“The American Ayatollahs”: President Obama Crushes The Neocons
Well, the ayatollah appears to have lent his provisional support to the historic U.S.-Iran accord announced Saturday night. In a letter to President Hassan Rouhani, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said the deal “can be the basis for further intelligent actions.” Now we just need sign-off from our American ayatollahs. But the early indications are that the Republicans, eager to perform Bibi Netanyahu’s bidding—not that they needed a second reason to oppose something Barack Obama did—will do everything within their power to stop the thing going forward.
We shouldn’t get too carried away in praising this accord just yet. It’s only a six-month arrangement while the longer-term one is worked out. Those talks are going to be harder than these were, and it’s not at all a stretch to envision them collapsing at some point. Iran is going to have to agree to a regular, more-or-less constant inspection regime that would make it awfully hard for Tehran to be undertaking weapons-grade enrichment. It’s easy to see why they agreed to this deal, to buy time and get that $4.2 billion in frozen oil revenues. But whether Iran is going to agree to inspections like that is another question.
Still, it is indeed a historic step. Thirty-four years of not speaking is a long time. So it’s impressive that this got done at all, and even more impressive are some of the inner details, like the fact that Americans and Iranians have been in direct and very secret negotiations for a year. Rouhani’s election does seem to have made a huge positive difference—four of five secret meetings centered in Oman have been held since Rouhani took office, which seems to be a pretty clear indication that he wants a long-term deal to happen.
So this is potentially, I emphasize potentially, a breakthrough that could have numerous positive reverberations in the region—not least among them the virtual elimination of the chance that the United States and Iran would end up at war. And what a refutation of those harrumphing warmongers! I’d love to have had a tap on John Bolton’s phone over the weekend, or Doug Feith’s, or Cheney’s, and heard the combination of perfervid sputtering and haughty head shaking as they lament Obama’s choice.
Well, then, let’s compare choices. They chose war, against a country that never attacked us, had no capability whatsoever to attack us, and had nothing to do with the allegedly precipitating event, 9/11. We fought that war because 9/11 handed the neocons the excuse they needed to dope the public into supporting a unilateral war of hegemony. It has cost us more than $2 trillion now. It’s taken the lives of more than 100,000 people. It has been the author of the trauma of thousands of our soldiers, their limbs left over there, their families sundered. And on the subject of Iran, the war of course did more to strengthen Iran in the region than Obama could dream of doing at his most Machiavellian-Manchurian. Fine, the world is well rid of Saddam Hussein. But these prices were far too steep.
Then along came Obama in 2008, saying he’d negotiate with Iran. I’d love to have a nickel for every time he was called “naive” by John McCain or Sarah Palin (after the differences between Iran and Iraq were explained to her) or any of dozens of others (and yeah, even Hillary Clinton). I’d settle for a penny. I’d still be rich. You might think that watching this past decade unfold, taking an honest measure of where the Bush administration’s hideous decisions have left us, that some of them might allow that maybe negotiation was worth a shot.
Of course that will never happen. Marco Rubio was fast out of the gates Sunday, but he will be joined today by many others. Some will be Democrats, yes, from states with large Jewish votes. Chuck Schumer and Robert Menendez have already spoken circumspectly of the deal (although interestingly, Dianne Feinstein, as AIPAC-friendly as they come, spoke strongly in favor of it). There will be a push for new sanctions, and that push will be to some extent bipartisan.
But the difference will be that if the Democrats get the sense that the deal is real and can be had, they won’t do anything to subvert it, whereas for the Republicans, this will all be about what it’s always about with them—the politics of playing to their Obama-hating base. But there’ll be two added motivations besides. There’s the unceasingly short-sighted and tragic view of what constitutes security for Israel, which maintains the conditions of near-catastrophe that keep just enough of the Israeli public fearful of change so that they perpetuate in putting people like Netanyahu in power, thus ensuring that nothing will ever change. And perhaps most important of all in psychic terms to the neocons, there is contemplation of the hideous reality that Obama and the path of negotiation just might work. This is the thing the neocons can’t come to terms with at all. If Obama succeeds here, their entire worldview is discredited. Check that; even more discredited.
Rouhani appears to be moving his right wing a bit. Ours, alas, isn’t nearly so flexible as Iran’s.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, November 24, 2013
“The Rewards Justify The Risks”: President Obama’s Iran Nuclear Deal Could Be A Major Triumph
International agreements last only so long as their signatories support them. Political forces certainly exist here as well as in Iran that oppose the interim agreement that the United States and the five other nations signed with Iran freezing its nuclear program. Agreements like this always contain risks, but in this instance, the rewards are sufficient to justify the risks.
