Thursday Iran Talking Points

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for November 11th, 2010:

National Review Online: Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) fellow Benjamin Weinthal blogs that while U.S. President Barack Obama used his trip to Indonesia to scold Israel for new settlement construction in east Jerusalem, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper “found the right language this week” by defending Israel against its critics. “Obama lacks a singleness of purpose when it comes to stopping Iran’s drive to go nuclear,” writes Weinthal. “One hopes that Act III of Obama’s foreign policy toward the Middle East will focus not on housing units in Jerusalem but on compelling Iran to stop its drive to go nuclear,” he concludes.

World Politics Review: WPR senior editor and Hudson Institute senior fellow Richard Weitz examines the issue of whether a ballistic missile defense (BMD) should become a NATO alliance-wide mission, noting that Washington would like to see NATO leaders offer a collective commitment to BMD. Weitz writes both the Obama administration and NATO leaders “share American concerns about Iran’s emerging potential to launch ballistic missiles, perhaps armed with a nuclear warhead, against European targets.”

Wednesday Iran Talking Points

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for November 10th, 2010:

The Jewish Week: James D. Besser analyzes the impact of the midterm election on the Obama administration’s Iran strategy and concludes it “may indirectly lead to greater U.S. flexibility on the issue of Israeli military action to stop [Iran’s] nuclear program.” Shoshana Bryen, director of strategic policy for the hardline neoconservative Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) told Besser, “If you’re talking about the military option, you’re not talking about a single strike. If you want to go to war against Iran, that’s a choice, but I don’t think there will be a lot of support for that in the U.S. military, which is already involved in two wars.” Besser considers it unlikely that the GOP leadership would push for a strike as long as the Pentagon remains opposed to the action. Even David Harris of the American Jewish Committee says “outsourcing responsibility for Iran” to Israel would be “an abdication of U.S. responsibility.”

National Public Radio: Alan Greenblatt examines how 100 new Republican members of Congress will impact on U.S. foreign policy. In examining the Obama administration’s Iran policy, Greenblatt interviews Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the hawkish American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and reports, “Pletka predicts that Republicans in Congress will push back if Obama continues his policy of seeking diplomatic engagement with Iran, as that nation continues to pursue its nuclear ambitions.”

WINEP Policy Watch: In a briefing from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), Ehud Yarri discusses the conjoining of Iranian Shia Islamism with that of Sunni Hamas in the Occupied Palestinian Territories through a booklet being circulated in Gaza. Writes Yarri, “Titled The Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic Revolution in Iran, this new publication represents the most important attempt to date to connect the growing cooperation between Hamas and its Iranian mentors to religious affinities, rather than political expediency.” He cites the booklet as a PR effort aimed at showing the two groups as “natural partner(s)” despite the usually deep-cutting sectarian divide between Shia and Sunni Muslims.

Tuesday Iran Talking Points

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for November 9th, 2010:

The Washington Post: Senior Council on Foreign Relations fellow and former George W. Bush policy adviser Michael Gerson writes that after the midterm election, Obama may choose to focus his efforts on foreign policy. He warns that Obama will make little headway in bringing peace in the Middle East because “Palestinian leaders are divided – unable to deliver on the agreements they are too weak to make in the first place. Israelis feel relatively safe behind security walls, uninclined toward risky compromise and concerned mainly about Iran,” echoing the reverse linkage argument frequently employed by hawks in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Gerson concludes that threat of military force against Iran is unlikely because, “When a president threatens force, he also loses control. And Barack Obama seems to be a man who values control.” As for the Tea Party movement, Gerson says it represents a “Jacksonian ascendancy” on Capitol Hill and “will urge more forceful policies against Cuba, Iran and Venezuela – along with Russia and China.”

Time: Tony Karon discusses Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pressure onVice President Joe Biden to get tough with Iran. “The only way to ensure that Iran will not go nuclear is to create a credible threat of military action against it if it doesn’t cease its race for a nuclear weapon,” Netanyahu reportedly told Biden. Karon writes that the Obama administration would have neither a legal basis nor international support in initiating a war with Iran. But the real challenge for the Obama administration, says Karon, may lie in the charges voiced by Republicans that Obama is “soft on Tehran” whenever any attempt at engagement with Iran is pursued. “That will certainly suit the Israeli leadership, who not only want to see a more confrontational U.S. position on Iran, but who also came into office insisting that Iran’s nuclear program, rather than peace with the Palestinians, should be Washington’s priority in the Middle East.”

