| Author | Message | | Alpha | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Apr 10, 2009 10:52 pm Post subject: Fw: CNI HEARING ON FOREIGN MILITARY AID |
| Fw: CNI HEARING ON FOREIGN MILITARY AID
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
WASHINGTON, DC APRIL 9, 2009 -On Tuesday April 7TH The Council for the National Interest hosted their 21st Capitol Hill hearing on the "Cost and Benefits of US-Military Aid to Seven Countries in the Middle East over the Past 30 Years." They also reviewed for the Capitol Hill audience a plan to give some $50 billion in additional aid to Israel and Egypt over the next ten years, and to arrange for the sale of an additional $20 billion in military weapons to Saudi Arabia.
Former Rep. Wayne Gilcrest (R-MD) spoke candidly about the influence lobby groups, especially AIPAC, have on military aid proposals to the Middle East
"Many Republicans wanted to pursue a policy of dialogue with Iran and a more objective policy between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But, they didn't want to go against either the administration, the lobby (AIPAC), or it was too hard to explain to their constituents back home"
Former Office of Management and Budget's Foreign Aid Branch Bureau Chief Colonel Harry Shaw, and Former Ambassador Ed Peck viewed the lack of control by the United States over military aid and called for a return to accountability.
Military and economic aid to Israel was of particular concern to the experts who questioned whether the US is enabling an expansion of settlements and inadvertently inhibiting the formation of a two state solution in Israel/Palestine.
CNI researchers predict that in the next ten years US taxpayers will in effect be contributing $200,000 for each new settler in West Bank and East Jerusalem. They predict that 150,000 such settlers will be positioned in the West Bank and will bring the total of Jewish colonist in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to more than 600,000. The speakers at the CNI public hearing questioned whether such an increase of settlers was in the interest of the United States or of Israel itself.
"We are enabling Israel to continue her settlement expansion and defeat any two state solutions with our huge military aid program. It is out of control," said CNI President Eugene Bird.
Israel continues to receive 100% of its military aid on October 1st of the fiscal year, and earns some $80 million in interest that is off the congressional budget.
Israel is the only country who has this special arrangement with the US Department of Treasury.
CNI is currently circulating an amendment on Capitol Hill that would call for US aid to Israel to be disbursed quarterly that would let tax payers off the hook for about $80 million a year.
New information obtained by Amnesty researchers this week confirmed a massive shipment of U.S. weapons was delivered to Israel on March 22nd.
This followed a report by Amnesty of human rights and international law violations by Israel during the invasion of Gaza. Amnesty is calling for a response to their report and an explanation of why the United States would re-supply Israel with about $500 million of weapons despite these violations or both international law and US agreements on the use of weaponry by Israel.
The United States is pursuing peace in the Middle East but is undermining its own efforts with a huge multi-billion program of supplying weaponry that is not needed to bring a real peace to the area.
To listen to Rep. Gilcrest's speech on military aid click link below
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzbh4_FBImw | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Apr 24, 2009 12:20 am Post subject: |
| Harman Wiretap Highlights Suspicions
Intel Concerns of Dual Loyalty ‘Rooted Deep in the System’
By Nathan Guttman
Published April 22, 2009, issue of May 01, 2009.
News
Washington — Leaks of wiretap transcripts involving a member of Congress and a “suspected Israeli agent” have shone a rare light on the scope of suspicion the American intelligence establishment harbors toward Israel and its supporters.
Investigators wiretapping the alleged Israeli agent were so concerned about remarks by Democratic Rep. Jane Harman of California during his conversation with her that the investigators subsequently sought a so-called FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) warrant — reserved for sensitive intelligence cases — to wiretap Harman, as well, according to a detailed story published April 19 by Congressional Quarterly. But then-attorney general Alberto Gonzales, the article claims, halted the investigation because he thought he would need Harman’s support in an upcoming clash over the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, about to be exposed by The New York Times.
According to the CQ story, Harman allegedly promised the Israeli agent to back off espionage-related charges against two former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Washington pro-Israel lobby. In exchange, her conversation partner is said to have promised he would lobby congressional leaders for Harman to become chairwoman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Harman has angrily denied that she made any such deal, and requested the administration to fully declassify the wiretapped conversations in question. Gonzales, meanwhile, has declined to comment so far.
But for close observers of the national security establishment, the real news was the extent of its suspicions of American Jewish supporters of Israel — up to and including its willingness to wiretap a member of Congress.
