Category Archives: Israel lobby

The danger of new Iran sanctions

Colin H. Kahl writes: The Geneva “interim” agreement reached in November between Iran and the so-called P5+1 (the United States, Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia) freezes Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for modest sanctions relief, with the goal of enabling further talks to comprehensively resolve one of the world’s thorniest challenges. Yet despite the landmark accord, more than two dozen Senators introduced legislation on December 19 to impose new oil and financial sanctions on Iran. The Senate could vote on the measure soon after it returns from recess in January. Powerful lobby organizations are mobilized in support of the bill, and it could certainly pass.

The legislation defies a request by the Obama administration and ten Senate committee chairs to stand down on sanctions while negotiations continue. It also flies in the face of an unclassified intelligence assessment that new sanctions “would undermine the prospects for a successful comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran.” Proponents of the bill note that the proposed sanctions would only come into force if Iran violates the Geneva agreement or fails to move toward a final deal, and would not kick in for months. But the White House warns that enshrining new economic threats in law now runs counter to the spirit of the Geneva pledge of no new sanctions during negotiations, and risks empowering Iranian forces hoping to scuttle nuclear talks. The legislation also defines congressionally acceptable parameters for a final deal that Iran experts almost universally believe are unachievable, namely the requirement that Iran completely dismantle its uranium enrichment program. For these reasons, the administration believes the bill represents a poison pill that could kill diplomacy, making a nuclear-armed Iran or war more likely.

Sanctions hawks disagree, arguing that the legislation will enable, not thwart, diplomatic progress. “Current sanctions brought Iran to the negotiating table,” Senator Robert Menendez, the bill’s leading champion, contends, “and a credible threat of future sanctions will require Iran to cooperate and act in good faith at the negotiating table.”

But this logic badly misreads the historical effect of sanctions on Iranian behavior and under-appreciates the role played by Iran’s fractious domestic politics. A careful look at Iranian actions over the past decade suggests that economic pressure has sometimes been effective, but only when it aligns with particular Iranian political dynamics and policy preferences. And once domestic Iranian politics are factored in, the lesson for today’s sanctions debate is clear: the threat of additional sanctions, at this critical juncture, could derail negotiations toward a peaceful solution. [Continue reading…]

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Don’t let Israel declare war for America

Sheldon Richman writes: The American people should know that pending right now in Congress is a bipartisan bill that would virtually commit the United States to go to war against Iran if Israel attacks the Islamic Republic. “The bill outsources any decision about resort to military action to the government of Israel,” Columbia University Iran expert Gary Sick wrote to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in protest, one of the bill’s principal sponsors.

The mind boggles at the thought that Congress would let a foreign government decide when America goes to war, so here is the language (PDF):

If the government of Israel is compelled to take military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran’s nuclear weapon program, the United States Government should stand with Israel and provide, in accordance with the law of the United States and the constitutional responsibility of Congress to authorize the use of military force, diplomatic, military and economic support to the Government of Israel in its defense of its territory, people and existence.

This section is legally nonbinding, but given the clout of the bill’s chief supporter outside of Congress — the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC [PDF]), leader of the pro-Israel lobby — that is a mere formality. [Continue reading…]

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Meet the American hedge fund billionaire who could start a ‘holy war’ in the Middle East

Alex Kane reports: Henry Swieca is a money man. The New York-based billionaire made his fortune by co-founding Highbridge Capital Corp., a hedge fund that boasted clients like the American International Group.

In 2009, the banking giant JP Morgan Chase, another client of Highbridge, fully took over the flagship hedge fund. Swieca went on to play a role at two more hedge funds: Talpion Fund Management, which he launched, and Clearline Capital, which Swieca joined as a startup investor in February 2013.

