Author: Eli Clifton

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for February 10th, 2011:

The Washington Post: Former Israeli ambassador Sallai Meridor opines on “What Israel fears in Egypt.” He observes, “Within every revolution are some who hope to use democratic processes to establish oppressive regimes. This was, to a large extent, what triumphed in Iran in 1979 and what happened in Gaza only five years ago.” He notes, “The implications for the region could be massive,” and asks, “If Israel’s western neighbor turns hostile, where would that leave our eastern neighbor, Jordan? Would it remain at peace with us? What would be the impact on other pro-American regimes? How many weeks, or days, would the new alignment of interests between Israel and most Arab regimes last against an aggressive and nuclear-armed Iran?” Meridor goes on to suggest that American pressure on Israel to allow Palestinians democratic rights led to a “’democratic’ take over of the Palestinian Authority by Hamas terrorists.”

The Jerusalem Post: Panelists at the Israeli Herzliya Conference discussed what strategies could be employed to pressure Iran to give up its nuclear program. Mehdi Khalaji, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, called for the West to help provide technology and media outlets for Iranians to “connect with each other.” “The Iranian public needs to know they are being cared for beyond the nuclear arena,” he said. Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, called for tighter sanctions and said Israel must not do any business with Iran: “[Israel] needs to be more Catholic than the pope,” he said.

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for February 9th, 2011:

The Wall Street Journal: Kenneth M. Pollack, director of the Saban center at the Brookings Institution, opines, “Could al Qaeda Hijack Egypt’s Revolution?” and observes, “the Iranian regime is also gleeful about the collapse of Mr. Mubarak, one of America’s most important Arab allies and one of Tehran’s most passionate enemies.” He continues, “Iran’s mullahs often see opportunity in chaos and violence, believing that anything that disrupts the region’s American-backed status quo works to their advantage,” and concludes, “All of this gives Iran and al Qaeda common interests that may drive them toward tacit cooperation—with the goal of fomenting a modern Bolshevik Revolution.”

Tablet Magazine: Hudson Institute visiting fellow Lee Smith argues that the Muslim Brotherhood is still a radicalizing force in Egypt and calls Yussuf al-Qaradawi, the Qatar-based Muslim Brotherhood preacher who exiled himself from Egypt in 1961, a “prospective Khomeini.” Qaradawi, who hosts the show “Shariah and Life” on Al Jazeera, “has cultivated among some American analysts a reputation for moderation with his fatwas, permitting masturbation and condemning Sept. 11 (while supporting suicide bombers in Israel),” says Smith. Smith goes on to argue, “While the parallels between Iran in 1979 and Egypt in 2011 can be overdrawn, it is foolish to pretend that they are not there,” and warns, “To the Iranians, Qaradawi is perhaps not the ideal voice of Sunni Islamism, but insofar as he rises and the Americans suffer, Tehran will make its accommodations.”

Los Angeles Times: Jonah Goldberg writes a column on “The real realism in Israel” in which he argues against linkage and supports the view that the current unrest in Egypt has nothing to do with Israel. Goldberg, who is at the Herzliya Conference, on a trip underwritten by the Emergency Committee for Israel, says that proponents who see an Israeli-Palestinian peace process as a key U.S. foreign policy goal, such as Gen. James Jones, are detached from reality. “Such thinking falls somewhere between wild exaggeration and dangerous nonsense,” says Goldberg. He goes on to argue, “As we’ve recently been reminded, Israel is the only truly democratic regime in the region, and therefore the most stable. But, we are told, if we were only more conciliatory to corrupt dictatorial regimes and more sympathetic to the ‘Arab street,’ the region would be more stable. (Ironically, this is very close to Israel’s own position, no doubt because it will take any peace it can get.)”

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for February 8th, 2011:

The Washington Post: Jennifer Rubin blogs that, in Israel, “dissent is celebrated, not suppressed.” She bolsters this assertion by citing yesterday’s Herzliya Conference panel on Iran’s nuclear program, characterizing the panel as “arguments between those who see [Iran’s] nuclear program as an existential threat to Israel (as does the government) and those who indulge in the fantasy that this isn’t anything to worry about.”

The National Review: Hudson Institute visiting fellow and former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith defends George W. Bush’s “freedom agenda,” writing that Obama is “repudiating his freedom agenda” and “threw the baby out with the bathwater.” He continues, “Rather, in its national-security approaches to Iran, Russia, China, Venezuela, and the Arab states, it downplayed human rights and democracy concerns or discarded them altogether.” Feith charges, “when Iranian demonstrators bravely defied imprisonment, torture, and death to protest their government’s electoral fraud in June 2009, Obama’s frigid detachment shocked even many of his own political supporters.”

The New York Times: The America Enterprise Institute’s Michael Rubin writes on the NYT’s “Room for Debate” forum that “Egypt is not Iran,” and observes, “many current and former officials worry that any withdrawal of support for Egyptian President Mubarak will reverberate through the region much as did President Carter’s abandonment of the Shah of Iran.” Rubin argues, “The problem with Carter’s approach was not the shah’s fall, but White House dithering in its aftermath,” and advocates that the Obama administration “support establishment of a technocratic transitional government, use their soapbox to help it make the necessary legal changes to ensure a smooth election according to a set time line, and then welcome Egypt’s new democratic order.”

