The definition of chutzpah

A few step-back observations about national "debate" over the Iran deal:

1. It is the definition of chutzpah to hype the danger of a nuclear Iran for years and decades, then complain that the deal only addresses Iran's nuclear program. It's also the definition of warmongering. You can't negotiate away all your differences with an adversary at once.

2. In the same vein, it's disingenuous to reject the deal on grounds that the removal of sanctions designed to induce such a deal will fund other activities we don't like.

3. We can pretend that there's a substantive debate about the merits of the deal, but that's obviously not what's going on.  The evidence of that is in the terms in which prominent Democrats declare their support.  According to Huffington Post's Sam Stein, Senators Kaine, Warren and Nelson felt empowered to support the deal after a meeting with ambassadors from the P5 + 1 group that negotiated with the U.S. against Iran:

...the conversation lingered largely on a hypothetical: What would happen if the agreement fell through?

According to one Senate Democratic aide, the ambassadors were emphatic that this would amount to a forfeiture of a successful diplomatic endgame.

An Israeli moderate's breathtaking sense of entitlement

As the Netanyahu cabinet unites in full-voiced opposition to the framework agreement with Iran and gears up to pull its strings in the U.S. Congress, the relative sobriety of former head of Israeli military intelligence Amos Yadlin, who would have been defense minister if Zionist Camp had won the March 17 election, offers a sharp contrast.  Yadlin, a major general who was one of the pilots who bombed the Iraqi reactor in 1981, allows that compared to realistic alternatives, the framework is "not a bad agreement,"  Acknowledging in an interview with Al-Monitor's Ben Caspit  that the Iranians have adhered to the terms of the interim agreement, he offers this conditional support:

If they implement the principles of the agreement presented yesterday in the same way, then for the next 15 years they will be frozen at a point of being one year away from a nuclear bomb, and I think this is not a negligible achievement...Let’s think: After all, even a US attack will not distance Iran for 15 years from a nuclear bomb, so why not freeze it in place for the same time — without a war?

Give his relative pragmatism and moderation, the window that Yadlin opens on Israel's assumptions about the terms of the country's relations with the U.S. is all the more striking. If Netanyahu had been savvier, he suggests, he would be in position to influence the shape of the ultimate deal -- and brought home additional bacon for Israel. My emphasis below:

Hedges, lies and pablum: Clinton to Goldberg

In a prior post, I may have overemphasized the hedge element in Hillary Clinton's interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, published Sunday. Hedging her criticisms of current policy and her interventionist impulses was definitely a part of the performance. But that performance was equal parts hedges, bald-faced lies and pablum in support of an implied general propensity toward more aggressive action that itself may prove illusory.

For the lies, see Peter Beinart. Everything Clinton said about Netanyahu and his dealings with the Palestinians in his two spells as prime minister was untrue. He didn't "move toward a Palestinian state" in the mid-nineties, he didn't agree to a meaningful settlement freeze in 2009, he didn't engage with Assad in 2009-2010, he didn't offer the Palestinians "Barak-like options"--or any concrete proposals -- in the last round of negotiations that collapsed this spring, and he either never relinquished or has recently reaffirmed a determination never to give up security control of the West Bank. As for the assault on Gaza, Clinton simply parroted IDF talking points.

With regard to the hedging, as I argued in the prior post, Clinton did not suggest that jihadism is a threat on the scale of communism, only that containment was an overall strategy that might be adapted to any toxic ideology that poses a threat to global order. Containment-as-framework was further hedged by allusions to the many mistakes the U.S. made in the Cold War, to be improved by "smart power" and "after-action reviews." Clinton's invocations of "smart power" sound a lot like Obama's oft-stated preferences for deploying nonmilitary tools of U.S. influence, as does her acknowledgement of "the limits of our power to spread freedom and democracy."

The Obama Doctrine: Pushing on a String?

There wasn't much to inspire in Obama's West Point speech. Dan Drezner wished in advance -- fairly, I think -- that Obama would sketch out in some detail for the benefit of allies just how he proposes to use means other than war to enhance collective security -- in the South China Sea, in eastern Europe. He didn't do that  He just touted in rather general terms the sanctions against Iran and Russia as examples of effective collective action.* He also drew a line, with perhaps more specificity than in the past, between vital U.S. interests that would be defended unilaterally if necessary and " issues of global concern do not pose a direct threat to the United States," in which collective action, usually nonmilitary, is the appropriate course. Perhaps I've grown accustomed to that distinction through Obamosmosis -- it did not surprise me.

What did strike me was a few rather caustic notes. The speech was short on rhetorical olive branches. For example:

1. China the aggressor and competitor: 

Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China’s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors

Regional aggression that goes unchecked – in southern Ukraine, the South China Sea, or anywhere else in the world – will ultimately impact our allies, and could draw in our military.