Swieca, whose net worth is $1.2 billion as of September 2013, is well-known as a financial guru. His every move is covered by the financial press. But he’s less known for what his foundation pours money into: right-wing, pro-Israel causes. Along with a host of charitable groups and domestic Jewish centers, the Swieca Family Foundation, which he runs with his Israeli-American wife Estee, has poured tons of cash into pro-Israel groups–including to religious extremist groups that operate in the most sensitive of holy places. Swieca did not return requests for comment on his donations.

According to tax records reviewed by AlterNet, Swieca, an Orthodox Jew, has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the American Israel Education Foundation, the non-profit offshoot of the powerful lobbying group called the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. He’s also handed over cash to groups like the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces; the right-wing, anti-Muslim David Horowitz Freedom Center; and the Hebron Fund, a Brooklyn-based organization that funnels American money into illegal Israeli settlements in Hebron, a big city in the West Bank that has the most intense regime of settler violence and enforced segregation in the occupied Palestinian territories.

But perhaps most alarmingly is Swieca’s funding of the Temple Institute, an organization that promotes the building of the Third Temple on the third most holy site for Muslims. [Continue reading…]

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Top Senate Democrats break with White House and circulate new Iran sanctions bill

Ali Gharib reports: Three top senators, including two Democrats, have begun circulating a draft of a new Iran sanctions bill that critics say could violate the terms of an agreement struck between Iran and the United States in Geneva last month. The bill, set for introduction by the Democratic chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Robert Menendez of New Jersey, along with top sanctions hawks Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), defies the Obama administration’s repeated requests for Congress to hold off on any new legislation that could imperil last month’s interim nuclear pact with Iran while talks continue toward a comprehensive final deal.

A copy of the bill, dubbed the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013*, was obtained by Foreign Policy. The new sanctions are unlikely to come to a vote in the Senate this week in the final days of the 2013 session.* Instead, the Senate would likely consider the measure after it returns on Jan. 6.

The legislation would broaden the scope of the sanctions already imposed against Iran, expanding the restrictions on Iran’s energy sector to include all aspects of its petroleum trade and putting in place measures targeting Iran’s shipping and mining sectors. The bill allows Obama to waive the new sanctions during the current talks by certifying every 30 days that Iran is complying with the Geneva deal and negotiating in good faith on a final agreement, as well as meeting other conditions such as not sponsoring or carrying out acts of terrorism against U.S. targets.

In accordance with goals laid out frequently by hard-liners in Congress and the influential lobbying group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the bill sets tough conditions for a final deal, should one be reached with Iranian negotiators. Among those conditions is a provision that only allows Obama to waive new sanctions, even after a final deal has been struck, if that deal bars Iran from enriching any new uranium whatsoever. The bill states Obama may not waive sanctions unless the United States and its allies “reached a final and verifiable agreement or arrangement with Iran that will … dismantle Iran’s illicit nuclear infrastructure, including enrichment and reprocessing capabilities and facilities.” (Congress could also block Obama’s waivers by passing a “joint resolution of disapproval” against a final deal.) [Continue reading…]

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The many enemies of a deal with Iran

Christopher Dickey writes: “Black swans” are the unlikely and unforeseen events that change the world. Mathematical probability cannot predict them and conventional wisdom is blind to them, as Nassim Nicholas Taleb, wrote six years ago when he coined the term. They seem to come out of nowhere, like the airliners of 9/11. But anyone who has a feel for the ever-deceptive volatility of the Middle East can see that right now the black swans are circling like vultures.

Their dark wings can be glimpsed in random headlines: a mysterious American disappears during on an off-the-books mission for the CIA. Members of a cult-like Iranian opposition group are slaughtered in Iraq even as their leaders forge close ties to famous American politicians. The worsening U.S. relationship with its old ally Saudi Arabia is threatened by renewed questions about the complicity of Saudi officials in the 9/11 attacks. Those are just a few of the sinister bits of information floating around the chaotic region these days.

None of these developments are certain to provoke cataclysmic change and, probability-wise, they probably won’t. But the region is so on edge, with Libya crumbling, Egypt in turmoil, and Syria tearing itself apart, that, like the act of a single assassin in Sarajevo in 1914, one unforeseen incident can bring on a cascade of catastrophes.