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for February 7th, 2011:

The Weekly Standard: The Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Benjamin Weinthal blogs that U.S. senators “have reached a breaking point” with Germany’s “recalcitrant position about shutting down Iran’s main financial conduit in Europe—the Hambug-based European-Iranian Trade Bank (EIH).” Weinthal cites a letter signed by eleven senators which calls on the government of Germany to shut down the bank. Weinthal interprets the letter: “In short, the senators are charging the German government with being an accomplice to busting Iranian sanctions, and in connection with not stopping Iran’s drive to obtain nuclear weapons.”

The Weekly Standard: Weekly Standard senior editor and Hudson Institute visiting fellow Lee Smith opines on the Obama administration’s continued habit of “project[ing] weakness” in the Middle East. “It was the June 2009 uprising following the Iranian elections that first showed Obama’s mettle. While millions of Iranians took to the streets to demonstrate, the administration dithered for two weeks before taking a stand,” says Smith, offering an example of the administration’s “weakness and passivity.” Smith goes on to suggest that “every regional ally—from Jerusalem to Riyadh” told Obama that engaging Iran was a “fool’s errand” and denies the widely accepted concept of linkage. “[Obama] was a president who kept insisting on the centrality of an Arab-Israeli peace process that everyone else in the region understood was a nonstarter.”

The New York Times: Senior Foundation for Defense of Democracies fellow Reuel Marc Gerecht writes on “How Democracy Became Halal” and observes, “We have a chance in Egypt to be lucky. Democratization there, like democratization of Iran, could thwart the ideologies and fear that move poor countries to spend fortunes on nuclear weapons.”

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for February 4th, 2011:

The Washington Post: Foundation for Defense of Democracies board member and Project for the New American Century letter signatory Charles Krauthammer opines on the unrest in Egypt and takes a swing at the possibility of Mohamed ElBaradei leading an interim government. “ElBaradei would be a disaster. As head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), he did more than anyone to make an Iranian nuclear bomb possible, covering for the mullahs for years,” says Krauthammer. He goes on to characterize El Baradei as a “useful idiot” for the Muslim Brotherhood and concludes that the Egyptian military is the “best vehicle for guiding the country to free elections over the coming months.”

National Review Online: Foundation for Defense of Democracies President Clifford May writes, “When Iranians rose up against the tyrannical regime that has ruled them for more than 30 years — when they marched in the streets chanting, ‘Obama, are you with us or against us?’ — the president mostly held his tongue, reluctant to jeopardize his policy of ‘outreach’ to Iran’s rulers. Can Obama now be more supportive of Egyptians as they confront a regime that, while authoritarian, is nowhere near as oppressive and brutal as that in Tehran?” May argues for an Egyptian army officer to take control of Egypt and schedule elections. But he rejects that Mohamed ElBaradei should serve as interim president. “He was overly solicitous of Iran’s despots in his previous job, and he is overly solicitous of the Muslim Brotherhood now. What’s more, he is no friend of America,” he writes.

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for February 3rd, 2011:

National Review Online: Foreign Policy Initiative Executive Director Jamie M. Fly opines that the possibility of the Muslim Brotherhood taking control in Egypt is concerning “but the solution is not for conservatives to cling to the supposed stability represented by Mubarak.” He argues that Mubarak’s presidency is “finished” and, “As long as chaos and uncertainty reign, the more likely it will be that extremist elements in the Muslim Brotherhood or elsewhere take advantage of the situation, just as the Islamists did during Iran’s drawn-out revolution in 1978–79.”

The New York Times: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a fellow at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, writes that she knows the Muslim Brotherhood from her experience in a 2002 political campaign, on behalf of the conservative party, in the Netherlands. She repeats the oft-used Islamophobic meme that the Brotherhood, “argue[s] for taqiyyah, a strategy to collaborate with your enemies until the time is ripe to defeat them or convert them to Islam.” Hirsi Ali warns that secular democrats in Egypt must explain to the Egyptian people why a “Shariah-based government” would be a disaster but, “unlike the Iranians in 1979, the Egyptians have before them the example of a people who opted for Shariah — the Iranians — and have lived to regret it.” She concludes, “The 2009 ‘green movement’ in Iran was a not a ‘no’ to a strongman, but a ‘no’ to Shariah.” and “ElBaradei and his supporters must make clear that a Shariah-based regime is repressive at home and aggressive abroad.”

The Weekly Standard: Thomas Donnelly, another fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, writes about the comparison of the fall of Hosni Mubarak with the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1979. He writes, “It is one thing to acknowledge that we cannot determine or dictate the outcome of the changes coming to the greater Middle East, quite another to act as though we don’t care enough to continue to exert a shaping influence,” calling on Obama to assert greater support for the protesters and to not cut the Pentagon budget. “In sum, at the moment when the movement to create a new order in the region is accelerating – and who can seriously think that the likelihood of violence is diminishing, will be self-regulating, or can be met only with ’soft power?’ – the United States appears to be backing away,” says Donnelly.