The Wall Street Journal: Walid Phares of the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies opines on the imminent judgement of the tribunal investigating the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minsiter Rafik Hariri. “Thanks largely to bountiful Iranian aid, Hezbollah is winning its war against international justice,” writes Phares. He expects many Hezbollah members will be charged, but not arrested. He views Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent trip to Lebanon as an indication that “Iran, and not only its minions, would act in the event of an adverse ruling.” Phares concludes by imploring the UN, which helped set up the tribunal, to adhere to the UN charter which permits the use of force to ensure such rulings are enforced.He concedes this is unlikely, since it requires consent of the Lebanese government.

AFP: The newswire reports on the comments of the deputy commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, who said that “Iranian influence has diminished somewhat.” Via a video conference, Cone told reporters in Washington, “We see all sorts of Iranian influence — some of it positive, in fact.” He added that some of the negative influence is “very difficult to attribute that to the Iranian government” — a reference to the fact that the alleged Iranian weapons entering Iraq may come from non-state actors.

Monday Iran Talking Points

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for November 8th, 2010:

AFP: Michael Comte reports on Sen. Lindsay Graham’s (R-SC) recent comments on China and Iran. The remarks included a call for “bold” action to deal with Iran and a statement which appeared to endorse military action against Iran’s nuclear program. “[If President Barack Obama] decides to be tough with Iran beyond sanctions, I think he is going to feel a lot of Republican support for the idea that we cannot let Iran develop a nuclear weapon,” he told the Halifax International Security Forum. “Containment is off the table,” Graham added. If the United States were to pursue a military option against Iran, Graham emphasized that it would be a war, “not to just neutralize their nuclear program, but to sink their navy, destroy their air force and deliver a decisive blow to the Revolutionary Guard, in other words neuter that regime.” Graham also warned that a “period of confrontation” with China over its “cheating” currency manipulation was drawing closer.

The National Interest: George Washington University professor Hossein Askari argues that a nuclear enrichment agreement with Iran would only serve to lift some sanctions. Meanwhile, Tehran could continue secretly pursuing their nuclear program and “meddling in the region to pressure the United States.” Askari suggests negotiations and a fuel swap agreement are simply stalling tactics coming from a regime that views America as “their existential threat.” “The atomic issue is not America’s central problem with Iran, the regime is the problem, a fact that America must painfully acknowledge and so reorient its strategic interests,” says Askari. He concludes that the United States should support the opposition and reform movements within Iran, while expanding sanctions and freezing foreign bank accounts of Iranian citizens in excess of “say $1 million or $5 million.”

National Review: National Review senior editor Jay Nordlinger laments that his warnings about the imminence of an Iran bomb have gone unnoted in the public discourse. Last year he interviewed former Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, who opined that Iran would have a bomb by 2015. Believing he had a scoop, Nordlinger ”put it here in the Corner. I put it in my web column. I put it in a piece for National Review (at the tippy-top). I put it everywhere but in concert and opera reviews.” Nordlinger writes, “And . . . nothing. No one commented, no one noticed — no one said, ‘Holy-moly!’” Casting himself as a prophet ignored, Nordlinger concludes: “Oh, well, it could be that the Iranian A-bomb is simply a foregone conclusion, or a topic that bores people. I fear it will not be so boring, when the mullahs go nuclear.”

Jerusalem Post: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. Vice President Joe Biden met in New Orleans this weekend during the Jewish Federations of North America’s general assembly . Netanyahu reportedly told Biden, “The only way to ensure that Iran is not armed with nuclear weapons is to create a credible threat of military action against it, unless it stops its race to obtain nuclear weapons.” Netanyahu said paradoxically that a military threat was the only way to avoid war, and that he feared Western governments were falling into Tehran’s hands: “Iran is attempting to mislead the West and there are worrying signs that the international community is captivated by this mirage.”