Let’s set the scene by looking at the Iran talks: The Obama administration has made those negotiations, to stop the mullahs from acquiring atomic weapons, a top priority. But last month’s breakthrough accords between Iran and the United States (plus France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China) are “just interim,” as French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius reminded the World Policy Conference in Monaco on Saturday. A final deal isn’t due for six months, if then.

The Iranians now have most of the know-how and most of the radioactive stuff they need to build a bomb. Will they truly and definitively step back from that threshold? Fabius, whose skepticism stalled the Geneva accords for a time, says he is skeptical still.

If the talks fail, the chances increase dramatically that the United States will get dragged into a new war in the Middle East, most likely alongside Israel. The objective of the surgical attacks that have been talked about would be to stall the Iranian program for just a few years—perhaps a very few years. But in response to such an action, it’s likely the Iranians would pursue a much more secretive effort without any United Nations inspectors to track it, and they’d eventually wind up with the bomb.

The only way to be 100 percent sure they won’t go down that path would be to change the regime. That was the logic behind the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and we know how that went. [Continue reading…]

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Israel lobby changes tactics on Iran deal

JTA reports: When it comes to the deal between Iran and major powers, Israel and the pro-Israel community are retreating from a strategy of confrontation and working instead to influence the contours of a final agreement.

In a conference call last week, Howard Kohr, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s executive director, advised pro-Israel activists and leaders not to confront the Obama administration directly over the “difference of strategy” between the United States and Israel on Iran. Instead, Kohr said to focus on passing new sanctions as a means of shaping a final deal.

AIPAC would not comment on the call, which was first revealed Dec. 3 in a Zionist Organization of America news release criticizing AIPAC’s approach. But Kohr’s advice comports with a recent rhetorical pivot by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who initially excoriated the interim deal with Iran reached last month in Geneva as a “historic mistake.”

This week, meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Jerusalem, Netanyahu significantly downplayed his unhappiness with the interim deal and said he was focused instead on the outcome of the six-month period established to reach a final accord over Iran’s nuclear program. Netanyahu is sending a team to Washington in the coming days to consult with US officials on how best to influence a final deal.

“We believe that in a final deal, unlike the interim deal, it’s crucial to bring about a final agreement about determination of Iran’s military and nuclear capability,” Netanyahu said. [Continue reading…]

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The Zionists afraid of free speech

This week, the New America Foundation hosted a discussion on the newly published, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, with its author Max Blumenthal. James Fallows writes:

I’ve been involved with New America since its beginning in the 1990s, initially as chairman of its board and still as a board member. New America puts on well over 100 events each year — in DC, New York, California, and elsewhere. To the best of my knowledge, this latest session was the only time we’ve been under public or private pressure to rescind an invitation for someone to speak. There could have been other cases, but I don’t know of any.

The event in question featured Max Blumenthal, who was being interviewed about his book on Israel, Goliath, by Peter Bergen, the well-known writer on war-and-terrorism topics. (Bergen is also a New America fellow; the latest of his many books is Man Hunt, about the bin Laden raid.) In the week before the event, items like this one in Commentary had said that New America should not provide a platform for what it claimed was destroy-Israel hate speech. Some members of the board got personal email pitches to the same effect.

I wasn’t involved in inviting Max Blumenthal, but having read his book before the session and now having heard him speak, I am glad that New America and its president, Anne-Marie Slaughter, stood by their invitation. That was the right call on general free-speech principles, and also because this book should be discussed and read. [Extra disclosures: Both Slaughter and Bergen are long-time friends of mine, as well as colleagues via the Atlantic, New America, and elsewhere. My wife and I have also been friends of Max Blumenthal’s parents for many years.]