Twice Obama rhetorically yoked China's aggression with Russia's -- and once, China's economic success with its military muscle-flexing.  No "we do not seek to contain China's rise" reassurances.

What the Saudis want from the U.S.

The next time you read about the Saudis bitching about the U.S. showing insufficient zeal for military adventure in the Middle East, recall this encounter between Robert Gates and the Saudi King in the summer of 2007, as recounted by Gates in his new memoir. I offer it without comment, just as a benchmark and reminder to be returned to when appropriate.

It was also the only encounter with a foreign leader in which I lost my cool. Abdullah, a heavyset man in his eighties with a history of health problems, was very sharp and did not mince words as he smoked one cigarette after another. He wanted a full-scale military attack on Iranian military targets, not just the nuclear sites. He warned that if we did not attack, the Saudis “must go our own way to protect our interests.” As far as I was concerned, he was asking the United States to send its sons and daughters into a war with Iran in order to protect the Saudi position in the Gulf and the region, as if we were mercenaries. He was asking us to shed American blood, but at no time did he suggest that any Saudi blood might be spilled. He went on and

Toward the end, Obama still seeking beginnings

Much as I admire both David Remnick and Barack Obama, I did not find Remnick's new 17,000-word profile of the president particularly illuminating [update: not so for the outtakes Remnick published a few days later].  Remnick asked some tough questions but did not push back much on the answers. That allowed Obama to be Obama, splitting differences, embracing complexities and balancing opposites, without really enabling him to defend his record with much vigor.

On the other hand, Obama being Obama is always interesting to me, and I did find a couple of his dicta revealing in the way they reiterated and updated old habits of mind and speech. Here's one:

I will measure myself at the end of my Presidency in large part by whether I began the process of rebuilding the middle class and the ladders into the middle class, and reversing the trend toward economic bifurcation in this society.”

"Began to" is Obama's signature way of hedging his goals, which he has always cast in terms of new beginnings rather than completed revolutions.  It's his vaunted "long game" from the other end of the telescope. Not for the first time, I'm driven back to his in his 100th-day press conference:

Just what is the United States retreating from?

I have a problem with the way Mark Landler frames recent Obama administration diplomatic activity -- the scheduling of a Syrian peace conference as well as the interim agreeement with Iran:

At one level, the flurry of diplomatic activity reflects the definitive end of the post-Sept. 11 world, dominated by two major wars and a battle against Islamic terrorism that drew the United States into Afghanistan and still keeps its Predator drones flying over Pakistan and Yemen. 

But it also reflects a broader scaling-back of the use of American muscle, not least in the Middle East, as well as a willingness to deal with foreign governments as they are rather than to push for new leaders that better embody American values. “Regime change,” in Iran or even Syria, is out; cutting deals with former adversaries is in.

To call these initiatives "a broader scaling-back of the use of American muscle" seems to me a distortion of historical US foreign policy norms. Regarding Iran: when has the U.S. ever imposed military muscle to halt another country's (professedly peaceful) nuclear program?  It is only the bluster of the neocons -- the crew who blundered into Baghdad -- and of a Congress always eager to show fealty to Netanyahu that makes a preemptive strike at Iran seem like a kind of default response to that country's nuclear program.

"Urged on by Netanyahu..."

During the Cold War, in the course of pursuing perhaps the most successful long-term foreign policy strategy in human history -- containment of the Soviet Union -- the United States did a lot of stupid, cruel, counterproductive things -- overthrow elected governments, prop up corrupt autocrats, support quasi-fascist insurgencies. It did all of them, though, in the perceived national interest, however short-sighted or ruthless the calculus of the decision-makers -- even when, in the case of Nixon, that perceived national interest was avowedly a matter of national prestige.

Imposing new sanctions on Iran now would be in a different category of foreign policy malfeasance. The Times editorial board's wording casually captures what's cockeyed:

A rare opportunity for a diplomatic resolution to the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program is at risk because many lawmakers, urged on by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, are insisting that Congress impose tougher economic sanctions, perhaps next week as an amendment to the defense bill. 

Do tell, NYT, of Israel's place at the US policymaking table

The New York Times editorial board does not like Benjamin Netanyahu, and hopes for success in the United States' upcoming round of negotiations with Iran. Yet they go rather easy on Netanyahu in response to his UN speech yesterday urging the U.S. and allies to regard Iran's seemingly conciliatory new president, Hassan Rouhani, as a wolf in sheep's clothing.

