WarSclerotic

Al Jazeera English – Focus – Talking to the enemy.

By Robert Grenier

Has the US changed its tone towards Ismail Haniyeh’s Hamas? [GALLO/GETTY]

A number of commentators, including Al Jazeera’s Clayton Swisher, have remarked of late on the apparent willingness of the Obama administration to permit a level of unofficial contact with senior Hamas officials.

They refer to discussions which reportedly took place last summer in Zurich, when Tom Pickering, a former undersecretary of state, and Rob Malley, a former advisor to the Clinton administration on Arab-Israeli affairs, met for informal talks with Mahmud Zahar, the Hamas foreign minister.

Neither of the Americans involved has any official status in the current administration, but it was apparently understood by their Hamas interlocutor that they would brief officials in Washington on the substance of their discussions.

And in February, a career US diplomat, Rachel Schneller, who is currently out-of-status and on loan to the council on foreign relations, was permitted by the state department to participate in a panel discussion in Doha which included Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan.

Schneller’s brief apparently extended so far as to permit her to share a cup of tea with Hamdan afterwards.

Language of ultimatums

These are welcome developments and are indicative, I believe, of a very different attitude and tone in the Obama administration concerning how best to deal with adversaries.

It puts me in mind of the controversy which flared between Obama and then-senator Clinton when the two were candidates vying for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Obama had had the temerity to suggest that he would be willing to hold talks with Iran without preconditions. Clinton, trying to run to Obama’s right on foreign policy and to present herself as representing the “moderate, experienced mainstream” of Washington thinking, strongly criticised the Illinois senator for being willing to “reward” the Iranians in uncompensated fashion, and suggested in the process that he was, at best, dangerously naïve.

Obama’s spokesmen and handlers, sensing vulnerability, promptly began to suggest all manner of caveats which would have had the effect of making any such talks with Iran highly conditional – until, that is, they were pulled up short by Obama himself, who indicated that he had no desire to apologise for his stance, but wished instead to make this a point of clear differentiation between himself and those like Clinton who (at least at the time) were aligning themselves with precisely the sort of arrogant orthodoxy espoused by the Bush administration.

Having held a number of bureaucratic positions during the Bush years, and having seen close-up the effects of the Bush administration’s general unwillingness to communicate with adversaries in anything other than the language of ultimatums – ‘Do what we want, or suffer the consequences’ – it was clear to me at the time how self-defeating these attitudes were.

A missed opportunity

Nowhere was this more apparent to me than with Iran during the early months after the US invasion of Iraq.

The Iranians, had they desired to do so, could have caused the US no end of problems in those early days. The fact was, however, that they and the US shared certain broad, common interests in Iraq during that period, upon which the two sides might have built.

Had the US been willing to share its perspectives with Iran in those early days and to solicit Iranian views in a similar manner, there might at least have been an effective mechanism in place to moderate the worst effects of the tension between them when US and Iranian interests in Iraq began to sharply diverge later on.

Indeed, there had been very effective cooperation between the US and Iranian delegations to the Bonn Conference on Afghanistan in November-December 2001, thanks in large part to the wisdom of James Dobbins, the US envoy, who understood the common interests at work and who had the sense and flexibility to exploit them to mutual benefit.

Changing tone

For now Obama’s approach has been limited to a change in tone, not policy [GALLO/GETTY]

Indeed, that is all we are really talking about here: Common sense and flexibility. One would not suggest for a moment that the Obama administration has cast off the shackles of domestic political orthodoxy in the US, particularly where “rogue regimes” and officially-branded terrorist groups are concerned.

No one has hinted that the current administration will substantially alter the conditions previously laid down before engaging officially with Hamas.

Let us not forget that Rob Malley, one of the US interlocutors at the Zurich encounter with Hamas last summer, was forced to resign as an advisor to the Obama campaign when his past contacts with Hamas as a senior director of the International Crisis Group became widely known.

The change in the attitude and tone of the current administration from the one which immediately preceded it is largely that: A change in tone, and not a clear change in policy.