The case against Goliath, summarized here, is that it is so anti-Israel as to represent not journalism or reasonable critique but bigoted propaganda; plus, that in being so anti-Israel it is effectively anti-Semitic. With a few seconds of online search, you can track down the now-extensive back and forth. The furor has certainly helped publicize the book, but to me those claims about it seem flat mischaracterizations. Goliath is a particular kind of exposé-minded, documentary-broadside journalism whose place we generally recognize and respect.

The purpose of this book is not to provide some judicious “Zionism at the crossroads” overview of the pluses and minuses of modern Israel. That is not the kind of writer Max Blumenthal is. His previous book, Republican Gomorrah, was about the rise of the Tea Party and related extremist sentiment within the GOP. In that book he wasn’t interested in weighing the conservative critique of big government or teachers’ unions or Medicaid. That’s Brookings’s job. Instead his purpose was to document the extreme voices — the birthers, the neo-secessionists, the gun and militia activists, those consumed by hatred of Barack Obama — who were then providing so much of the oomph within Republican politics.

That book was effective not because Blumenthal said he disagreed with these people. Of course he did, but so what? Its power came simply from showing, at length and in their own words, how they talked and what they planned to do. As Blumenthal pointed out in this week’s New America session, that earlier book argued, a year before the Tea Party’s surge victories in the 2010 mid-terms: these people are coming, and they are taking the party with them. His account wasn’t “balanced” or at all subtle, but it was right.

His ambition in Goliath is similar. He has found a group of people he identifies as extremists in Israel — extreme in their belief that Arabs have no place in their society, extreme in their hostility especially to recent non-Jewish African refugees, extreme in their seeming rejection of the liberal-democratic vision of Israel’s future. He says: these people are coming, and they’re taking Israeli politics with them. As he put it in a recent interview with Salon, the book is “an unvarnished view of Israel at its most extreme.” Again, the power of his book is not that Blumenthal disagrees with these groups. Obviously he does. It comes from what he shows. [Continue reading…]

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Britain’s ill-informed friends of Israel are refusing to face facts on Iran nuclear deal

Peter Oborne writes: It was one of those coincidences that a novelist might hesitate to invent. One of William Hague’s first tasks after signing a historic nuclear agreement with Iran was to address the grandest and most important gathering of Britain’s pro-Israel lobby.

Having flown back into London from Geneva on the Sunday, the Foreign Secretary then turned up the next day at the Park Plaza hotel at Westminster for the annual lunch of Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI). More than 100 Tory MPs, as well as hundreds more CFI supporters, were present to hear Daniel Taub, the Israeli ambassador, chide Mr Hague over Iran. One reporter present wrote that Mr Hague was “humiliated”, adding that when he rose to speak he was greeted with “light applause” and “heard in obvious silence”.

Some close to Mr Hague insist, by contrast, that it was a cheerful event. Nevertheless, the atmosphere was by no means as warm and easy as it was last year, when David Cameron was the guest of honour. At some tables, I am told, there was palpable resentment. Each guest had been given a briefing pack that included a caustic summary of the deal that Mr Hague had signed the previous day. A longer version of this document was then dispatched to Conservative MPs, ahead of the Foreign Secretary’s afternoon statement to the House of Commons on Iran.

I have obtained this briefing, which parroted the overblown rhetoric with which Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, responded to the deal in Geneva. The CFI warned Tory MPs that “the world’s most dangerous regime has taken a significant step towards obtaining the world’s most dangerous weapon” – echoing Mr Netanyahu almost verbatim.

This was not merely propaganda. It was ignorant and poorly informed. [Continue reading…]

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Iran deal exposes the limits of the Israel lobby’s power

Mohammed Ayoob writes: The impact of the Iran nuclear deal is unlikely to be limited to the nuclear proliferation arena. While the question whether the deal has prevented Iran from ever developing nuclear weapons capability or has merely postponed the inevitable by a few months or years will continue to be debated, one should not ignore the wider strategic consequences of the agreement for several reasons.

