WarSclerotic

History News Network.

The Obama Administration is blustering that more drastic sanctions will be imposed on Iran if it does not stop enriching uranium, but Russia and China have undermined the threat by saying they will not support such sanctions. Meanwhile, Israel watches from the sideline and makes its own calculations of its national interest and stirring memories of 1981….

In 1981, a number of U.S. officials applauded Israel’s action, knowing the Iraqis were indeed a threat and that their government would probably never take such a bold step. These officials wanted to publicly support Israel and to justify the attack as an act of self-defense. State Department Arabists, however, vehemently objected and told Secretary of State Alexander Haig the United States would invite universal condemnation from the Arab world and the administration would “not have a Middle East policy for the next four years.” Instead of praise, the U.S. joined in the international condemnation of the raid….

A decade later, U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney sent the Israeli Air Force commander who oversaw the operation, David Ivri, an enlarged black-and-white U.S. satellite photograph of Osirak, taken a few days after the IAF raid. Cheney wrote an inscription: “For Gen. David Ivri, with thanks and appreciation for the outstanding job he did on the Iraqi nuclear program in 1981 – which made our job much easier in Desert Storm.”

President Obama should take this history into account as he allows Iran more time to develop its nuclear capability while trying to muster support for what are likely to be ineffective sanctions.

Republicans slam Obama’s hard line towards Israel – Israel News, Ynetnews.

House Republican Whip Eric Cantor says spat with Israel ‘jeopardizes America’s national security’, while another senior party member concerned about administration’s ‘softer approaches’ toward Palestinian Authority, Syria and Iran

Yitzhak Benhorin

Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other top officials said last week’s announcement of the new construction was insulting and damaging to efforts to revive long-stalled peace talks.

“To say that I am deeply concerned with the irresponsible comments that the White House, vice president and the secretary of state have made against Israel is an understatement,” said House Republican Whip Eric Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in the House of Representatives.

“In an effort to ingratiate our country with the Arab world, this administration has shown a troubling eagerness to undercut our allies and friends.”

He said the administration’s public spat with the Jewish State “jeopardizes America’s national security.”

The government of hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave permission for the new construction in Jerusalem’s Ramat Shlomo neighborhood on March 9, just as Biden visited Israel, sparking a major diplomatic crisis.

Israel’s ambassador to Washington said bilateral relations have hit a 35-year low.

It also came just two days after the Palestinians had reluctantly agreed to hold indirect, US-brokered negotiations with Israel.

Senator Sam Brownback said in a statement that “it’s hard to see how spending a weekend condemning Israel for a zoning decision in its capital city amounts to a positive step towards peace.”

The Kansas Republican, a staunch defender of Israel in Congress, said it would be “far more worthwhile” for the administration to focus its efforts instead on shifting the location of the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a highly controversial proposal.

‘Israel indispensable ally’

There are no embassies in Jerusalem, as Israel captured and annexed east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War in a move the international community does not recognize. Israel considers all of the city its capital despite Palestinian claims to east Jerusalem.

Brownback also urged the Obama administration to narrow its focus on the “growing Iranian nuclear threat,” referring to the Islamic republic’s continued defiance of international calls to halt its controversial uranium enrichment program. Israel considers Iran an existential threat.

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) issued a statement saying, “The Administration’s decision to escalate its rhetoric following Vice President Biden’s visit to Israel is not merely irresponsible, it is an affront to the values and foundation of our long-term relationship with a close friend and ally.”

According to the Republican leader, “The Administration has demonstrated a repeated pattern since it took office: while it makes concessions to countries acting contrary to US national interests, it ignores or snubs the commitments, shared values and sacrifices of many of our country’s best allies.

“If the Administration wants to work toward resolving the conflict in the Middle East, it should focus its efforts on Iran’s behavior, including its pursuit of nuclear weapons, its state-sponsorship of terrorism, its crushing of domestic democratic forces, and the impact its behavior is having, not just on Israel, but also on the calculations of other countries in the region as well as on the credibility of international nonproliferation efforts,” Boehner said in the statement.”House Republicans remain committed to our long-standing bilateral friendship with Israel, as well as to the commitments this country has made,” he added.

Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, demanded that the Obama administration halt its condemnations of “an indispensable ally and friend of the United States.”

“US condemnations of Israel and threats regarding our bilateral relationship undermine both our allies and the peace process, while encouraging the enemies of America and Israel alike,” she said.

Ros-Lehtinen added that she was “deeply concerned” about the administration’s “softer approaches” toward the Palestinian Authority, Syria and Iran.

Iran and Syria are the main foreign backers of the Shiite terror group Hezbollah but both deny that they provide anything other than moral support.

Washington also accuses Syria of turning a blind eye to militants crossing its border into Iraq.

