After WikiLeaks supporters disrupted websites like Mastercard, a new Harvard report examines DDoS attacks.
Recent cyberattacks by WikiLeaks supporters targeted at companies like Visa and Mastercard have brought distributed denial of service (DDoS) - an attack in which multiple systems flood the bandwidth or resources of a targeted system in an attempt to make it unavailable - into the public consciousness, stirring up a debate as to whether or not DDoS is an acceptable tactic for civil disobedience.
In fact, denial of service (DoS) attacks emerged as a political tool in 1998, introduced by Ricardo Dominguez, co-founder of Electronic Disturbance Theatre, who built FloodNet, a tool that allowed activists to crash a variety of websites.
DDoS emerged two years later when web giants Yahoo!, Buy.com, CNN, Amazon, and others were taken down in a series of attacks so large, they had to have had multiple points of origin. Those attacks were eventually traced to Michael Calce, a 15-year-old in Montreal, Canada, who was caught after bragging about his prowess in a chat room.
Unfortunately, DDoS has become a fairly common form of attack against human rights and independent media sites, and one which shows no signs of slowing. A recent report from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society reveals that the technique has been applied to a wide range of targets worldwide, and appears to have no strong ties to any particular set of political principles.
Diverse targets
The Berkman Center's study comprised of a survey of independent media and human rights-related sites, as well as a review of media reports of DDoS and other cyberattacks over the past twelve years.
In 2010 alone, over one hundred DDoS attacks made headlines, with targets as diverse as an Israeli human rights group to an independent news site in Malawi.
In a DDoS attack, a network of computers are utilized to flood traffic on a target system, causing the site to load slowly or become disabled entirely. Often, a botnet - a network of compromised computers that can be controlled remotely - is utilised to maximize effectiveness of the attack.
Though DDoS is often propagated along with other forms of attack, it can be debilitating for small site operators. Attacks often don't require much bandwidth to adversely affect sites; rather, there is evidence that very small attacks focused on vulnerabilities in technical architectures can render some sites inoperative.
In some cases, even a single attacker can be effective in disabling a site, without the assistance of botnets or other volunteers.
No 'silver bullet'
As a result of DDoS, the Berkman Center's researchers found, some organizations may find their sites inaccessible for long periods of time, a function of inexperienced and overwhelmed system administrators, unhelpful Internet service providers (ISPs), and isolation from the technical community that works together to fend off DDoS.
Though the researchers offer recommendations for a variety of technical steps that independent media and human rights site administrators can take to reduce the impact of DDoS, there are unfortunately no silver bullets for the community.
Rather, a broad look at the hosting landscape, as well as ways in which outlying sites can be integrated into the technical community, are recommended.
The full report can be read here.
Jillian York is a writer, blogger, and activist based in Boston. She works at Harvard Law School's Berkman Centre for Internet & Society and is involved with Global Voices Online.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Veterans: The French in Algeria
A look at how bitterness provoked by the Agerian war still fuels resentment between France and its Muslim community.
Algeria, Africa's second largest country was colonised by the French in the 19th century. But unlike the neighbouring French protectorates of Tunesia or Morocco, Algeria was considered French territory, legally a mere extension of mainland France itself. And by the mid-20th century it was home to over one million European settlers. While they enjoyed the privileges of French citizenship, the overwhelming majority of the population, Arab and Berber Muslims, reaped few benefits from the French presence.
"The majority of the native population didn't have the same rights that were held by a French citizen. There was a contradiction between those supposedly egalitarian republican principles that France was supposed to be importing to Algeria as a colony, and the reality," historian Benjamin Stora says.
In 1954, a group of Algerians, determined to end France's colonial rule and achieve independence, turned to violence. On Novermber 1, the recently formed National Liberation Front (FLN) launched attacks across Algeria against French military and civilian targets.
For the French authorities in Paris the FLN's aim of independence for Algeria was unthinkable. Troups were sent in to clamp down on what was regarded as mere civil unrest. And even as the violent rebellion escalated in the coming months into an all-out conflict, France refused to admit it was entering into war.
"War can only take place when two clearly distinct national groups are concerned. Calling it a war meant admitting that Algeria wasn't France," lawyer Jacques Verges.
Algeria may have been considered part of France, but for those on the mainland the violence engulfing it often seemed distant.
"I wasn't really interested in what was happening in Algeria. I was mainly bound up with myself, sports, friends, I had a completely ordinary life," Jean-Pierre Vittori says.
But his life was soon to be touched by events across the Mediterranean Sea.
"Every French man had to carry out military service [...] if we didn't, we were considered traitors, cowards. So one day I received an official letter calling me up, and I went, just like that, without asking myself too many questions," Vittori says.
But on arriving in Algeria uncomfortable questions about the French mission were difficult to suppress.
"On one side was a few Europeans living in the region that had a lot of money, on the other was the Algerian population which had almost nothing. I started myself asking questions concerning their reasons for rebelling, wondering whether their action was in fact justified," Vittori remembers.
France's bloody eight-year war in Algeria left millions of people dead and ultimately ended in failure for the European power when the African nation declared independence in 1962.
The war left deep psychological scars in both countries and has affected relations between the two countries to this day.
For many of the one and half million French veterans the conflict is know known as "la guerre sans nom" (the war without name) and still evokes complex emotions more than 40 years on with some feeling shame and regret, others bitterness and anger.
"I lost a part of my life, I lost my mother, I lost everything, everything. And today I look at the French people and see that they have no answers to those of us who've suffered," Bernhard Salkin, one of the veterans says.
Al Jazeera examines the bitterness still provoked by France's colonial war in Algeria and how it fuels resentment between France and its Muslim community.
Algeria, Africa's second largest country was colonised by the French in the 19th century. But unlike the neighbouring French protectorates of Tunesia or Morocco, Algeria was considered French territory, legally a mere extension of mainland France itself. And by the mid-20th century it was home to over one million European settlers. While they enjoyed the privileges of French citizenship, the overwhelming majority of the population, Arab and Berber Muslims, reaped few benefits from the French presence.
"The majority of the native population didn't have the same rights that were held by a French citizen. There was a contradiction between those supposedly egalitarian republican principles that France was supposed to be importing to Algeria as a colony, and the reality," historian Benjamin Stora says.
In 1954, a group of Algerians, determined to end France's colonial rule and achieve independence, turned to violence. On Novermber 1, the recently formed National Liberation Front (FLN) launched attacks across Algeria against French military and civilian targets.
For the French authorities in Paris the FLN's aim of independence for Algeria was unthinkable. Troups were sent in to clamp down on what was regarded as mere civil unrest. And even as the violent rebellion escalated in the coming months into an all-out conflict, France refused to admit it was entering into war.
"War can only take place when two clearly distinct national groups are concerned. Calling it a war meant admitting that Algeria wasn't France," lawyer Jacques Verges.
Algeria may have been considered part of France, but for those on the mainland the violence engulfing it often seemed distant.
"I wasn't really interested in what was happening in Algeria. I was mainly bound up with myself, sports, friends, I had a completely ordinary life," Jean-Pierre Vittori says.
But his life was soon to be touched by events across the Mediterranean Sea.
"Every French man had to carry out military service [...] if we didn't, we were considered traitors, cowards. So one day I received an official letter calling me up, and I went, just like that, without asking myself too many questions," Vittori says.
But on arriving in Algeria uncomfortable questions about the French mission were difficult to suppress.
"On one side was a few Europeans living in the region that had a lot of money, on the other was the Algerian population which had almost nothing. I started myself asking questions concerning their reasons for rebelling, wondering whether their action was in fact justified," Vittori remembers.
France's bloody eight-year war in Algeria left millions of people dead and ultimately ended in failure for the European power when the African nation declared independence in 1962.
The war left deep psychological scars in both countries and has affected relations between the two countries to this day.
For many of the one and half million French veterans the conflict is know known as "la guerre sans nom" (the war without name) and still evokes complex emotions more than 40 years on with some feeling shame and regret, others bitterness and anger.
"I lost a part of my life, I lost my mother, I lost everything, everything. And today I look at the French people and see that they have no answers to those of us who've suffered," Bernhard Salkin, one of the veterans says.
Al Jazeera examines the bitterness still provoked by France's colonial war in Algeria and how it fuels resentment between France and its Muslim community.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
The delusions of the peace process
The politics of the peace process have emphatically ensured that the mere prospect for producing peace is nonexistent.
It is astonishing that despite the huge gaps between the maximum that Israel is willing to concede and the minimum that the Palestine Authority could accept as the basis of a final settlement of the conflict, governmental leaders, especially in Washington, continue to pull every available string to restart inter-governmental negotiations.
Is it not enough of a signal that Israel lacks the capacity or will to agree to an extension of the partial settlement freeze for a mere additional 90 days, despite the outrageous inducements from the Obama Administration (20 F-35 fighter jets useful for an attack on Iran; an unprecedented advance promise to veto any initiative in the Security Council acknowledging a Palestinian state; and the assurance that Israel would never again be asked to accept a settlement moratorium) that were offered to suspend partially their unlawful settlement activity.
In effect, a habitual armed robber was being asked to stop robbing a few banks for three months in exchange for a huge financial payoff. Such an arrangement qualifies as a transparently shameless embrace of Israeli lawlessness on behalf of a peace process that has no prospect of producing peace, much less justice.
Justice here is conceived in relation to the satisfaction of Palestinian rights, especially the right of self–determination that has through the years been whittled down.
The continued division of Historic Palestine
The Palestinian acceptance of the 1967 borders (a decision ratified by the PLO in 1988) as the unilaterally reduced basis of the territorial claims associated with Palestinian self-determination, which is only 22 per cent of historic Palestine, and this is less than half of what the UN had proposed in its 1947 partition plan that was at that time quite reasonably rejected by the Palestinians and their Arab neighbours as a colonialist ploy in which the indigenous population was adversely affected and never consulted.
In retrospect, the Palestinian readiness to settle for the 1967 borders was an extraordinary concession in advance of negotiations that was never acknowledged by either Israel or the United States, casting real doubt on whether there was ever a credible commitment to end the conflict by diplomacy.
The shamelessness continues. Instead of castigating Israel for its refusal to show even a pretense of pragmatic flexibility that would make the Obama approach seem slightly less fatuous and regressively wimpy, the US government simply announced that it was abandoning its efforts to persuade Israel to extend the moratorium, and was now embarking on a resumption of the negotiations between the parties without any preconditions, that is, settlement expansion and ethnic cleansing could now continue uncontested.
EU: vocal on settlements and silent of statehood
This was too much even for the normally passive European Union. A few days ago a meeting of the EU Foreign Ministers in Brussels issued a statement insisting that all Israeli activity cease in what was called the "illegal settlements" and that the Gaza blockade be ended "immediately" by an opening of all the crossings to humanitarian and commercial goods, as well as to the entry and exit of persons.
The EU statement was impressively forthright for once: "Our view on settlements, including East Jerusalem, are clear: they are illegal under international law and an obstacle to peace."
Regrettably, the EU statement was silent on the issue of recognition of Palestinian statehood, losing the opportunity to reinforce the symbolically important diplomatic step taken by Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay to accord Palestine recognition within its 1967 borders.
Nevertheless, the EU did distance itself from Washington, leaving the United States to the discomfort of its lonely solidarity with Israel. By refusing a diplomatic accommodation with Turkey in the aftermath of the flagrantly criminal attack last May on the Freedom Flotilla carrying humanitarian assistance to the beleaguered people of Gaza, Israel confirms this perception of its pariah status.
Underneath these dark clouds of deception and delusion, the peoples of occupied Palestine, as well as the several million refugees, endure their harsh daily existence while the world watches and waits, seemingly helpless.
The durable American envoy to the conflict, George Mitchell, continues to say that the objective of the talks is "an independent, viable state of Palestine..living side by side with Israel." The incoherence of such an objective should be palpable. How can one honestly talk about such an envisioned Palestinian state as "viable" when the American leadership agrees with Israel that "subsequent developments" (the code phrase for settlements, land seizures, wall, ethnic cleansing, annexation of Jerusalem) need to be embodied in the outcome of negotiations?
And what sort of "independence" is being contemplated if the Palestinian borders are to be still controlled by Israeli security forces and a demilitarised Palestine is expected to live side by side with a highly militarised Israel? The American approach plays with lives as it plays with language, and yet most of the mainstream media swallows this latest bend in the river without raising even a sceptical eyebrow.
The value of retrospection
These considerations ignore some other problematic aspects of the current framework. The Netanyahu government demands PA acknowledgement of Israel as "a Jewish state," thereby overlooking the human rights of the Palestinian minority in pre-1967 Israel, numbering about 1.5 million or about 20 per cent of the total population, to live as citizens under conditions of non-discrimination and dignity.
Sometimes history is useful. Even the notorious Balfour Declaration, a pure assertion of British colonial prerogative, promised the Zionist movement only "a homeland," not a sovereign state. The workings of warfare and geopolitics and clever propaganda gradually shifted the parameters of understanding, allowing a homeland to be transformed into a sovereign state with disastrous chain of consequences for the indigenous population.
In this respect the most recent Hamas position of refusing recognition of Israel while agreeing to the establishment of a Palestinian state within 1967 borders is a reasonable effort to draw a line between affirming the illegitimate and being reconciled to political circumstances. To expect more is to drive the Palestinians into an unacceptable corner of humiliation, in effect, endorsing the nakba, and all that has followed by way of dispossession and abuse.
Of course, the issue of self-determination is not for non-Palestinians to determine. Those who call upon Washington, even now and despite its partisanship and ill-concealed alignments, to impose a solution are thus doubly misguided. Even Hilary Clinton acknowledged days ago the impossibility of adopting such an approach.
What seems clear at present is that both the PA and Hamas seem ready to accept a state of their own within 1967 borders, more or less along the lines set forth back in 1967 in the Security Resolution 242, which remains an iconic document that supposedly embodies a continuing international consensus. What it would mean with respect to implementation is certain to be highly contentious, especially in relation to those infamous "subsequent developments," better understood as massive encroachments on Palestinian prospects for separate statehood.
The mindlessness of diplomacy
Many in the Palestinian diaspora doubt whether a two-state solution is attainable or desirable. Instead they are calling for a single secular, bi-national democratic state that is co-terminus with the historic Palestinian mandate, and alone has the inherent capacity to reconcile contemporary ideas of democracy, human rights, and a belated realisation of Palestinian rights, including the long deferred claims of Palestinian refugees.
