-known. It’s because his financial links to the American Security Initiative have already been reported.

In Washington this March, Adelson co-chaired a fundraising event where Coleman made a pitch for the American Security Initiative.

Coleman is a close ally of Adelson — both are board members of the Republican Jewish Coalition.

The primary goal of the Coalition right now is to kill the Iran deal.

Following the March fundraiser and Coleman’s pitch for the American Security Initiative, the Daily Beast reported: “A GOP source said Adelson is expected to help fund the new security group, but Coleman declined to comment.”

So why is The Intercept now pointing at the Saudis when Adelson’s already been fingered?

Facebooktwittermail

Europeans shocked by efforts of Israel lobby to block Iran deal

The New York Times reports: In the United States, pro-Israel groups have spent heavily on a campaign to block the deal in the Congress, organizing meetings with Israeli diplomats and a videoconference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who has called the deal a “stunning historic mistake” that threatens Israel’s existence.

Although France’s main Jewish organization has expressed “very serious doubts” about the Iran deal, [Camille] Grand [director of the Strategic Research Foundation in Paris and an expert on nuclear nonproliferation] said, its objections have not spilled into the political sphere.

“Netanyahu’s opposition was so extreme that it made it difficult for it to exist in any French debate,” he said. “Even critics couldn’t sign up to the Netanyahu narrative because it doesn’t offer a constructive solution.”

And then there is the money — huge sums being spent mainly by the pro-Israel groups, less by supporters of the deal — which shock Europeans unused to this kind of profligate lobbying. Some here are also baffled by the hyperbole coming out of Washington, with talk of a choice between war and peace, and oblique references to the Holocaust. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

British embassy in Iran reopens

The Guardian reports: The UK’s foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, has reopened the British embassy in Iran, declaring that there was no limit to what the two countries could achieve, as mutual trust is restored.

Hammond watched the union flag being raised in the embassy compound in central Tehran for the first time since it was stormed and ransacked by protesters in 2011.

Reflecting the cautious nature of the relationship with a long, troubled history, the Iranian government sent a relatively junior official, Abolghasem Delphi, the head of the western European department at the foreign ministry. He made no public comments. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Ehud Barak’s Iran bombshell could shake up Israeli politics

The Associated Press reports: Former Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s comments that Israel nearly attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities but the plan was scuttled by military men and cowardly politicians could shake up Israeli politics.

The leaked interview, in which Barak also described Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as indecisive and obsessively pessimistic, was the talk of the town Sunday in an Israel obsessed about Iran. But beyond the hand-wringing, the always calculating Barak may have been focused on the future, perhaps for a final run at the country’s leadership.

Also a former prime minister, Barak enjoys respect as the last leader of the moderate Labor Party to win an election, defeating Netanyahu in 1999. But he also is seen by analysts as having squandered his opportunity, lasting just two years in a term that cemented his reputation as brilliant but arrogant, and prone to overcomplicated analysis and nonstop machinations. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The Iranian project of regional expansion was from the start based on shaky ground

Basheer Nafi writes: In spite of mounting evidence that the Iranian influence was in decline, many concluded that the nuclear agreement would provide the Iranian expansionist project with what it needs to become an invincible power. So, where is the fault in the reading of the Iranian expansionist project, or in Tehran’s own assessment of its power?

This, first of all, is the Middle East, the post-World War I Middle East, where power equations do not last for long and where the underpinnings of power keep changing just like quick sand. It is true that the Iranian expansion coincided with American failings in the Middle East, followed by a relative American withdrawal, as well as a decline of the regional Egyptian and Saudi influence; but it has also coincided with an active Turkish return to the neighbouring Middle East.

Additionally, it is true that the fall of the Taliban and Saddam regimes was quite swift, but it is also true that the Iraqi resistance to the occupation did not wait long before emerging, and that the Taliban were soon to regroup and lead the resistance against the occupation and its allies in Kabul. The problem with the Iranian expansionist project, right from the start, was that it did not take into consideration the continuously changing nature of the map of power and influence in the region.

Secondly, the Iranians chose in most of their expansionist steps to stand by the minorities, whether political or sectarian, in the face of the majority, not only the majority in every single country but also the majority at the level of the region as a whole.

The peoples of the region were, for several decades, viewing Iran with admiration and sympathy, especially when Iranian policy was characterised with standing by the people and their aspirations. Yet, Iran was changing rapidly, where nationalistic and sectarian ambitions replaced the policies of pan-Islamic solidarity. Iran encouraged the emergence of a sectarian hegemonic regime in Iraq, and put its entire weight behind the continuation of the hegemony of a sectarian and political minority over Syria and its people.

