Obama took away Israel’s threat to bomb Iran in 2012 … Netanyahu wasn’t in a thankful mood and continued his rampage in the region by punishing Hamas in a devastating bombardement a year ago. President Obama aims to reshuffle power in the Middle East … a geopolitical earthquake. On France24 a debate over the nuclear negotiations with Iran, one prominent idiot took part so I had to find out where his credentials lie … WINEP. Hillary Clinton’s ME advisor Dennis Ross is part of the club, a pro-Israel lobby group and spin-off from AIPAC.
Robert Satloff on Next Steps in the Iran Crisis | The Atlantic 2012 |
Goldberg: Come back to red lines. What would your red line be if you were the Israeli prime minister, and what would your red line be if you were the American president?
Satloff: Thankfully, I am neither, just a humble think-tank director. The rub is that America and Israel have similar and complementary interests but not identical interests; the threshold for risk to be borne by a great power thousands of miles away and a small though potent regional power in the neighborhood are different; and therefore the red lines the Israeli prime minister and American president will lay down will necessarily be different. Especially at this hyper-politicized moment, when President Obama is allergic to the idea of deepening foreign entanglements, it is highly unlikely that he could begin to approach the sort of commitment-to-use-military-force-when-Iran-crosses-a-certain-enrichment-threshold that PM Netanyahu would like to hear. (Interestingly, in his Charlotte address, the President referred to al-Qaeda as America’s top enemy, even when his advisors privately boast that al-Qaeda is on the ropes, nearing total defeat, so the chances that he would publicly authorize the use of force — or the imminent use of force — against a lesser foe in the near future are really slim.)
As an American, I shudder at the thought that my country (under either political party) would end up accepting an Iranian nuke the way we ended up accepting North Korea’s and Pakistan’s nukes. And here, we have a powerful weapon that we seem unwilling to brandish to the fullest extent possible — UN Security Council resolutions [adopted in 2006] demanding Iran’s suspension of enrichment activities until Iran comes into compliance with its IAEA obligations [pdf]. We won that fight at the Security Council, fair and sqaure, and if I were president — especially a president as justifiably and legitimately committed to non-proliferation as President Obama — that’s what my red line would be.
Josh Block ‘Discovers’ Iranian Democracy | Tikun Olam |
March 29, 2011 – Apparently, the PPI hired Josh because they didn’t have enough street cred with the pro-Israel crowd. Josh’s first initiative since coming there is a doozy. He’s trying to exploit the political prominence of the Arab Spring democratic revolutions by hitching a new anti-Iranian so-called “democracy initiative” to them. He’s doing this with another Bush-era neocon darling with a special interest in promoting anti-jihadi views, Freedom House:
With democratic revolutions shaking the Middle East, a Democratic think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute, and the pro-democracy group Freedom House are launching a new task force aimed at shifting American policy on its central regional foe, Iran, toward a more aggressive focus on democracy.
The new “Iran Strategy Task Force” is subtitled “Beyond Sanctions…”
You know what “beyond sanctions” is code word for, don’t you? Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran. And don’t ya just love that phrase “aggressive focus on democracy?” Since when is the pursuit of democracy `aggressive?’ Since when does democracy come from pre-emptive air strikes or regime change such as the anti-Iran hawks propose? And you know that’s what “aggressive” really means.
The names of the “luminaries” chosen for this august undertaking are also revealing, as they show its clear right-wing pro-Israel bias, and the slow drift rightward of some figures who should know better. Among them are: Ken Pollack, Ray Tayekh, Steve Beckerman (Aipac), Rob Satloff (WINEP), Walter Russell Mead, Larry Diamond (Hoover Institution).
Anti-Iran Media Drumbeat, Fueled by Israel, Increases as Deal Deadline Nears | Tikun Olam |
March 15, 2015 – As the deadline looms for the P5+1 nations to achieve a framework for a nuclear deal with Iran, the steady drumbeat of hostile coverage directed at Iran in the media increases. Jim White at Empty Wheel, in two good posts, noted a tendentious Washington Post op-ed by Ray Tayekh, Michael Hayden, and Ollie Heinonen, along with a separate piece by perennial NY Times Iran doomsayer, David Sanger.
Regarding the Post op-ed, everyone knows about Michael Hayden’s role as a holdover spook from the Bush administration, who ran both the NSA and CIA during that period. He also is a partner in the Chertoff Group, founded by Bush’s Homeland Security czar, Michael Chertoff.
Ray Tayekh, though he served in the Obama administration for a time and is Iranian-American, has chosen to throw in his lot with the Iranophobes. According to Nima Shirazi, he is a founding member of the Iran Strategy Task Force, whose avowed mission was to pressure the Obama administration to adopt a tougher approach to Iran. ISTF includes the neocon Freedom House as its co-founding sponsor, and individual members like Josh Block of The Israel Project and Rob Satloff of WINEP. Tayekh is also a member of another Iran committee founded by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, one of the leading hawkish, pro-Israel security outfits in DC.
My previous diary – Timeline of Curious Events US-Israel and Tactical Stand-off (Jan. 2012).