U.S. envoy’s trip on hold as diplomatic crisis deepens – Haaretz – Israel News.

A visit to Israel by U.S. special peace envoy George Mitchell is on hold pending an Israeli response to a series of American demands, Army radio reported on Tuesday.

Mitchell had been due to leave Washington for Israel early on Monday but will delay his trip in a sign of the Obama administration’s growing anger at Israel’s refusal to stop building Jewish homes in East Jerusalem.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on has refused to draw a line under a crisis in Israeli-U.S. relations that erupted last week when Israel announced plans for 1,600 new housing units in Ramat Shlomo, an orthodox Jewish suburb beyong the Green line in the northeast of the city.

Israel would continue to build in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said on Monday.

“For the past 40 years, no Israeli government ever limited construction in the neighborhoods of Jerusalem,” he said.

Mitchell is thought to have delayed his travel plans until Tuesday ? but may cancel his visit to Israel altogether and instead fly straight to Moscow for talks with the ‘Quartet’ of Middle East peace mediators – the European Union, United Nations, the United States and Russia.

“We want to make sure that we have the commitment from both sides that, when he travels, we can make progress,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said.

According to a report in The Washington Post on Tuesday, U.S. officials say that Mitchell’s visit will remain on hold until the White House receives an Israeli response to key demands.

Israel must reverse the approval for construction in Ramat Shlomo, make a “substantial gesture” towards the Palestinians and publicly declare that all of the “core issues” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the status of Jerusalem, be included in upcoming talks.

The three conditions, set by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a 43-minute telephone call to Netanyahu on Friday, have not been publicized by the U.S. – but Israel is expected to provide a formal answer on Tuesday, the Post reported.

American officials see a resolution to the current crisis as a test of Netanyahu’s commitment to ties with the U.S., the paper said.

“We have to have guarantees that these kinds of things will not happen again,” a senior U.S. official was quoted as saying, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

“If he is unwilling to make that kind of commitment, it raises the questions of how committed he is to negotiations – and it raises the question of how committed he is to the relationship between Israel and the United States.”

“He has to take a firm stand to prevent similar kinds of announcements that will have a negative effect on negotiations,” the official said.

NTI: Global Security Newswire – Iran Sanctions Battle Seen Dragging Into June.

France yesterday suggested it could take months longer to negotiate a fourth U.N. Security Council resolution addressing Iran’s disputed nuclear activities, Reuters reported (see GSN, March 12).

France, the United States and other Western powers have struggled to win support from China and Russia for additional U.N. economic penalties against Iran. The West has expressed concern that Iran’s nuclear program could support weapons development, but Tehran has denied having any military ambitions for its work.

All Security Council measures require the consent of the body’s five permanent member nations: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

“We are … talking and talking, trying to get an agreement by negotiation and at the same time working on sanctions. I believe that yes, before June it will be possible, but I’m not so sure,” French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said.

“Before June I hope, but who am I to hope or decide,” he said, noting that Paris had hoped to set up another set of Security Council penalties last month.

Punitive measures could hit Iranian insurance firms and financial institutions and impose new travel bans, but they would not hit the nation’s energy industry or wider economy, Kouchner said. “We are not talking about blocking the exportation (of oil products) from the Gulf of Hormuz, even if some strategic people are thinking about it. It will be simple, clear and economic.”

The European Union might consider adopting a separate set of sanctions, Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb said.

“Failing (U.N. sanctions), I think there is an emerging consensus inside the European Union that we will take some unilateral measures from the EU side,” Stubb said. “What those exact measures are have not been discussed in detail” (Luke Baker, Reuters I, March 14).

“I think we’ll be able to convince Russia and China and I’m quite hopeful that we’ll get something in the Security Council,” he added.

“Time is running out, so I’m sure this is going to be something, if the U.N. Security Council fails, that we’ll deal with when we have our EU foreign ministers’ meeting on [March 22],” Stubb said. “That’s when we’ll get into the detail (of possible sanctions) … There is consensus enough” (Luke Baker, Reuters II, March 13).

Asked if EU nations could come together in support of independent penalties against Iran, Kouchner said, “broadly yes, but we have to talk about what kind of sanctions. And first we should devote our strength and time to getting a resolution in the U.N. Security Council and we’re working on that.”

Washington plans to circulate a preliminary U.N. sanctions document late this month, Agence France-Presse quoted Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini as saying. The EU would probably not consider its own measures until the Security Council considers the proposed resolution, he said (Agence France-Presse I/Google News, March 14).

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband was expected to make the case for new U.N. sanctions on Iran to top Chinese officials during a visit to China that was under way today, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.

“Britain and China haven’t only agreed on the goal that Iran should respect the [Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty] and not become a nuclear weapon state. We’ve also agreed on the means to achieve that, which is a combination of engagement and pressure. The engagement has been on the table with Iran for some time, and they have been refusing it,” he said (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, March 15).

