WarSclerotic

Why Iran May Be Ready to Deal – NYTimes.com.

( Setting a new standard for “wishful thinking.” – JW )

By VALI NASR

WASHINGTON

FOR the first time since 2009, there may be signs of a break in the deadlock over Iran’s nuclear program. Iran entered the latest talks with a slightly softened position. That is good news, but the United States will have to change its negotiating strategy to take advantage of it.

Economic sanctions are biting hard in Iran. Meanwhile, its strategic position is crumbling because of the turmoil in its ally Syria and the rise of militant Sunni Islamism throughout the Arab Middle East. Together, these forces seem to have forced Iran to reconsider its own bargaining position.

So rather than strengthen sanctions another notch, America should give Iran a little tit for tat: begin negotiating directly, and put on the table the prospect of lifting sanctions, one by one, as bargaining chips.

The United States should shift from trying to further intimidate Iran to trying to clinch an agreement. The sanctions have given America leverage, and we should use it to seek a deal that would finally restrict Iran’s ability to make bomb fuel, rather than ratchet up the pressure in the hopes of getting either a broader deal now or a total surrender later.

The problem with just standing tough is that it is likely to backfire; Iran is understandably nervous, and if it thinks America is intransigent, it might double down on its nuclear program, speeding it up past a point of no return.

Hints of progress were seen at the round of talks in Kazakhstan last month. The United States, negotiating together with Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany, proposed only small steps that would slightly ease American-imposed restrictions (allowing Iran to again trade in gold and silver, and to obtain spare parts for civilian aircraft), while insisting on stringent demands that Iran give up its ability to highly enrich uranium and use it to build nuclear weapons. Somewhat surprisingly, Iran said the proposal was welcome but not enough — and that it would respond in a few weeks. That contrasted with its previous pattern of flatly rejecting the other side’s proposals.

In 2009 and 2010, Iran sent another signal, in the form of a proposal worked out with Brazil and Turkey, that it might agree to export much of its more highly enriched uranium in exchange for being allowed to enrich it to a level suitable for nuclear power and medical uses. But the United States and its partners dismissed the offer as propaganda, largely because Iran had not made it directly, and because Iran would have still retained enough fuel to start building bombs later.

The new pressures on Tehran, its milder tone in the talks and its past signals that it might consider restricting enrichment levels suggest that Iran may be ready for productive bargaining. So the United States should be open to that possibility when talks resume in the coming days, and make new proposals to determine how serious the Iranians are.

Since 2003, Washington has relied on sanctions to bring Iran to the international bargaining table. But the Bush and Obama administrations have done more sanctioning than negotiating — partly because putting pressure on Iran is popular in America, while making deals with Iran is not. Rather than pushing for a negotiated solution to the crisis, Washington has often seemed to be holding out for Iran to simply capitulate.

But that only undermines the original purpose of the sanctions — to resolve the crisis without war — because sanctions can be a two-edged sword. The more pressure they exert, the more suspicious Iran’s leaders get about America’s real intentions. The more suspicious they are, the more they want a nuclear program. And the closer they get to their nuclear goals, the more they feel able to resist new pressure.

Iran’s leaders already suspect that America’s real goal is to overthrow their Islamic republic; at the same time, their citizens bitterly resent the sanctions, and generally support the idea of an Iranian nuclear program. Their leaders remember the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein violated international law by using chemical weapons and was never punished for it. Iran’s leaders concluded that they were vulnerable to aggression by their better-armed Arab neighbors, and that international agreements offered no protection.

In other words, insecurity drives Iran’s nuclear ambition, and it leaves Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, convinced that if he were to give up Iran’s nuclear program entirely, as Libya did in the last decade, he would only invite the fate of Muammar el-Qaddafi. That logic — if Iran is going to face sanctions anyway, better to face them with the bomb than without — has produced a saying in Tehran these days: “Better to be North Korea than Iraq.” Still, Iran’s leaders and citizens clearly want the sanctions lifted, and they may now be signaling a way out of the deadlock.

It’s time for the United States to test the leaders’ real intentions and offer them a path to rejoining the international community.

The committee of six nations involved in the Iran talks has achieved its original goal: to confront Iran with a united front. So the other five, whose differing agendas inevitably complicate the bargaining, should step aside and leave the United States to one-to-one talks with Iran.

And rather than offering only vague promises that serious concessions might be rewarded someday by dropping all the sanctions as a package, Washington should offer to do away with specific sanctions, piece by piece, in exchange for specific Iranian concessions. In that way, both sides might begin dismantling the most dangerous aspects of Iran’s nuclear program in incremental, verifiable ways.

Of course, Iran might lose enthusiasm for negotiations as the sanctions disappear. But by then, if its first concessions had been substantial, it would have given up critical pieces of its nuclear program, leaving the world a little safer.

Huckabee: Why America needs to stand with Israel | Fox News Video.

( While I don’t agree with Huckabee on most of his positions, this statement of support for Israel sounds like I could have written it. – JW )

http://video.foxnews.com/v/2233075423001/

Bethlehem Arabs ‘Shoe’ Obama Posters, US Officials – Defense/Security – News – Israel National News.

Barack Obama

White House

Arabs in Bethlehem had a “warm welcome” for American officials who on Monday came to prepare for President Barack H. Obama’s visit to the city Friday, by throwing shoes and garbage at the vehicles in an entourage from the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem. Hundreds of Arabs mobbed the vehicles outside the Church of the Nativity, where Obama is scheduled to visit when he comes to Bethlehem.