“It’s rooted deep in the system,” an official with an American Jewish organization said, “and it comes from the bottom up.”
The leaked transcripts hint, among other things, at the security establishment’s continued search for an Israeli mole that some reportedly believe remained uncaught after Jonathan Pollard, an American Jewish civilian naval intelligence analyst, was discovered engaged in massive espionage for Israel in 1985. More generally, the wiretap reflects the security establishment’s continuing concern about leaks of classified information to pro-Israel activists and Israeli agents who have shown themselves adept at obtaining nonpublic information from the government.
“We know that we are closely watched, that people might be listening to our phone calls. This is our working premise,” said a former senior Israeli official who was based in Washington in recent years. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, said he believed that suspicion toward Israel was prevalent in the military and intelligence establishments but was not common at the political and diplomatic levels.
The disclosure of the Harman wiretaps comes at a time when the government’s most elaborate attempt to crack down on alleged wrongdoings by pro-Israel activists is at a crossroads. The prosecution of two former AIPAC lobbyists, which began more than four years ago and is scheduled to go to trial June 2, is under review and, according to press reports, might be dropped altogether. The conversations involving Harman focused on attempts to put an end to the legal proceedings against the two former AIPAC staffers, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman.
Although no formal explanation was provided from the National Security Agency for eavesdropping on the Harman conversation, it is widely believed that the wiretap was part of the investigation into the AIPAC case.
According to court records, wiretaps and surveillance in the Rosen-Weissman case began as early as 1999. From the indictment, which is now being reviewed by the attorney general’s office, it is clear that attempts to stop the flow of information to pro-Israel activists led to a wide- ranging counterintelligence operation in which Israeli diplomats and pro-Israel lobbyists were being followed and their conversations monitored. These conversations involved senior government officials who had been in touch with the subjects of the investigation. The U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia reviewed transcripts of these wiretaps in lengthy pretrial proceedings, and parts of them are expected to be presented if the case reaches trial.
Stephen Green, a Vermont-based writer who has chronicled the counterintelligence spats between the United States and Israel since the late 1970s, said the mistrust toward Israel stems from agents working on the cases and not from an overall anti-Israel ideology. “This has nothing to do with politics or with Israeli foreign policy. These are people who deal with these issues on a daily basis and become very, very upset,” Green said.
Green, who, through the Freedom of Information Act, has obtained documents chronicling decades of security investigations of government officials suspected of leaking restricted information to Israel, was questioned by the FBI about his research during the investigation of the Rosen-Weissman case.
Suspicion toward pro-Israel Americans predates the Pollard espionage affair. In 1979, the FBI looked into allegations that Stephen Bryen, then a staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, passed on information to Israeli officials. The search for Israeli spies, which at times focused on the notion of an Israeli network led by a master spy code-named “Mega,” intensified after the 1985 arrest of Jonathan Pollard.
The investigation, as it turned out, never ended, and as recently as April 2008 it resurfaced with the arrest of Ben-Ami Kadish, a former army engineer from New Jersey who passed on classified information to the same Israeli handler that was in charge of Pollard. Kadish, now 85, pleaded guilty last December as part of a plea agreement and is awaiting his May sentencing.
Echoes of the defense establishment’s concerns over American Jews’ loyalty to Israel were apparent, too, in a 1996 memo sent out by the Pentagon to defense contractors, warning them that Jewish employees with “strong ethnic ties” to Israel could be exploited by the Israelis to gather classified information. The memo was later retracted after Jewish groups protested its content.
The issue, however, is still being raised when discussing security clearance for American Jews who have ties with Israel. Arlington, Va.-based attorney Sheldon Cohen, who represents many cases of workers denied security clearances, has found a disproportionate presence of Jews among this group. The usual reason given is concern about their alleged ties with Israel.
Recently, Cohen authored an article dealing with a question posed to Jews applying for defense clearance: “Would you bear arms for the United States against Israel?” This hypothetical question is not presented, according to Cohen, to any other ethnic or religious group. “The one thing common to all the applicants to whom this question is put is their Jewish heritage,” he wrote.
http://www.forward.com/articles/105045/
Additional at following URL:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2009/04/20/wiretap-rep-jane-harman-promising-to-intervene-for-aipac.php | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Apr 26, 2009 10:16 am Post subject: Review of Transparent Cabal in Middle East Policy |
| Review of Transparent Cabal in Middle East Policy
Saturday, April 25, 2009 8:26 AM
From: "Stephen Sniegoski"
To: "Sniegoski, Stephen"
Friends,
Review of "Transparent Cabal" in "Middle East Policy"
I received permission to disseminate Thomas R. Mattair's review of my book from "Middle East Policy," Spring 2009, Vol. 16, Issue 1, pp. 146-149.