Saudi Arabia last week rebuffed reports that it had indicated a willingness to lobby for Chinese endorsement of a new Security Council resolution on Iran, AFP reported.

“This issue is not true, it was not discussed during the visit of [U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates] who was in the kingdom recently,” an official source told Saudi state media (Agence France-Presse II/Google News, March 13).

Recent announcements that several major gasoline companies would end their business with Iran have forced Tehran to fall back on alternative suppliers, United Press International reported.

“The decision by European companies and Reliance to stop supplying Iran with (petroleum products) will force Iran into secondary and less-efficient markets in order to obtain petroleum, which will increase Iran’s transaction costs,” Cliff Kupchan, an Iran analyst with the New York-based Eurasia Group, told the UAE newspaper The National (United Press International, March 12).

Meanwhile, a former high-level Pakistani official indicated in 2006 that Tehran had sought complete nuclear weapons from Islamabad in the late 1980s, the Washington Post reported yesterday.

Pakistan did not seriously consider providing nuclear weapons to Iran, two former top military officials told the newspaper (Smith/Warrick, Washington Post, March 14).

Islamabad yesterday denounced the Post report, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

“It is yet another repackaging of fiction, which surface occasionally for purposes that are self-evident,” Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit said (Xinhua News Agency, March 15).

NATO would respond to a nuclear-armed Iran as a potential danger, the head of the military alliance told Gulf News in remarks published yesterday.

“While NATO as such is not involved in the Iran issue, we support international endeavors to find a political and diplomatic solution. But if Iran at a certain stage actually acquires nuclear capability, then we would consider it a threat against the alliance,” said NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

“This is also the reason we are considering the establishment of a missile defense system that we can start to deploy by 2011,” he said (see related GSN story, today; Habib Toumi, Gulf News, March 14).

In Washington, the Obama administration has yet to agree on how to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the New York Times reported Friday.

The administration has not established what Iranian achievements would constitute a “nuclear weapons capability,” creating uncertainly over what atomic progress the United States would tolerate in the Middle Eastern state, according to multiple high-level Defense Department and intelligence officials (David Sanger, New York Times, March 12).

In Tehran, the chief of staff to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed Israeli threats of military action against Iranian nuclear sites, Iran’s Fars News Agency reported.

“Any allegation about attacking Iran, specially by Israel, are absurd and nonsense because if Israel dared to attack Iran, it would not wait even one hour,” Esfandiar Rahim Mashae’i said (Fars News Agency, March 13).

Iran on Saturday announced the arrest of 30 people for allegedly probing secured Iranian computer networks for information on the nation’s nuclear scientists, the Indo-Asian News Service reported. The group had ties to the CIA, according to Iranian authorities (Indo-Asian News Service/Hindustan Times, March 14)

Israelis worry about their missile shield – UPI.com.

GOP Leads Backlash against Obama; Democrats Uneasy – Politics & Gov’t – Israel News – Israel National News.

IsraelNN.com) Republican Party leaders attacked the Obama administration Monday with unusually harsh language, charging it with an “irresponsible” position against an ally. “In an effort to ingratiate our country with the Arab world, this administration has shown a troubling eagerness to undercut our allies and friends,” said the GOP’s only Jewish Republican Congressman, Eric Cantor of Virginia.

He went so far as to say that the dispute “jeopardizes America’s national security.”

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has taken the heat for the current crisis that erupted when a government minister announced the approval of the fourth of seven stages for building new homes for Jews in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood. Totally Jewish, it is located in a part of Jerusalem that was restored to Israel in the Six Day War when Jerusalem was reunited, but not recognized as such by the United States.

The initial media and political blows were delivered to Prime Minister Netanyahu, who apologized to visiting U.S. Vice President Joe Biden for the timing of the announcement with his arrival that was aimed at promoting American-mediated talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel for a new PA state.

However, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton followed up with an unprecedented and scathing public attack on the Prime Minister. Republican legislators did not miss a beat as most political commentators stated that Clinton ”over-reacted.”

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the leading Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, charged that the Obama government’s condemnations of “an indispensable ally and friend of the United States…undermine both our allies and the peace process, while encouraging the enemies of America and Israel alike.

She noted that President Obama has taken “softer approaches” towards the Palestinian Authority, Syria and Iran.

Senator Sam Brownback’s office stated, “It’ is hard to see how spending a weekend condemning Israel for a zoning decision in its capital city amounts to a positive step towards peace.”

Democrats also are uneasy over the crisis, which comes only eight months before Congressional elections. Polls have shown that President Obama’s political stature is sinking.

Laura Rozen of Politico.com wrote on Monday that Democratic legislators are looking for some kind of political leadership from U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell, who is a former senator and is President Obama’s ”make-or-break” representative in the PA-Israeli struggle.