While negotiating a final agreement, the current deal stops Iran from using its nuclear facilities to make bombs. It allows the International Atomic Energy Commission to conduct rigorous daily inspections. Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, says, “The limits on Iran’s nuclear program are, unequivocally, a major success in reining-in Iran’s nuclear potential and an essential stepping stone toward the negotiation of an even more effective, final agreement.”
The agreement also continues a welcome thaw in American relations with Iran. Some hardliners in Congress like to present America as the wounded party in the longstanding quarrel between the two nations, but that is simply not the case. This August, the Central Intelligence Agency finally unclassified documents that revealed its role in the overthrow of Iranian nationalist Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. That act, and America’s continuing support for the Shah’s dictatorship, figured prominently in the minds of the Iranian revolutionaries who held American diplomats hostage in 1979.
Iran subsequently supported terrorist acts against Americans, but Americans backed Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, who in 1980 began an eight-year war with Iran that cost the Iranians a million lives. The Bush administration also branded Iran, which had aided America in Afghanistan, part of the “axis of evil” and supported groups that sought to overthrow its government.
A thaw between the governments could ease conflicts throughout the Middle East and even South Asia. Iran could be of immense help in negotiating an end to the war in Syria. (Syria is Iran’s Vietnam. It has already spent billions backing Basher al-Assad.) The Rouhani government could aid the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq. It could help suppress al Qaeda and other Sunni terrorist organizations. It could reduce Saudi Arabia’s sway over world oil prices. And it could remove a real, or imagined, threat to Israel. It’s easily forgotten, but Iran was once Israel’s closest ally in the Middle East. The two nations have an affinity as religious outliers in the Sunni Arab Middle East that could be revived if Israel were to finally recognize the rights of Palestinians.
The main opponents of America reaching an agreement were the Israeli and Saudi governments and organizations and politicians in the United States that are close to the rightwing Netanyahu government in Israel. Netanyahu has compared the agreement to the 1938 Munich agreement that allowed the Nazis to gobble up Central Europe. And Illinois Senator Mark Kirk, who, when he ran in 2010, was the largest recipient of so-called pro-Israel money, compared Obama to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain who signed the Munich Agreement. During the last month, Kirk and other Senators pressed for even harsher sanctions on Iran, even though the effect of these would have been to undercut any possibility of an agreement with Iran and leave the United States with no option but war to preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
In the weeks before the new agreement was signed, some opponents began to back down. On October 29, after meeting with senior administration officials, leaders of AIPAC, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Conference of Presidents of Jewish Organizations reportedly agreed not to press a new sanctions bill while the administration was negotiating the interim agreement with Iran. And in the immediate aftermath, several important critics appear to have moderated their stance. Kirk, while belittling of the Iran’s concessions in the agreement as “cosmetic,” now threatens to bring forth sanctions legislation only if “Iran undermines this interim accord or if the dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure is not under way by the end of this six-month period.” That even opens the way to a Kirk backed a final agreement.
The Guardian described the Saudis as maintaining a “discreet silence” about the agreement. Only Netanyahu and other members of his administration have continued to denounce the agreement. Netanyahu called the deal an “historic mistake.” “The Iranian regime is committed to the destruction of Israel and Israel has the right and the obligation to defend itself, by itself, against any threat,” Netanyahu said. “As Prime Minister of Israel, I would like to make it clear: Israel will not allow Iran to develop a military nuclear capability.”
Netanyahu’s statement was uncompromising – even setting as a trigger Iran developing a “capability” and not an actual weapon. It also hyped an “existential” Iranian threat that, if it ever existed, only did so during the term of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and then only in Ahmadinejad’s fevered rhetoric, which was meant for domestic consumption. The rhetoric, and so, too, is Iran as a major backer of Hamas. But it is unclear whether Netanyahu is really laying the basis for an Israeli military strike, or simply currying favor with Israeli voters. Israel does not appear to have the military ability to knock out Iran’s nuclear program, although it could certainly reap havoc and start another regional war.
Netanyahu and some American critics of the deal with Iran have compared it to the American agreement with North Korea in 2005, in which North Korea promised to give up nuclear weapons in exchange for economic aid. North Korea subsequently violated the agreement. But a more optimistic comparison would be to the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) agreement that Ronald Reagan signed with the Soviets in 1987.
Conservatives denounced Reagan for the pact. National Review called it “Reagan’s suicide pact.” Henry Kissinger charged that it undermined “40 years of NATO.” But, of course, the treaty turned out to be a prelude not only to more comprehensive arms agreements, but to the end of the Cold War. If the United States is lucky – and luck is always a factor in international affairs – the modest deal that the United States and five other nations signed with Iran could like, the Reagan’s INF treaty, be the beginning of something much larger, more important, and more welcome.