One looks to see the common-sense pragmatism of the current administration, in contrast to the narrow ideological doctrines of the Bush administration, somehow translated into a more permanent change – if not in actual policy, at least in terms of substantive practice.

Institutionalising dialogue

The point, it seems to me, is to find a means of institutionalising the dialogue with adversaries – whether we are speaking of Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah, or others – in a way which permits greater understanding of the two sides’ respective positions, establishes trusted means of contact, and helps to mitigate both misunderstanding of intentions and miscalculation of likely reactions.

The point of such dialogue is not necessarily to bring about change and reconciliation – though that would always be welcome – but at least to better manage conflict in the meantime.

I have long been an advocate of the enhanced use of my old organisation, the CIA, to manage just those sorts of discreet, unofficial contacts.

Obviously, the CIA has been used in this fashion in the past. However, it has not traditionally played such a role so widely or commonly as many tend to assume. In fact, the CIA has traditionally avoided such roles, preferring to stay away from politics and to stick to intelligence-gathering.

In order to communicate with adversaries effectively, and to build up the necessary institutional relationships and capabilities to do so, simply using one-time panel discussions and occasional contacts with former government officials is unlikely to meet the need. In this, as in other areas, the US needs a sustained and systematic approach.

Robert Grenier was the CIA’s chief of station in Islamabad, Pakistan, from 1999 to 2002. He was also the director of CIA’s counter-terrorism centre.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Ahmadinejad: Obama is a cowboy who follows will of Israel – Haaretz – Israel News.

Iran on Wednesday lamented U.S. President Barack Obama’s statements on the new U.S. nuclear strategy, calling him an inexperienced newcomer who follows the will of Israel.

“Such remarks were not even made by his predecessor George W. Bush,” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, addressing thousands in a speech in north-western Iran.

T

he United States pledged never to use nuclear weapons against states that comply with non-proliferation treaties as part of a much-anticipated review of nuclear arms strategy released Tuesday.

But the new pledge – a first for the U.S. – leaves open a nuclear strike against countries that have signed on to a global non-proliferation treaty but stand accused of violating its terms.

Obama, in an interview with The New York Times, said outright that the loophole would apply to “outliers like Iran and North Korea” that the U.S. believes are developing nuclear weapons.

“The American leaders still act like cowboys and like heroes in Western movies,” Ahmadinejad said in his remarks carried by the news network Khabar. “Whenever there is a problem, they use their guns.”

The Iranian president said the U.S. seemed to continue the same policies as Bush and “Obama seems to be just a new face but with the same intentions, which is deceiving world nations.”

“We advise Mr. Obama to be careful and not follow the path of his predecessor as he would have the same fate as Bush, and we are not interested in this to happen,” Ahmadinejad said.

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the new U.S. policy was just propaganda and called on Washington to cooperate with the world on global nuclear disarmament instead.

The Nuclear Posture Review was issued just before Obama heads to Prague to sign a new nuclear-arms-reduction treaty with Russia. The treaty calls on both sides to reduce their nuclear warheads to 1,550, or about one-third below current levels.

Ahmadinejad warns of ‘tooth-breaking response’ to Obama | ABS-CBN News Online Beta.

TEHRAN, Iran – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday warned his US counterpart Barack Obama of a “tooth-breaking” response, as he condemned Washington’s new nuclear policy.

Ahmadinejad lashed out after the United States unveiled new limits on use of the nation’s nuclear arsenal, but suggested that exceptions could be made for “outliers” such as Iran and North Korea, both accused by the West of flouting UN resolutions concerning their nuclear programmes.

“I hope these published comments are not true… he (Obama) has threatened with nuclear and chemical weapons those nations which do not submit to the greed of the United States,” Ahmadinejad said in speech broadcast live on state television.

“Be careful. If you set step in Mr. (George W.) Bush’s path, the nations’ response would be the same tooth-breaking one as they gave Bush,” he said as crowds in the northwestern city of Orumieh cheered “Death to America!”

In a policy shift, Washington said on Tuesday it would only use atomic weapons in “extreme circumstances” and would not attack non-nuclear states — but singled out Iran and North Korea as exceptions.