First, it has the potential of introducing a sea change in the relationship of the United States that could unfetter Iranian diplomatic capabilities that can be used in pursuit of its broader regional goals. This is the reason why Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies have reacted so harshly and negatively to the agreement. If things proceed down the path of an Iranian-U.S. rapprochement in the context of a war weary American public opinion, Riyadh can no longer automatically depend upon U.S. diplomatic and military support against Iran in its competition for power and influence in the Persian Gulf.

Second, it has demonstrated unequivocally that on vital strategic issues in which U.S. and Israeli interests diverge Washington does possess the residual political will to make hard decisions in the teeth of Israeli opposition, something that analysts of all hues had doubted for a long time. This may signal the beginning of the unraveling of the prevailing myth that U.S. policy toward the Middle East is shaped in Tel Aviv and not in Washington. It also explodes the myth that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is an all-powerful force when it comes to fashioning U.S. policy toward the Middle East. Its consequences, therefore, go beyond the Iranian nuclear issue and are likely to impact public perceptions in the United States and abroad regarding the deadlock over the Palestinian issue and the likely direction of U.S. policy on the unending Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This explains Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s uncompromising hostility toward the Geneva agreement even at the expense of doing grave damage to Israeli-U.S. relations. [Continue reading…]

One of the paradoxes of the practice of railing against power — be that the power of the Israel lobby, or government, or corporations — is that those who persistently issue such warnings can be reluctant to acknowledge that such power has limits.

Thus in the current situation there are those who will insist that sooner or later Congress, on the command of AIPAC, will impose new sanctions and destroy the agreement Iran. Or, that due to pressure from Israel and Saudi Arabia the current agreement will expire without a permanent agreement being reached.

Both of those scenarios are certainly possibilities but my sense is that what this weekend’s agreement reveals is that the opponents of U.S.-Iranian rapprochement are manifestly swimming against the international tide.

The neocon trolls, beguiled by their own apocalyptic rhetoric, are convinced that the evil Islamic republic, hellbent on its pursuit of nuclear weapons, can pursue no other course. Yet what all the evidence makes clear is that Iran’s leaders — like those of any other state — are acting in accordance with what they perceive as their own interests and currently they see those interests best served by improved international relations.

The lesson here is about flexibility. Those with the skill to hold on to power are often more pragmatic than their opponents.

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Sen. Mark Kirk’s unshakable loyalty to Israel

Eli Clifton and Ali Gharib report: During an invitation-only phone briefing for supporters, one of the Senate’s top Iran hawks relished his battle with the Obama administration over the imposition of more sanctions against Iran amid the latest round of diplomatic negotiations underway in Geneva. During the call, Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., reserved special attacks for Secretary of State John Kerry and lead U.S. negotiator Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman.

“It’s the reason why I ran for the Senate, [it] is all wrapped up in this battle. I am totally dedicated to the survival of the state of Israel in the 21st century,” said Kirk, whose office framed the call as an update on Iran’s nuclear program and Kirk’s efforts to pass additional sanctions. “This has been very much a one-senator show, unfortunately,” he said of his confrontational, public approach.

Kirk is leading the Republican effort to introduce new sanctions in the Senate. Along with six co-sponsors, Kirk on Tuesday announced his intention to introduce amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual bill that budgets for the military, that would increase sanctions on Iran and impose restrictions on any possible interim nuclear deal with Iran. The effort is currently being held up by the upper chamber’s Democratic leadership.

The 28-minute phone call with Kirk, which occurred on Monday afternoon, was by invitation only, but Salon reporters obtained an invitation and RSVPed by name to Kirk for Senate finance director Barret Kedzior. [Continue reading…]

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Friedman on the Israel lobby’s effort to block a deal with Iran

Thomas Friedman writes: Never have I seen Israel and America’s core Arab allies working more in concert to stymie a major foreign policy initiative of a sitting U.S. president, and never have I seen more lawmakers — Democrats and Republicans — more willing to take Israel’s side against their own president’s. I’m certain this comes less from any careful consideration of the facts and more from a growing tendency by many American lawmakers to do whatever the Israel lobby asks them to do in order to garner Jewish votes and campaign donations.