Geopolitics is stubborn, and is not moving in hopeful directions. Now arms are being again twisted by American diplomacy in the region to resume talks between the parties on what are being called "core issues" (borders, security arrangements, Jerusalem, settlements, refugees, relations with neighbours).
While this mindless diplomatic spinning goes forth, other clocks are ticking madly: the settlements expanding at accelerating rates, new segments of the wall are being constructed, ethnic cleansing intensifies in East Jerusalem, the apartheid practices and structures in the West Bank are being steadily strengthened, the entrapped and imprisoned population of Gaza lives continuously on the brink of a survival crisis, the refugees in their camps endure their dreary and unacceptable confinement.
Netanyahu thunderously warns that Jerusalem is Israel's capital, that never will a single Palestinian refugee be allowed to return, that Israel is a Jewish state, and that whatever Tel Aviv calls "security" must be treated as non-negotiable. Given these predispositions, combined with the disparities in bargaining power between the parties, as well as the one-sided hegemonic role of the United States, who but a fool could think that a just peace could emerge from the such a deformed pattern of geopolitical diplomacy?
Is it not better at this time to rely on the growing Palestine Solidarity Movement, peace from below, and the related success being experienced in waging the Legitimacy War against Israel, what Israel itself nervously calls "the de-legitimacy project" that is viewed by its leaders and think tanks as a far greater threat to its illicit ambitions than armed resistance?
Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has authored and edited numerous publications spanning a period of five decades, most recently editing the volume International Law and the Third World: Reshaping Justice (Routledge, 2008).
He is currently serving his third year of a six year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.
It is astonishing that despite the huge gaps between the maximum that Israel is willing to concede and the minimum that the Palestine Authority could accept as the basis of a final settlement of the conflict, governmental leaders, especially in Washington, continue to pull every available string to restart inter-governmental negotiations.
Is it not enough of a signal that Israel lacks the capacity or will to agree to an extension of the partial settlement freeze for a mere additional 90 days, despite the outrageous inducements from the Obama Administration (20 F-35 fighter jets useful for an attack on Iran; an unprecedented advance promise to veto any initiative in the Security Council acknowledging a Palestinian state; and the assurance that Israel would never again be asked to accept a settlement moratorium) that were offered to suspend partially their unlawful settlement activity.
In effect, a habitual armed robber was being asked to stop robbing a few banks for three months in exchange for a huge financial payoff. Such an arrangement qualifies as a transparently shameless embrace of Israeli lawlessness on behalf of a peace process that has no prospect of producing peace, much less justice.
Justice here is conceived in relation to the satisfaction of Palestinian rights, especially the right of self–determination that has through the years been whittled down.
The continued division of Historic Palestine
The Palestinian acceptance of the 1967 borders (a decision ratified by the PLO in 1988) as the unilaterally reduced basis of the territorial claims associated with Palestinian self-determination, which is only 22 per cent of historic Palestine, and this is less than half of what the UN had proposed in its 1947 partition plan that was at that time quite reasonably rejected by the Palestinians and their Arab neighbours as a colonialist ploy in which the indigenous population was adversely affected and never consulted.
In retrospect, the Palestinian readiness to settle for the 1967 borders was an extraordinary concession in advance of negotiations that was never acknowledged by either Israel or the United States, casting real doubt on whether there was ever a credible commitment to end the conflict by diplomacy.
The shamelessness continues. Instead of castigating Israel for its refusal to show even a pretense of pragmatic flexibility that would make the Obama approach seem slightly less fatuous and regressively wimpy, the US government simply announced that it was abandoning its efforts to persuade Israel to extend the moratorium, and was now embarking on a resumption of the negotiations between the parties without any preconditions, that is, settlement expansion and ethnic cleansing could now continue uncontested.
EU: vocal on settlements and silent of statehood
This was too much even for the normally passive European Union. A few days ago a meeting of the EU Foreign Ministers in Brussels issued a statement insisting that all Israeli activity cease in what was called the "illegal settlements" and that the Gaza blockade be ended "immediately" by an opening of all the crossings to humanitarian and commercial goods, as well as to the entry and exit of persons.
The EU statement was impressively forthright for once: "Our view on settlements, including East Jerusalem, are clear: they are illegal under international law and an obstacle to peace."
Regrettably, the EU statement was silent on the issue of recognition of Palestinian statehood, losing the opportunity to reinforce the symbolically important diplomatic step taken by Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay to accord Palestine recognition within its 1967 borders.
Nevertheless, the EU did distance itself from Washington, leaving the United States to the discomfort of its lonely solidarity with Israel. By refusing a diplomatic accommodation with Turkey in the aftermath of the flagrantly criminal attack last May on the Freedom Flotilla carrying humanitarian assistance to the beleaguered people of Gaza, Israel confirms this perception of its pariah status.
Underneath these dark clouds of deception and delusion, the peoples of occupied Palestine, as well as the several million refugees, endure their harsh daily existence while the world watches and waits, seemingly helpless.
The durable American envoy to the conflict, George Mitchell, continues to say that the objective of the talks is "an independent, viable state of Palestine..living side by side with Israel." The incoherence of such an objective should be palpable. How can one honestly talk about such an envisioned Palestinian state as "viable" when the American leadership agrees with Israel that "subsequent developments" (the code phrase for settlements, land seizures, wall, ethnic cleansing, annexation of Jerusalem) need to be embodied in the outcome of negotiations?
And what sort of "independence" is being contemplated if the Palestinian borders are to be still controlled by Israeli security forces and a demilitarised Palestine is expected to live side by side with a highly militarised Israel? The American approach plays with lives as it plays with language, and yet most of the mainstream media swallows this latest bend in the river without raising even a sceptical eyebrow.
The value of retrospection
These considerations ignore some other problematic aspects of the current framework. The Netanyahu government demands PA acknowledgement of Israel as "a Jewish state," thereby overlooking the human rights of the Palestinian minority in pre-1967 Israel, numbering about 1.5 million or about 20 per cent of the total population, to live as citizens under conditions of non-discrimination and dignity.
Sometimes history is useful. Even the notorious Balfour Declaration, a pure assertion of British colonial prerogative, promised the Zionist movement only "a homeland," not a sovereign state. The workings of warfare and geopolitics and clever propaganda gradually shifted the parameters of understanding, allowing a homeland to be transformed into a sovereign state with disastrous chain of consequences for the indigenous population.
In this respect the most recent Hamas position of refusing recognition of Israel while agreeing to the establishment of a Palestinian state within 1967 borders is a reasonable effort to draw a line between affirming the illegitimate and being reconciled to political circumstances. To expect more is to drive the Palestinians into an unacceptable corner of humiliation, in effect, endorsing the nakba, and all that has followed by way of dispossession and abuse.
Of course, the issue of self-determination is not for non-Palestinians to determine. Those who call upon Washington, even now and despite its partisanship and ill-concealed alignments, to impose a solution are thus doubly misguided. Even Hilary Clinton acknowledged days ago the impossibility of adopting such an approach.
What seems clear at present is that both the PA and Hamas seem ready to accept a state of their own within 1967 borders, more or less along the lines set forth back in 1967 in the Security Resolution 242, which remains an iconic document that supposedly embodies a continuing international consensus. What it would mean with respect to implementation is certain to be highly contentious, especially in relation to those infamous "subsequent developments," better understood as massive encroachments on Palestinian prospects for separate statehood.
The mindlessness of diplomacy
Many in the Palestinian diaspora doubt whether a two-state solution is attainable or desirable. Instead they are calling for a single secular, bi-national democratic state that is co-terminus with the historic Palestinian mandate, and alone has the inherent capacity to reconcile contemporary ideas of democracy, human rights, and a belated realisation of Palestinian rights, including the long deferred claims of Palestinian refugees.
Geopolitics is stubborn, and is not moving in hopeful directions. Now arms are being again twisted by American diplomacy in the region to resume talks between the parties on what are being called "core issues" (borders, security arrangements, Jerusalem, settlements, refugees, relations with neighbours).
While this mindless diplomatic spinning goes forth, other clocks are ticking madly: the settlements expanding at accelerating rates, new segments of the wall are being constructed, ethnic cleansing intensifies in East Jerusalem, the apartheid practices and structures in the West Bank are being steadily strengthened, the entrapped and imprisoned population of Gaza lives continuously on the brink of a survival crisis, the refugees in their camps endure their dreary and unacceptable confinement.
Netanyahu thunderously warns that Jerusalem is Israel's capital, that never will a single Palestinian refugee be allowed to return, that Israel is a Jewish state, and that whatever Tel Aviv calls "security" must be treated as non-negotiable. Given these predispositions, combined with the disparities in bargaining power between the parties, as well as the one-sided hegemonic role of the United States, who but a fool could think that a just peace could emerge from the such a deformed pattern of geopolitical diplomacy?
Is it not better at this time to rely on the growing Palestine Solidarity Movement, peace from below, and the related success being experienced in waging the Legitimacy War against Israel, what Israel itself nervously calls "the de-legitimacy project" that is viewed by its leaders and think tanks as a far greater threat to its illicit ambitions than armed resistance?
Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has authored and edited numerous publications spanning a period of five decades, most recently editing the volume International Law and the Third World: Reshaping Justice (Routledge, 2008).
He is currently serving his third year of a six year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Europe must emerge from US' shadow
The EU has allowed Washington to dominate Arab-Israeli diplomacy for far too long.
Lamis Andoni Last Modified: 13 Dec 2010 11:58 GMT
Several senior European politicians have urged the European Union (EU) to threaten Israel with sanctions if it continues to build Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian territory.
A letter signed by, among others, Mary Robinson, the former EU commissioner, and Javier Solana, the organisation's former foreign affairs chief, calls for a European peace plan based on the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the equivalent of "100 per cent of the territory [Israel] occupied in 1967, including its capital in East Jerusalem".
The demands made by the group of 26 former European leaders are not vastly different from the EU's declared position, but this call represents a push for a more assertive policy that includes measures designed to pressure Israel to comply.
Included within this is the suggestion that the EU's informal freeze on upgrading diplomatic relations with Israel should be linked to settlement construction. "The EU has always maintained that settlements are illegal, but has not attached any consequences for continued and systematic settlement expansion," the letter, which was sent to European governments and EU institutions, said.
The EU is essentially being called upon to take some initiative and move independently from the US policy that has so far dominated all diplomatic efforts to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict - something long desired by Palestinians who have been disappointed by the EU's weakness before Washington.
Dominating the diplomatic stage
Independent EU policies, with claws, could dramatically alter the dynamics of international relations, particularly as they relate to the Middle East. But the fact that the signatories to the letter are politicians who until recently held powerful positions across Europe, indicates not only the extent of European resentment towards the status quo but also the continent's inability to break free from US foreign policy.
From the outset of Arab-Israeli negotiations, which began with the Madrid Conference in 1991, Europe has assumed an active but secondary role - leaving the US to dictate the terms of the process. Historically, the US was so keen to exclude other countries that it actively sought to prevent the convening of an international peace conference on the Middle East conflict until it was clear that the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse. Once it had collapsed, the US was able to fully monopolise the diplomatic stage.
With this US supremacy has come the dominance of Washington's policy focus, which has always been on ensuring that Israel maintains both a military and political edge. This it guaranteed by blocking others from participating in the asymmetrical negotiations.
The central difference between the US and the EU is that most European countries, rhetorically at least, believe that a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict must be based on international law and UN resolutions, while the US seeks to negate these to ensure that any solution is based on Israeli-manufactured facts on the ground.
But despite this different political stand, the EU has, for the most part, fallen in line behind Washington - supporting and facilitating the US controlled negotiation process.
This deferral to the US as the sole superpower is not confined to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Europe has more broadly failed to meaningfully challenge US power or to seek greater parity in its alliance with the US - perhaps most notably displayed in its obedient following of Washington into the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Time to mutiny?
It is not only Europe's weakness, however, that has enabled the US to chart the parameters of Western relations with the region. Arabs are also to blame for maintaining the illusion that the key to peace is to be found in Washington's hands.
Arab officials often complain that Europe has failed to fulfill Arab expectations and left the region vulnerable to the US, but European officials, for their part, suggest that Arab submission to the US has undermined Europe's efforts to boost its role.
Both parties appear reluctant to loosen the US' grip on international relations.
It is important to note that European positions vary - with Britain, Germany, and to some extent, France, serving as the main European enforcers of US foreign policy. However, the fact that the letter was signed by former officials from these countries - including Chris Patten, a former British member of the European Commission, Helmut Schmidt, a former German chancellor, and Hubert Védrine, a former French foreign minister - reveals the extent of European frustration with Washington's full backing of Israel.
Israel, which was quick to condemn the letter, has always argued that Europe's "hostility" towards it impacts its leverage in the peace process, while the US has similarly employed the argument that its 'special relationship' with Israel better equips it to encourage Israeli compliance. But this argument is only partially true. Israel must be influenced by Europe, for it cannot sustain any standing in the world with US support alone.
Continuous Israeli lobbying in Europe and Israel's sensitivity towards popular European campaigns in solidarity with the Palestinians have repeatedly revealed that Israel is using the 'leverage' argument in a bid to blackmail Europe and undercut international pressures.
It is difficult to gauge the impact of the letter, but its timing suggests that the signatories believe that growing popular European campaigns against Israel's actions warrant an EU shift from words to deeds. It is time for Europe to regain its role, for Palestinians do not stand to be the only losers from continued European subordination to Washington.
Now that the US has abandoned its efforts to achieve a settlement freeze as a prelude to negotiations, Europe must put an end to the US monopoly of peace diplomacy. Arab states and the Palestinians must also stand up to support this mutiny by Europe's grandees, as the Guardian calls them, and should start by removing some of their eggs from Washington's basket.
Lamis Andoni is an analyst and commentator on Middle Eastern and Palestinian affairs.
Lamis Andoni Last Modified: 13 Dec 2010 11:58 GMT
Several senior European politicians have urged the European Union (EU) to threaten Israel with sanctions if it continues to build Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian territory.
A letter signed by, among others, Mary Robinson, the former EU commissioner, and Javier Solana, the organisation's former foreign affairs chief, calls for a European peace plan based on the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the equivalent of "100 per cent of the territory [Israel] occupied in 1967, including its capital in East Jerusalem".
The demands made by the group of 26 former European leaders are not vastly different from the EU's declared position, but this call represents a push for a more assertive policy that includes measures designed to pressure Israel to comply.