She quoted a senior Democratic foreign policy leader as saying that the failure of top Obama officials and Mitchell to make contact with Congressman is the “the same exact mistake of the first two Clinton years with majorities in both Houses. You’d think they would have learned the lesson of ‘never take your allies for granted’ at least after this year.”

Veteran Middle East peace negotiator Aaron David Miller told Rozen, “The tree they’re up on this one is very tall. Paradoxically, it may be up to Bibi [Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu] to help them climb down.”

Review & Outlook: Obama’s Turn Against Israel – WSJ.com.

In recent weeks, the Obama Administration has endorsed “healthy relations” between Iran and Syria, mildly rebuked Syrian President Bashar Assad for accusing the U.S. of “colonialism,” and publicly apologized to Moammar Gadhafi for treating him with less than appropriate deference after the Libyan called for “a jihad” against Switzerland.

When it comes to Israel, however, the Administration has no trouble rising to a high pitch of public indignation. On a visit to Israel last week, Vice President Joe Biden condemned an announcement by a mid-level Israeli official that the government had approved a planning stage—the fourth out of seven required—for the construction of 1,600 housing units in north Jerusalem. Assuming final approval, no ground will be broken on the project for at least three years.

But neither that nor repeated apologies from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prevented Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—at what White House sources ostentatiously said was the personal direction of President Obama—from calling the announcement “an insult to the United States.” White House political chief David Axelrod got in his licks on NBC’s Meet the Press yesterday, lambasting Israel for what he described as “an affront.”

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Associated Press

Since nobody is defending the Israeli announcement, least of all an obviously embarrassed Israeli government, it’s difficult to see why the Administration has chosen this occasion to spark a full-blown diplomatic crisis with its most reliable Middle Eastern ally. Mr. Biden’s visit was intended to reassure Israelis that the Administration remained fully committed to Israeli security and legitimacy. In a speech at Tel Aviv University two days after the Israeli announcement, Mr. Biden publicly thanked Mr. Netanyahu for “putting in place a process to prevent the recurrence” of similar incidents.

The subsequent escalation by Mrs. Clinton was clearly intended as a highly public rebuke to the Israelis, but its political and strategic logic is puzzling. The U.S. needs Israel’s acquiescence in the Obama Administration’s increasingly drawn-out efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear bid through diplomacy or sanctions. But Israel’s restraint is measured in direct proportion to its sense that U.S. security guarantees are good. If Israel senses that the Administration is looking for any pretext to blow up relations, it will care much less how the U.S. might react to a military strike on Iran.

As for the West Bank settlements, it is increasingly difficult to argue that their existence is the key obstacle to a peace deal with the Palestinians. Israel withdrew all of its settlements from Gaza in 2005, only to see the Strip transform itself into a Hamas statelet and a base for continuous rocket fire against Israeli civilians.

Israeli anxieties about America’s role as an honest broker in any diplomacy won’t be assuaged by the Administration’s neuralgia over this particular housing project, which falls within Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries and can only be described as a “settlement” in the maximalist terms defined by the Palestinians. Any realistic peace deal will have to include a readjustment of the 1967 borders and an exchange of territory, a point formally recognized by the Bush Administration prior to Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza. If the Obama Administration opts to transform itself, as the Europeans have, into another set of lawyers for the Palestinians, it will find Israeli concessions increasingly hard to come by.

That may be the preferred outcome for Israel’s enemies, both in the Arab world and the West, since it allows them to paint Israel as the intransigent party standing in the way of “peace.” Why an Administration that repeatedly avers its friendship with Israel would want that is another question.

Then again, this episode does fit Mr. Obama’s foreign policy pattern to date: Our enemies get courted; our friends get the squeeze. It has happened to Poland, the Czech Republic, Honduras and Colombia. Now it’s Israel’s turn.

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs.