The Times editorialists note that the Iranians "were not happy that Mr. Obama, meeting Mr. Netanyahu at the White House on Monday, took a harsher tone toward Iran than he did when he spoke by phone with Mr. Rouhani last week"  -- but imply that Iran ought to be able to understand such posturing. The language in which they explain the political dynamic at work in both countries is revealing in what it assumes about U.S. politics:

Wired for War

It is doubtless hard for most Americans, and for most people who have not had extended experience of war, to fathom the experience, values, motives and emotions of a lethal and brutally effective military leader like Qassem Suleimani, head of Iran's Quds Force, profiled in this week's New Yorker by Dexter Filkins. The Quds force spearheads Iran's overseas military adventures, and Suleimani helped build up Hezbollah, choreographed and equipped Shiite militias' killings of Americans in Iraq, probably helped orchestrate Hezbollah's terrorist bombings of Jews in Argentina, and is directing Iran's military intervention on behalf of Assad in Syria. He cut his teeth in eight years of brutal combat in the Iran-Iraq war.

Filkins cites Ryan Crocker asserting that Suleimani is not motivated primarily by religion: "Religion doesn’t drive him. Nationalism drives him, and the love of the fight.”  But Suleimani has a certain mysticism of his own.  "When I see the children of the martyrs, I want to smell that scent, and I lose myself," he recently said in an interview in Iran. Stranger yet is his response to eight years of World War I-like horror in the Iran-Iraq war:

Hobson's choices in Syria

Re Syria, the FT's Gideon Rachman is at his best -- teasing out the geopolitical crosscurrents tugging at those countries that fancy themselves able or compelled to try to influence events, and noting the extent to which appearances may be deceptive:

As the world edges towards a peace conference on Syria, three ideas about the west’s role in the conflict are widely accepted. First, that the longer the conflict goes on, the greater the chances of direct or indirect western military intervention. Second, that there is a deep and bitter division between the US and Russia that is making progress much harder. Third, that the Syrian civil war is dominating western thinking on the Middle East. Few people publicly dispute these propositions. And yet they are all distinctly questionable (my emphasis).

Western inhibitions about intervention are driven not just by the debacle in Iraq but by the "success" in Libya:

Moderate Mitt vs. Nimble Obama

As I expected, Romney brought Moderate Mitt to this debate. Practically the first word out of his mouth was "peace" -- and throughout, he stressed that he wanted to foster peace. In fact, he had a simple two-track message, peace/strength.  And I do think, taking his performance as a solo, that he hit his core objectives: he was 1) moderate Mitt, and 2) versed Mitt, reeling off for-show nuances like the power hierarchy in Pakistan, and rattling off 4- and 5-point plans and systematic rebuttals. .  Oh, and as always, 3) Dominating Mitt, talking over everyone.  Objective 4) was to paint a weak Obama, and that one didn't go so well.

One thing Romney did well --advancing his image as a peacemaker not a warmonger -- was deliver firm one-word answers to "should we" questions.  Should we divorce Pakistan? No. Should we have propped up Mubarek? No.  Should we take more decisive military action in Syria (beyond arming the 'right' rebels)? No.

"Unless" war is necessary? -- or until?

Like Peter Beinart, I'm mildly heartened by evidence that "Obama's backbone vis Bibi [is] proving infectious" on Capitol Hill.  Yet  I'm troubled by a perhaps random note in Barney Frank's otherwise forceful message to Bibi to back off (as reported by the Hill's Julian Pecquet):

Say it's so, Joe, and say it loud

I don't often paste up a clip from someone else's post if I don't have more than two cents of my own to add.. My audience is too small; why bring buckets of water to the ocean? Or rather, I tote my buckets via Twitter or emails to the Dish.

But Joe Klein is out there loudly proclaiming something that so needs to be said -- and risking the full fury of the anti-semite police to say it -- that I feel compelled to add my kazoo to his bullhorn:

Netanyahu’s recent behavior is outrageous. He is trying push us into a war that is not in our national interest, a war that would only further destabilize a region that is already teetering near chaos. He is trying to get us to damage our relations with the rest of the world–especially the Russians and Chinese, whom we spent great diplomatic effort luring into the Iranian economic sanctions–so that he can pursue a strategy that even the Israeli military and intelligence communities find questionable. President Obama will not yield to this pressure, nor should he–and every American should know the implications of what Netanyahu and his American neoconservative allies, including Mitt Romney, are proposing...

Aspiring Pander in Chief offers Israel carte blanche

Jerusalem, July 29, 2012 -- In a speech near the Old City today, U.S. presidential hopeful Mitt Romney harked back to an historic concept of Israel as a besieged, beleaguered outpost rather than a regional hyperpower and promised the U.S. would stop at nothing to advance Israel's perceived interests. 