The review is mentioned on the following site:
http://www.mepc.org/journal_vol16/1toc.asp
And the pdf version can be found at my website:
http://home.comcast.net/~transparentcabal/review.pdf
Main page: http://home.comcast.net/~transparentcabal/
"Middle East Policy" is a major scholarly journal on foreign policy
developments in the Middle East. "Middle East Policy" is the journal of the
Middle East Policy Council, which until recently had been headed by Chas
Freeman. Before Freeman, its president was George McGovern.
I should point out that the review was based on a prepublication copy which listed a different publisher. The final hard copy book lists Enigma
Editions as the publisher and sells for less at Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Transparent-Cabal-Neoconservative-National-Interest/dp/1932528172
While Mattair's review is largely favorable, he does take issue with my
contention that the Israeli Likudniks and the neocons sought the
destabilization and fragmentation of Israel's enemies.
In regard to almost every other argument in "The Transparent Cabal," I
provided overwhelming evidence, including the words of neocon-friendly
writers and the neocons themselves, for such things as the neocons'
existence; Jewishness; support for Israel; influence on government policy; support for war against Iraq, Iran, and other Arab states; and differences with the foreign policy establishment. There is also overwhelming evidence for Israel's support for the war on Iraq and advocacy of an attack on Iran. The evidence for the neocon and Likudnik support for the destabilization and fragmentation of Israel's enemies is not as obvious and direct as the proof for these other arguments, but it is still there. .
I think that I showed that such a fragmentation idea did exist among the
Israeli Right (and even on the mainstream) though this was not the only
geopolitical view of the Israeli elite. In regard to the neocons, I would
have to admit that only a few expressed this view explicitly but for others
it was implicit. For example, Ledeen claimed that destabilization had to
precede the change to democracy. However, Middle East experts rightly point out that such an approach would simply lead to destabilization and
fragmentation, as has been the case with Iraq. Few Middle East experts
actually believe that the Middle East countries would become unified
democracies. Certainly, Likudnik experts do not believe this and it is
highly questionable that most leading neocons really do either, considering their negative references to Arabs and Muslims who express opposition to Israel. As I show in "The Transparent Cabal," in speaking of democracy, the neocons do not mean either majority rule (anti-Israel groups have to be prevented from ruling) or freedom of speech (harsh anti-Zionist language should be banned)
Mattair acknowledges that "deductive reasoning would suggest that military action to overthrow an authoritarian government ruling over diverse ethnic and sectarian communities might very well lead to fragmentation." And this was explicitly pointed out by some Israeli Likudniks and neocons. Moreover, it is reasonable to assume that Israel would prefer being surrounded by weak, fragmented enemies than by strong, united ones. Finally, it should be noted that the neocon Middle East war agenda was opposed by the foreign policy establishment which saw stability as a preeminent goal.
In short, I think a cumulation of evidence-consisting of some explicit
statements, the actual impact of policies that induce destabilization and
fragmentation, and the interest of Israel in having weak enemies-provides
sufficient proof (by historians' standards) of a neocon/Likudnik
fragmentation goal.
____________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________
Review of "The Transparent Cabal" by Thomas R. Mattair in "Middle East
Policy," Spring 2009, Vol. 16, Issue 1, pp. 146-149.
http://home.comcast.net/~transparentcabal/review.pdf
The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel, by Stephen J. Sniegoski. Light in the Darkness Publications,2008. 440 pages, including notes and index. $24.95, hardcover.
Thomas R. Mattair, author of global Security Watch - Iran: A Reference
Handbook (Praeger Security International, 2008)
In this well-written, well-organized book, Stephen J. Sniegoski makes some compelling arguments about neoconservatives: (1) they were the driving force behind the Bush administration's war in Iraq, (2) their motivation was based on their belief that American interests in the Middle East are virtually identical with the Israeli Likud party's beliefs about Israeli interests in the region, and (3) these mutual interests lie in destabilizing Israel's adversaries and reconfiguring the environment rather than in the traditional American policy of stabilizing the Middle East. Others have plowed this same ground, but Sniegoski has marshaled a prodigious amount of evidence and added some new elements. He notes that these arguments have often elicited charges of anti-Semitism, particularly from neoconservatives themselves.