After a year of attempting diplomatic initiatives, Obama in recent weeks has ratcheted up pressure for fresh UN sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme, which Washington suspects is masking a weapons drive.

UN veto-wielding power China, which has emerged as Iran’s main economic trading partner in recent years, continues to seek a diplomatic solution to the controversy.

But French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said that Beijing had agreed to participate in talks on Thursday in New York with other world powers concerning sanctions against Tehran.

Kouchner, speaking in Paris on Wednesday, described the Chinese stance as “a positive factor” and “good news” but did not say at what level the talks would be held.

Ahmadinejad said Obama’s handling of Washington’s nuclear policy showed “his inexperience.”

“What Mr. Obama has said even Mr. Bush whose hands were smeared with blood of nations did not,” said the hardliner who has refused to budge under Western pressure to abandon Tehran’s atomic drive.

“We advise Mr. Obama to be careful in not signing anything they put in front. Wait and weigh things a bit. Beware that those who were bigger and stronger than you could not do a damn thing, let alone you,” he said.

Two other top Iranian officials also denounced Washington’s nuclear policy.

“We regard the recent position and comments of the United States as propaganda,” foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters.

Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi said the new US policy supported Israel.

“They use new designs for new bombs, support Israel which has many nuclear warheads, but on the other hand pressure Iran. This is exactly a domineering order and oppressive dealing which Iran does not accept,” he was quoted as saying by the ILNA news agency.

Israel is Middle East’s sole but undeclared nuclear power and it has not ruled out a military strike against Iran to stop its atomic programme.

Mottaki meanwhile said Iran was still hopeful that a UN-drafted nuclear fuel deal could be finalised if the United States, France and Russia showed “political will.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency brokered a deal in Vienna last October which envisages Iran sending its low-enriched uranium (LEU) to France and Russia for conversion into fuel for a small Tehran research reactor.

But Iranian officials have refused to hand over Tehran’s stockpiles of LEU, insisting on a simultaneous swap for higher-enriched uranium inside Iran.

US, Russia, and France who were party to the Vienna talks have opposed this condition.

Following the deadlock over the deal, Washington has been spearheading global efforts to impose new sanctions on Tehran.

Iran is already under three sets of UN sanctions for pursuing the uranium enrichment work, the most controversial part of its atomic drive.

Iran Ridicules Obama’s Nuclear Strategy – TIME.

President Barack Obama speaks on the telephone with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev about the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

Pete Souza / White House / AP

(TEHRAN, Iran and WASHINGTON) — Iran’s hard-line president has ridiculed President Barack Obama’s new strategy aimed at reducing the likelihood of nuclear conflict.

Obama on Tuesday announced new rules constraining the use of America’s nuclear arsenal, vowing not use nuclear weapons against countries that do not have them. However, Iran and North Korea were not included in that pledge because they do not cooperate with other countries on nonproliferation standards. (See “Judging Obama’s First Year, Issue by Issue.”)

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, addressing thousands in northwestern Iran on Wednesday, likened Obama to a “cowboy” and called him an inexperienced newcomer who follows the will of Israel. Ahmadinejad said the U.S. president “can’t do a damn thing.”

The Obama administration is suddenly moving on multiple fronts with a goal of limiting the threat of a catastrophic international conflict, although it’s not yet clear how far and how fast the rest of the world is ready to follow.

In releasing the results of an in-depth nuclear strategy review, President Barack Obama said his administration would narrow the circumstances in which the U.S. might launch a nuclear strike, that it would forgo the development of new nuclear warheads and would seek even deeper reductions in American and Russian arsenals.

His defense secretary, Robert Gates, said the focus would now be on terror groups such as al-Qaeda as well as North Korea’s nuclear buildup and Iran’s nuclear ambitions. (See a graphic of the nuclear armed world.)

“For the first time, preventing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism is now at the top of America’s nuclear agenda,” Obama said, distancing his administration from the decades-long U.S. focus on arms competition with Russia and on the threat posed by nuclear missiles on hair-trigger alert.