By Spengler The chess-masters of Tehran have played a single combination for the past five years: threaten America’s flanks in Iraq and Afghanistan in order to gain control of the center of the board, that is, by pushing on with a nuclear program that many suspect is designed to acquire nuclear weapons. Iran has sufficient assets in the territory of its troubled neighbors to make a shambles of America’s Potemkin village. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki may be able to govern Iraq with a third of the seats contested in the March 7 parliamentary elections, provided that Iran’s allies such as Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr permit him to do so. And the appearance of Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad in Kabul on March 10 to declare hissolidarity with Afghanistan’s beleaguered President Hamid Karzai planted Iran’s flag in the midst of Afghan politics. Iran will succeed, unless another player kicks over the chessboard. Israeli officials report that American officials are visiting Jerusalem – including Vice President Joseph Biden last week – to warn Israel against launching an attack on Iran. “They’re not talking about the Palestinians, they’re only talking about Iran,” commented the head of one Israeli political party. That explains the exceptionally harsh, even adversarial tone that Washington has taken towards Israel, supposedly in response to last week’s go-ahead for 1,600 apartments in East Jerusalem, but evidently in anticipation of an Israeli attack on Iran. Reuters quoted an unnamed American official warning that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s position was “perilous” because of alleged divisions in his government over negotiating with the Palestinians. United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s March 12 statement seemed disproportionate that the East Jerusalem construction was “a deeply negative signal about Israel’s approach to the bilateral relationship and counter to the spirit of the vice president’s trip”. And the Israeli news site Debka.com, which frequently carries intelligence community leaks, reports that Washington is threatening to withhold weapons from the Israelis. Considering that Obama faces congressional elections in five months and well may lose control of both houses, the lady may protest too much. Obama may be in a lot more trouble than Netanyahu. The Obama administration’s shrill tone towards Israel reflects its domestic political weakness as much as its strategic problems. According to a March 7 poll by The Israel Project, Americans take the Israeli side against the Palestinians by a margin of 57% to 7%, with the rest neutral. A Gallup Poll released February 28 gives the margin at 63% to 15%, with 23% neutral. Only 30% of respondents told Gallup that they expect a peace agreement between Israel and the Arab states. More to the point, 60% of respondents in a March 2 Fox News poll said they believed force would be required to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, while only 25% believe that diplomacy and sanctions will work. Fifty-one percent of Democrats and 75% of Republicans polled favored the use of force. Obama’s job approval for handling Iran was at only 41%, with 42% disapproving. An Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities would polarize American opinion. And if the Obama administration attempted to punish Israel for doing what most Americans seemingly want to do in any event, the balance of American sentiment – if available polling data are any guide – would shift away from Obama and to Israel. Obama’s party would pay at the polls in November. No one cares about the Palestinians; to the extent that the charade of Israeli negotiations with the weak and divided Palestine Authority comes into consideration, it is because Washington still hopes that a show of progress might be helpful in addressing more urgent concerns in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia. Obama’s investment in rapprochement with Iran is not a sentimental gesture: it is the pillar on which American regional policy rests. Despite the enormous difference in outlook between the last administration and the present one, there is an underlying continuity in Washington’s stance towards Iran, due to the facts on the ground put in place by Iran itself. I wrote on this site in October 2005, shortly after Ahmadinejad came to power: I do not believe any formal understanding is in place, but the probable outcome is that Washington will refrain from military action to forestall any Iranian nuclear arms developments, while Tehran will refrain from disrupting Washington’s constitutional Potemkin Village in Iraq. Tehran thinks strategically, as befits a country with a government newly elected by an overwhelming majority, while Washington thinks politically. President George W Bush is struggling to persuade the American public of the wisdom of his nation-building scheme in Iraq, and badly wants the Iranians to keep their hands in their pockets. Iran is prepared to do so as long as America keeps its opposition to its nuclear program within the confines of the diplomatic cul-de-sac defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency. (See A Syriajevo in the making?, Asia Times Online, October 25, 2005) Nation-building in Iraq is the tar baby that has entrapped American foreign policy. The notion that the United States should take responsibility for the political evolution of a country cooked up by British cartographers with the explicit purpose of keeping Sunni Arabs, Shi’ite Arabs and Kurds at each others’ throats, ranks as one of the great political delusions of the past century. Since the American invasion in 2003, it always has been in Iran’s power to make the country ungovernable. More important to Iran, though, is the potential acquisition of nuclear weapons. Should it become a nuclear power, Iran could set its cats’ paws in Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan to whatever task it chose with far less fear of American retribution. The Obama administration’s abortive opening to Iran always aimed at obtaining Iranian help in stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan, among other things by soliciting Tehran’s good offices with the Shi’ite Hazara minority in Afghanistan. Iran has ties both to the Hazara as well as to their mortal enemies, the Sunni Taliban, and keeps its options open. Its prospective influence in Afghanistan is potent enough to panic the US – Secretary of Defense Robert Gates arrived in Kabul unannounced on March 8, the same day that Ahmadinejad was expected in the Afghan capital, prompting the Iranian president to postpone his trip by two days. Gates’ unexpected trip was interpreted as a pre-emptive action against Iranian influence. Karzai embraced his Iranian counterpart as a friend and ally. As Asia Times Online’s M K Bhadrakumar wrote on March 13: “Karzai can hope to tap into Iran’s influence with various Afghan groups, which traditionally focused on the Persian-speaking Tajiks and Hazara Shi’ites but today also extends to segments of the Pashtun population. Significantly, Ahmedinejad was received on Wednesday at Kabul airport by the Northern Alliance leader Mohammed Fahim, who has become the first vice president in Karzai’s new government despite strong opposition from the US and Britain.” (See A titanic power struggle in Kabul, Asia Times Online, March 13) The United States responded to Ahmadinejad’s Afghan visit by paying obeisance to Iran’s influence. “The future of Afghanistan has a regional dimension and we hope that Iran will play a more constructive role in Afghanistan in the future,” said US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley. He added in the past, the US and Iran have “cooperated constructively” and hoped that they would do so again, given that Iran has “a legitimate interest in the future of Afghanistan”. The answer to the question: “What is Obama’s exit strategy from Afghanistan?” – is a Great Gamelet in which Iran and Pakistan work out a power-sharing arrangement in Afghanistan and establish a miniature balance of power between Sunnis and Shi’ites. All that is missing is Johnny Depp in Mad Hatter makeup replacing Richard Holbrooke as AfPak czar, distributing 3-D glasses to the diplomatic corps. Just as delusional is the idea that an Iraqi government formed by either of the two front-runners in the March 7 elections, Maliki or Iyad Allawi, would free Iraq of Iranian influence. That is the conventional wisdom in Washington, however. The Washington Post editorialized March 13: A government headed by either Mr Maliki or Mr Allawi would offer the Obama administration an opportunity to forge a vital strategic relationship with Iraq even as US troops depart in the next two years. Mr Maliki signed a strategic framework with the Bush administration and has already demonstrated his capacity to resist Iranian influence. Mr Allawi is even more interested in an alliance with Washington and has good relations with Arab Sunni governments that have shunned Mr Maliki’s administration. The precise opposite is the case: Iraq’s elections took place without crippling violence because Tehran understands well the chess maxim: “The threat is mightier than the execution.” Iran is content to allow America to keep its Potemkin village in place for a while longer, and push on with its nuclear program which carries with it possibility of a nuclear weapon. What the Bush administration might have done under present circumstances is a hypothetical question. But the fact is that Bush built the Potemkin village in Iraq, and Obama inherited it. The difference lies in the Bush administration’s desire to project American power, and the Obama administration’s desire to diminish it. One might speculate that a Republican administration – at least one headed by Senator John McCain – would have encouraged Israel to extricate the US from its present Zugzwang (imperative to move when any move is damaging) by attacking Iran’s nuclear program. That, after all, is what allies are for. There is no Obama administration as such; there is only Obama, who appears to run the entire show out of his Blackberry. As David Rothkopf wrote in his Foreign Policy blog March 12, Obama’s is “an administration in which seeking the favor of the president has taken on an importance that is in fact, much more reminiscent of the historical czars than is the role being played by anyone with this now devalued moniker”. As I wrote on this space February 18: “Israel has a strategic problem broader than the immediate issue of Iran’s possible acquisition of nuclear weapons: it is an American ally at a moment when America has effectively withdrawn from strategic leadership. That leaves Israel at a crossroads. It can act like an American client state, or a regional superpower. Either decision would have substantial costs.”(See The case for an Israeli strike against Iran, Asia Times Online, February 18) The best thing that Israel can do for the United States in its time of befuddlement is pursue its own interests, for American and Israeli security concerns have one overriding commonality: the need to prevent rogue states in the region from acquiring nuclear weapons. In the the present test of wills between Washington and Jerusalem, the smart money is on David rather than Goliath.