Included within this is the suggestion that the EU's informal freeze on upgrading diplomatic relations with Israel should be linked to settlement construction. "The EU has always maintained that settlements are illegal, but has not attached any consequences for continued and systematic settlement expansion," the letter, which was sent to European governments and EU institutions, said.
The EU is essentially being called upon to take some initiative and move independently from the US policy that has so far dominated all diplomatic efforts to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict - something long desired by Palestinians who have been disappointed by the EU's weakness before Washington.
Dominating the diplomatic stage
Independent EU policies, with claws, could dramatically alter the dynamics of international relations, particularly as they relate to the Middle East. But the fact that the signatories to the letter are politicians who until recently held powerful positions across Europe, indicates not only the extent of European resentment towards the status quo but also the continent's inability to break free from US foreign policy.
From the outset of Arab-Israeli negotiations, which began with the Madrid Conference in 1991, Europe has assumed an active but secondary role - leaving the US to dictate the terms of the process. Historically, the US was so keen to exclude other countries that it actively sought to prevent the convening of an international peace conference on the Middle East conflict until it was clear that the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse. Once it had collapsed, the US was able to fully monopolise the diplomatic stage.
With this US supremacy has come the dominance of Washington's policy focus, which has always been on ensuring that Israel maintains both a military and political edge. This it guaranteed by blocking others from participating in the asymmetrical negotiations.
The central difference between the US and the EU is that most European countries, rhetorically at least, believe that a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict must be based on international law and UN resolutions, while the US seeks to negate these to ensure that any solution is based on Israeli-manufactured facts on the ground.
But despite this different political stand, the EU has, for the most part, fallen in line behind Washington - supporting and facilitating the US controlled negotiation process.
This deferral to the US as the sole superpower is not confined to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Europe has more broadly failed to meaningfully challenge US power or to seek greater parity in its alliance with the US - perhaps most notably displayed in its obedient following of Washington into the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Time to mutiny?
It is not only Europe's weakness, however, that has enabled the US to chart the parameters of Western relations with the region. Arabs are also to blame for maintaining the illusion that the key to peace is to be found in Washington's hands.
Arab officials often complain that Europe has failed to fulfill Arab expectations and left the region vulnerable to the US, but European officials, for their part, suggest that Arab submission to the US has undermined Europe's efforts to boost its role.
Both parties appear reluctant to loosen the US' grip on international relations.
It is important to note that European positions vary - with Britain, Germany, and to some extent, France, serving as the main European enforcers of US foreign policy. However, the fact that the letter was signed by former officials from these countries - including Chris Patten, a former British member of the European Commission, Helmut Schmidt, a former German chancellor, and Hubert Védrine, a former French foreign minister - reveals the extent of European frustration with Washington's full backing of Israel.
Israel, which was quick to condemn the letter, has always argued that Europe's "hostility" towards it impacts its leverage in the peace process, while the US has similarly employed the argument that its 'special relationship' with Israel better equips it to encourage Israeli compliance. But this argument is only partially true. Israel must be influenced by Europe, for it cannot sustain any standing in the world with US support alone.
Continuous Israeli lobbying in Europe and Israel's sensitivity towards popular European campaigns in solidarity with the Palestinians have repeatedly revealed that Israel is using the 'leverage' argument in a bid to blackmail Europe and undercut international pressures.
It is difficult to gauge the impact of the letter, but its timing suggests that the signatories believe that growing popular European campaigns against Israel's actions warrant an EU shift from words to deeds. It is time for Europe to regain its role, for Palestinians do not stand to be the only losers from continued European subordination to Washington.
Now that the US has abandoned its efforts to achieve a settlement freeze as a prelude to negotiations, Europe must put an end to the US monopoly of peace diplomacy. Arab states and the Palestinians must also stand up to support this mutiny by Europe's grandees, as the Guardian calls them, and should start by removing some of their eggs from Washington's basket.
Lamis Andoni is an analyst and commentator on Middle Eastern and Palestinian affairs.
Friday, December 3, 2010
WikiLeaks: US-Iran Relations "Now What" Moment?
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
By: Reza Marashi
Lost in the clamor and commotion of WikiLeaks releasing 251,287 diplomatic cables is the perspective of those who currently or have recently served in government. For four years, I served in the Office of Iranian Affairs at the State Department during the period in which most of the Iran-related cables are from. We worked hard to find constructive solutions toward peace. When President Obama took office in 2009, we launched the most serious attempt since 1979 to begin dialogue with Iran. Clearly, our diplomatic efforts were not perfect, but trying to predict Iranian politics is often a humbling experience. With the benefit of twenty-twenty hindsight, it would have been more effective if we had done a few things differently. Wikileaks may highlight this, or confirm previously held suspicions. Regardless, it has brought three key issues to the fore:
1. This unprecedented violation will strategically weaken America in ways that are currently impossible to predict. If nothing else, government officials, businessmen, students and others around the world may think twice before confiding in their American counterparts -- if they are still willing talk. And weakening American diplomacy lessens its credibility as an alternative to political, economic and military conflict.
While many view this massive security breach as an exciting and unique glimpse into foreign policy, the bottom line is that it is illegal. And while some may hope that these leaks serve as a catalyst for policy adjustments and greater government transparency, Americans should ask themselves: at what cost? Simply put, U.S. diplomats -- many of whom are my friends and former colleagues -- have been put in harm's way as a result of this illegal act. America has these security and confidentiality rules in place to protect those who serve.
2. It should now be clear that U.S. policy has never been a true engagement policy. By definition, engagement entails a long-term approach that abandons "sticks" and reassures both sides that their respective fears are unfounded. We realized early on that the administration was unlikely to adopt this approach. Instead, we pursued a "carrot and stick" strategy similar to the Bush administration, utilizing positive and negative inducements to convince Iran that changing its behavior would be its most rewarding and least harmful decision. The key difference between the Bush and Obama approach is an effort by the latter to fix tactical mistakes of the former. By disavowing regime change, striking diplomatic quid pro quos with key allies, and dropping preconditions to diplomacy with Iran, Obama changed tactics, but maintained an objective similar to his predecessor -- making Iran yield on the nuclear issue through pressure. By changing tactics, the U.S. managed to build a consensus for international sanctions after talks collapsed in 2009 -- something the Bush administration was unable to achieve.
Moreover, as the leaked cables show, the highest levels of the Obama administration never believed that diplomacy could succeed. While this does not cheapen Obama's Nowruz message and other groundbreaking facets of his initial outreach, it does raise three important questions: How can U.S. policymakers give maximum effort to make diplomacy succeed if they admittedly never believed their efforts could work? Why was Iran expected to accept negotiation terms that relinquished its greatest strategic asset (1200 kg of LEU) without receiving a strategic asset of equal value in return? And what are the chances that Iran will take diplomacy seriously now that it knows the U.S. never really did? The Obama administration presented a solid vision, but never truly pursued it.
3. Paradoxically, WikiLeaks may have caused a "Now What?" moment in U.S.-Iran relations. For America, the strategic ambiguity in its status-quo Iran policy is no longer tenable. Wikileaks has provided Iran with clarity on the U.S. "carrot-stick" strategy. Now, Obama must choose between continuing the existing policy that has been unevenly applied (where are the carrots?), or recalibrating his policy to seriously consider the political, economic, security and nuclear incentives sought by Iran that any diplomatic solution will have to address. This does not imply that concessions must be made to Iran on each of these four fronts. Only robust diplomacy can determine whether it is in America's interest to address Iranian concerns. But if Iran's interests are not addressed in negotiations, diplomacy will be deemed one-sided and fail without being executed in good faith. This increases the likelihood that the aforementioned international coalition will begin to fragment -- and that Iran will likely exploit those fragmentations.
For Iran, WikiLeaks should make it clear -- it has no real friends, in the region or elsewhere. At best, it has leverage that is facilitated by business arrangements. Trust is in short supply. Going forward, this is likely to affect its strategic calculus vis-à-vis the U.S. and its nuclear program. While it is currently unclear whose hand will be strengthened in Tehran by these recent developments, one of two scenarios seems likely. Iran's new-found sense of isolation may exacerbate existing domestic and international pressures to the point where it feels compelled to cut a deal. Indeed, Iranian decision-makers may decide that the WikiLeaks damage suffered by the U.S. and Iran have leveled the playing field, making it easier to reach an agreement without losing face. Conversely, the information gleaned from WikiLeaks could emasculate pragmatic conservatives in Iran, embolden hardliners and their preconceived notions of "foreign plots," and reinforce Iran's "don't trust anyone" mentality that has become increasingly visible in its foreign policy since 2005.
As negotiations in Geneva commence this weekend, it would be wise for both sides to utilize lessons learned -- from the previous round of diplomacy, and from the WikiLeaks debacle -- to maximize the chances for successful diplomacy. Ambassador John Limbert, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iran during my time at the State Department, used to (half) joke about doing whatever it took to keep some form of rationality in our Iran policy. If any good is to come out of the inexcusable WikiLeaks security breach, perhaps it will be something as simple as taking Ambassador Limbert's advice to heart.
Reza Marashi is director of research at the National Iranian American Council and a former Iran desk officer at the U.S. State Department.
This article orginally appreared in The Huffington Post.
By: Reza Marashi
Lost in the clamor and commotion of WikiLeaks releasing 251,287 diplomatic cables is the perspective of those who currently or have recently served in government. For four years, I served in the Office of Iranian Affairs at the State Department during the period in which most of the Iran-related cables are from. We worked hard to find constructive solutions toward peace. When President Obama took office in 2009, we launched the most serious attempt since 1979 to begin dialogue with Iran. Clearly, our diplomatic efforts were not perfect, but trying to predict Iranian politics is often a humbling experience. With the benefit of twenty-twenty hindsight, it would have been more effective if we had done a few things differently. Wikileaks may highlight this, or confirm previously held suspicions. Regardless, it has brought three key issues to the fore:
1. This unprecedented violation will strategically weaken America in ways that are currently impossible to predict. If nothing else, government officials, businessmen, students and others around the world may think twice before confiding in their American counterparts -- if they are still willing talk. And weakening American diplomacy lessens its credibility as an alternative to political, economic and military conflict.
While many view this massive security breach as an exciting and unique glimpse into foreign policy, the bottom line is that it is illegal. And while some may hope that these leaks serve as a catalyst for policy adjustments and greater government transparency, Americans should ask themselves: at what cost? Simply put, U.S. diplomats -- many of whom are my friends and former colleagues -- have been put in harm's way as a result of this illegal act. America has these security and confidentiality rules in place to protect those who serve.
2. It should now be clear that U.S. policy has never been a true engagement policy. By definition, engagement entails a long-term approach that abandons "sticks" and reassures both sides that their respective fears are unfounded. We realized early on that the administration was unlikely to adopt this approach. Instead, we pursued a "carrot and stick" strategy similar to the Bush administration, utilizing positive and negative inducements to convince Iran that changing its behavior would be its most rewarding and least harmful decision. The key difference between the Bush and Obama approach is an effort by the latter to fix tactical mistakes of the former. By disavowing regime change, striking diplomatic quid pro quos with key allies, and dropping preconditions to diplomacy with Iran, Obama changed tactics, but maintained an objective similar to his predecessor -- making Iran yield on the nuclear issue through pressure. By changing tactics, the U.S. managed to build a consensus for international sanctions after talks collapsed in 2009 -- something the Bush administration was unable to achieve.
Moreover, as the leaked cables show, the highest levels of the Obama administration never believed that diplomacy could succeed. While this does not cheapen Obama's Nowruz message and other groundbreaking facets of his initial outreach, it does raise three important questions: How can U.S. policymakers give maximum effort to make diplomacy succeed if they admittedly never believed their efforts could work? Why was Iran expected to accept negotiation terms that relinquished its greatest strategic asset (1200 kg of LEU) without receiving a strategic asset of equal value in return? And what are the chances that Iran will take diplomacy seriously now that it knows the U.S. never really did? The Obama administration presented a solid vision, but never truly pursued it.
3. Paradoxically, WikiLeaks may have caused a "Now What?" moment in U.S.-Iran relations. For America, the strategic ambiguity in its status-quo Iran policy is no longer tenable. Wikileaks has provided Iran with clarity on the U.S. "carrot-stick" strategy. Now, Obama must choose between continuing the existing policy that has been unevenly applied (where are the carrots?), or recalibrating his policy to seriously consider the political, economic, security and nuclear incentives sought by Iran that any diplomatic solution will have to address. This does not imply that concessions must be made to Iran on each of these four fronts. Only robust diplomacy can determine whether it is in America's interest to address Iranian concerns. But if Iran's interests are not addressed in negotiations, diplomacy will be deemed one-sided and fail without being executed in good faith. This increases the likelihood that the aforementioned international coalition will begin to fragment -- and that Iran will likely exploit those fragmentations.
For Iran, WikiLeaks should make it clear -- it has no real friends, in the region or elsewhere. At best, it has leverage that is facilitated by business arrangements. Trust is in short supply. Going forward, this is likely to affect its strategic calculus vis-à-vis the U.S. and its nuclear program. While it is currently unclear whose hand will be strengthened in Tehran by these recent developments, one of two scenarios seems likely. Iran's new-found sense of isolation may exacerbate existing domestic and international pressures to the point where it feels compelled to cut a deal. Indeed, Iranian decision-makers may decide that the WikiLeaks damage suffered by the U.S. and Iran have leveled the playing field, making it easier to reach an agreement without losing face. Conversely, the information gleaned from WikiLeaks could emasculate pragmatic conservatives in Iran, embolden hardliners and their preconceived notions of "foreign plots," and reinforce Iran's "don't trust anyone" mentality that has become increasingly visible in its foreign policy since 2005.
As negotiations in Geneva commence this weekend, it would be wise for both sides to utilize lessons learned -- from the previous round of diplomacy, and from the WikiLeaks debacle -- to maximize the chances for successful diplomacy. Ambassador John Limbert, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iran during my time at the State Department, used to (half) joke about doing whatever it took to keep some form of rationality in our Iran policy. If any good is to come out of the inexcusable WikiLeaks security breach, perhaps it will be something as simple as taking Ambassador Limbert's advice to heart.
Reza Marashi is director of research at the National Iranian American Council and a former Iran desk officer at the U.S. State Department.
This article orginally appreared in The Huffington Post.
Wiki weakens Iran war drive
The Saudi endorsement could be the kiss of death for Netanyahu's push for a military strike on Iran.