That said, I don’t mind Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia going ballistic — in stereo — over this proposed deal. It gives Kerry more leverage. Kerry can tell the Iranians: “Look, our friends are craaaaaazzzy. And one of them has a big air force. You better sign quick.”

No, I don’t begrudge Israel and the Arabs their skepticism, but we still should not let them stop a deal. If you’re not skeptical about Iran, you’re not paying attention. Iran has lied and cheated its way to the precipice of building a bomb, and without tough economic sanctions — sanctions that President Obama engineered but which Netanyahu and the Arab states played a key role in driving — Iran would not be at the negotiating table.

It’s good to see Friedman again acknowledging the influence of the Israel lobby and not surprising that like so many others he repeats the trope that sanctions forced Iran to negotiate, but as Hossein Mousavian points out, the actual effect of sanctions has been the opposite of their intended effect:

Contrary to the claims of some US lawmakers and Israeli officials, sanctions only caused a dramatic rise in nuclear capability, as Tehran sought to show it would not respond to pressure. Before, Iran was enriching uranium to below 5 per cent at one site with 3,000 centrifuges and possessed a minute stockpile of enriched uranium. Today, it is enriching to 20 per cent at two sites with 19,000 centrifuges. It has a stockpile of 8,000kg of enriched uranium and more sophisticated centrifuges.

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Iranian human rights activists blast Congress’s sanctions push

Ali Gharib writes: Many Iran hawks in Washington claim the mantle of human rights advocacy in their push for ever harsher measures against the Islamic Republic, up to and sometimes including the use of military force against Iran’s nuclear facilities. But there’s a disconnect: While D.C.’s Iran hawks never relent in their push for more sanctions, human rights activists working inside and outside Iran feel that sanctions are impinging on their work. That’s the backdrop for the push by the Obama administration to get Congress to hold off on more sanctions. But Members of Congress, especially from the Republican right, appear poised to press on in their quest to further cripple the Iranian economy.

“Adding more sanctions at this stage in the negotiations, when there is a lot of hope about the fate of nuclear talks with Iran, is tantamount to sabotage,” said Hadi Ghaemi, the head of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, in a statement released by the group today. “The idea of adding more sanctions at this crucial point in the negotiations disappoints millions of Iranians who are hopeful these talks will lead to a compromise and help lift the sanctions, and sounds like a drumbeat leading to war.”

The release singled out a statement by Sen. Mark Kirk, one of Congress’s most avid Iran hawks, to reporters: “How do you define an Iranian moderate? An Iranian who is out of bullets and out of money.” The line refers to Iran’s moderate President Hassan Rouhani. While Iran’s elections are deeply flawed—only regime-approved candidates can run—it’s worth noting that Rouhani was not Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s choice for president. “The 18 million Iranians who defied the odds and voted for change in this year’s presidential elections might take issue with Senator Kirk’s insulting characterization,” noted Jamal Abdi, of the National Iranian American Council, a U.S.-based group that opposes new sanctions, in a press release.

Laying bare Kirk’s cynical attack on Iranian moderates requires only remembering his plea for Iran to free the Green movement leaders under house arrest; both Mir Hossien Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, while reformers, were also stalwarts of the Islamic Republic. And Kirk has made impolitic statements before: In 2011, he said, “It’s okay to take the food out of the mouths” of ordinary Iranians to punish them for the acts of their government. [Continue reading…]

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AIPAC ready to mount an aggressive campaign to sabotage negotiations with Iran

The New York Times reports: Diplomats from the United States and five other countries are pursuing an accord that would cause Iran to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for the loosening of some of the sanctions that have crippled the Iranian economy. Talks broke off this weekend but are scheduled to resume on Nov. 20.