“The greatest threat to U.S. and global security is no longer a nuclear exchange between nations, but nuclear terrorism by violent extremists and nuclear proliferation to an increasing number of states,” he said, spelling out the core theme of the new strategy.

Obama’s announcement set the stage for his trip to Prague Thursday to sign a new arms reduction agreement with Russia. And it precedes a gathering in Washington next Monday of government leaders from more than 40 countries to discuss improving safeguards against terrorists acquiring nuclear bombs.

In May, the White House will once again help lead the call for disarmament at the United Nations in New York during an international conference on strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Congressional Democrats hailed Tuesday’s announcement, but some Republicans said it could weaken the nation’s defense.

Rep. Buck McKeon of California, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said the policy change could carry “clear consequences” for security and he was troubled by “some of the language and perceived signals imbedded” in the policy.

Two leading Senate voices on nuclear strategy, Arizona Republicans John McCain and Jon Kyl, criticized the Obama policy’s restrictions on using nuclear arms to retaliate against a chemical or biological attack.

“The Obama Administration must clarify that we will take no option off the table to deter attacks against the American people and our allies,” the senators said in a joint statement.

From the start of his term in office, Obama has put halting the spread of atomic arms near the top of his defense priorities. But during his first year he failed to achieve a significant breakthrough on arguably the two biggest threats: Iran and North Korea.

Obama’s current push for arms control initiatives is designed to strengthen international support for strengthened nonproliferation efforts.

“Given al-Qaeda’s continued quest for nuclear weapons, Iran’s ongoing nuclear efforts and North Korea’s proliferation, this focus is appropriate and, indeed, an essential change from previous” policy, Gates said.

In presenting the results of the administration’s policy review, Gates said a central aim was to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. defense strategy.

That will include removing some of the intentional ambiguity about the circumstances under which the U.S. would launch a nuclear strike, Gates told reporters at the Pentagon.

“If a non-nuclear weapons state is in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty and its obligations, the U.S. pledges not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against it,” Gates said. If, however, such a state were to use chemical or biological weapons against the U.S. or its allies, “it would face the prospect of a devastating conventional,” or non-nuclear, military response.

That is not a major departure from the policy of past administrations, but it is slightly more forthright about which potential aggressors might fear a nuclear strike, and which might not.

“This is not a breakthrough; it’s a common-sense refinement” of U.S. policy, said Daryl Kimball, president of the Arms Control Association.

Gates said Iran and North Korea in particular should view the new U.S. policy as a strong message about their behavior.

“If you’re not going to play by the rules, if you’re going to be a proliferator, then all options are on the table in terms of how we deal with you,” he said.

The major review of nuclear policy was the first since 2001 and only the third since the end of the Cold War. The version produced in December 2001 came just three months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

With the threat of terrorism in mind, Gates said the U.S. is not closing the door to the nuclear option.

“Given the catastrophic potential of biological weapons and the rapid pace of biotechnology development, the United States reserves the right to make any adjustment to this policy that may be warranted by the evolution and proliferation of biological weapons,” the defense chief said.

Some private nuclear weapons experts said Obama should have gone further to reduce reliance on U.S. nuclear weapons as a deterrent.

“There’s no real indication of the deep shifts in thinking necessary to begin giving up the nuclear fix,” said Paul Ingram, executive director of the British American Security Information Council.

U.S. allies, however, welcomed the outcome.

“The right signal at the right time,” said Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini.

Sharon Squassoni, a nonproliferation expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the administration’s overall approach to nuclear policy, as spelled out by Obama and Gates, is clearer than those of previous administrations.

The reworked policy, she said, is a “significant but not radical departure.”

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, appearing at the Pentagon news conference with Gates, said Obama has instructed his national security team to pursue another round of arms reduction talks with Russia, to follow up on the recently concluded replacement for the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START agreement.

The aim would be to conduct wider talks to include for the first time short-range U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons as well as weapons held in reserve or in storage.

Obama’s Incremental Surrender.

By Alan Caruba Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Since taking office on January 20, 2009, President Obama has engaged in one form of incremental surrender and betrayal after another, letting our allies know the United States is not to be trusted to protect them and our enemies know they need only wait for our troops to depart.