It also supported the foolish Houthi plot to seize control of Yemen. Without a single exception, Iran’s regional policies were to generate civil wars and ethnic and sectarian cleansing, not to mention the tragic destruction of peoples and their resources. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Netanyahu’s intelligence deficit

J.J. Goldberg writes: Israel’s military intelligence corps has given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a surprising report assessing the opportunities and threats that the Iran nuclear deal poses for Israel.

What’s startling about the report is not its substance, which is mostly a predictable mix of standard arguments presented for and against the deal: No nukes for 10 years, which gives Israel time to develop new countermeasures, but then a quick path to a nuke after a decade; an accelerated regional arms race, plus new legitimacy for pariah Iran, but also (surprisingly) a reduced likelihood of Iran attacking Israel. The upsides aren’t perfect. The downsides aren’t unmanageable.

No, what’s remarkable about the report is the fact that it exists. Netanyahu has ordered every level of Israeli officialdom to muzzle any discussion of the deal’s possible upsides. Central to his strategy is his insistence that the deal is an unmitigated catastrophe. Orders are to depict it as so ruinous that no outcome is acceptable short of its absolute defeat.

The prime minister and his allies insist Israel is united behind his unequivocal rejection of the deal. The cowering silence of the political opposition has helped him nurture the myth. But it’s a myth.

Now comes word that his intelligence community is defying the gag order and telling him otherwise. The deal offers Israel both advantages and disadvantages, the spooks say. The disadvantages are not too calamitous for anyone to cope with them. For an outside observer, the logical conclusion is that Netanyahu’s fiery confrontation with the Obama administration is unnecessary. And destructive. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Noam Chomsky: Rogue states and nuclear dangers

The first prime-time Republican primary debate of 2015 was an eye-opener of sorts when it came to the Middle East. After forcefully advocating for the termination of the pending nuclear deal with Iran, for example, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker unleashed an almost indecipherable torrent of words. “This is not just bad with Iran,” he insisted, “this is bad with ISIS. It is tied together, and, once and for all, we need a leader who’s gonna stand up and do something about it.” That prescription, as vague as it was incoherent, was par for the course.

When asked how he would respond to reports that Iranian Qods Force commander Major General Qassem Soleimani had recently traveled to Russia in violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution, GOP billionaire frontrunner Donald Trump responded, “I would be so different from what you have right now. Like, the polar opposite.” He then meandered into a screed about trading Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl for “five of the big, great killers leaders” of Afghanistan’s Taliban, but never offered the slightest hint that he had a clue who General Soleimani was or what he would actually do that would be “so different.” Questioned about the legacy of American soldiers killed in his brother’s war in Iraq, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush replied in a similarly incoherent fashion: “To honor the people that died, we need to — we need to stop the Iran agreement,” and then pledged to annihilate ISIS as well. Senator Ted Cruz seemed to believe that merely intoning the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” opened a surefire path to rapidly defeating ISIS — that, and his proposed Expatriate Terrorist Act that would stop Americans who join ISIS from using their “passport to come back and wage jihad on Americans.” Game, set, match, ISIS. 

Of the 10 candidates on that stage, only Senator Rand Paul departed from faith-based reality by observing that “ISIS rides around in a billion dollars’ worth of U.S. Humvees.” He continued, “It’s a disgrace. We’ve got to stop — we shouldn’t fund our enemies, for goodness sakes.” On a stage filled by Republicans in a lather about nonexistent weaponry in the Middle East — namely, an Iranian A-bomb — only Paul drew attention to weaponry that does exist, much of it American. Though no viewer would know it from that night’s debate, all across the region — from Yemen to Syria to Iraq — U.S. arms are fueling conflicts and turning the living into the dead.  Military spending in the Middle East reached almost $200 billion in 2014, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks arms sales. That represents a jump of 57% since 2005.  Some of the largest increases have been among U.S. allies buying big-ticket items from American weapons makers. That includes Iraq and Saudi Arabia ($90 billion in U.S. weapons deals from October 2010 to October 2014), which, by the way, haven’t fared so well against smaller, less well-armed opponents. Those countries have seen increases in their arms purchases of 286% and 112%, respectively, since 2005.