Friday Iran Talking Points

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for November 5th, 2010:

Foreign Policy: Josh Rogin, writing on Foreign Policy’s The Cable blog, reports that Heritage Action for America, the lobbying arms of the conservative Heritage Foundation, is sending out mailers to Republican senators, urging them to vote against the New START treaty with Russia. One of the mailings raised the question: “’Why did Senator Bob Corker vote in committee to put Russia’s military interests ahead of our own?” This referred to Corker’s vote approving the treaty in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on September 16. Rogin adds, “With a picture juxtaposing the images of Obama, Vladimir Putin, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the mailer alleges that President Obama and lawmakers are using the ‘lame duck’ session of Congress to ram through the New START treaty, which it argues ‘severely weakens our national security.’” The mailer alleges that the treaty, which would primarily reduce the number of U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads, would put nuclear weapons in the hands of “countries that want to destroy us,” like North Korea and Iran. Corker’s Chief of Staff told The Cable that much in the flier wasn’t accurate.

National Review Online: American Enterprise Institute (AEI) fellow Ali Alfoneh writes that Sobh-e Sadegh’s—an Iranian newspaper with close ties to the IRGC—calls November 4th, the 31st anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. embassy, as “the day of humiliation of world imperialism.” The newspaper’s statements, say Alfoneh, show that “the political alliances which defeated the Shah’s regime required foreign enemies like the United States for internal unification, an essential component of the regime’s survival.” Alfoneh concludes, “[Some of the hostage takers] have themselves become victims of this ruthless political system, which constantly looks for and finds fifth columnists. It is this side of the Atlantic where some are still unwilling to accept reality.”

The Weekly Standard: Michael Weiss writes that uproar over the sentencing to death of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, for the crimes of murder and adultery, and Iran’s unclear plans regarding her execution offer an insight into “the theocracy’s preferred method of psychological torture: Will we or won’t we.” Weiss concludes that despite outcry from various Western human rights groups and the U.S. State Department, “Whatever happens to Ashtiani, one can only guess at the psychological torture she and her family have endured because their government takes sadistic joy in treating capriciously the matter of whether she lives or dies.”

American Enterprise Institute: Charlie Szrom, a senior analyst and program manager at AEI’s Critical Threats Project, writes that the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designation is flawed because it is used for political purposes. “Two weeks from now, officials from the P5+1 group, consisting of the United States, Russia, China, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, hope to meet with Iranian officials for a new round of talks over Iran’s nuclear program. Did this announcement of Jundallah’s FTO designation occur now as a bargaining chip to encourage Iran to engage in talks over its nuclear program?” asks Szrom. He argues that the FTO designation should be used regardless of the diplomatic and political environment and “Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hamas, Hezbollah, and al Qaeda and its affiliates, threaten American interests and should trigger FTO designation as soon as credible evidence of their status emerges.” Szrom warns that fixing the FTO designation process and the recent designation of Jundallah as a terrorist group, “does not encourage Iran to abandon its pursuit of a nuclear weapon, which will continue without serious considerations by the United States of all its options regarding Iran.”

Thursday Iran Talking Points

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for November 4th, 2010:

National Review Online: Foundation for Defense of Democracies president Clifford May suggests that should Palestinian Authority president Abbas declare Palestine a state and request UN recognition, Obama might not oppose this declaration of statehood because he “believes in a ‘two-state solution.’” May notes such a move would be met with opposition from Arab countries, because many of them “define victory as Israel’s destruction.” Besides, writes May, establishment of Palestinian state would escalate the conflict between Hamas and Fatah. The international community will be uncomfortable backing Hamas, “a terrorist organization openly and unequivocally committed to Israel’s extermination, and guided by the jihadi rules of Iran.” If Hamas gains control of the West bank, it will be obligated to “’resist’ Israel’s existence” and, when Israel responds militarily, “Will Syria and Iran come to Hamas’s aid?.” This dire scenario, concludes May, is reason for Obama to make absolutely clear “that he does not want Abbas to bypass negotiations and head down a road leading to a minefield.”

Newsweek: Dan Ephron writes that while “the composition of Congress does not necessarily determine Washington’s approach to the Middle East,” Israeli leadership may believe that the Republican-led House may be “more amenable to the idea of considering military options in case sanctions don’t work.” Ephron predicts that the White House will set foreign policy on Iran but Ahmadinejad will offer more resistance to Washington’s efforts to stop Iran’s nuclear program, perceiving that Obama is now a weaker president.