The latest tiny surrender was Obama’s pledge that the United States will not use nuclear weapons against none-nuclear countries no matter what weapons they choose to use against us. In plain terms, our nuclear weapons may well be the only thing restraining the bad intentions of any number of despots worldwide.

It should be noted that Obama’s new policy leaves our strategic nuclear weapons in place, but limits further development and testing. As The Washington Times noted, “American is taking a pledge to pursue nuclear obsolescence.”

Obama’s policy ignores the fact that our current enemies are not states, but stateless terrorist Islamist organizations with state sponsors. They have made it clear that they would love to get their hands on a small nuclear weapon or on biological/chemical weapons with which to inflict death on the scale of 9/11 or larger.

This kind of empty and stupid posturing may make Obama feel like a great global leader, but in practical terms it does nothing to assure our allies that he has the stomach to retaliate against their enemies and ours.

There’s a reason there has not been a World War Three. It begins with the U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons. It kept the Soviets mindful of their own destruction until their system collapsed under the failure of communism.

To fail to understand that America has been the global policeman since the end of World War Two is to ignore the benefit this has brought to the world despite the difficulties encountered in Vietnam in the 1970s and Iraq in this decade.

The U.S. armed forces, its Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard, represent more than three million personnel on active duty, the vast bulk of whom are stationed within the U.S. with others in Hawaii, Alaska, Guam, and Puerto Rico. The rest are at sea protecting the vital lanes of commercial traffic around the world and showing the power of the U.S. to those who might think about challenging it.

Deployments include, of course, those in Iraq and in Afghanistan, but the U.S. also has more than 56,000 in Germany, 33,000 in Japan, and around 30,000 in South Korea. There are fairly sizeable units in England and Italy. There are units through East Asia, North Africa, the Near East and South Asia, as well as sub-Saharan Africa.

When Obama made his speech regarding the decision to increase our presence in Afghanistan he used West Point cadets as the photo backdrop. He used the return of a casualty of war as a photo opportunity showing him saluting military-style.

It is all symbolism without substance and it is obscene.

This president gives every indication of having no real heart for combat. He has demonstrated a knack for picking the wrong side in a fight whether it’s a Fidel Castro- wannabe legally exiled from Honduras or the decision to withdraw a nuclear umbrella from former Soviet satellite nations in Eastern Europe.

He is utterly clueless regarding the lessons previous U.S. presidents have discovered. The Middle East only responds to power and force.

Diplomacy produces nothing but stalemate in the Middle East and that is often the best outcome one can accept.

A case in point is our traditional and most reliable Middle East ally, Israel, whose prime minister was recently treated in an extraordinarily shabby fashion by Obama as if to deliberately signal the Palestinians, the Iranians, the Syrians and others whose “side” he’s on.

Since 1947 no amount of negotiations and diplomacy have moved Israel’s Palestinian and Syrian enemies any closer to peace though, after having been thoroughly defeated in war, both Egypt and Jordan did accept peace terms.

Apparently, only after Iran nukes Tel Aviv will the new Obama doctrine be debated for several weeks concerning an appropriate level of retaliation. This is a president who, even though a bi-partisan Congress has passed tough sanctions against Iran, hasn’t found time to sign off on them.

It you want World War Three, you need only wait for Obama to force Israel’s hand to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities for lack of any other option. They have previously done this in both Iraq and Syria.

Obama has proven to be a disaster for the nation on so many levels and in so many ways that observers can only watch and wonder what this demented socialist flower child and his cronies will do next.

How Israelis View U.S.-Israel Relations – Inside Israel – CBN News – Christian News 24-7 – CBN.com.

Obama bans terms `Islam` and `jihad` from U.S. security document – Haaretz – Israel News.

President Barack Obama’s advisers will remove religious terms such as “Islamic extremism” from the central document outlining the U.S. national security strategy and will use the rewritten document to emphasize that the United States does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terror, counterterrorism officials said.

The change is a significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventative war and currently states: The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century.