MJ Rosenberg Last Modified: 03 Dec 2010 15:35 GMT
Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, is ecstatic. He has come to the conclusion that a diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks, revealing that the Saudis privately favour a military strike on Iran, has vindicated Israel's hawkish stance. With Saudi Arabia aboard the war train, how can it possibly be derailed?
Of course, he is totally wrong. The revelation that the Saudi royals agree with the Israeli position adds exactly nothing to the case for war. The House of Saud? Whom exactly do they speak for? Not even the Saudi people, let alone anybody else in the Muslim world. In fact, the Saudi endorsement could be the kiss of death for Netanyahu's plans.
A more significant revelation is that the Obama administration has no intention of resorting to force to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. A host of cables indicate that in private, as in public, only sanctions and diplomacy are on the table.
That is why right-wing Israelis (and their neocon cutouts in the US) hope that the Republicans win in 2012 - preferably former half-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin - and that the nuclear stalemate remains unresolved until she can order "Bombs Away".
Netanyahu's wishful thinking
Nothing in WikiLeaks can be legitimately used to advance the case for war despite Netanyahu's wishful thinking. This is from Ha'aretz:
"Our region has been hostage to a narrative that is the result of 60 years of propaganda, which paints Israel as the greatest threat," Netanyahu said.
"In reality leaders understand that that view is bankrupt. For the first time in history there is agreement that Iran is the threat," he said.
"If leaders start saying openly what they have long been saying behind closed doors, we can make a real breakthrough on the road to peace."
By that, he means, a real breakthrough on the road to war.
But even if the Saudis agree with the Israelis that a military strike is warranted, it really amounts to little more than nothing. That is because neither Israel nor Saudi Arabia considered US interests when coming to this conclusion, which is the only thing a president of the US should consider.
Saudis and Israelis support policies which they believe are in their interests. That is how foreign governments invariably behave and it is how the US would behave toward Israel but for the unique political considerations that impel our national leadership to march in lockstep with Israeli leaders.
Diplomacy, not war
Nothing in WikiLeaks affects the clear US national interest which dictates, above all, that we resolve our differences with Iran through diplomacy and not through war.
That assertion hardly requires proving. The US is involved in two wars in the Middle East already, in which 5,840 Americans (and countless Iraqis and Afghans) have been killed. And we still have well over 100,000 troops in that part of the world.
A strike on Iran by the US or by Israel would not only put our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan at greater risk, it would destroy the US' standing throughout the Muslim world. It would also vastly increase the threat of terrorism against American civilians at home and abroad. It could even trigger a regional war.
Sure, a few royals and unrepresentative autocrats would privately cheer us on, but those regimes would ultimately either join the opposition to us or be swept away by popular fury.
The Wiki-revealed knowledge that the Israelis and the Saudis are tacitly working in concert against Iran would only make things worse, given that among most Arabs and Muslims, the Saudi regime is only a little more popular than the Netanyahu government. A US/Israeli/Saudi tripartite alliance against Iran could be the US' Suez, and could finish us off in the region the way the United Kingdom and France were finished by their anti-Egypt alliance with Israel in 1956.
In addition, of course, no one believes a strike on Iran would eliminate its nuclear facilities.
Nobody wants to see a nuclear-armed Iran. But few are particularly happy with nuclear weapons in the hands of Pakistan, or for that matter, India. And, believe it or not, the Muslim world has never been particularly comfortable with Israel's uninspected nuclear arsenal. And then there is North Korea which, unlike Iran, has demonstrated its crazy recklessness over and over again. (Iranian recklessness has been confined to repulsive rhetoric, not impulsive actions.)
Israelis say that they do not want to live under a nuclear shadow. But that does not make them any different than anyone else, or more vulnerable either. There is a gigantic hole in the middle of Manhattan which provides ample evidence that Americans do not need any lectures from anyone on that score.
The good news is that, unlike al-Qaeda, Iran is a nation that can be engaged in serious negotiations. It is not a nihilist terror group; it is not a suicide cult. Rather, it is a nation that has been a key player in its region for thousands of years.
We have grievances with them and they have grievances with us. That means that we must enter into comprehensive negotiations on all those grievances - starting with their nuclear programme and our attempts at overthrowing their government, along with the whole host of issues that divide us, including the security of Israel.
Remember, back in 2003, the Iranians sent the Bush administration a two-page document stating that they were ready for comprehensive negotiations and we refused to even acknowledge the offer. Obama has done better than his predecessor, but not by much.
He offers friendly greetings to the Iranian people, but like Bush, he mainly issues demands and sets time-tables. (See this column.) A better model would be Nixon, who treated a dangerous adversary, China, with respect and an outstretched hand, and changed the world. Is Iran really worse than the place we used to call Red China? More fanatical? What is Iran's equivalent of invading Korea in 1950 to install a puppet state? (No, we installed Iran's puppet regime in Iraq for them.)
In short, we can do business with Iran, if we want to - and if we block out the endless war-mongering from the neocons. (AIPAC's spring conference will be almost entirely dedicated to hyping the Iran threat, with half of Congress in attendance, dutifully memorising AIPAC talking points.)
There is no alternative to negotiations. Either get serious about them or prepare to live with a nuclear armed Iran. In either case, we will be better off following Nixon's example and not George W. Bush's.
MJ Rosenberg is a senior foreign policy fellow at Media Matters Action Network. The above article first appeared in Foreign Policy Matters, a part of the Media Matters Action Network.
MJ Rosenberg Last Modified: 03 Dec 2010 15:35 GMT
Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, is ecstatic. He has come to the conclusion that a diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks, revealing that the Saudis privately favour a military strike on Iran, has vindicated Israel's hawkish stance. With Saudi Arabia aboard the war train, how can it possibly be derailed?
Of course, he is totally wrong. The revelation that the Saudi royals agree with the Israeli position adds exactly nothing to the case for war. The House of Saud? Whom exactly do they speak for? Not even the Saudi people, let alone anybody else in the Muslim world. In fact, the Saudi endorsement could be the kiss of death for Netanyahu's plans.
A more significant revelation is that the Obama administration has no intention of resorting to force to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. A host of cables indicate that in private, as in public, only sanctions and diplomacy are on the table.
That is why right-wing Israelis (and their neocon cutouts in the US) hope that the Republicans win in 2012 - preferably former half-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin - and that the nuclear stalemate remains unresolved until she can order "Bombs Away".
Netanyahu's wishful thinking
Nothing in WikiLeaks can be legitimately used to advance the case for war despite Netanyahu's wishful thinking. This is from Ha'aretz:
"Our region has been hostage to a narrative that is the result of 60 years of propaganda, which paints Israel as the greatest threat," Netanyahu said.
"In reality leaders understand that that view is bankrupt. For the first time in history there is agreement that Iran is the threat," he said.
"If leaders start saying openly what they have long been saying behind closed doors, we can make a real breakthrough on the road to peace."
By that, he means, a real breakthrough on the road to war.
But even if the Saudis agree with the Israelis that a military strike is warranted, it really amounts to little more than nothing. That is because neither Israel nor Saudi Arabia considered US interests when coming to this conclusion, which is the only thing a president of the US should consider.
Saudis and Israelis support policies which they believe are in their interests. That is how foreign governments invariably behave and it is how the US would behave toward Israel but for the unique political considerations that impel our national leadership to march in lockstep with Israeli leaders.
Diplomacy, not war
Nothing in WikiLeaks affects the clear US national interest which dictates, above all, that we resolve our differences with Iran through diplomacy and not through war.
That assertion hardly requires proving. The US is involved in two wars in the Middle East already, in which 5,840 Americans (and countless Iraqis and Afghans) have been killed. And we still have well over 100,000 troops in that part of the world.
A strike on Iran by the US or by Israel would not only put our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan at greater risk, it would destroy the US' standing throughout the Muslim world. It would also vastly increase the threat of terrorism against American civilians at home and abroad. It could even trigger a regional war.
Sure, a few royals and unrepresentative autocrats would privately cheer us on, but those regimes would ultimately either join the opposition to us or be swept away by popular fury.
The Wiki-revealed knowledge that the Israelis and the Saudis are tacitly working in concert against Iran would only make things worse, given that among most Arabs and Muslims, the Saudi regime is only a little more popular than the Netanyahu government. A US/Israeli/Saudi tripartite alliance against Iran could be the US' Suez, and could finish us off in the region the way the United Kingdom and France were finished by their anti-Egypt alliance with Israel in 1956.
In addition, of course, no one believes a strike on Iran would eliminate its nuclear facilities.
Nobody wants to see a nuclear-armed Iran. But few are particularly happy with nuclear weapons in the hands of Pakistan, or for that matter, India. And, believe it or not, the Muslim world has never been particularly comfortable with Israel's uninspected nuclear arsenal. And then there is North Korea which, unlike Iran, has demonstrated its crazy recklessness over and over again. (Iranian recklessness has been confined to repulsive rhetoric, not impulsive actions.)
Israelis say that they do not want to live under a nuclear shadow. But that does not make them any different than anyone else, or more vulnerable either. There is a gigantic hole in the middle of Manhattan which provides ample evidence that Americans do not need any lectures from anyone on that score.
The good news is that, unlike al-Qaeda, Iran is a nation that can be engaged in serious negotiations. It is not a nihilist terror group; it is not a suicide cult. Rather, it is a nation that has been a key player in its region for thousands of years.
We have grievances with them and they have grievances with us. That means that we must enter into comprehensive negotiations on all those grievances - starting with their nuclear programme and our attempts at overthrowing their government, along with the whole host of issues that divide us, including the security of Israel.
Remember, back in 2003, the Iranians sent the Bush administration a two-page document stating that they were ready for comprehensive negotiations and we refused to even acknowledge the offer. Obama has done better than his predecessor, but not by much.
He offers friendly greetings to the Iranian people, but like Bush, he mainly issues demands and sets time-tables. (See this column.) A better model would be Nixon, who treated a dangerous adversary, China, with respect and an outstretched hand, and changed the world. Is Iran really worse than the place we used to call Red China? More fanatical? What is Iran's equivalent of invading Korea in 1950 to install a puppet state? (No, we installed Iran's puppet regime in Iraq for them.)
In short, we can do business with Iran, if we want to - and if we block out the endless war-mongering from the neocons. (AIPAC's spring conference will be almost entirely dedicated to hyping the Iran threat, with half of Congress in attendance, dutifully memorising AIPAC talking points.)
There is no alternative to negotiations. Either get serious about them or prepare to live with a nuclear armed Iran. In either case, we will be better off following Nixon's example and not George W. Bush's.
MJ Rosenberg is a senior foreign policy fellow at Media Matters Action Network. The above article first appeared in Foreign Policy Matters, a part of the Media Matters Action Network.
Monday, November 22, 2010
The endgame for the peace process
Future historians will argue over the precise moment when the Arab-Israeli peace process died.
Robert Grenier
Is the realisation finally dawning in Ramallah, Tel Aviv and Washington that the peace process is dead? [GALLO/GETTY]
Future historians will no doubt argue over the precise moment when the Arab-Israeli peace process died, when the last glimmer of hope for a two-state solution was irrevocably extinguished. When all is said and done, and the forensics have been completed, I am sure they will conclude that the last realistic prospect for an agreement expired quite some time before now, even if all the players do not quite realise it yet: anger and denial are always the first stages in the grieving process; acceptance of reality only comes later.
There are growing signs, however, that the realisation is beginning to dawn in Ramallah, Tel Aviv and, most strikingly, Washington, that the peace process, as currently conceived, may finally be dead.
Washington: hoping for a miracle?
We should begin in Washington, in the aftermath of the seven-hour marathon meeting between Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, and Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, in New York last week.
To view the apparent results of that meeting in context, one would have to recount the gargantuan structure of US military, intelligence, economic and diplomatic support to Israel, painstakingly constructed over many decades, for which there would not be space to describe it all here - if indeed one had the knowledge to do so.
The edifice is so extensive, including direct military aid, weapons transfers, access to US emergency weapons stocks, pre-positioning of US military materiel in Israel, US investments in Israeli technology development, US support for Israel's foreign weapons sales, weapons co-production agreements, all sorts of loan guarantees, assistance for settlement of immigrants in Israel - the list goes on - that literally no single entity in Washington is aware of it all.
In September, the US Congressional Research Service made a noteworthy attempt to capture it, but was probably only partly successful, having no access, for example, to classified US assistance. The annual value of all this is literally incalculable, and well in excess of the $3bn per year usually cited, to say nothing of critical US diplomatic support in the UN and elsewhere.
Given all this, confronted with Israel's refusal to extend its partial moratorium on new settlement construction in the Occupied Territories, and with anything more than verbal pressure on Israel literally unthinkable, the US was hard-pressed to come up with additional inducements which might extend the peace process even a little further.
Into the breach, as he has done so many times before, stepped the redoubtable Dennis Ross. Ross, in discussions with an Israeli counterpart, compiled an extensive list of motivators whose length we do not yet know, but which was verbally agreed between Clinton and Netanyahu in New York, and which will be presented in writing for possible approval by the Israeli cabinet.
We are told it includes a US commitment to block any Palestinian-led effort to win unilateral UN recognition of a Palestinian state; US obstruction of efforts either to revive the Goldstone Report at the UN, or to seek formal UN condemnation of Israel for the deadly Mavi Marmara incident; an ongoing US commitment to defeat any UN resolutions aimed at raising Israel's unacknowledged nuclear weapons programme before the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); vigorous US diplomatic efforts to counter all attempts to "delegitimise" Israel in various world fora; and, most importantly, increasing efforts to further ratchet international sanctions on both Iran and Syria concerning their respective nuclear and proliferation efforts.
To this the US is adding a commitment to supply Israel with some 20 ultra-modern F-35 aircraft worth $3bn - so new they have not yet entered the US inventory - as well as a mysterious "comprehensive security agreement," whose details have not been revealed, but which may include unilateral US endorsement of Israeli troop deployments in the Jordan Valley, in the event of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.
And what is Israel being asked in return? Consider this carefully: in return for the above written guarantees, Israel will consider agreement to a brief, one-time-only 90-day extension of the partial settlement moratorium, which excludes not only East Jerusalem, but also the cordon sanitaire of settlements which Israel has carefully constructed to ring the city and deny Palestinian access to it, after which the US agrees, in writing, never again to request an Israeli settlement moratorium.