With the United States feeding the fires of war and many in its political class frothing about nonexistent nukes, leave it to the indomitable Noam Chomsky, a TomDispatch regular and institute professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to cut to the quick when it comes to Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United States, the regional balance of power, and arms (real or imagined). He wades through the spin and speechifying to offer a frank assessment of threats in the Middle East that you’re unlikely to hear about in any U.S. presidential debate between now and the end of time. Nick Turse

“The Iranian threat”
Who is the gravest danger to world peace?
By Noam Chomsky

Throughout the world there is great relief and optimism about the nuclear deal reached in Vienna between Iran and the P5+1 nations, the five veto-holding members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany. Most of the world apparently shares the assessment of the U.S. Arms Control Association that “the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action establishes a strong and effective formula for blocking all of the pathways by which Iran could acquire material for nuclear weapons for more than a generation and a verification system to promptly detect and deter possible efforts by Iran to covertly pursue nuclear weapons that will last indefinitely.”

There are, however, striking exceptions to the general enthusiasm: the United States and its closest regional allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia. One consequence of this is that U.S. corporations, much to their chagrin, are prevented from flocking to Tehran along with their European counterparts. Prominent sectors of U.S. power and opinion share the stand of the two regional allies and so are in a state of virtual hysteria over “the Iranian threat.” Sober commentary in the United States, pretty much across the spectrum, declares that country to be “the gravest threat to world peace.” Even supporters of the agreement here are wary, given the exceptional gravity of that threat.  After all, how can we trust the Iranians with their terrible record of aggression, violence, disruption, and deceit?

Opposition within the political class is so strong that public opinion has shifted quickly from significant support for the deal to an even split. Republicans are almost unanimously opposed to the agreement. The current Republican primaries illustrate the proclaimed reasons. Senator Ted Cruz, considered one of the intellectuals among the crowded field of presidential candidates, warns that Iran may still be able to produce nuclear weapons and could someday use one to set off an Electro Magnetic Pulse that “would take down the electrical grid of the entire eastern seaboard” of the United States, killing “tens of millions of Americans.”

Continue reading →

Facebooktwittermail

Iranians must take responsibility for their role in the 1953 coup

Shervin Malekzadeh writes: The Salsabil neighbourhood of Tehran was still a middle-class enclave when the first coup against Mohammad Mossadegh failed in the summer of 1953. As news spread of the monarch’s escape, defiant residents poured out into the streets with cries of “Death to the Shah, death to the Shah!”.

Racing ahead of their neighbours and painting anti-Shah slogans on alley walls were two brothers, ages eight and ten, my father and uncle. Many years later in middle age my father remembered with awe how three days later the neighbourhood turned out again in response to the second, successful coup. The Shah was already on his way home from Rome as the residents of Salsibil chanted ‘Death to Mossadegh, death to Mossadegh!’.

Almost every family in Iran can tell a similar story. Together they constitute ghosts, the collective memory of loss and humiliation at the hands of others. The tragedy of Mossadegh, writes the historian Ali Ansari, is the narrative of fatalism it left in the national psyche, a history of being outmanoeuvred by stronger foes, always ending in betrayal. Children are taught the lessons of this history in clichés: never trust anyone outside the family, even your closest friends. We are all members of hezb-e ba’d (the ‘wind party’), blowing in the direction of the strong and away from the weak.

How countries remember their pasts, writes Jennifer Lind, a Dartmouth professor, conveys information about their future behavior. For America and Iran to move past the emerging détente to something resembling respect, if not friendship, it’s crucial that the US comes to terms with its own history in Iran, beginning with the coup d’état against Mossadegh. America does not need to forgive itself for what it did in 1953, though surely it must be forgiven: it needs to remember that Iranians did this to themselves in cooperation with the CIA.

More than any other event, perhaps even more than the seizure of the US embassy and hostage crisis in 1979-80, the overthrow of the Mossadegh government set the terms by which Washington frames and understands its relationship with Iran and its people, an official narrative of American culpability that, although well intentioned, renders ordinary Iranians irrelevant to any future reconciliation between the two countries.

Speaking to The New York Times last month, president Barack Obama acknowledged that the US “had some involvement with overthrowing a democratically elected regime in Iran” and so it ought not be surprising that Iranians “have their own security concerns, their own narrative”. Americans, he said, would do well to put themselves in Iran’s shoes.