U.S.-Israel crisis: This time, it’s serious | JTA – Jewish & Israel News.

By Ron Kampeas · March 15, 2010

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Last summer, when the relationship between the Obama and Netanyahu administrations was getting off to what appeared to be a rocky start, Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren was at pains — twice — to deny that he had been “summoned” to the State Department for a dressing down.

One such “meeting” was actually a friendly phone call, he said, and the other was a routine getting-to-know-you meeting. The distinction was key, he told journalists: When the State Department actually “summons” an envoy, “That’s serious.”

Welcome to the serious zone: Oren’s spokesman, Jonathan Peled, confirmed to JTA that the ambassador had indeed been “summoned” for a meeting last Friday with James Steinberg, the deputy secretary of state, as the controversy engendered by Israel’s announcement of a new building start during last week’s visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden shows no sign of abating.

“It wasn’t a meeting,” Oren told the Washington Jewish Week in an interview at a fund-raiser for a DC-area school on Sunday night “It was a summoning. I was told it was the first time that any ambassador had been summoned at that level.” Oren said he was “working hard to avert an escalation. We’re working very hard to get back to what we need to do to make peace and stop Iran from making the bomb. We have apologized publicly and privately profusely.”

Israeli media reported Monday that in a conference call Saturday night with other Israeli diplomats, Oren — a New Jersey-born historian who has gone out of his way to talk up the relationship — said that ties were at a 35-year nadir. He was presumably referring to the Ford administration’s threat to “reassess” the relationship with Israel because of perceived Israeli reluctance to make the necessary concessions to achieve peace with Egypt.