After witnessing US policy toward Israel and the Palestinians for over 30 years, I had thought I was beyond shock. This development, however, is breathtaking. In effect, along with a whole string of additional commitments, including some potentially far-reaching security guarantees which it is apparently afraid to reveal publicly, the Obama administration is willing to permanently cast aside a policy of some 40 years' duration, under which the US has at least nominally labelled Israeli settlements on occupied territory as "obstacles to peace,". All this in return for a highly conditional settlement pause which will permit Netanyahu to pocket what the US has given him, simply wait three months without making any good-faith effort at compromise, and know in the end that Israel will never again have to suffer the US' annoying complaints about illegal settlements.
Leave aside the fact that as of this writing, the Israeli cabinet may yet reject this agreement - which seems even more breathtaking, until one stops to consider that virtually everything the Americans have offered the Israelis they could easily obtain in due course without the moratorium. No, what is telling here is that the American attempt to win this agreement, lopsided as it is, is an act of sheer desperation.
What gives rise to the desperation, whether it is fear of political embarrassment at a high-profile diplomatic failure or genuine concern for US security interests in the region, I cannot say. It seems crystal clear, however, that the administration sees the next three months as a last chance. Their stated hope is that if they can get the parties to the table for this brief additional period, during which they focus solely on reaching agreement on borders, success in this endeavour will obviate concerns about settlements and give both sides sufficient stake in an outcome that they will not abandon the effort.
No one familiar with the substance of the process believes agreement on borders can be reached in 90 days on the merits; consider additionally that negotiators will be attempting to reach such a pact without reference to Jerusalem, and seeking compromise on territory without recourse to off-setting concessions on other issues, and success becomes virtually impossible to contemplate.
The Obama administration is coming under heavy criticism for having no plan which extends beyond the 90 days, if they can get them. There is no plan for a 91st day because there is unlikely to be one. The Obama policy, absurd as it seems, is to somehow extend the peace process marginally, and hope for a miracle. The demise of that hope carries with it the clear and present danger that residual aspirations for a two-state solution will shortly be extinguished with it.
Tel Aviv: buyer's remorse?
Meanwhile, in Israel, we are seeing something akin to buyer's remorse. On the cusp of finally achieving the goal for which Likud has aimed since its founding in 1973 - that is, an end to the threat of territorial compromise which would truncate the Zionist project in Palestine - the Israeli military and intelligence communities, which will have to deal with the consequences of a permanently failed peace process and the dissolution of responsible Palestinian governance in the West Bank which could well follow, are actively voicing their concerns.
Even as ardent a Likudnik as Dan Meridor has recently said to Haaretz: "I've reached the painful conclusion that keeping all the territory means a binational state that will endanger the Zionist enterprise. If we have to give up the Jewish and democratic character (of the state) - I prefer to give up some of the territory."
The time for such second thoughts has passed, however. Having succeeded in creating irrevocable facts on the ground, settlements which no conceivable Israeli government could remove even if it wanted to, the territory which Meridor and company would conceivably part with now will not be enough to avoid the fate which they fear in future: the progressive delegitimation of the current state, and the eventual rise of a binational state in its place.
Ramallah: terminally gloomy?
The terminal gloom among the tired leadership of the Palestinian Authority (PA) is palpable. They will not allow themselves to be openly complicit in a negotiated capitulation to Israel, and yet they cannot bring themselves to irrevocably abandon the process either.
The recent, relative success of Salam Fayyad, the prime minister, in bringing some measure of security and good governance to the West Bank notwithstanding, they know their legitimacy is tied to the hope of their people for a just peace - a peace they also know, in their hearts, they cannot deliver. They look to the Americans in hope of salvation, while the Americans can only hope, impotently, for the same.
Both Israelis and Palestinians know that the relative calm prevailing in the West Bank and Gaza cannot last indefinitely absent some prospect for an end to Israeli occupation of the former. No one can see the way to a near-term solution, and yet neither does anyone yet have the courage to suggest an alternative future.
That will be the task of a new and probably distant generation of Israelis and Palestinians.
Robert Grenier was the CIA's chief of station in Islamabad, Pakistan, from 1999 to 2002. He was also the director of the CIA's counter-terrorism centre.
Robert Grenier
Is the realisation finally dawning in Ramallah, Tel Aviv and Washington that the peace process is dead? [GALLO/GETTY]
Future historians will no doubt argue over the precise moment when the Arab-Israeli peace process died, when the last glimmer of hope for a two-state solution was irrevocably extinguished. When all is said and done, and the forensics have been completed, I am sure they will conclude that the last realistic prospect for an agreement expired quite some time before now, even if all the players do not quite realise it yet: anger and denial are always the first stages in the grieving process; acceptance of reality only comes later.
There are growing signs, however, that the realisation is beginning to dawn in Ramallah, Tel Aviv and, most strikingly, Washington, that the peace process, as currently conceived, may finally be dead.
Washington: hoping for a miracle?
We should begin in Washington, in the aftermath of the seven-hour marathon meeting between Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, and Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, in New York last week.
To view the apparent results of that meeting in context, one would have to recount the gargantuan structure of US military, intelligence, economic and diplomatic support to Israel, painstakingly constructed over many decades, for which there would not be space to describe it all here - if indeed one had the knowledge to do so.
The edifice is so extensive, including direct military aid, weapons transfers, access to US emergency weapons stocks, pre-positioning of US military materiel in Israel, US investments in Israeli technology development, US support for Israel's foreign weapons sales, weapons co-production agreements, all sorts of loan guarantees, assistance for settlement of immigrants in Israel - the list goes on - that literally no single entity in Washington is aware of it all.
In September, the US Congressional Research Service made a noteworthy attempt to capture it, but was probably only partly successful, having no access, for example, to classified US assistance. The annual value of all this is literally incalculable, and well in excess of the $3bn per year usually cited, to say nothing of critical US diplomatic support in the UN and elsewhere.
Given all this, confronted with Israel's refusal to extend its partial moratorium on new settlement construction in the Occupied Territories, and with anything more than verbal pressure on Israel literally unthinkable, the US was hard-pressed to come up with additional inducements which might extend the peace process even a little further.
Into the breach, as he has done so many times before, stepped the redoubtable Dennis Ross. Ross, in discussions with an Israeli counterpart, compiled an extensive list of motivators whose length we do not yet know, but which was verbally agreed between Clinton and Netanyahu in New York, and which will be presented in writing for possible approval by the Israeli cabinet.
We are told it includes a US commitment to block any Palestinian-led effort to win unilateral UN recognition of a Palestinian state; US obstruction of efforts either to revive the Goldstone Report at the UN, or to seek formal UN condemnation of Israel for the deadly Mavi Marmara incident; an ongoing US commitment to defeat any UN resolutions aimed at raising Israel's unacknowledged nuclear weapons programme before the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); vigorous US diplomatic efforts to counter all attempts to "delegitimise" Israel in various world fora; and, most importantly, increasing efforts to further ratchet international sanctions on both Iran and Syria concerning their respective nuclear and proliferation efforts.
To this the US is adding a commitment to supply Israel with some 20 ultra-modern F-35 aircraft worth $3bn - so new they have not yet entered the US inventory - as well as a mysterious "comprehensive security agreement," whose details have not been revealed, but which may include unilateral US endorsement of Israeli troop deployments in the Jordan Valley, in the event of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.
And what is Israel being asked in return? Consider this carefully: in return for the above written guarantees, Israel will consider agreement to a brief, one-time-only 90-day extension of the partial settlement moratorium, which excludes not only East Jerusalem, but also the cordon sanitaire of settlements which Israel has carefully constructed to ring the city and deny Palestinian access to it, after which the US agrees, in writing, never again to request an Israeli settlement moratorium.
After witnessing US policy toward Israel and the Palestinians for over 30 years, I had thought I was beyond shock. This development, however, is breathtaking. In effect, along with a whole string of additional commitments, including some potentially far-reaching security guarantees which it is apparently afraid to reveal publicly, the Obama administration is willing to permanently cast aside a policy of some 40 years' duration, under which the US has at least nominally labelled Israeli settlements on occupied territory as "obstacles to peace,". All this in return for a highly conditional settlement pause which will permit Netanyahu to pocket what the US has given him, simply wait three months without making any good-faith effort at compromise, and know in the end that Israel will never again have to suffer the US' annoying complaints about illegal settlements.
Leave aside the fact that as of this writing, the Israeli cabinet may yet reject this agreement - which seems even more breathtaking, until one stops to consider that virtually everything the Americans have offered the Israelis they could easily obtain in due course without the moratorium. No, what is telling here is that the American attempt to win this agreement, lopsided as it is, is an act of sheer desperation.
What gives rise to the desperation, whether it is fear of political embarrassment at a high-profile diplomatic failure or genuine concern for US security interests in the region, I cannot say. It seems crystal clear, however, that the administration sees the next three months as a last chance. Their stated hope is that if they can get the parties to the table for this brief additional period, during which they focus solely on reaching agreement on borders, success in this endeavour will obviate concerns about settlements and give both sides sufficient stake in an outcome that they will not abandon the effort.
No one familiar with the substance of the process believes agreement on borders can be reached in 90 days on the merits; consider additionally that negotiators will be attempting to reach such a pact without reference to Jerusalem, and seeking compromise on territory without recourse to off-setting concessions on other issues, and success becomes virtually impossible to contemplate.
The Obama administration is coming under heavy criticism for having no plan which extends beyond the 90 days, if they can get them. There is no plan for a 91st day because there is unlikely to be one. The Obama policy, absurd as it seems, is to somehow extend the peace process marginally, and hope for a miracle. The demise of that hope carries with it the clear and present danger that residual aspirations for a two-state solution will shortly be extinguished with it.
Tel Aviv: buyer's remorse?
Meanwhile, in Israel, we are seeing something akin to buyer's remorse. On the cusp of finally achieving the goal for which Likud has aimed since its founding in 1973 - that is, an end to the threat of territorial compromise which would truncate the Zionist project in Palestine - the Israeli military and intelligence communities, which will have to deal with the consequences of a permanently failed peace process and the dissolution of responsible Palestinian governance in the West Bank which could well follow, are actively voicing their concerns.
Even as ardent a Likudnik as Dan Meridor has recently said to Haaretz: "I've reached the painful conclusion that keeping all the territory means a binational state that will endanger the Zionist enterprise. If we have to give up the Jewish and democratic character (of the state) - I prefer to give up some of the territory."
The time for such second thoughts has passed, however. Having succeeded in creating irrevocable facts on the ground, settlements which no conceivable Israeli government could remove even if it wanted to, the territory which Meridor and company would conceivably part with now will not be enough to avoid the fate which they fear in future: the progressive delegitimation of the current state, and the eventual rise of a binational state in its place.
Ramallah: terminally gloomy?
The terminal gloom among the tired leadership of the Palestinian Authority (PA) is palpable. They will not allow themselves to be openly complicit in a negotiated capitulation to Israel, and yet they cannot bring themselves to irrevocably abandon the process either.
The recent, relative success of Salam Fayyad, the prime minister, in bringing some measure of security and good governance to the West Bank notwithstanding, they know their legitimacy is tied to the hope of their people for a just peace - a peace they also know, in their hearts, they cannot deliver. They look to the Americans in hope of salvation, while the Americans can only hope, impotently, for the same.
Both Israelis and Palestinians know that the relative calm prevailing in the West Bank and Gaza cannot last indefinitely absent some prospect for an end to Israeli occupation of the former. No one can see the way to a near-term solution, and yet neither does anyone yet have the courage to suggest an alternative future.
That will be the task of a new and probably distant generation of Israelis and Palestinians.
Robert Grenier was the CIA's chief of station in Islamabad, Pakistan, from 1999 to 2002. He was also the director of the CIA's counter-terrorism centre.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
US and Israel: Blinded by the Right
Similarities exist in the political landscapes' of both the US and Israel, which left unaltered, could be of grave harm.
Mark LeVine Last Modified: 24 Oct 2010 09:32 GMT
Holding hands on the way down; both the US and Israel are being led to the precipice by the increasingly right-wing policies [EPA]
"I'm not a witch... I'm you."
With these words, Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell attempted to convince voters that despite admitting to have dabbled in witchcraft and holding many extreme views, her values and views are closer to those of her state's voters than those of the "Washington elite," represented by her opponent, Chris Coons.
We can pass this comment off as just political sloganeering, but in fact it well summarises the sad state of affairs in the "Thelma and Louise" of global politics, the United States and Israel.
Like the angry, self-loathing drunk unable to recognise himself in the The Who's seminal anthem "Who Are You," Americans and Israelis are reaching such depths of distrust and despair that the coarsest appeals to right wing identity politics - represented by the rise of the Tea Party and the current Netanyahu government - will ensure the perpetuation of policies that will doom both countries to an even darker future.
In so doing they are moving so far from their founding ideals that it's becoming impossible to recognise them anymore.
Weaving a Powerful Spell
O'Donnell, or at least the Tea Party from which she sprang, is involved in a base kind of witchcraft, using superstition and the lure of identity with some mythical past to manipulate people into acting against their core interests and forgetting their own history.
There is surprising resonance between O'Donnell's message and what is being put out to Israeli society by its leadership in the current "loyalty oath" controversy, in which the cabinet of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has drafted a law that would force new non-Jewish citizens of the state to swear an oath to be loyal to Israel as a Jewish state.
In both countries, the confusion about and opposition to extremist policies reveal a startling lack of comprehension of just how similar the "mainstream" has long been to the Right of centre (for example, Democratic Administrations brought us both Vietnam and the disastrous first dalliances with the Afghan resistance).
In Israel, Labour Party Minister Avishay Braverman declared that "Ben-Gurion would be turning in his grave" over the new law. Indeed, a large demonstration was held in front of his Tel Aviv home, where the countries Declaration of Independence was read over sixty years before.
But Ben-Gurion was a primary architect of the very policies of Conquest of Land that made the zero-sum conflict with Palestinian Arabs inevitable. Even as he read the Declaration of Independence, which described Israel as a "peace-seeking country based on the principles of equality and civil liberties" he knew full well that the only way the new state could survive and prosper would be if the country's indigenous Palestinian Arab population - those that were left inside Israel - were denied basic rights and equality well into the future.
A report from the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom described how "beneath the statue of Meir Dizengoff, first mayor of Tel Aviv, actress Hanna Meron read out from that Declaration of Independence," but she should have known that Tel Aviv - long the symbol of the rational, modern Israel - was itself built upon on the conquest of Palestinian land, the forced incorporation of surrounding Palestinian villages, and ultimately of Jaffa (minus most of its residents). When lamenting that the "reality of Israel is very different than what the country's Declaration of Independence envisaged," she missed the fact that while its different from the rhetoric of six decades past, the reality actually bears striking continuities to that bygone era.