Sources in the city told Israel Radio that Arab protesters tore down posters with Obama’s image, throwing them to the ground and spitting and stepping on them. The protesters threw shoes at other posters that were hung too high for them to easily tear down.

The American entourage had entered Bethlehem unannounced, apparently in an effort to avoid such scenes. The entourage was said to be comprised chiefly of security officials who were there to ensure that Obama would be safe during his visit. PA police attempted to stop the crowd from throwing shoes and debris at the American vehicles, and were only partially successful, witnesses said.

Sources in the PA said they were examining ways to ensure that Monday’s protests were not repeated when Obama came to town.

The Region: Note to Obama | JPost | Israel News.

‘An Egyptian woman, her name’s Samira Ibrahim and she’s done a lot of courageous things. She’s also been criticized for sending tweets that are anti-Semitic, anti-American.

Does the US need to accept that when we want to make change you have to support people who do those things, financially and in terms of awards… because it pays off in the end, because it’s a trade-off we have to make?” This is what Erin Burnett of CNN asked former first lady Barbara Bush in a recent interview.

This Samira Ibrahim case became controversial after it was discovered that she had tweeted her joy about successful terrorist killings of Americans and Israelis and even quoting Adolf Hitler on evil Jewish conspiracies. So should she get an award from the US State Department? In her question, Burnett was perfectly summarizing Obama administration Middle East policy.

Current US strategy is to support anti-American, anti-Semitic radicals, with even arms and money, believing that “it pays off in the end.”

The nonsense here should be obvious: Why put into power people who hate you, lie about you and want to destroy you? What is the payoff? That if you help your ideologically motivated enemies into power they will then like you? That being in power will make them moderates, an idea that notably failed in the Israel-Palestinian “peace process” and on many other occasions? More accurately, today you give them guns, tomorrow they use those weapons to murder the US ambassador in Benghazi.

But Burnett accurately reflects US policy: you must put people who hate you into power and even flatter them and give them money. Burnett’s phrasing even implies that the United States is the one doing the overthrowing; “When we want to make a change…”

In February 2011, The New York Times described a secret White House study of the previous year planning for how “the administration could push for political change in countries with autocratic rulers who are also valuable allies of the United States…”

The goal, as The Washington Post described it at about the same time, was to create “an alternative to ‘the al-Qaida narrative’ of Western interference.”

And how would that be done? By helping Islamists into power, thus showing the United States was not anti-Islamist or, by questionable extension of that concept, not anti-Muslim.

No, you don’t have to do that. Change at any cost is not a necessity and what needs to be done is to help your friends, not your enemies. Is that clear? Here is Israel’s true problem with the Obama administration and the president personally. It is not so much about the long-dead “peace process” which the White House won’t acknowledge – even to itself – was killed by Palestinian intransigence or about bilateral US-Israel relations. No, it is mainly about a US policy of helping radical Islamists who are anti-Semites and openly call for wiping Israel off the map to get into power.

Consider how bizarre this is. The US government helps install – or at least does not try to stop – the takeover of key strategic countries by its own enemies and those eager to attack its ally, Israel. The likely outcome is to condemn the region to far more terrorism, oppression, ethnic massacres, war and dictatorship. It is like backing “moderate” Communists during the Cold War.

Having Islamists ruling Egypt, soon Syria, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, and Obama’s model regime in Turkey is a major threat to Israeli security.

Aside from what such governments do directly, they either help – or turn a blind eye – to even more violent Salafist groups. For example, this has brought cross-border attacks from Egyptian territory, rocket firings from Gaza, and the violent aspects of the Gaza flotilla engineered by Turkey’s government through the IHH group.

Is empowering those who want to commit genocide against the Jews and destroy Israel, in Burnett’s words, “a trade-off we have to make” because “”it pays off in the end”? There’s a precedent.

In 1939, British Colonial Department secretary Malcolm MacDonald explained appeasement in these words: “There are times when the most ethical consideration must give way to… necessity.”

Yet for the Obama administration this is a policy of choice, not necessity, and it does not benefit US interests.

As for claims that “moderate Islamists” – like Hamas and the Brotherhood – restrain extremists, this is an old disastrous idea. Consider, for example, the August 8, 1932, Glasgow Herald: “Murder, arson, and outrage continue to shatter the internal peace of Germany…. Herr Hitler and his more moderate colleagues… are said to deplore the terrorist tactics of some sections of their followers.”

The September 17, 1935, New York Times, while acknowledging that hatred of Jews was central to Hitler’s ideology, suggested anti-Semitic laws in Nazi Germany were a sop thrown to “the Radical wing of the [Nazi] party.”

That’s how the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists work. True, the latter are more eager to use violence and have less patience. But both groups have the same goals and often cooperate in achieving them. In Egypt, they came together to attack the US embassy, to strike against Christian churches, and to install a militant version of Shari’a law.

Certainly, the United States does not control everything that happens in these countries. Yet inasmuch as it does have money and influence, that power has been used to help the Islamists and not the moderates. For example, the Obama administration has backed Brotherhood leadership of the Syrian opposition and supports giving weapons to both the Brotherhood and Salafists, with no preference given to non-Islamists at all.

Real moderates in Iran, Turkey and the Arabic speaking world firmly believe US policy is backing their enemies. Indeed, it was real moderates in Egypt who exposed the fact that Samira Ibrahim is an extremist! Empowering anti-American and anti-Semitic Islamism in the guise of “moderate Islamism” is the most dangerous thing US policy could do in the Middle East or in the world generally.

Binyamin Netanyahu hopes Obama will agree to strike Syria, back Israel – UPI.com.