Without diverting his stream of unqualified praise and unconditional support for the host country, Romney widened his scope at select moments to advance two extraordinary historical principles:

Iran wants sanctions relief; Israel ain't gettin' no total enrichment ban

On Friday I noted the symmetric spin on the part of Iran and the major powers negotiating over Iran's nuclear program. While Dennis Ross claims that Iran's  "leaders are preparing their domestic audience for concessions," the careful language in which the Times' Mark Landler described U.S. goals suggested that the U.S. and allies had moved off the maximalist "no enrichment" position loudly and repeatedly demanded by the Israelis.

Today, as the head of the IAEA, Yukiya Amano, announces an imminent deal with Iran on an inspection regime, the terms in which Times reporters describe a prospective general agreement on the how Iran's nuclear program may proceed suggests more firmly that a total ban on enrichment is off the table:

Spinning in the mirror with Iran

There's a fearful symmetry to the diplomatic posturing on display in this Mark Landler article about the pending talks with Iran:

...Mr. Ross said, Iran’s recent statements signal that its leaders are preparing their domestic audience for concessions. Iranian officials have declared that the West has effectively endorsed Iran’s right to enrich uranium, a step they portrayed as a major strategic coup. American officials insist the United States has not done that and has been deliberately ambiguous about whether it would ever grant Iran the right to enrichment.

A blurry green line for Iran?

Clive Crook rightly points out that Obama's presentation of his Iran policy in his AIPAC speech and the Goldblog interview has played out as something of a Rorschach test.  The WSJ is reassured that Obama has effectively bound himself to bomb Iran.  James Fallows, on the other hand, sees Obama's statement that "as President of the United States, I don't bluff" as a potential superbluff.

Crook tries to part the veil by focusing on the detailed case ("detailed" for a speech, anyway) Obama made that Iran's obtaining a nuclear weapon would be a severe blow not only to Israeli security but to American interests, middle east stability, and global antiproliferation.  He has thus set himself against the case, laid out by intelligence veteran Paul Pillar, that fears of an Iranian bomb are overblown and that a nuclear Iran could be effectively contained.  He has laid out the stakes in such a way that Iran's obtaining nuclear capability can be seen as nothing other than a colossal failure of his own policy

Whether Obama is committed to attack if Iran is seen to be building a bomb may be beside the point, however.  Or rather, it's not in itself news. If it's true that an American president can't be exposed to have bluffed, as Obama said, it's equally true that an American president under current political conditions can't suggest that a nuclear-armed Iran would not be such a catastrophe.  The real nub was captured, as Spencer Ackerman pointed out, is captured in a tweet by anything-for-Israel neocon Noah Pollack:

Obama policy = preventing Iran from getting nuke. Israel policy = preventing capability to build nuke. There's the rub.

Obama may be seeking wiggle room, not only for a perhaps-unlikely negotiated settlement with Iran, but for a protracted stalemate. I'd like to ask nuclear arms experts: how precise a concept is 'breakout capacity'?  Is it possible to clearly parse this statement of Obama's to Goldberg:

The president who doesn't do sound bytes, revisited

Below, I've reposted my Friday response to Obama's remarkable in-depth interview with Jeffrey Goldberg focused on his Iran policy.  First, a prescript:

I felt a pang when I read in Andrew Sullivan's take that not a word in this interview was spoken about the Palestinians, because I had noted the same thing and meant to address it in my post, but left it out in my pre-workday "post haste" and enthusiasm for Obama's bravura performance.  So I want to say that in a sane political environment, on the policy merits, I think the American president should be able to make clear to the Israeli prime minister that U.S. aid would be cut off if Israel launched an unprovoked attack that the U.S. judged to be against its own interests and a threat to global order.  I also think that the U.S. should cut off aid if Israel continues to build new settlements on the West Ban and in East Jerusalem.

The U.S. held hostage

In this hopeful season, as it begins to look as if U.S. unemployment figures may break for Obama in the Reagan pattern, I can't help but lament that Obama's fate lays in the palm of Netanyahu's hand. U.S. leverage to prevent Israel from bombing Iran is undercut by our disloyal opposition loudly proclaiming that Israel must receive unconditional U.S. support for any action it chooses, including setting the Middle East on fire and throwing the world economy into recession -- and screaming "appeasement" at any administration attempt to exert any kind of pressure on Israel.

I would like to think that Obama has some sub rosa resources for transmitting a 'cross me and you die' message to Netanyahu -- a brutal paranoiac driven by his 100 year-old father's lifelong obsession with antisemitism.  But without any preparation for the American people -- i.e., some suggestion that U.S. interests do not always dictate unconditional support for any and all actions of the Israeli government -- I can't see where any deterrent power over Israel would come from.