He points out, however, that they sometimes acknowledge being a largely
Jewish group, and he dismisses the charge of anti-Semitism by noting that
many Jewish Americans have made his basic arguments.
The author provides a good definition of neoconservatives: primarily Jewish individuals who began as liberals and leftists but migrated to the right in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They began to see McGovern and Carter Democrats and the Nixon and Ford Republicans as insufficiently devoted to anti-communism, military strength, interventionism and Israel and gravitatedfirst to Senator Henry Jackson (D-WA) and then to the Reagan Republicans. Again, Sniegoski is careful to cite Jewish authors who have offered the same definition. Moreover, he identifies the leading neoconservatives along with their intellectual inspirations, family and institutional connections, financial patrons, media outlets, Christian Right supporters, ad hoc groups, liberal and conservative pro-Zionist Jewish allies, and ties to Israel.
Sniegoski argues that, while the neoconservatives were the driving force for
the war with Iraq in 2003, the basic idea of offensive war to weaken
Israel's neighbors, induce regime change and reconfigure the region has been an element of Zionist thinking since Vladimir Jabotinsky in the 1920s. It was part of Ben-Gurion's thinking in the 1950s and has been ascendant among Likud leaders since their electoral victory in 1977. His claim that by "reconfiguration" Likudniks have meant destabilizing and fragmenting the region into a mosaic of weak ethnic and sectarian entities draws heavily - perhaps too heavily - on a 1982 article by Oded Yinon, who argued that the ongoing Iran-Iraq War would result in an ethno-sectarian division of Iraq, and also on a 1982 article in which Yoram Peri warned against this. After the unhappy consequences of Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Sniegoski argues, Likud drew an important lesson: Such a war must not alienate Israeli public opinion and must be supported by the United States. Therefore, U.S. support for a stable Middle East, an uninterrupted flow of oil, and Arab-Israeli compromises for peace had to be changed.
The author effectively shows the similarity of Israeli Likudnik and
neoconservative thinking during the past two decades. The Reagan
administration supported Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War as a bulwark against the revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran. This concerned Israel, which viewed Iraq as a major adversary and thought even post-revolutionary Iran could be a potential ally. Israel and neoconservatives, particularly Michael Ledeen, promoted U.S. arms sales to Iran in 1985-86 as part of an ultimately unsuccessful effort at rapprochement. Sniegoski also recounts Israeli Likudnik and neoconservative concern when George H.W. Bush's administration continued to support Iraq for two years after the end of this war in 1988. This administration's effort to tie U.S. housing-loan guarantees for Soviet Jewish immigrants in Israel to a halt to Israeli settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem was also a sore point. In fact, Israeli Labor party leaders and a wide range of Jewish Americans also shared these views. Sniegoski then asserts that Israel and the neoconservatives sought not only the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime but also the destabilization and ethno-sectarian fragmentation of Iraq as their favored outcome of Operation Desert Storm in 1991. He provides no evidence to support this, however. He does show that, when Israeli leaders - again including Labor leaders - saw
that Iraq was contained and shifted their concerns to an Iranian threat,
neoconservatives like Ledeen, who had argued for rapprochement with Tehran, quickly shifted to emphasizing an Iranian threat.
Sniegoski also does an excellent job of documenting the important role
neoconservatives played during the George W. Bush administration. They
insisted that Iraq was a greater terrorist threat than al-Qaeda and were
developing military plans for overthrowing Saddam Hussein's regime in the earliest months of 2001. He also stresses the role they played after 9/11 in arguing that Iraq should be an initial target and later that Iraq, Iran and Syria should become targets soon after the first stage of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan was complete. They also argued that Israeli military actions against Arafat's Palestinian Authority should not be
criticized. Other questionable actions of the neocons are recounted:
* producing erroneous intelligence to support the war against Iraq
* opposing cooperation with Iran and Syria after 9/11, including the "grand
bargain"
* claiming that the United States faced a monolithic Middle Eastern
terrorist threat, not because of U.S. policies but because of the very
existence and values of the United States, and that the terrorist threat to
Israel was part of this threat and should be jointly confronted
* advocating democracy promotion to combat tyranny (not all neoconservatives
agreed with this)
* wanting to widen Israel's summer 2006 war with Hezbollah into Israeli
and/or U.S. military action against Syria and Iran
* opposing the December 2006 Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group recommendations to include Iran and Syria in regional efforts to stabilize Iraq
* opposing the gradual withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq
* proposing and supporting Bush's "surge" of additional forces to Iraq in
2007
* criticizing the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate conclusion
that Iran had suspended a nuclear-weapons program in 2003
* calling continually for war against Iran and Syria.