Indeed, when activists decry the supposed arrival of "fascism" in Israel, they forget that while the "forcible invasion of the hallowed realm" of individual conscience might now be hitting close to home for Jewish citizens, its long been at the heart of the Palestinian experience of living in the country - either as citizens, or obviously worse, as occupied inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza.
Even as the Israeli peaceniks made their stand, untold numbers of Palestinians languish in Israeli jails, and scores have been injured and killed, precisely for refusing to accept the expansion of Israeli ideology on the ground, for peacefully imagining another solution and then trying to actualise it on the ground. And so Palestinian activists such as Ameer Makhoul or Abdallah Abu Rahmah, remain imprisoned merely for asserting the core ideals of the Declaration of Independence: that they deserve and are owed the same full rights as their Jewish co-citizens.
The sad reality is that the line towards what protesters describe as fascism was not crossed last week; not 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, but at the beginnings of the Zionist project, which was built on a conquest of land and exclusively Jewish identity; this is historical reality. And when Palestinians met that discourse with an equally exclusivist nationalism on their part, the mold was set for the zero-sum, irreconcilable conflict that continues to this day.
Of Tea and Potions
Say what you will, at least Israelis don't bother sugar-coating their occupation anymore except to the most gullible foreign visitors.
With the horrors of Vietnam still fresh in America's historical memory, military leaders feel compelled to present their presence in Iraq or Afghanistan in the softest manner possible, at least for the natives' benefit. And so the Iraqi invasion was labelled, in all seriousness, "Operation Iraqi Freedom." In Afghanistan, thanks in part to the huge success of Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea, the US military created a program in which female soldiers, who are increasingly part of the kill chain, are being sent into Afghan homes to drink tea with women in order to help smooth relations between the occupier and occupied.
Perhaps the soldiers are slipping some sort of potion in the tea when the women aren't looking to convince them of America's benign intentions (this is a military, after all, that has actually spent money training soldiers to knock over goats with their minds). Or maybe the military is just drinking its own Kool-Aid. But the Afpak brass claims that this program is a "success" that will help pacify the often recalcitrant population.
Of course, the fact that the tea parties have been dubbed by commanders "tea as a weapon" suggests that, whatever the PR spin, the military has not lost sight of the program's function and purpose.
Back in the United States, however, the witchcraft seems to be working perfectly. If Israelis lounging in Tel Aviv's famed cafés rarely need bother about the troubles caused by their settler compatriots and stubborn Palestinians, a just released poll reveals that only 4% of Americans rank the almost decade long war to be a major issue as in advance of the mid-term elections. It's not that most support what General Petreaus and other commanders openly describe as an "endless" conflict (although a shocking number still do).
Like Israelis who complain that Palestinians don't want peace while the bulldozers clear away ever more Palestinian soil, most Americans are so focused on the lousy economy that they apparently feel they don't have the luxury to worry about the war. That the hundreds of billions of dollars spent annually on the war could be spent productively to stimulate the economy, retrain workers, rebuild infrastructure and educational institutions, and otherwise improve the employment prospects and economic situation of most Americans doesn't even cross their minds, so successful has the voodoo first practised by President Bush and now by his successor been.
Even the dean of American newscasters, Tom Brokaw, has been bewitched, complaining in a New York Times Oped recently that "we all would benefit from a campaign that engaged the vexing question of what happens next in the long and so far unresolved effort to deal with Islamic rage," as if America - its politics, its economic interests, and its toxic consumerist culture - hasn't played a significant role in fomenting and sustaining "Islamic" anger.
And so now we have the prospect of politicians like Christine O'Donnell and Avigdor Lieberman holding some part of the fate of their countries, and everyone else's with it, in their hands. Smiling giddily, they drive their countries ever closer to a precipice over which neither will be able to avoid careening, never mind returning in a form that resembles the ideals upon which they were founded - however flawed they may have been in practise.
At least in the movie, the audience could take comfort in the idea that Thelma and Louise would achieve a measure of peace as they sped off that desert cliff. There will be no witchraft powerful enough to make put a positive spin on where the United States and Israel are heading if they don't turn around before it's too late.
Mark LeVine is a professor of history at UC Irvine and senior visiting researcher at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden. He has authored several books including Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv and the Struggle for Palestine (University of California Press, 2005) and An Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989 (Zed Books, 2009).
Mark LeVine Last Modified: 24 Oct 2010 09:32 GMT
Holding hands on the way down; both the US and Israel are being led to the precipice by the increasingly right-wing policies [EPA]
"I'm not a witch... I'm you."
With these words, Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell attempted to convince voters that despite admitting to have dabbled in witchcraft and holding many extreme views, her values and views are closer to those of her state's voters than those of the "Washington elite," represented by her opponent, Chris Coons.
We can pass this comment off as just political sloganeering, but in fact it well summarises the sad state of affairs in the "Thelma and Louise" of global politics, the United States and Israel.
Like the angry, self-loathing drunk unable to recognise himself in the The Who's seminal anthem "Who Are You," Americans and Israelis are reaching such depths of distrust and despair that the coarsest appeals to right wing identity politics - represented by the rise of the Tea Party and the current Netanyahu government - will ensure the perpetuation of policies that will doom both countries to an even darker future.
In so doing they are moving so far from their founding ideals that it's becoming impossible to recognise them anymore.
Weaving a Powerful Spell
O'Donnell, or at least the Tea Party from which she sprang, is involved in a base kind of witchcraft, using superstition and the lure of identity with some mythical past to manipulate people into acting against their core interests and forgetting their own history.
There is surprising resonance between O'Donnell's message and what is being put out to Israeli society by its leadership in the current "loyalty oath" controversy, in which the cabinet of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has drafted a law that would force new non-Jewish citizens of the state to swear an oath to be loyal to Israel as a Jewish state.
In both countries, the confusion about and opposition to extremist policies reveal a startling lack of comprehension of just how similar the "mainstream" has long been to the Right of centre (for example, Democratic Administrations brought us both Vietnam and the disastrous first dalliances with the Afghan resistance).
In Israel, Labour Party Minister Avishay Braverman declared that "Ben-Gurion would be turning in his grave" over the new law. Indeed, a large demonstration was held in front of his Tel Aviv home, where the countries Declaration of Independence was read over sixty years before.
But Ben-Gurion was a primary architect of the very policies of Conquest of Land that made the zero-sum conflict with Palestinian Arabs inevitable. Even as he read the Declaration of Independence, which described Israel as a "peace-seeking country based on the principles of equality and civil liberties" he knew full well that the only way the new state could survive and prosper would be if the country's indigenous Palestinian Arab population - those that were left inside Israel - were denied basic rights and equality well into the future.
A report from the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom described how "beneath the statue of Meir Dizengoff, first mayor of Tel Aviv, actress Hanna Meron read out from that Declaration of Independence," but she should have known that Tel Aviv - long the symbol of the rational, modern Israel - was itself built upon on the conquest of Palestinian land, the forced incorporation of surrounding Palestinian villages, and ultimately of Jaffa (minus most of its residents). When lamenting that the "reality of Israel is very different than what the country's Declaration of Independence envisaged," she missed the fact that while its different from the rhetoric of six decades past, the reality actually bears striking continuities to that bygone era.
Indeed, when activists decry the supposed arrival of "fascism" in Israel, they forget that while the "forcible invasion of the hallowed realm" of individual conscience might now be hitting close to home for Jewish citizens, its long been at the heart of the Palestinian experience of living in the country - either as citizens, or obviously worse, as occupied inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza.
Even as the Israeli peaceniks made their stand, untold numbers of Palestinians languish in Israeli jails, and scores have been injured and killed, precisely for refusing to accept the expansion of Israeli ideology on the ground, for peacefully imagining another solution and then trying to actualise it on the ground. And so Palestinian activists such as Ameer Makhoul or Abdallah Abu Rahmah, remain imprisoned merely for asserting the core ideals of the Declaration of Independence: that they deserve and are owed the same full rights as their Jewish co-citizens.
The sad reality is that the line towards what protesters describe as fascism was not crossed last week; not 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, but at the beginnings of the Zionist project, which was built on a conquest of land and exclusively Jewish identity; this is historical reality. And when Palestinians met that discourse with an equally exclusivist nationalism on their part, the mold was set for the zero-sum, irreconcilable conflict that continues to this day.
Of Tea and Potions
Say what you will, at least Israelis don't bother sugar-coating their occupation anymore except to the most gullible foreign visitors.
With the horrors of Vietnam still fresh in America's historical memory, military leaders feel compelled to present their presence in Iraq or Afghanistan in the softest manner possible, at least for the natives' benefit. And so the Iraqi invasion was labelled, in all seriousness, "Operation Iraqi Freedom." In Afghanistan, thanks in part to the huge success of Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea, the US military created a program in which female soldiers, who are increasingly part of the kill chain, are being sent into Afghan homes to drink tea with women in order to help smooth relations between the occupier and occupied.
Perhaps the soldiers are slipping some sort of potion in the tea when the women aren't looking to convince them of America's benign intentions (this is a military, after all, that has actually spent money training soldiers to knock over goats with their minds). Or maybe the military is just drinking its own Kool-Aid. But the Afpak brass claims that this program is a "success" that will help pacify the often recalcitrant population.
Of course, the fact that the tea parties have been dubbed by commanders "tea as a weapon" suggests that, whatever the PR spin, the military has not lost sight of the program's function and purpose.
Back in the United States, however, the witchcraft seems to be working perfectly. If Israelis lounging in Tel Aviv's famed cafés rarely need bother about the troubles caused by their settler compatriots and stubborn Palestinians, a just released poll reveals that only 4% of Americans rank the almost decade long war to be a major issue as in advance of the mid-term elections. It's not that most support what General Petreaus and other commanders openly describe as an "endless" conflict (although a shocking number still do).
Like Israelis who complain that Palestinians don't want peace while the bulldozers clear away ever more Palestinian soil, most Americans are so focused on the lousy economy that they apparently feel they don't have the luxury to worry about the war. That the hundreds of billions of dollars spent annually on the war could be spent productively to stimulate the economy, retrain workers, rebuild infrastructure and educational institutions, and otherwise improve the employment prospects and economic situation of most Americans doesn't even cross their minds, so successful has the voodoo first practised by President Bush and now by his successor been.
Even the dean of American newscasters, Tom Brokaw, has been bewitched, complaining in a New York Times Oped recently that "we all would benefit from a campaign that engaged the vexing question of what happens next in the long and so far unresolved effort to deal with Islamic rage," as if America - its politics, its economic interests, and its toxic consumerist culture - hasn't played a significant role in fomenting and sustaining "Islamic" anger.
And so now we have the prospect of politicians like Christine O'Donnell and Avigdor Lieberman holding some part of the fate of their countries, and everyone else's with it, in their hands. Smiling giddily, they drive their countries ever closer to a precipice over which neither will be able to avoid careening, never mind returning in a form that resembles the ideals upon which they were founded - however flawed they may have been in practise.
At least in the movie, the audience could take comfort in the idea that Thelma and Louise would achieve a measure of peace as they sped off that desert cliff. There will be no witchraft powerful enough to make put a positive spin on where the United States and Israel are heading if they don't turn around before it's too late.
Mark LeVine is a professor of history at UC Irvine and senior visiting researcher at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden. He has authored several books including Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv and the Struggle for Palestine (University of California Press, 2005) and An Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989 (Zed Books, 2009).
Bush 'considered' bombing Syria
In memoir to be released soon, former US president says Israel wanted him to bomb suspected Syrian nuclear facility.
CIA image showing alleged covert nuclear reactor under construction, near Al Kibar, in the eastern desert of Syria
George Bush contemplated ordering a US military strike against a suspected Syrian nuclear facility at Israel's request in 2007, the former US president has reminisced in his memor to be published soon.
Israel eventually destroyed the facility, which Syria denied was for developing a nuclear weapons.
In his memoir, "Decision Points", to hit bookstores on Tuesday, Bush says that he received an intelligence report about a "suspicious, well-hidden facility in the eastern desert of Syria" that looked similar to a nuclear facility at Yongbyon, North Korea.
Shortly afterward, he spoke by phone with Ehud Olmert, then the Israeli prime minister.
"George, I'm asking you to bomb the compound," Olmert told Bush, according to the book, a copy of which was obtained by the Reuters news agency.
Bush said he discussed options with his national security team. A bombing mission was considered "but bombing a sovereign country with no warning or announced justification would create severe blowback," he writes.
A covert raid was discussed, but it was considered too risky to slip a team in and out of Syria undetected.
Bush received an intelligence assessment from then-CIA Director Mike Hayden, who reported that analysts had high confidence the plant housed a nuclear reactor but low confidence of a Syrian nuclear weapons programme.
Bush said he told Olmert, "I cannot justify an attack on a sovereign nation unless my intelligence agencies stand up and say it's a weapons programme."
Faulty intelligence
Bush had ordered the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 based on intelligence that said Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, which were never found.
Olmert was disappointed by Bush's decision to recommend a strategy of using diplomacy backed up by the threat of force to deal with Syria over the facility.
"Your strategy is very disturbing to me," Olmert told Bush, according to the book.
Bush denies charges that arose at the time that he had given a "green light" for Israel to attack the installation.
"Prime Minister Olmert hadn't asked for a green light and I hadn't given one. He had done what he believed was necessary to protect Israel," Bush says in the book.
In Jerusalem, Olmert's office declined comment on the disclosures in the Bush memoir.
Israel has never formally confirmed carrying out the sortie or targeting a nuclear facility.
The Olmert government was pursuing indirect peace talks with Syria at the time.
But Olmert, who resigned in a corruption scandal in 2008, has recently lifted the veil, speaking of a "daring operation" that he ordered despite opposition.
Bush writes that Olmert's "execution of the strike" against the Syrian compound made up for the confidence he had lost in the Israelis during their 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, which Bush feels had a mixed outcome.
Lebanon's young democracy emerged from the conflict stronger for having endured the test, Bush says, but "the result for Israel was mixed."
"Its military campaign weakened Hezbollah and helped secure its border. At the same time, the Israelis' shaky military performance cost them international credibility," Bush says.