But they are facing bipartisan doubt about their course. “I understand what they’re saying about destroying a chance for a peaceful outcome here with new sanctions, but I really do believe if the new sanctions were crafted in the right way, they would be more helpful than harmful,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina.

Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the third-ranking Democrat, was briefed Monday on the negotiations by Mr. Biden and has met with the White House chief of staff, Denis R. McDonough, as well as with cabinet officials. Yet he still proclaimed himself “dubious” of the possible agreement because of concerns that the administration might be willing to give too much away while getting too little in return.

In a letter to the editor in The New York Times last week and an opinion article in USA Today, Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the Democratic chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, indicated he would press forward against the administration’s wishes on the sanctions legislation.

“Iran is on the ropes because of its intransigent policies and our collective will, and it would be imprudent to want an agreement more than the Iranians do,” he wrote in USA Today on Monday. “Tougher sanctions will serve as an incentive for Iran to verifiably dismantle its nuclear weapons program.”

A powerful lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, issued its own broadside. “Aipac continues to support congressional action to adopt legislation to further strengthen sanctions, and there will absolutely be no pause, delay or moratorium in our efforts,” the group’s president, Michael Kassen, said in a statement this month.

But the group’s officials are taking a wait-and-see stance for now. If the talks collapse on their own, the group can avoid wading into a political donnybrook, but if a diplomatic breakthrough is achieved, Aipac is ready to mount an aggressive campaign to stop it, according to one person familiar with its thinking. [Continue reading…]

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Iran negotiations vs. war

In an editorial, USA Today says: For foreign policy hard-liners, nothing is quite so unnerving as peace negotiations. The nearer an agreement seems, the more they fret that too much will be given away. Better, they think, to hang tough until the other side capitulates.

But the likeliest alternative to the suddenly promising negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program is not capitulation. It is war, which makes rising attempts to kill talks in the crib look particularly foolish.

The hard-liners’ anxiety has been ramping up to Xanax levels ever since top diplomats, including Secretary of State John Kerry, rushed to Geneva last week in hopes of wrapping up a six-month interim deal that would test Iran’s claim that it is willing to abandon its quest for nuclear weapons.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, fresh off a Kerry briefing, started ripping into the negotiations, calling them “the deal of the century for Iran.” Meanwhile, in the U.S. Senate, where Netanyahu enjoys more influence than any foreign leader should, key senators were threatening to move ahead with legislation that would tighten sanctions, an in-your-face response that almost certainly would kill the Iranian attempt at outreach before it can be explored. [Continue reading…]

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AIPAC’s lackeys in Congress ready to obstruct Iran talks

Foreign Policy reports: The Obama administration is facing an unexpected hurdle in its new nuclear talks with Iran – a sizeable bloc of Democratic lawmakers who have made clear that they would break with the White House and fight any effort to lift the current sanctions on Tehran.

The future of those sanctions is a key issue in this week’s negotiations in Geneva between senior officials from Iran and the U.S., the most serious talks between the two longtime adversaries in decades. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohamad Javad Zarif kicked off Monday’s session with a PowerPoint presentation, delivered in English, which offered to put new limits on his country’s nuclear program in exchange for easing the Western sanctions that have devastated the Iranian economy and decimated the value of its currency.

The White House has already signaled a potential openness to that kind of deal, but a wide array of powerful Democrats — including the top members of both the Senate and House foreign affairs committees — strongly oppose lifting any of the existing sanctions on Iran unless Tehran offers concessions that go far beyond anything Zarif has talked about in Geneva. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington, has also promised to do everything in its power to keep the punitive measures in place.

“If the president were to ask for a lifting of existing sanctions it would be extremely difficult in the House and Senate to support that,” Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told The Cable. “I’m willing to listen but I think that asking Congress to weaken and diminish current sanctions is not hospitable on Capitol Hill.”