Israeli officials and leaders of pro-Israel organizations are asking the administration to dial it down, in tones ranging from the pleading to the berating — sometimes in the same statement.

“The Obama Administration’s recent statements regarding the U.S. relationship with Israel are a matter of serious concern,” the American Israel Public Affairs Committee said in a statement Sunday night, a rare direct broadside from an organization that generally operates behind the scenes. “AIPAC calls on the Administration to take immediate steps to defuse the tension with the Jewish State.”

The statement comes just a week before the start of AIPAC’s annual policy conference, widely seen as the most important pro-Israel event in Washington.

Like an array of other Jewish groups, AIPAC wants the matter kept quiet: “We strongly urge the Administration to work closely and privately with our partner Israel, in a manner befitting strategic allies, to address any issues between the two governments.”

That echoed a plea Sunday morning from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to his Cabinet as much as to the Obama administration.

“I suggest that we not get carried away — and that we calm down,” he said. “We know how to deal with these situations — with equanimity, responsibly and seriously.”

But Obama administration officials, who accepted Netanyahu’s explanation that he had been blindsided, were nonetheless not ready to let the matter go.

In addition to Friday’s summons of Oren, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley described a conversation the same day between Netanyahu and Hillary Rodham Clinton, the secretary of state, in exceptionally blunt terms. Clinton objected to the announcement “not just in terms of timing, but also in its substance,” Crowley said.

The Netanyahu-Clinton phone call reportedly lasted 45 minutes — and by most accounts sounded less like the “conversation” Oren says he had with Steinberg and more like a lecture.

Ha’aretz reported that Clinton, who is scheduled to speak at the AIPAC conference next week, wants three demands met beyond Netanyahu’s offer to check into how the announcement was made in order to ratchet it back to normal: reverse the Ramat Shlomo decision; make a substantive gesture to the Palestinians, such as a prisoner release; and agree to peace talks that encompass not only borders but final status issues such as refugees and Jerusalem.

On Monday, Netanyahu told a Likud Party meeting building in Jerusalem would not stop. However, his defense minister and Labor Party leader Ehud Barak said more needed to be done to assuage the Americans. Barak, a potential rival to Netanyahu in elections, hinted at a Labor Party meeting that a failure to do so could lead his party to pull its support for the government. “Peace talks are a first priority for Israel and for the entire region,” Ha’aretz quoted Barak as saying. “The political process is in the interest of the state and it is a subject in which the Labor party believes. It is one of the things that anchors us in the government and drives us to work within it.”

The controversy erupted last week with what both sides agreed was the humiliation handed last week to Biden, considered to be Netanyahu’s best friend in the Obama administration. The vice president had come to allay Israeli concerns that Obama’s outreach to Muslims would come at Israel’s expense; just as he was getting ready to meet with Palestinian officials as part of the administration’s push to restart peace talks, Israel announced plans to build 1,600 housing units in Ramat Shlomo, part of disputed eastern Jerusalem.

Biden, furious, condemned the announcement — several times — but went ahead with a speech that affirmed the unshakeable U.S.-Israel bond. Netanyahu apologized for the timing and said he would probe how the announcement was made without his knowledge.

“There was a regrettable incident, that was done in all innocence and was hurtful, and which certainly should not have occurred,” Netanyahu said in his statement. “We appointed a team of directors-general to examine the chain of events and to ensure procedures that will prevent such occurrences in the future. Beyond this, I think we should suffice with the foregoing.”

And that was that, or so the Israelis hoped. But then came the continuing U.S. criticisms and demands.

In the past, the pro-Israel community has been able to rally push-back against such initiatives, and as the unusual AIPAC statement made clear, this is no different. The Ford administration backed down from the 1975 “reassessment” after AIPAC garnered more than 70 signatures from the Senate signaling that Congress would override any presidential attempt to cut back funds. That was the lobby’s first signal victory, accruing to it the “don’t mess with us” reputation it maintains until now.

Now, however, the president can count on a Democratic Congress less likely to break ranks with him in a Washington that has become much more partisan. Notably, Republicans — including Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), the minority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives — have sided with Israel in the matter, but as of Monday the only Democrat to speak out has been Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.), perhaps the most-pro-Israel stalwart in her caucus. Other more powerful pro-Israel reliables — like Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee — have yet to speak out.

It’s unclear, however, what impact they would have if they did: Unlike President Ford in 1975 or President George H.W. Bush in 1991, Obama is not threatening any cut in assistance, rendering Congress’ “purse strings” powers superfluous. By holding back on such threats, the Obama administration can ignore Congress and continue to reproach Israel.