CIA image showing alleged covert nuclear reactor under construction, near Al Kibar, in the eastern desert of Syria
George Bush contemplated ordering a US military strike against a suspected Syrian nuclear facility at Israel's request in 2007, the former US president has reminisced in his memor to be published soon.
Israel eventually destroyed the facility, which Syria denied was for developing a nuclear weapons.
In his memoir, "Decision Points", to hit bookstores on Tuesday, Bush says that he received an intelligence report about a "suspicious, well-hidden facility in the eastern desert of Syria" that looked similar to a nuclear facility at Yongbyon, North Korea.
Shortly afterward, he spoke by phone with Ehud Olmert, then the Israeli prime minister.
"George, I'm asking you to bomb the compound," Olmert told Bush, according to the book, a copy of which was obtained by the Reuters news agency.
Bush said he discussed options with his national security team. A bombing mission was considered "but bombing a sovereign country with no warning or announced justification would create severe blowback," he writes.
A covert raid was discussed, but it was considered too risky to slip a team in and out of Syria undetected.
Bush received an intelligence assessment from then-CIA Director Mike Hayden, who reported that analysts had high confidence the plant housed a nuclear reactor but low confidence of a Syrian nuclear weapons programme.
Bush said he told Olmert, "I cannot justify an attack on a sovereign nation unless my intelligence agencies stand up and say it's a weapons programme."
Faulty intelligence
Bush had ordered the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 based on intelligence that said Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, which were never found.
Olmert was disappointed by Bush's decision to recommend a strategy of using diplomacy backed up by the threat of force to deal with Syria over the facility.
"Your strategy is very disturbing to me," Olmert told Bush, according to the book.
Bush denies charges that arose at the time that he had given a "green light" for Israel to attack the installation.
"Prime Minister Olmert hadn't asked for a green light and I hadn't given one. He had done what he believed was necessary to protect Israel," Bush says in the book.
In Jerusalem, Olmert's office declined comment on the disclosures in the Bush memoir.
Israel has never formally confirmed carrying out the sortie or targeting a nuclear facility.
The Olmert government was pursuing indirect peace talks with Syria at the time.
But Olmert, who resigned in a corruption scandal in 2008, has recently lifted the veil, speaking of a "daring operation" that he ordered despite opposition.
Bush writes that Olmert's "execution of the strike" against the Syrian compound made up for the confidence he had lost in the Israelis during their 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, which Bush feels had a mixed outcome.
Lebanon's young democracy emerged from the conflict stronger for having endured the test, Bush says, but "the result for Israel was mixed."
"Its military campaign weakened Hezbollah and helped secure its border. At the same time, the Israelis' shaky military performance cost them international credibility," Bush says.
Bush 'considered' bombing Syria
In memoir to be released soon, former US president says Israel wanted him to bomb suspected Syrian nuclear facility.
CIA image showing alleged covert nuclear reactor under construction, near Al Kibar, in the eastern desert of Syria
George Bush contemplated ordering a US military strike against a suspected Syrian nuclear facility at Israel's request in 2007, the former US president has reminisced in his memor to be published soon.
Israel eventually destroyed the facility, which Syria denied was for developing a nuclear weapons.
In his memoir, "Decision Points", to hit bookstores on Tuesday, Bush says that he received an intelligence report about a "suspicious, well-hidden facility in the eastern desert of Syria" that looked similar to a nuclear facility at Yongbyon, North Korea.
Shortly afterward, he spoke by phone with Ehud Olmert, then the Israeli prime minister.
"George, I'm asking you to bomb the compound," Olmert told Bush, according to the book, a copy of which was obtained by the Reuters news agency.
Bush said he discussed options with his national security team. A bombing mission was considered "but bombing a sovereign country with no warning or announced justification would create severe blowback," he writes.
A covert raid was discussed, but it was considered too risky to slip a team in and out of Syria undetected.
Bush received an intelligence assessment from then-CIA Director Mike Hayden, who reported that analysts had high confidence the plant housed a nuclear reactor but low confidence of a Syrian nuclear weapons programme.
Bush said he told Olmert, "I cannot justify an attack on a sovereign nation unless my intelligence agencies stand up and say it's a weapons programme."
Faulty intelligence
Bush had ordered the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 based on intelligence that said Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, which were never found.
Olmert was disappointed by Bush's decision to recommend a strategy of using diplomacy backed up by the threat of force to deal with Syria over the facility.
"Your strategy is very disturbing to me," Olmert told Bush, according to the book.
Bush denies charges that arose at the time that he had given a "green light" for Israel to attack the installation.
"Prime Minister Olmert hadn't asked for a green light and I hadn't given one. He had done what he believed was necessary to protect Israel," Bush says in the book.
In Jerusalem, Olmert's office declined comment on the disclosures in the Bush memoir.
Israel has never formally confirmed carrying out the sortie or targeting a nuclear facility.
The Olmert government was pursuing indirect peace talks with Syria at the time.
But Olmert, who resigned in a corruption scandal in 2008, has recently lifted the veil, speaking of a "daring operation" that he ordered despite opposition.
Bush writes that Olmert's "execution of the strike" against the Syrian compound made up for the confidence he had lost in the Israelis during their 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, which Bush feels had a mixed outcome.
Lebanon's young democracy emerged from the conflict stronger for having endured the test, Bush says, but "the result for Israel was mixed."
"Its military campaign weakened Hezbollah and helped secure its border. At the same time, the Israelis' shaky military performance cost them international credibility," Bush says.
CIA image showing alleged covert nuclear reactor under construction, near Al Kibar, in the eastern desert of Syria
George Bush contemplated ordering a US military strike against a suspected Syrian nuclear facility at Israel's request in 2007, the former US president has reminisced in his memor to be published soon.
Israel eventually destroyed the facility, which Syria denied was for developing a nuclear weapons.
In his memoir, "Decision Points", to hit bookstores on Tuesday, Bush says that he received an intelligence report about a "suspicious, well-hidden facility in the eastern desert of Syria" that looked similar to a nuclear facility at Yongbyon, North Korea.
Shortly afterward, he spoke by phone with Ehud Olmert, then the Israeli prime minister.
"George, I'm asking you to bomb the compound," Olmert told Bush, according to the book, a copy of which was obtained by the Reuters news agency.
Bush said he discussed options with his national security team. A bombing mission was considered "but bombing a sovereign country with no warning or announced justification would create severe blowback," he writes.
A covert raid was discussed, but it was considered too risky to slip a team in and out of Syria undetected.
Bush received an intelligence assessment from then-CIA Director Mike Hayden, who reported that analysts had high confidence the plant housed a nuclear reactor but low confidence of a Syrian nuclear weapons programme.
Bush said he told Olmert, "I cannot justify an attack on a sovereign nation unless my intelligence agencies stand up and say it's a weapons programme."
Faulty intelligence
Bush had ordered the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 based on intelligence that said Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, which were never found.
Olmert was disappointed by Bush's decision to recommend a strategy of using diplomacy backed up by the threat of force to deal with Syria over the facility.
"Your strategy is very disturbing to me," Olmert told Bush, according to the book.
Bush denies charges that arose at the time that he had given a "green light" for Israel to attack the installation.
"Prime Minister Olmert hadn't asked for a green light and I hadn't given one. He had done what he believed was necessary to protect Israel," Bush says in the book.
In Jerusalem, Olmert's office declined comment on the disclosures in the Bush memoir.
Israel has never formally confirmed carrying out the sortie or targeting a nuclear facility.
The Olmert government was pursuing indirect peace talks with Syria at the time.
But Olmert, who resigned in a corruption scandal in 2008, has recently lifted the veil, speaking of a "daring operation" that he ordered despite opposition.
Bush writes that Olmert's "execution of the strike" against the Syrian compound made up for the confidence he had lost in the Israelis during their 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, which Bush feels had a mixed outcome.
Lebanon's young democracy emerged from the conflict stronger for having endured the test, Bush says, but "the result for Israel was mixed."
"Its military campaign weakened Hezbollah and helped secure its border. At the same time, the Israelis' shaky military performance cost them international credibility," Bush says.
US snubs Israel over threat to Iran
US rejects Israeli request for military threat against Iran over its nuclear programme, favouring continued sanctions.
Vice President Biden told the Jewish leaders in the US that a military threat against Iran was not necessary [REUTERS]
The US has rejected comments by Israel's prime minister calling for a military threat against Iran to ensure it does not obtain nuclear weapons.
"We know that they are concerned about the impact of the sanctions. The sanctions are biting more deeply than they anticipated and we are working very hard at this," Robert Gates, US defence secretary, said on Monday.
"So I would disagree that only a credible military threat can get Iran to take the actions it needs to end its nuclear weapons programme," he said during a visit to Australia for security talks.
"We are prepared to do what is necessary but at this point we continue to believe that the political-economic approach that we taking is in fact having an impact in Iran."
Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, told US Vice President Joe Biden on Sunday that only a "credible" military threat can deter Iran from building a nuclear weapon, Israeli political sources said.
Netanyahu, beginning a five-day US visit, argued that economic sanctions have failed to persuade Iran to stop its nuclear programme.
Peaceful resolution
However, Biden said after the talks that the sanctions "have a bite" and were having a "measurable impact", though he expressed frustration that Tehran had brushed aside overtures by President Barack Obama's administration.
"The only way to ensure that Iran will not go nuclear is to create a credible threat of military action against it if it doesn't cease its race for a nuclear weapon," one of the sources quoted Netanyahu as telling Biden.
In remarks to the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly in New Orleans, Biden said: "We continue to seek a peaceful resolution and hope Iranian leaders will reconsider their current destructive and debilitating course".
"But let me be very clear about this: We are also absolutely committed to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons."
The West believes that Iran aims to use its uranium enrichment programme to build atomic weapons, and both Israel and the United States have said all options are on the table in dealing with its nuclear ambitions.
But Netanyahu, who has in the past called for "crippling sanctions" against Iran, had made clear that Israel wanted to see if tough economic sanctions could eliminate what it described as a threat against its existence.
Tehran has repeatedly denied it is seeking to build atomic weapons and maintains that it has a right to produce its own fuel for several nuclear power plants it's building for civilian use.
Biden's discussions with Netanyahu comes on the heels of US mid-term elections that left Obama in a weakened position with Republicans in control of the House of Representatives and the Democrats clinging to a slender majority in the Senate.
US politicking
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham set a tough tone on Saturday at a security conference in Ottawa when he said conservatives want "bold" action on Iran.
If Obama "decides to be tough with Iran beyond sanctions, I think he is going to feel a lot of Republican support for the idea that we cannot let Iran develop a nuclear weapon," Graham told the Halifax International Security Forum.
"Sanctions are important. They are increasing pressure on Iran. But so far there has not been any change in the behaviour of Iran and upgrading of international pressure is necessary," Mark Regev, Netanyahu's spokesman, quoted him as telling Biden.
The impasse over Iran's nuclear activities has already led to fresh UN and EU sanctions against Tehran, which were followed by several other unilateral punitive measures by the United States and the European Union.
Sanctions notably ban investments in oil, gas and petrochemicals while also targeting banks, insurance, financial transactions and shipping - which Tehran has brushed off as having no impact.
But Iran has said it is prepared to resume talks from November 10 and proposed that they be held in Turkey rather than Vienna, the site proposed by Catherine Ashton, EU foreign policy chief.
The talks, which include Britain, China, France, Russia, Germany and the US, have been deadlocked since October 2009 when the two sides met in Geneva.
The New York Times reported last month that the Obama administration and its European allies were preparing a new, more onerous offer for Iran than the one rejected by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last year.
The offer would require Iran to send more than 1,995 kgs of low-enriched uranium out of the country, an increase of more than two-thirds from the amount required under a deal struck in Vienna.
Vice President Biden told the Jewish leaders in the US that a military threat against Iran was not necessary [REUTERS]
The US has rejected comments by Israel's prime minister calling for a military threat against Iran to ensure it does not obtain nuclear weapons.
"We know that they are concerned about the impact of the sanctions. The sanctions are biting more deeply than they anticipated and we are working very hard at this," Robert Gates, US defence secretary, said on Monday.
"So I would disagree that only a credible military threat can get Iran to take the actions it needs to end its nuclear weapons programme," he said during a visit to Australia for security talks.
"We are prepared to do what is necessary but at this point we continue to believe that the political-economic approach that we taking is in fact having an impact in Iran."
Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, told US Vice President Joe Biden on Sunday that only a "credible" military threat can deter Iran from building a nuclear weapon, Israeli political sources said.
Netanyahu, beginning a five-day US visit, argued that economic sanctions have failed to persuade Iran to stop its nuclear programme.
Peaceful resolution
However, Biden said after the talks that the sanctions "have a bite" and were having a "measurable impact", though he expressed frustration that Tehran had brushed aside overtures by President Barack Obama's administration.
"The only way to ensure that Iran will not go nuclear is to create a credible threat of military action against it if it doesn't cease its race for a nuclear weapon," one of the sources quoted Netanyahu as telling Biden.
In remarks to the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly in New Orleans, Biden said: "We continue to seek a peaceful resolution and hope Iranian leaders will reconsider their current destructive and debilitating course".
"But let me be very clear about this: We are also absolutely committed to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons."
The West believes that Iran aims to use its uranium enrichment programme to build atomic weapons, and both Israel and the United States have said all options are on the table in dealing with its nuclear ambitions.
But Netanyahu, who has in the past called for "crippling sanctions" against Iran, had made clear that Israel wanted to see if tough economic sanctions could eliminate what it described as a threat against its existence.
Tehran has repeatedly denied it is seeking to build atomic weapons and maintains that it has a right to produce its own fuel for several nuclear power plants it's building for civilian use.
Biden's discussions with Netanyahu comes on the heels of US mid-term elections that left Obama in a weakened position with Republicans in control of the House of Representatives and the Democrats clinging to a slender majority in the Senate.
US politicking
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham set a tough tone on Saturday at a security conference in Ottawa when he said conservatives want "bold" action on Iran.
If Obama "decides to be tough with Iran beyond sanctions, I think he is going to feel a lot of Republican support for the idea that we cannot let Iran develop a nuclear weapon," Graham told the Halifax International Security Forum.
"Sanctions are important. They are increasing pressure on Iran. But so far there has not been any change in the behaviour of Iran and upgrading of international pressure is necessary," Mark Regev, Netanyahu's spokesman, quoted him as telling Biden.
The impasse over Iran's nuclear activities has already led to fresh UN and EU sanctions against Tehran, which were followed by several other unilateral punitive measures by the United States and the European Union.