By: John B. Judis, The New Republic, November 24, 2013
Face-Off: Splintering Of The Iranian Alliance
A long simmering rift between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ali Khamenei, the country’s Supreme Leader, has finally boiled over. For the last two weeks, the two leaders have been locked in a public battle over Ahmadinejad’s decision to fire his minister of intelligence, a close ally of Khamenei. And, in spite of indications in the last few days that a compromise has been reached—not to mention Khamenei’s repeated pleas that factional feuds be kept out of the media lest the dispute embolden foes and dishearten friends—acrimonious attacks by both sides have continued apace. Regardless of how the crisis is resolved, one thing is clear: The confrontation marks a splintering of the once healthy alliance between the two leaders—and a serious blow to unity within the Iranian regime.
Ahmadinejad and Khamenei have had disagreements over key appointments in the past, but typically they have been waged outside the public eye. The president previously refused, for instance, to comply with Khamenei’s publicly stated wish to dismiss Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, Ahmadinejad’s chief of staff, all-powerful behind-the-scenes fixer, and his son’s father-in-law to boot. Everything Mashaei did or said—from his talk of “Iranian nationalism,” a concept condemned by many Iranian clerics as a Western colonial trick, to his cavorting with a beautiful actress—became a subject of controversy and backbiting in the media. But Ahmadinejad, in spite of pressure exerted by the Supreme Leader, has never flagged in his support for his beleaguered adviser and relative.
Two weeks ago, however, these often whispered tensions broke into the open when Ahmadinejad dismissed his intelligence minister and Khamenei opposed the move in a surprisingly public fashion. Instead of trying to solve the conflict behind closed doors, Khamenei chose to publish a letter—pointedly addressed not to the president, but to the dismissed minister—that reappointed the man to his post. Ahmadinejad, for his part, maintained a studied silence, but he refused to attend cabinet meetings and his website continued to carry the news of his intelligence minister’s dismissal. Finally, on Monday, he agreed to attend a cabinet meeting, but the controversial minister of intelligence was absent and his fate is still not clear.
In addition, Ahmadienjad’s announcement that he had reconciled with Khamenei has itself become the focus of a new round of controversy. After comparing his relationship with the Supreme Leader to that of a son and his father, Ahmadinejad has been lambasted by conservative clergy members loyal to Khamanei. The relationship isn’t filial, Khamenei’s representative to the Revolutionary Guards charged, but rather that of an “Imam and Mamoum”—a divinely guided leader and a submissive believer who is led in all matters and at all times. Another cleric declared that refusing to heed Khamenei’s voice is heresy against god himself.
While the facts of the on-going confrontation are more or less clear, the important question is why Ahmadinejad, who began his first term as president by kissing Khamenei’s hand on the day of his inauguration, is now biting the very same hand that was certainly critical in giving him his alleged victory in the contested June 2009 election. According to one theory, Ahmadinejad knows the clergy are increasingly reviled in Iran and is keen on either challenging them or at least distancing himself from them. Others attribute his defiance to the arrogance of power, his tendency to believe in his own lies, and his belief that he, in fact, did win the last election and thus need not play vassal to a weakened Khamenei. Needless to say, the conservative clergy attribute the whole crisis to an Israeli and American conspiracy and claim that “infiltrators” from the ranks of the enemy have bedeviled the gullible president.
Why Khamenei has decided to pick a public fight at this time is no less important to ponder. It appears that, once again, he has chosen a path whose goal is nothing more than establishing and expanding his own authoritarian power—the outcome of which will likely leave the regime fractured and weakened, his power utterly dependent on the whim of the Revolutionary Guards. His rash decision has left him with no good outcome: He must either cave and allow Ahmadinejad to fire the minister—and suffer yet another major blow to his authority—or he can succeed in humiliating Ahmadinejad, creating considerable resentment amongst his base of mainly poor, rural supporters.
A third possibility, however, is that Khamenei and his allies might have chosen this public row as an excuse to offer up Ahmadinejad as a sacrifice and blame him for the country’s impending financial woes. By all accounts, the country’s economic horizon looks bleak. (The only good news has been the price of oil.) Many seasoned economists, including several in key positions in the government, admit that the Iranian economy is heading towards a dangerous moment of hyper-inflation and depression-like unemployment rates. With the economy in rapid decline, the search for a scapegoat will likely intensify. The only thing that’s uncertain at this point is who will take the fall.
By: Abbas Milanti, Contributing Editor, The New Republic, May 6, 2011
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