In fact, it is Obama’s stated commitment to “tachles” — increased assistance to Israel in the realm of military cooperation, such as missile defense, and ramped up pressure on Iran to make its nuclear intentions transparent — that has made the latest flap particularly upsetting to the president’s circle, particularly among those with intimate Israel ties, such as Dennis Ross, who handles Iran policy at the White House, and Martin Indyk, a Clinton confidante who maintains an informal advisor role.

In a posting on the Daily Beast Web site, Indyk recalled that the last time Netanyahu led Israel in the late 1990s, his boss, Madeleine Albright, then the secretary of state, was similarly embarrassed during a visit. She called Indyk, then the ambassador to Israel, and shouted: “You tell Bibi that he needs to stop worrying about his right wing and start worrying about the United States.”

It’s time to heed that advice, Indyk said. “There is one way to repair the damage to U.S.-Israel relations and to his own standing with the Israeli public,” he wrote. “He could immediately declare that in order to boost the chances for negotiations, he is calling a halt to all provocative acts in Jerusalem—including announcements of new building activity in east Jerusalem, housing demolitions, and evictions. He should also establish a mechanism in the prime minister’s office to ensure that his decision is implemented.”

The State Department sounded an Albright-sounding note on Friday, when Crowley stated that Clinton wanted to make clear to Netanyahu that “the United States considers the announcement a deeply negative signal about Israel’s approach to the bilateral relationship — and counter to the spirit of the vice president’s trip; and to reinforce that this action had undermined trust and confidence in the peace process, and in America’s interests.”

“The secretary said she could not understand how this happened, particularly in light of the United States’ strong commitment to Israel’s security,” Crowley said. “And she made clear that the Israeli government needed to demonstrate not just through words but through specific actions that they are committed to this relationship and to the peace process.”

There are signs of a push-back strategy among Israel and its Washington supporters: frame Palestinian provocations as more damaging than the building starts announcement.

Headlines in Israel on Monday focused on calls by the Palestinian leadership to protest the rededication of the “Hurva,” an ancient Old City synagogue destroyed by Jordanian forces. P.A. officials reportedly have said that the building threatens the integrity of the Al Aksa mosque, although the synagogue is nowhere near the compound.

“If the Obama Administration is pressing Israel these days over an untimely, but at bottom bureaucratic, step toward construction in Jerusalem, they must press the Palestinians harder over inciting their people with an inflammatory, but false, threat to their mosque on the Temple Mount,” the Orthodox Union said on its Web site. “This is a present call to violence and danger.”

Berkley listed Palestinian violations in her release: “Where, I ask, was the administration’s outrage over the arrest and monthlong incarceration by Hamas of a British journalist who was investigating arms smuggling into Gaza? Where was the outrage when the Palestinian Authority this week named a town square after a woman who helped carry out a massive terror attack against Israel? It has been the P.A. who has refused to participate in talks for over a year, not the government of Israel. Yet once again, no concern was lodged by the administration.”

In fact, the Obama administration routinely condemns Hamas terrorism and has chided the Palestinian Authority for dragging its feet on talks; the State Department’s most recent human rights roundup cited Palestinian incitement as an ongoing problem. It is true that Obama officials have not pronounced on the naming of the square after a Dalal Mughrabi, a woman who died leading a 1978 terrorist attack that killed 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children. The Palestinian Authority postponed the official dedication until after Biden left to avoid embarrassing him, though less formal ceremonies reportedly did take place.

Meanwhile, the Israeli Cabinet appeared to get Netanyahu’s message about the need to avoid future embarrassments of U.S. officials (and, for that matter, of the prime minister himself); the mistimed announcement of the Ramat Shlomo building was believed to be part of a “more right wing than thou” contest of wills between two ministers of the religious Shas Party, Interior Minister Eli Yishai and Housing Minister Ariel Attias. For his part, Attias was cowed, pleading on Israel Radio on Monday morning to “look forward” and asking “experienced and wise people” in the United States and Israel not to let matters further deteriorate.

Final destination Iran? – Herald Scotland | News | World News.

Exclusive: Rob Edwards

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Published on 14 Mar 2010

Hundreds of powerful US “bunker-buster” bombs are being shipped from California to the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in preparation for a possible attack on Iran.

The Sunday Herald can reveal that the US government signed a contract in January to transport 10 ammunition containers to the island. According to a cargo manifest from the US navy, this included 387 “Blu” bombs used for blasting hardened or underground structures.

Experts say that they are being put in place for an assault on Iran’s controversial nuclear facilities. There has long been speculation that the US military is preparing for such an attack, should diplomacy fail to persuade Iran not to make nuclear weapons.

Although Diego Garcia is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory, it is used by the US as a military base under an agreement made in 1971. The agreement led to 2,000 native islanders being forcibly evicted to the Seychelles and Mauritius.

The Sunday Herald reported in 2007 that stealth bomber hangers on the island were being equipped to take bunker-buster bombs.