Sniegoski also shows that, with a few possible exceptions, the positions and actions of the neoconservatives were in synch with Israel under Likud leader Ariel Sharon and Kadima leader Ehud Olmert. Israel may have initially thought that war against Iraq would be a mistake, in that Iraq was necessary to balance Iran, and that Iran should be the U.S. target after Afghanistan. However, Israel did support war against Iraq before Iran and Syria when it learned that this was the commitment of the Bush administration. It also advocated most of the rest of the neoconservative program for expanding the "global war on terror" through military action to bring about regime change in Iran and Syria.
One of the most interesting elements of this story, which has been told
before, is that a small group of neoconservatives and Israelis, including
Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser and Meyrav Wurmser, recommended to Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud government in 1996 that Israel engage in preemptive military action to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime as a first step in creating a more favorable regional environment for Israel, and that they explained how Israel could obtain U.S. support. This small group recommended the establishment of a Hashemite monarchy in Iraq, aligned with Hashemite Jordan. They also advised Netanyahu to weaken, contain and roll back Syria, particularly to break its influence in Lebanon. According to Sniegoski, Wurmser explained in subsequent writings that he envisioned a Hashemite Iraq with a weak central government and maximum autonomy for tribal, ethnic and sectarian communities. Wurmser also clarified that he sought regime change in Syria for the same purpose. This tends to support
the author's argument that fragmentation of neighboring states has been an Israeli and neoconservative objective. This goes beyond what one finds in Mearsheimer and Walt's The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. Sniegoski also mentions some Israeli and American support for ethnic opposition forces in Iran and provides evidence of individual neoconservatives who proposed detaching Saudi Arabia's oil rich Eastern province. It is also clear that Netanyahu and others oppose returning the Golan to Syria, which means that Syria is already fragmented. However, much more evidence about a wider range of leading Israelis and neoconservatives, particularly inside the Bush II administration, would have been needed to make the case.
It might be difficult to provide sufficient evidence that neoconservatives
or Israeli Likudniks seek fragmented, powerless states surrounding Israel as a desired outcome - except for the fact that they are carrying out such a plan in the West Bank, which Likudniks and neoconservatives want to divide into non-contiguous enclaves. On the other hand, deductive reasoning would suggest that military action to overthrow an authoritarian government ruling over diverse ethnic and sectarian communities might very well lead to fragmentation. It would have helped, however, if Sniegoski had examined the positions of these individuals in 2002-03 on what Iraq might look like after Saddam. Did they foresee a weak central government and provinces with very extensive autonomy? It would also have helped if the author had examined their positions on Iran after regime change. Did they expect successful movements of ethnic separatism or autonomy? Which ones were seeking a
fragmentation of Lebanon as a result of the summer 2006 war?
Sniegoski argues that neoconservative claims about threats from Iraq and the possibilities for a flowering of democracy in the region have been
deliberate deceptions to mobilize public support. It is likely that some
individuals found democracy promotion to be a convenient idea; others may have merely been engaging in wishful thinking or underestimating the challenges. The neocons clearly did not accept the result of the Palestinian election in 2006. The recent election in Iraq seems promising, but the situation remains fragile.
Aside from whether Sniegoski proves his thesis about fragmentation, however, this is a very good book that will make readers think about the price the United States has paid for accepting and acting on the neoconservative agenda.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I had arranged for good friend (Dr. Stephen Sniegoski) to appear on the 'American Dream' broadcast for Press TV (out of the D.C. bureau) about his 'The Transparent Cabal' book as such is linked near the top of the following URL:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2008/11/26/dr-stephen-sniegoski-discusses-his-transparent-cabal-book.php
Review of 'The Transparent Cabal' which appears at www.amazon.co.uk and at www.amazon.com
The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East,and the National Interest of Israel:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2009/04/01/review-of-the-transparent-cabal-at-amazon-com.php
Freeman: Israel's policies destructive to US
http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=90376
Chas Freeman slams 'destructive' Israeli policies
http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=90342§ionid=351020202
Press TV (the Iranian channel) just did a 30 minute interview with Ambassador Freeman (but the 'American' media won't!) in New York (click on the 'Media Player' link at the following URL to watch such if interested further):
Exclusive Interview with Chas Freeman:
http://www.presstv.com/programs/player/?id=90443
Freeman: US run by Israel lobby
http://www.presstv.com/Detail.aspx?id=88235§ionid=3510203
Chas Freeman forced by Israel Lobbies to withdraw from NIC:
http://tinyurl.com/blabl8
Additional at http://NEOCONZIONISTTHREAT.COM
Read George Washington's warning against the passionate attachment (like we have for Israel) at the bottom of http://www.astandforjustice.org | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2009 2:14 am Post subject: |
| An Israeli Surprise for Obama?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/24/AR2009042402900.html?wprss=rss_print/editorialpages
By Jim Hoagland
Sunday, April 26, 2009
President Obama's national security aides are struggling to conclude a strategic review of U.S. policy toward Iran. The review is certain to be comprehensive, imaginative -- and largely silent to irrelevant on the most difficult choices about Iran that Obama will face over the next year or two.