The officials described the changes on condition of anonymity because the document still was being written, and the White House would not discuss it.

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But rewriting the strategy document will be the latest example of Obama putting his stamp on U.S. foreign policy, like his promises to dismantle nuclear weapons and limit the situations in which they can be used.

The revisions are part of a larger effort about which the White House talks openly, one that seeks to change not just how the United States talks to Muslim nations, but also what it talks to them about, from health care and science to business startups and education.

That shift away from terrorism has been building for a year, since Obama went to Cairo, Egypt, and promised a new beginning in the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world.

“You take a country where the overwhelming majority are not going to become terrorists, and you go in and say, ‘We’re building you a hospital so you don’t become terrorists.’ That doesn’t make much sense, said National Security Council staffer Pradeep Ramamurthy.

Ramamurthy runs the administration’s Global Engagement Directorate, a four-person National Security Council team that Obama launched last May with little fanfare and a vague mission to use diplomacy and outreach in pursuit of a host of national security objectives. Since then, the division has not only helped change the vocabulary of fighting terror but also has shaped the way the country invests in Muslim businesses, studies global warming, supports scientific research and combats polio.

“Do you want to think about the U.S. as the nation that fights terrorism or the nation you want to do business with?” Ramamurthy said.

David Ignatius – Obama weighs new peace plan for the Middle East.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Despite recent turbulence in U.S. relations with Israel, President Obama is “seriously considering” proposing an American peace plan to resolve the Palestinian conflict, according to two top administration officials.

“Everyone knows the basic outlines of a peace deal,” said one of the senior officials, citing the agreement that was nearly reached at Camp David in 2000 and in subsequent negotiations. He said that an American plan, if launched, would build upon past progress on such issues as borders, the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem. The second senior official said that “90 percent of the map would look the same” as what has been agreed in previous bargaining.

The American peace plan would be linked with the issue of confronting Iran, which is Israel’s top priority, explained the second senior official. He described the issues as two halves of a single strategic problem: “We want to get the debate away from settlements and East Jerusalem and take it to a 30,000-feet level that can involve Jordan, Syria and other countries in the region,” as well as the Israelis and Palestinians.

“Incrementalism hasn’t worked,” continued the second official, explaining that the United States cannot allow the Palestinian problem to keep festering — providing fodder for Iran and other extremists. “As a global power with global responsibilities, we have to do something.” He said the plan would “take on the absolute requirements of Israeli security and the requirements of Palestinian sovereignty in a way that makes sense.”

The White House is considering detailed interagency talks to frame the strategy and form a political consensus for it. The second official likened the process to the review that produced Obama’s strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. He said the administration could formally launch the Middle East initiative by this fall.

White House interest in proposing a peace plan has been growing in recent months, but it accelerated after the blow-up that followed the March 9 Israeli announcement, during Vice President Biden’s visit, that Israel would build 1,600 housing units in East Jerusalem. U.S. officials began searching for bolder ways to address Israeli and Palestinian concerns, rather than continuing the same stale debates.

Obama’s attention was focused by a March 24 meeting at the White House with six former national security advisers. The group has been meeting privately every few months at the request of Gen. Jim Jones, who currently holds the job. In the session two weeks ago, the group had been talking about global issues for perhaps an hour when Obama walked in and asked what was on people’s minds.

Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser for presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, spoke up first, according to a senior administration official. He urged Obama to launch a peace initiative based on past areas of agreement; he was followed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser for Jimmy Carter, who described some of the strategic parameters of such a plan.

Support for a new approach was also said to have been expressed by Sandy Berger and Colin Powell, who served as national security advisers for presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, respectively. The consensus view was apparently shared by the other two attendees, Frank Carlucci and Robert C. McFarlane from the Reagan years.

Obama’s embrace of a peace plan would reverse the administration’s initial strategy, which was to try to coax concessions from the Israelis and Palestinians, with the United States offering “bridging proposals” later. This step-by-step process was favored by George Mitchell, the president’s special representative for the Middle East, who believed a similar approach had laid the groundwork for his breakthrough in Northern Ireland peace talks.

