WarSclerotic

Patrick Disney: Is the Sanctions Debate Justifying the Military Option?.

To an outsider, it may seem like Washington is united in favor of imposing new sanctions on Iran. But, like in Iran itself, the internal wrangling over this question among Washington policymakers is much more complex and divided by factions than one may assume.

Congressional leaders from both parties have long called for new sanctions — and, bolstered by the strong support of the pro-Israel lobby, even some Democrats have undermined the President’s engagement strategy in their zeal for a more heavy-handed approach. Now that the administration has moved past direct talks and embraced the pressure track, one would assume that Congress, the President and the rest of the Iran policymaking community is in harmony.

But they’re not. Not even close.

The President’s harshest critics, among them future presidential-hopeful Sarah Palin, disparage the administration’s push for sanctions as being too soft. They decry the shift away from “crippling” sanctions — which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had previously endorsed — to a more targeted approach of sanctions that “bite.” The administration is holding firm on its decision not to pursue a unilateral or “coalition of the willing” approach until the multilateral option has been tried within the UN Security Council. And yet, many Republicans who once pressed the administration to abandon diplomatic engagement in favor of new sanctions have now soured on Obama’s version of the pressure track.

Among both liberals and conservatives, there is little optimism that new sanctions will significantly alter the situation facing US-Iran relations.

This is due, in part, to the administration’s inability to clarify its reasons for pursuing sanctions in the first place. Originally, the incoming Obama administration laid out a strategy of diplomatic engagement, bolstered — if need be — by economic pressure. The core of this strategy remained face-to-face talks, and sanctions were depicted as a way to gain leverage at the negotiating table.

It was impossible, however, to anticipate the tectonic shift that took place in Iran after last June’s presidential election. Without warning, a powerful movement sprang up that challenged the very nature of Iran’s theocracy. That is when the rationale for the Administration’s sanctions push shifted. Officials began speaking of targeted sanctions having the potential to influence the “internal dynamics” inside Iran — providing a boost for the protest movement and possibly even bringing about regime change.

These two very divergent justifications for the Administration’s sanctions policy have never been fully reconciled, nor has there been any clarification about what the sanctions are actually supposed to accomplish.

This lack of strategic vision came even more clearly into view when the contents of a secret memo were leaked to the New York Times last week. Written by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the memo asserted that the Obama administration does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran’s continued development of its nuclear program despite western diplomatic efforts and sanctions.

Now, in the context of this strategic black hole, many in Washington are openly questioning the sanctions option, with conservatives turning sharply against President Obama’s sanctions plan.

Russia and China will never allow meaningful sanctions to be imposed, they argue, so the UN Security Council process is a waste of time. Similarly, unilateral sanctions — which have passed both houses of Congress and need only be combined for the President signature — are unlikely to alter Iran’s behavior. After all, Iran has long anticipated a US clampdown on refined petroleum imports, and has therefore put in place a number measures designed to inoculate itself against any sort of pressure the US and a few of its allies might impose.

Thus, no longer under the illusion that “crippling” sanctions will be a panacea, critics of Obama’s Iran policy are seeking to frame the issue as a choice between living with a nuclear Iran and taking military action to prevent it. Yet this framing deliberately eliminates the various other options the President has at his disposal, and it is intentionally designed to make the military option seem preferable.

The challenge now for the Obama administration will be to demonstrate that this dilemma is in fact a false choice. This is sure to be difficult, however, as Iran’s nuclear program continues to grow and in the absence of any breakthrough on the diplomatic front.

There is little doubt that the Obama administration views military options on Iran as a means only of last resort, but if conventional wisdom solidifies around this stark choice of either a nuclear-armed Iran or a military strike, President Obama is likely to find himself surrounded by members of both parties propagating the idea that all other options have, in fact, been exhausted.

Risk grows that Israel will go alone to take out Iranian nukes | Washington Examiner.

The growing rift between the Obama administration and Israel, coupled with the administration’s failure to rein in Tehran’s nuclear program, has increased the chances that the Israelis will eventually launch an attack on Iran, experts said.

“U.S.-Israeli relations are at their lowest point since … the early ’80s,” said Ilan Berman, vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council. “It has a lot to do with the fact that Israel thinks this administration is not serious about preventing a nuclear Iran. What is Israel going to do? I’m not certain one way or another. But from the rhetoric, there will come a determining point.”

Berman said Israel “could wait and see if sanctions would work, [but] if Israel feels threatened it would strike first before allowing a nuclear Iran.”

“If I had to put down odds, I think I would [bet on] the latter,” he added.

A U.S. intelligence official who spoke to this reporter on condition of anonymity said, “Israel will not allow a nuclear Iran to rise. And the U.S. should not either.”

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has frequently promised to destroy Israel, something American officials tend to see as an empty boast aimed at his Islamic extremist power base, but which Israel takes much more seriously.

The Obama administration’s diplomatic efforts aimed at forcing Iran to give up its aspirations to produce nuclear weapons have recently become entangled in global economic realities. China, which uses lots of Iranian oil and sees little advantage in helping the U.S. in the Middle East, has muddied international efforts to toughen sanctions.

The sanctions that have been imposed have proved ineffective, experts said.

This has created distress in Israel, especially in light of worsening relations with the United States. That split was demonstrated earlier this month when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided not to attend the 47-nation nuclear security summit.

Patrick Clawson, deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that despite Iran’s determination for nuclear warheads, “it has encountered significant technical problems that might be slowing it down at least enough to buy the U.S. and Israel some more time.”

Clawson said efforts by Israel and Western countries to slow Iranian attempts to collect what it needs to become a nuclear nation have delayed their program by several months.

But that is delaying the inevitable, experts said. And, when Iran is armed with nuclear weapons, many analysts believe Tel Aviv will be less inclined than at any time in decades to defer to Washington on what action to take. Clawson said Israel “will certainly make its decision on its own” as to whether it will use force against Iran.

Assessments vary as to when Iran will be able to produce nuclear weapons and launch those weapons at its enemies. An unclassified report issued by the Defense Department and first published by Reuters earlier this month said, “With sufficient foreign assistance, Iran could probably develop and test an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the United States by 2015.”

In February the International Atomic Energy Agency acknowledged Iran’s determination to develop a nuclear weapon as rapidly as possible. It was a change from past assessments that stated Iran was still not close to developing a fully capable nuclear weapon.

The IAEA findings gave the U.S. all the evidence it needed to pursue strong sanctions against Iran, Israel believed. But the response from the Obama administration was seen as “futile,” in the words of one analyst.

Iran has been using every means at its disposal in an attempt to acquire enriched uranium to boost its nuclear program, the assessment said. Iranian officials have publicly denied those claims, saying that its plans to enrich uranium to 20 percent levels would be used for the treatment of cancer patients.

Berman warned that the Obama administration’s policy to view the Iranian nuclear issue “as more of a management problem than a global crisis has created serious discontent between Jerusalem and Washington.”

He said, “Remember, Israel is not separated from Iran by a large ocean so they can’t say, ‘Hey maybe Iran is bluffing when they say they want to annihilate us.’ The Israelis have no other choice but to take what Iran says seriously regardless of what anyone else is saying.”