The review cannot be completed until Obama has what may be his toughest meeting yet with a foreign leader. That Oval Office session with Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's newly elected prime minister, will come in mid-May. Netanyahu's impressions of Obama's intentions on Iran will determine war-or-peace choices for the Middle East.
The survey of American options on Iran forms a major part of the sprint that the president and his advisers have made toward the 100-day milestone they will reach on Wednesday.They have authored strategic reviews on Afghanistan and Iraq, dispatched special envoys to urgent trouble spots, and invited Middle East leaders to the White House to keep that region's flickering peace hopes alive.
Obama has already offered diplomatic engagement to Iran without preconditions -- making Tehran's behavior, not Washington's conduct, the dominant issue for international opinion. The policy adjustments have been necessary and adroitly handled.
But they have also stirred doubts in Israel's untested and politically heterogeneous government about Obama's commitment to Israel's security, as Netanyahu defines it. These misgivings create a queasiness between the two allies that cannot be publicly discussed by either without damaging political consequences.
So even after the Iran review is completed, don't expect it to deal forthrightly (or perhaps at all) with this core question: Can Obama's hopes for Middle East peace and fruitful negotiations with Iran survive an Israeli military strike on Iran's nuclear program, perhaps as early as the first half of 2010?
The likelihood of that strike has been growing since it became clear in the final months of the Bush administration that the United States would not undertake such action itself. I draw this conclusion from a series of not-for-attribution conversations with American, Asian, European and Middle East diplomats, and other officials and analysts, conducted since Obama's inauguration.
There are serious arguments on the other side, beginning with doubts about Israel's ability to identify, reach and destroy all of Iran's bomb-building capabilities. There is also a widespread belief that not even the hawkish Netanyahu would risk the rupture with the United States and the fury of the Arab street that an Israeli attack on Islamic Iran could bring.
"The Israelis who have to decide this thing will find these arguments very familiar," said a former ambassador to Israel from a developing country. "They are precisely the arguments used in 1981 to say Israel could not and should not disable Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor in Iraq before that happened. They are arguments that could have been used against striking the North Korean reactor in Syria last year. And yet, it did not turn out that way at all in either case."
Asked whether Israeli warplanes had the range to fly around Arab-controlled airspace to hit Iran, a European official replied: "You might think not, unless you noticed the emphasis being put on Israel's in-air refueling capacity in its recent military exercises. In any event, Arab air defenses have never been a problem for Israel."
Israel sounded out the Bush White House nearly a year ago on flying across Iraq to hit Iran. George W. Bush discouraged what was a probe of U.S. attitudes rather than a serious request for a specific mission that was being planned. "But we did not say the answer would always be no. And we did not say we would shoot Israeli planes down if they came," a former U.S. official says.
The nightmare scenario for Obama is that Israel launches an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities that is largely unsuccessful but that provokes an Iranian missile retaliation against Israel and all-out guerrilla campaigns by Hamas and Hezbollah. Could any U.S. president, however angry, turn his back on Israel in that situation? What would happen to the U.S. mediation efforts Obama promised King Abdullah II of Jordan in their White House meeting last week?
Battle plans famously don't survive an army's first encounter with the enemy. Strategic reviews are works of intellectual cogency until they are broadsided by reality. There are so many moving parts to the Iranian dilemma that the White House is considering not issuing a formal document to reflect its findings. Such reticence will be tacit acknowledgment that the true test of Obama's Iran policies will come when events that are foreseeable -- but currently unspeakable -- occur.
jimhoagland@washpost.com | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