The fact that Obama is weighing the peace plan marks his growing confidence in Jones, who has been considering this approach for the past year. But the real strategist in chief is Obama himself. If he decides to launch a peace plan, it would mark a return to the ambitious themes the president sounded in his June 2009 speech in Cairo.

A political battle royal is likely to begin soon, with Israeli officials and their supporters in the United States protesting what they fear would be an American attempt to impose a settlement and arguing to focus instead on Iran. The White House rejoinder is expressed this way by one of the senior officials: “It’s not either Iran or the Middle East peace process. You have to do both.”

ANALYSIS: Israel’s main interest at Obama’s summit: Stop Iran – Monsters and Critics.

Jerusalem – With just days remaining until Washington’s nuclear security summit, Israel on Tuesday still had not decided who it would send.

That’s because for Israel, nuclear security has one meaning above all else – stopping Iran from acquiring atomic weapons.

Thus, the ranking of the delegation Israel ends up sending to US President Barack Obama’s gathering on Monday and Tuesday of more than 40 world leaders will likely indicate Israel’s expectations that this goal can or cannot be met.

A high-level delegation – led possibly by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – would mean Israel expects the summit will adopt ‘practical measures and resolutions’ to halt Tehran’s drive to acquiring nuclear arms, a senior Israeli official said.

But a lower ranking representation would indicate scepticism as to whether the Israeli expectations can be met, the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the German Press Agency dpa.

The focus of the Washington gathering – the largest summit in decades in the US capital – is specifically on keeping nuclear material used in weapons and in other fields like power generation out of the hands of rogue criminals and terrorists.

But it is likely there will be talks on the sidelines about other issues, including the ongoing efforts to force Iran to stop its nuclear enrichment programme that the international community suspects will lead to nuclear weapons. And there are signs that Russia and China – both of whose leaders are coming next week – are softening to the idea of a new round of UN sanctions talks.

Israeli leaders have repeatedly pushed for international action to halt Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, for ‘sanctions that bite,’ in the oft-expressed words of Israeli spokesmen.

‘Israel expects the international community to act swiftly and decisively to thwart this danger,’ Netanyahu told last month’s conference of the America-Israel Public Affairs committee.

‘The biggest danger is the indecisiveness of the international community,’ Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Der Spiegel, also in March.

For Israel, the dangers posed by Tehran’s nuclear drive are heightened by statements, by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders, that the Jewish state should be wiped off the map, and by the support, including arms deliveries, Iran gives to Islamic organizations, such as Hamas, or the Lebanese Hezbollah, which reject any peaceful accommodation with Israel.

Israel leaders also make it clear they think time is running out to stop Iran.

‘I think that it’s a crucial time,’ Lieberman told EU Foreign Affairs supremo Catherine Ashton in mid-March.

‘It is now the time for a new Churchill policy, not the time for a Chamberlain policy, and that’s our expectation,’ he said.

Assuming effective sanctions are put in place against Iran, Israel will likely wait to see what effect, if any, they have, before deciding on further courses of action.

Despite Russian President Dimitry Medvedev’s statement that he has received assurances from Israeli President Shimon Peres that Israel does not intend to strike Iran, other Israeli leaders have been more ambiguous on the possibility of a military strike against Tehran.

‘We will always reserve the right to self-defence,’ Netanyahu told the AIPAC conference.

‘We are not taking any options off the table,’ Lieberman told Der Spiegel.

Whether Israel would use the military option, however is another question.

It is likely that Israel’s ambiguity is intended as a deterrent, aimed at adding weight to international pressure on Tehran, for fear of the ramifications of any Israeli military action.

Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made it clear during a recent visit to Israel that he is concerned by the ‘unexpected consequences’ an Israeli strike on Iran will have.

In addition, any unilateral Israeli military action against Iran would serve to turn the issue into an Iranian-Israeli conflict, and not a problem for the world.

And, given the statements by Israeli leaders that Iran poses a threat not just to the Jewish state, but to the region and the world, this is exactly what Israel wants to avoid

A Nuclear Iran and the Futility of Sanctions | FrontPage Magazine.