“I’d say no,” said Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) when asked if he’d accept a presidential plea to lift sanctions. “They’ve got a long way to go to demonstrate the kind of credibility that would lead us to believe we can move in a conciliatory direction. And sanctions are what has strengthened the administration’s hand.”

Opposition from Democratic lawmakers represents more than just a political headache for the administration. Congress has the power to impose, modify or remove sanctions regardless of what the White House wants, and it has shown a willingness to overrule the administration in the past. [Continue reading…]

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Israel’s increasing sense of isolation

Joanna Paraszczuk reports: A sense of isolation prevails in Israel’s media on Wednesday — reflected in both news reporting and opinion pieces — following Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s Tuesday speech to the UN General Assembly.

Populist outlet Ynet and Channel 2 focus on comments made by Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon on Wednesday morning. Ya’alon spoke out in support of Netanyahu’s stance on Iran, saying that the Prime Minister had “drawn an accurate picture” of Israel’s stance on Iran and President Hassan Rouhani.

“In the UN, the Prime Minister described an accurate reality about how we see the Iranian threat, which is ongoing, even though President Rouhani spoke sweetly and Western officials prefer not to face reality with open eyes,” Ya’alon told reporters during a tour of the Golan Heights.

The Defense Minister echoed Netanyahu’s words, saying that Iran posed a terror threat in the region and beyond, “Iran carries out terror in Afghanistan, it trains and arms Hezbollah, it tries to smuggle weapons into Gaza, it is investing in infrastructure of terrorism in South America and Asia and its centrifuges continue to turn. That is why we say you have to stop the Iranian nuclear program by all means.”

Channel 2 also carries comments from Security Cabinet member and Minister Silvan Shalom, who warned that Israel stands alone.

“We are quite alone in facing the Iranian threat to destroy us,” Shalom said, adding that Rouhani is no different from his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

“Israel is trying to remove the mask from Rouhani’s face, he speaks sweetly and in a different way from Ahmadinejad, but he did not really no different from him. His aim is to gain more time to build a nuclear bomb, which would be an eternal insurance certificate for the ayatollahs’ regime,” Shalom added. [Continue reading…]

Setting aside for now the fact that Iran’s leaders persist in denying that the Islamic republic’s nuclear program is geared towards weapons production, Shalom’s characterization of the implications of a nuclear-armed Iran is quite revealing.

Having referred to “the Iranian threat to destroy us,” he then suggests that nuclear weapons would serve as an “eternal insurance certificate for the ayatollahs’ regime” — acknowledging that such weapons would serve Iran in exactly the same way that they serve all other nuclear powers: as the ultimate deterrent. Shalom clearly doesn’t share the view promoted by Alan Dershowitz and other members of the rabid wing of the Israel lobby: that Iran is a “suicide nation” willing to see itself destroyed by a retaliatory nuclear strike from Israel.

Moreover, to suggest that Iran’s rulers would want or need nuclear insurance is to acknowledge that an ad hoc coalition of regional powers — preeminently Israel and Saudi Arabia — remain reluctant to abandon their dreams of bringing about regime change in Tehran.

At the same time as engaging in last week’s whirlwind of diplomatic outreach, Hassan Rouhani made it very clear that he has a relatively small window of opportunity to make real progress as he faces pressure from a new axis of extremism revealing the common interests of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, and the Assad regime, all of whom for their own reasons feel deeply threatened by the possibility of Iranian-U.S. rapprochement.

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Helen Thomas 1920-2013

Helen Thomas died today at the age of 92.

Bloomberg reports: In 2012, Palestinian leaders gave Thomas an award for her career. According to an account in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, a magazine critical of U.S. foreign policy in the region, Thomas told supporters at the Virginia home of Maen Areikat, the top Palestinian envoy to the U.S., that she accepted the honor “on behalf of brave supporters of Palestinians who have taken an unpopular stand despite the personal and professional costs.”

In 2010, Thomas described the way she was betrayed by the White House press corps — many of whose members will today be stepping up to offer their vacuous words of praise.

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