The president’s comments were a version of the standard narrative used by progressive Americans to signal that they get it: they understand that in overthrowing the elected government of Mossadegh, the US planted the seeds of an anti-American backlash that produced the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the rise of radical Islam in the region. In his book All the Shah’s Men, Stephen Kinzer goes so far as to draw a direct line from the CIA’s actions “through the Shah’s repressive regime and the Islamic Revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the World Trade Center in New York”.

That the 1953 coup has become a type of shorthand for the unintended consequences of meddling in the domestic affairs of other countries demonstrates a growing sophistication on the part of US policymakers. But making the causal leap from coup to theocracy confuses a partial truth for the whole. The CIA played a necessary and critical role in orchestrating the coup, but its actions were successful only through the cooperation of thousands of Iranians, from street toughs and army generals to feckless clerics and ordinary citizens eager to prove their loyalty to whoever ended up the winner. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Iran deal is shaping the Iraq war

Noah Feldman writes: Iraq’s prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, is taking severe steps to rid himself of his troublesome predecessor, Nuri al-Maliki. On the heels of a government shakeup, the latest move is a parliamentary report blaming Maliki and many of his political and military leaders for the fall of Mosul to Islamic State last summer. The report is going to be referred to a public prosecutor — which means Abadi may be plotting a criminal prosecution. Maliki is fighting back, issuing a public statement repudiating the report.

Given that Maliki had more domestic support than Abadi when the U.S., with grudging Iranian acquiescence, forced Maliki out of office, it’s no surprise that Abadi would like to consolidate his authority by purging Maliki completely.

But beyond an interest in the Byzantine manipulations of Iraqi politics, why should the rest of the world care about Abadi’s move or Maliki’s displacement?

The answer lies in the effects of the U.S.-Iran deal, which is now before Congress but is being treated by regional actors as a fait accompli. Abadi’s move on Maliki reflects, through a glass darkly, the realignment of regional politics in light of the Iran deal. Where once Maliki was perceived as pro-Iran by Iraqi Sunnis and the U.S., today Abadi is pursuing a new approach in which, he is betting, U.S. and Iranian interests will be closely aligned, and maintaining a multi-sectarian, unified Iraq is no longer an inviolable goal. And the Iranians, having abandoned Maliki to his fate, seem to be on board. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The AP’s controversial and badly flawed Iran inspections story, explained

Max Fisher writes: On Wednesday afternoon, the Associated Press published an exclusive report on the Iran nuclear program so shocking that many political pundits declared the nuclear deal dead in the water. But the article turned out to be a lot less damning that it looked — and the AP, which scrubbed many of the most damning details, is now itself part of this increasingly bizarre story.

To get a handle on all this, I spoke to Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at Middlebury College’s Monterey Institute of International Studies. What follows is a primer on what happened, what the AP story said and how it changed, as well as the nuclear issues involved — a place called Parchin and something known as PMD — and what they mean for the nuclear deal.

The bottom line here is that this is all over a mild and widely anticipated compromise on a single set of inspections to a single, long-dormant site. The AP, deliberately or not, has distorted that into something that sounds much worse, but actually isn’t. The whole incident is a fascinating, if disturbing, example of how misleading reporting on technical issues can play into the politics of foreign policy. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Cheap claims of anti-Semitism can’t change reality of Iran deal lobbying

Lara Friedman writes: There is an old truism that holds that the best defense is a good offense. Or, more colloquially, when you find yourself in hot water, flip the script and go on the attack. Allies of and apologists for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu are today doing just that. They are peddling a new narrative that President Obama and others, by speaking openly and critically about the extraordinary efforts of the Israeli government and some U.S. Jewish groups to kill the Iran deal, are guilty of feeding anti-Semitism or smearing American Jews, or are unmasking themselves as anti-Semites.

According to this narrative, the suggestion that Netanyahu is interfering in U.S. politics – as is self-evidently true – is unacceptable, because it feeds anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jews pulling the strings of politicians. The observation that Israel’s leader is pressing American Jews to take his side over that of their elected president – while demonstrably true – cannot be uttered, as it dredges up anti-Semitic tropes about the divided loyalties of America’s Jewish citizens. The fact that Israel is a nation standing alone in opposing the Iran nuclear deal – as is manifestly the case – is unmentionable, as it correlates with an anti-Semitic caricature of Jews as warmongers. Commenting that well-funded American Jewish organizations are playing a leading role in efforts to build grassroots support for Netanyahu’s position – something some groups have previously discussed with pride – is forbidden, as it promotes anti-Semitic canards about Jewish power and money. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail