OBAMA’S FAILING IRAN DIPLOMACY
Richard Grenell
Wall Street Journal, November 21, 2011
On Nov. 13, President Obama made some remarkable statements. “When I came into office,” he said at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Honolulu, “the world was divided and Iran was unified around its nuclear program.” Now, he said, “the world is united and Iran is isolated. And because of our diplomacy and our efforts, we have, by far, the strongest sanctions on Iran that we’ve ever seen.” Mr. Obama added, “China and Russia were critical to making that happen. Had they not been willing to support those efforts in the United Nations, we would not be able to see the kind of progress that we’ve made.”
This was pure spin. The United Nations Security Council actually began instituting resolutions and sanctions in 2006, agreed to and voted on by all 15 members, that called upon Iran to stop enriching uranium.
In its nearly three years in office, the Obama administration has helped pass just one of those resolutions—in June 2009. Only 12 of the 15 members of the Security Council voted in favor of it. Brazil, Turkey and Lebanon did not.
The simple fact is that the world is less unified on Iran now than it was under President George W. Bush. True enough, Mr. Obama may hear fewer complaints about hard-charging U.S. foreign policies than his predecessor. But silence is not cooperation.
The Bush administration got five Security Council resolutions passed on Iran starting in 2006. Three were sanctions resolutions. The Security Council was unanimous on two of the votes and lost only one country’s support (Indonesia) in the third vote in 2008. In total, the Bush team lost the support of one country in its three sanctions resolutions while the Obama team lost the support of three countries in one resolution.
Two views are emerging in response to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s latest report on Iran’s nuclear weapons. While one camp believes the Iranians are close to obtaining nuclear weapons, the other side believes they haven’t mastered the technology and that time still remains to work out a diplomatic, non-military solution. The Obama team falls in the second camp. It is calling for more diplomacy and more international pressure—as if U.S. diplomats haven’t tried to convince Iran or its neighbors that its pursuit of a nuclear weapon is not a good idea.
And that’s what’s so dangerous about the president’s spin. His administration professes that the world is unified in pressuring Iran, but what the international community is really unified about is doing nothing.
The pronouncements from the White House that unity from the international community is its priority are naïve and treacherous excuse-making. And if consensus is the mandate, then the Obama team has already failed that test with the divided-support for their only resolution. More importantly, the Russians and the Chinese, with their complaints about another round of sanctions, have scared off the Obama team from calling for a vote on another resolution.…
The strategy to increase pressure on Iran through international sanctions had a chance to work. But the president released that pressure and ignored the previous U.S. work to try his personal diplomacy. The Obama team has succeeded in stopping countries from grumbling about U.S. policy, but that’s only because they haven’t called for an Iran vote in almost 18 months.
(Mr. Grenell was the director of communications and spokesman
for four U.S. ambassadors to the United Nations from 2001-2008.)
OBAMA’S IRAN FAILURE
Lee Smith
Weekly Standard, November 21, 2011
The Obama administration’s Iran policy rested on three pillars—the peace process, engagement, and containment. The first would win the newly elected president credit with the Arab people of the Middle East and empower the Arab states to gather in a robust coalition against Tehran. As for the second, even if engagement failed to bring Iran back into the community of nations, it would prove to Washington’s European allies and, more important, to Russia and China, that the Obama White House had gone the extra mile, which would, in turn, make containment possible.
All three efforts have now failed, which may explain why recent Israeli news reports suggest Jerusalem is moving toward a decision about a military strike of some sort against Iran’s nuclear program.
After more than half a year of relative quiet as the Arab Spring rolled through the Middle East, the Israeli government has helped shift the regional conversation back to Iran. It’s hardly surprising that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are reportedly in favor of a strike since their historical legacies might rest on how the Iranian issue is resolved. However, the fact that Israel’s president Shimon Peres now calls military action “more and more likely” suggests that, regardless of the eventual decision, Israel has embarked on a public diplomacy campaign intended to seize international attention.
Jerusalem has been aided in this by the release of the latest International Atomic Energy Agency report, which not only details the military intent of Tehran’s nuclear program, but also exposes the U.S. intelligence community’s 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) as a politicized effort to downplay the threat. If the Obama administration could write off that NIE as someone else’s embarrassment, it was forced to admit its own failure to engage Tehran when it announced indictments on October 11 in the Iranian plot to blow up the Saudi ambassador in Washington.
The Israelis saw that Washington was shaken by the plot, and while it is difficult to know how much their contribution to the debate over Iran was planned or just timed fortuitously, the administration has been galvanized. The State Department sent off a flurry of démarches to U.S. allies, which according to Pentagon sources contained the strongest statements they’d ever seen coming from State on the issue of Iran. To shore up its policy of containing Iran with regional clients, Washington now intends to provide the United Arab Emirates with 4,900 additional bunker-buster bombs, presumably intended for Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Don’t expect any of this to quiet the talk from Jerusalem, though, for the simple reason that deterrence and containment aren’t going to work with Iran. To date, the question of whether it is possible to deter Iran has centered on the rationality of the revolutionary regime. For instance, can a leadership that wishes to usher in the rule of the occulted, twelfth imam be convinced that a nuclear exchange is a bad idea?… [Meanwhile] the hegemon of the Middle East, the United States, is weak. Therefore, Tehran can save its revolution by extending its imperial sway over the entire Middle East.
A more useful question, then, is whether Washington has the will to deter a nuclear Iran.… Even as the Obama administration is exiting from Iraq, it contends that the withdrawal will be offset by a beefed up troop presence in Gulf states like Kuwait. But when Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warns, like many before him, that a strike on Iran “could have a serious impact on U.S. forces in the region,” he reveals that Washington sees U.S. troops in the region not as a forward position against Tehran, but effectively as Iranian hostages. The U.S. forces there deter attacks on Tehran, not the other way round.
The notion that the Gulf Cooperation Council forces can be strengthened to balance the Iranians is at odds with the historical rationale for arms sales to Gulf Arab states. The Israelis get American weapons for use against American adversaries; the Arabs are sold U.S. munitions because it pleases them to have expensive new toys and it keeps U.S. production lines rolling.… Arab armies and their weapons are typically turned against their own populations—which is why there was so much resistance recently to a $53 million arms sale to Bahrain. Indeed, with the recent parade of Bahraini dignitaries through Washington, American policymakers cannot help but be dismayed by the fact that a vital U.S. strategic interest—the home port of the Fifth Fleet—has been entrusted to a gang of incompetents.
Administration officials may well believe they can deter a nuclear Iran—without figuring nonstate actors (and possible delivery mechanisms) like Hezbollah into the equation. But the fact that the Obama White House decided not to pursue further sanctions against the Iranians for the plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington—an operation that might have killed hundreds of Americans—signals that the administration has no credible threat of force, not even against a nonnuclear Iran.
Accordingly, Israel may well escalate its public diplomacy campaign—and may move beyond diplomacy if it thinks a mortal threat is being ignored. There are options short of a full-scale bombing campaign that Jerusalem might take: an aerial strike on one facility, or even a ground operation designed by a defense minister obsessed with commando raids—anything that might make the international community, and especially the United States, take the Iranian threat seriously. Israel may not be able to destroy the Iranian nuclear program in its entirety by itself, but it might settle for less than that in the hopes of inspiring others to finish the job.
CANADA WILL BACK WEST’S PUSH ON IRAN
John Ibbitson
Globe & Mail, November 21, 2011
As early as Monday, Canada will impose tough new sanctions on Iran, which has become a top-tier foreign-policy concern for the Harper government. The West is getting ready to move against Iran. Canada will be part of the push.…
It’s Iran, not Syria, that worries the Harper government the most. The rogue regime in Tehran is firmly in control, and determined to acquire a nuclear weapon, as the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded once and for all earlier this month.
An Iranian bomb would not only threaten the very existence of Israel. As Republican Senator John McCain warned Sunday, the rest of the Middle East is every bit as frightened by the prospect. To protect themselves, “the Saudis will acquire nuclear weapons, maybe even the Egyptians, other countries will acquire nuclear weapons in the most volatile part of the world today,” he said.
Israel is warning that it simply won’t allow Iran to go nuclear. Republicans and Democrats in the United States are competing to see who is more determined to stop the regime from getting the bomb. With a presidential election less than a year away, jaw, jaw, jaw could lead to war, war, war.
But an attack on Iran would be hugely difficult, highly dangerous and likely to fail, because the most important facilities are hidden deep underground. Air strikes probably wouldn’t be enough. That means special forces would have to go in. Even if they succeeded, the Iranian government would stop at nothing to punish the Israelis, the Americans and their allies, including us.
So what to do? Not many people noticed that Canada co-sponsored [last] Friday’s resolution by the IAEA’s board of governors demanding that Iran give up on trying to acquire the bomb. But every Canadian should pay close attention to what the Harper government said during the debate.
“Canada will continue to work with like-minded nations on next steps. The question is not if, but rather the degree to which, we will act.” That means, according to officials within the government, that if the United States or the European Union impose stronger sanctions on Iran, Canada will at least match those sanctions.…
But as someone once said, it takes time for sanctions to be proved ineffective. And China, which buys Iranian oil, and Russia, which also has close business ties, will block any meaningful action at the United Nations Security Council. That means that, at some point, Israel may launch a strike against Iran, even if that strike only delays final production of the weapon by a year or so. If they do…sources say that Prime Minister Stephen Harper will fully support the action.… The only thing that the Harper government will not support is doing nothing.
THE COMING ISRAEL-IRAN WAR?
Benny Morris
National Interest, November 15, 2011
The recent publication of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s latest report on Iran—“Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and relevant provisions of Security Council resolutions in the Islamic Republic of Iran”—has pushed Israel a large step closer to launching an assault on Iran’s nuclear installations. One report emanating from London’s The Daily Mail last week stated that the British Cabinet believes Israel will strike this Christmas or a few weeks after.…
The data presented by the UN agency—on Iran’s nuclear-enrichment program and nuclear-detonation work, warheads, equipment and knowledge acquisition—all point to the giant strides that Iran has made during the past decade and indicate that Iran will be in possession of a nuclear bomb, should it so desire and if left unhampered, within twelve to twenty-four months.
Israel’s defense establishment has for years been divided about the wisdom and feasibility of assaulting the Iranian nuclear installations, which are dispersed around the country and, in many cases, buried deep underground. A major recent argument of those opposing an immediate strike—and they have included the heads of the IDF, Mossad, Shin Bet (the internal security service) and military intelligence—was that there was still time for international diplomacy and sanctions to curb Iran’s nuclear program. The IAEA report means that time has now run out.
To be sure, President Obama and his chief European allies will now push for a new, upgraded round of sanctions. But they are unlikely to receive UN Security Council endorsement, given Chinese and Russian support of Tehran. The West could conceivably institute sanctions on its own—but they aren’t likely to be any more effective than the previous three or four rounds. The only sanctions that might conceivably force the ayatollahs of Tehran to change tack would be a complete boycott of Iran’s central bank and a complete freeze on purchases of Iranian oil, the country’s only export (except for pistachios). But Chinese and Russian (and, perhaps, Indian) noncooperation dooms these measures before they even get off the ground.
Which leaves the world, including Israel, with only two options: allowing the Iranians to attain the bomb and then hope that mutual deterrence will work to keep the Iranian finger off the red button, or militarily assaulting the Iranian nuclear facilities before that can happen.
Europe, of course, is out of the picture altogether. But the United States, in its post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan mood appears to lack the stomach for new military adventures. So the onus is on Israel, which has (relatively) small but effective air, naval and commando units.…
[Given] the current sense of crisis and immediacy in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv…Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the leading proponents of a strike against Iran, have charged that their opponents are sowing fear and demoralization in order to stay the government’s hand. These opponents argue that Iran’s retaliation for an Israeli strike would be inordinately damaging and costly for Israel (rockets on its cities, terrorists blowing up its embassies); it’s best, they say, to let the Iranians get the bomb and rely on mutual deterrence.
Barak went on record about the possible effects of prospective Iranian—and Hamas and Hezbollah—rocketing of Israel in the wake of a strike against the Iranian nuclear installations. He told Israel Radio: “When a journalist says that there might be 100,000 [Israeli] dead or a major newspaper argues that Israel might be destroyed or an important Knesset Member says the [existing] cemeteries may prove insufficient, I say…the sowing of panic is reaching a crescendo.…War is no picnic, but in no scenario will we suffer 50,000 dead; not even 5,000 dead, [not even] 500 dead.”
He added that he and Netanyahu will not decide the issue on their own. Launching an attack will require a Cabinet decision, and a decision has not yet been taken, he said. But “we are preparing for this,” he added.…
WHY A NUCLEAR IRAN IS NOT JUST AN ISRAELI PROBLEM
Alex Ryvchin
Jerusalem Magazine, November 15, 2011
The Middle East is so frequently embroiled in violence that the world failed to note the region’s descent into cold war. That blindness could have continued had it not been for several dramatic incidents that brought the depth of loathing between the Sunni Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Shiite Republic of Iran into sharp focus.
First, there was the explosive WikiLeaks revelation that Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud had repeatedly urged then-US Army general David Petraeus to launch a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program. Then, last month, in a mob-like move aimed at showing Riyadh that Iran does not take kindly to Saudi interference, US Attorney General Eric Holder revealed an Iranian plot to assassinate Adel Al-Jubeir, the Saudi ambassador to the United States.
These incidents have not only demonstrated the extent of hostilities between these two regional giants, they have shown that Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons will resonate far beyond Israel’s borders.
Fueled by the ancient Persian suspicion of Arab hegemony coupled with years of sectarian tension, relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran have descended steeply since the fall of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979.…
This intense feud has all the ingredients of destruction—religion, money and power.
Presently, the delicate peace in the Persian Gulf is maintained by US presence in the region, which in turn ensures the stability of the global oil supply. A nuclear Iran would fundamentally transform this fragile arrangement.
If faced with a vastly superior military rival, Saudi Arabia—at the expense of both Israel and the Saudi-allied Gulf States—would be forced to either give in and allow Iran to reign over the region, or it would enter a 1950s-style nuclear arms race. Most likely, Saudi Arabia will seek to acquire its own arsenal through its Sunni ally, Pakistan.
In either scenario, the region would be thrust into chaos and the world would be faced with the choice of either Iranian supremacy in the Middle East or a nuclear arms race between two extremist, radical regimes.
The implications of a nuclear Iran for Israel are twofold: First, a nation committed to Israel’s destruction would have the military capability to match its annihilationist rhetoric. While political commentators may squabble over whether Iran would ever use nuclear weapons to eradicate the Jewish State, the stakes are too high for Israel to risk underestimating Iran’s intentions.
Second, the landscape of the Arab-Israeli conflict would be immediately and fundamentally transformed. The presence of Israel is, at best, begrudgingly tolerated by its neighbors. At worst, they merely bide their time until the balance of power shifts in their favor.
The Arab characterization of the 1967 War as a mere “setback” (Naksa) and the Palestinian insistence that millions of its refugees be resettled in Israel – thereby shifting the demographic balance in the Palestinian’s favor – points to an Arab intention to eradicate Jewish self-determination in the region; whether by force or by stealth.
A recalibration of power in the Middle East would significantly bolster these aspirations and would gravely diminish the military deterrent that is so central to Israel’s survival. Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons may be the battle cry for which Israel’s enemies have been waiting. Israel’s relationship with its enemies to the north and to the south would also be catastrophically altered.…
[Hamas and Hezbollah], safe in the knowledge that Israel will think long and hard before engaging in battle with a satellite of a nuclear state, will be encouraged to undertake more daring provocations. Syria and Lebanon would also be emboldened: A volatile Syria, led by an increasingly desperate and fragile regime, but now with the protection of a nuclear Iran, may seek to divert attention from its brutality towards its own people by directing some of it towards its preferred foe and scapegoat, Israel.…
Lebanon may decide to pick its own fight.… Israel’s recent discovery of massive natural gas reserves off its poorly-delineated Mediterranean coast constitutes a far greater prize, one which Lebanon may now be prepared to fight for.
Either way, Iran may view these issues as suitable pretexts for waging war through its proxies in order to test Israel’s willingness in challenging a nuclear power.
Since its birth, Israel’s survival has been predicated on possessing a military might greater than that of its combined enemies.…
Iran now stands poised to rock any stability that Israel enjoys and to transform the balance of power in the Middle East. If at first glance this may appear to be just an Israeli problem requiring an Israeli solution, a closer analysis of a nuclear Iran shows that this is an international catastrophe that demands a united and determined international reaction.