Sanctions notably ban investments in oil, gas and petrochemicals while also targeting banks, insurance, financial transactions and shipping - which Tehran has brushed off as having no impact.
But Iran has said it is prepared to resume talks from November 10 and proposed that they be held in Turkey rather than Vienna, the site proposed by Catherine Ashton, EU foreign policy chief.
The talks, which include Britain, China, France, Russia, Germany and the US, have been deadlocked since October 2009 when the two sides met in Geneva.
The New York Times reported last month that the Obama administration and its European allies were preparing a new, more onerous offer for Iran than the one rejected by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last year.
The offer would require Iran to send more than 1,995 kgs of low-enriched uranium out of the country, an increase of more than two-thirds from the amount required under a deal struck in Vienna.
Championing democracy - but not yet
Supporting democratic reform in the Muslim world must be a central element of US counter-terrorism policy.
Robert Grenier Last Modified: 06 Nov 2010 13:56 GMT
With presidential elections in Egypt due next year, Obama's apparent indifference to the fate of political reform in the country could have far-reaching consequences [GALLO/GETTY]
"Lord, make me a champion of democracy - but not yet."
Those words, a paraphrase of the famous quote from Saint Augustine, sum up nicely the attitude of US governments, both Democratic and Republican, where the issue of political reform in the Arab and Muslim world is concerned. That is not to suggest, however, that most Americans are ready to acknowledge such ambivalence, even to themselves. No, Americans take comfort in the rhetoric of democracy, and pride themselves on their own democratic history, seeing that legacy not merely as a reflection of their peculiar national experience, but as a model to others and a manifestation of a universal yearning among men. To Americans, democracy is synonymous with virtue.
As with most virtues, however, adherence to democratic principles is likely to be consistent only when combined with a clear sense of enlightened self-interest. For Americans, the link between democracy and self-interest is clear enough at home. But when gazing beyond the water's edge, Americans easily lose sight of the link between their principles and national security - save in the most vague, long-range terms, captured in such phrases as "democracies are inherently moderate," or "democracies do not lightly make war" - both of which are perhaps dubious propositions, at best.
Instead, concern for international democracy is relegated to the realm of altruism, and its proponents often dismissed, whenever countervailing national interests present themselves, as fuzzy-headed idealists incapable of firm leadership in foreign affairs, which is best left in any case to the clear-eyed proponents of realpolitik. Not all Americans subscribe to this view, of course, but the irony is that in the US, even the proponents of international democracy fail to make a compelling case for it.
The Egyptian example
Barack Obama, the US president, and The Washington Post have provided us with but the most recent example. When meeting last September with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Obama went out of his way, according to the White House account of their discussions, to advocate for civil society, open political competition and transparent elections.
With the Egyptian parliamentary vote due later this month, the picture looks rather different: the Egyptian government has again rejected election monitors, both domestic and international; it has launched a crackdown on the political opposition, arresting some 260 members of the Muslim Brotherhood, among others; it has suspended the licenses of 17 private independent television channels; and it has restricted text messaging, the organising tool of choice for street oppositionists.
With pivotal presidential elections in Egypt due next year, the US president's apparent indifference to the fate of political reform in Egypt has potentially far-reaching consequences - but it is not merely the result of inattention. It is worth noting that the occasion of Obama's September meeting with Mubarak was the launch of the latest ill-fated Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Egyptian support for which is a major preoccupation of the White House.
The Washington Post's reaction to the administration's failure to maintain pressure on Mubarak is also instructive. The best they could do to justify their denunciation of Obama's policy was to complain that Mubarak had "defied" him, and to invidiously compare the relative passivity shown toward Mubarak with the recent unpleasantness displayed toward Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, over his settlement policies. So much for ringing endorsements of democracy.
Misunderstanding?
In fact, the championing of democratic reform in the Muslim world should not simply be a matter of altruism, easily set aside when seemingly more compelling national interests present themselves. Instead, it should be seen as a central element in US counter-terrorism policy.
Counter-terrorism experts in the US and the West decry the lack of a coherent "counter-narrative" to that presented by violent extremists, who win new converts to their cause in part by vilifying the allegedly perfidious role played by the US in subjugating Muslims, both directly and through support to unrepresentative and repressive regimes.
"We are losing the information war," they lament. Most, however, fundamentally misunderstand the problem. To them, the negative perceptions of the US are the result of some colossal misunderstanding. Yes, it is often misunderstood, but the negative perception of the US is not fundamentally the result of others' failure to see the basic goodness of its intentions: it is a result of US policies which, while they may not aim at the repression of Muslims as a matter of intent, often contribute to that effect.
The "extremist narrative" cannot be countered by showing images of smiling Muslims happy to be living in the US; it can only be effectively combated when the US genuinely addresses the core concerns of Muslims.
Justice and democracy
For this, there are two main elements: justice and democracy. To be clear, justice cannot be imposed by the US. Nor can the demands of justice for oppressed Muslims, whether in Chechnya, Palestine, Xinjiang or Kashmir, be easily addressed. Most involve complicated disputes requiring patient diplomacy. But if, as a great power, the US genuinely pressed for resolution of these disputes, and did so in a way which made justice for those victimised a clear, consistent, well-articulated and forcefully-supported element of US policy, perceptions of the US would change over time.
Secondly, and just as importantly, we must remember that terrorism is the tool of the weak. It is engaged in by people who feel themselves or those with whom they identify to be oppressed, and who see no other means of redressing their grievances. If we are to oppose resort to terrorism as illegitimate, as we must, we should also include as part of that policy provision for legitimate, political means of redress. And that means championing democracy.
The most important recent call to support of international democracy, little remembered now, was the second inaugural address of President George W. Bush, delivered in January, 2005. I remember being greatly heartened by that speech, not just because it was a ringing endorsement of American values, which it was, but because I saw it as a key element of US counter-terrorism policy, for which I was a senior responsible official at the time. Commitment and follow-through on those words were sorely lacking, but I am convinced that the policy espoused in 2005 remains firmly linked to long-term global security.
None of this is to suggest that a commitment to democracy can be pursued in a vacuum, or that its implementation will be easy. There will always be conflicting, countervailing interests which must be addressed and accommodated, and in any case US influence in the world has clear, and perhaps growing, limits. Moreover, the spread of democracy will not eliminate extremism. It will make it much more difficult, however, for those who espouse the use of violence to attract new adherents to their cause, by changing the environment in which such appeals are made.
A consistent commitment to democracy, even if sometimes inconsistently applied, is genuinely in the security interests of the US and, perhaps paradoxically, in the long-term interests of some of the US' most important and currently undemocratic allies in the region.
Long-term US and regional security have not been well-served when the US and others have failed to support democratic outcomes which they thought might work against their perceived short-term interests: in 1992 in Algeria, in 2006 in Palestine, and, perhaps, now in Egypt.
As St. Augustine himself came to realise, change which must be implemented eventually is usually best implemented now.
Robert Grenier is a retired, 27-year veteran of the CIA's Clandestine Service. He was the director of the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Centre from 2004 to 2006.
Robert Grenier Last Modified: 06 Nov 2010 13:56 GMT
With presidential elections in Egypt due next year, Obama's apparent indifference to the fate of political reform in the country could have far-reaching consequences [GALLO/GETTY]
"Lord, make me a champion of democracy - but not yet."
Those words, a paraphrase of the famous quote from Saint Augustine, sum up nicely the attitude of US governments, both Democratic and Republican, where the issue of political reform in the Arab and Muslim world is concerned. That is not to suggest, however, that most Americans are ready to acknowledge such ambivalence, even to themselves. No, Americans take comfort in the rhetoric of democracy, and pride themselves on their own democratic history, seeing that legacy not merely as a reflection of their peculiar national experience, but as a model to others and a manifestation of a universal yearning among men. To Americans, democracy is synonymous with virtue.
As with most virtues, however, adherence to democratic principles is likely to be consistent only when combined with a clear sense of enlightened self-interest. For Americans, the link between democracy and self-interest is clear enough at home. But when gazing beyond the water's edge, Americans easily lose sight of the link between their principles and national security - save in the most vague, long-range terms, captured in such phrases as "democracies are inherently moderate," or "democracies do not lightly make war" - both of which are perhaps dubious propositions, at best.
Instead, concern for international democracy is relegated to the realm of altruism, and its proponents often dismissed, whenever countervailing national interests present themselves, as fuzzy-headed idealists incapable of firm leadership in foreign affairs, which is best left in any case to the clear-eyed proponents of realpolitik. Not all Americans subscribe to this view, of course, but the irony is that in the US, even the proponents of international democracy fail to make a compelling case for it.
The Egyptian example
Barack Obama, the US president, and The Washington Post have provided us with but the most recent example. When meeting last September with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Obama went out of his way, according to the White House account of their discussions, to advocate for civil society, open political competition and transparent elections.
With the Egyptian parliamentary vote due later this month, the picture looks rather different: the Egyptian government has again rejected election monitors, both domestic and international; it has launched a crackdown on the political opposition, arresting some 260 members of the Muslim Brotherhood, among others; it has suspended the licenses of 17 private independent television channels; and it has restricted text messaging, the organising tool of choice for street oppositionists.
With pivotal presidential elections in Egypt due next year, the US president's apparent indifference to the fate of political reform in Egypt has potentially far-reaching consequences - but it is not merely the result of inattention. It is worth noting that the occasion of Obama's September meeting with Mubarak was the launch of the latest ill-fated Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Egyptian support for which is a major preoccupation of the White House.
The Washington Post's reaction to the administration's failure to maintain pressure on Mubarak is also instructive. The best they could do to justify their denunciation of Obama's policy was to complain that Mubarak had "defied" him, and to invidiously compare the relative passivity shown toward Mubarak with the recent unpleasantness displayed toward Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, over his settlement policies. So much for ringing endorsements of democracy.
Misunderstanding?
In fact, the championing of democratic reform in the Muslim world should not simply be a matter of altruism, easily set aside when seemingly more compelling national interests present themselves. Instead, it should be seen as a central element in US counter-terrorism policy.
Counter-terrorism experts in the US and the West decry the lack of a coherent "counter-narrative" to that presented by violent extremists, who win new converts to their cause in part by vilifying the allegedly perfidious role played by the US in subjugating Muslims, both directly and through support to unrepresentative and repressive regimes.
"We are losing the information war," they lament. Most, however, fundamentally misunderstand the problem. To them, the negative perceptions of the US are the result of some colossal misunderstanding. Yes, it is often misunderstood, but the negative perception of the US is not fundamentally the result of others' failure to see the basic goodness of its intentions: it is a result of US policies which, while they may not aim at the repression of Muslims as a matter of intent, often contribute to that effect.
The "extremist narrative" cannot be countered by showing images of smiling Muslims happy to be living in the US; it can only be effectively combated when the US genuinely addresses the core concerns of Muslims.
Justice and democracy
For this, there are two main elements: justice and democracy. To be clear, justice cannot be imposed by the US. Nor can the demands of justice for oppressed Muslims, whether in Chechnya, Palestine, Xinjiang or Kashmir, be easily addressed. Most involve complicated disputes requiring patient diplomacy. But if, as a great power, the US genuinely pressed for resolution of these disputes, and did so in a way which made justice for those victimised a clear, consistent, well-articulated and forcefully-supported element of US policy, perceptions of the US would change over time.
Secondly, and just as importantly, we must remember that terrorism is the tool of the weak. It is engaged in by people who feel themselves or those with whom they identify to be oppressed, and who see no other means of redressing their grievances. If we are to oppose resort to terrorism as illegitimate, as we must, we should also include as part of that policy provision for legitimate, political means of redress. And that means championing democracy.
The most important recent call to support of international democracy, little remembered now, was the second inaugural address of President George W. Bush, delivered in January, 2005. I remember being greatly heartened by that speech, not just because it was a ringing endorsement of American values, which it was, but because I saw it as a key element of US counter-terrorism policy, for which I was a senior responsible official at the time. Commitment and follow-through on those words were sorely lacking, but I am convinced that the policy espoused in 2005 remains firmly linked to long-term global security.
None of this is to suggest that a commitment to democracy can be pursued in a vacuum, or that its implementation will be easy. There will always be conflicting, countervailing interests which must be addressed and accommodated, and in any case US influence in the world has clear, and perhaps growing, limits. Moreover, the spread of democracy will not eliminate extremism. It will make it much more difficult, however, for those who espouse the use of violence to attract new adherents to their cause, by changing the environment in which such appeals are made.
A consistent commitment to democracy, even if sometimes inconsistently applied, is genuinely in the security interests of the US and, perhaps paradoxically, in the long-term interests of some of the US' most important and currently undemocratic allies in the region.
Long-term US and regional security have not been well-served when the US and others have failed to support democratic outcomes which they thought might work against their perceived short-term interests: in 1992 in Algeria, in 2006 in Palestine, and, perhaps, now in Egypt.
As St. Augustine himself came to realise, change which must be implemented eventually is usually best implemented now.
Robert Grenier is a retired, 27-year veteran of the CIA's Clandestine Service. He was the director of the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Centre from 2004 to 2006.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Tariq Aziz: villain or victim?
The decision to deliver a death sentence to Tariq Aziz has caused a stir in the international community.
Mark Seddon Last Modified: 27 Oct 2010 10:02 GMT
The decision passed down by Iraq's high tribunal to sentence Tariq Aziz, former foreign minister to death, has caused a stir in the international community. However, it is unlikely many, if any, will speak out against the decision [EPA]
So what really lies behind the decision by Iraq's high tribunal to pass a death sentence on Tariq Aziz, long serving Iraqi foreign minister and number two to Saddam Hussein? The decision has caused shock waves around the World, largely because the sentence has the feel of vengeance to it. The Iraqi High Tribunal took what must be a highly unusual step in effectively rescinding the earlier judgments against him. For Tariq Aziz’s twenty seven year sentence has effectively been reduced to a matter of months by his death sentence. Aziz has now been found guilty of “the persecution of Islamic parties”, whose leaders were assassinated, imprisoned or forced into exile.
One of Saddam’s main targets was – according to the high tribunal - the Islamic Dawa party of current Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite Muslim. Presumably there was enough proof to show that Tariq Aziz was involved with this persecution as well, and if so we can be fairly certain that retribution has indeed played a part in his death sentence. How ironic then that many Western Governments seemed so content for Saddam’s regime to contain Islamic parties at the time. But don’t hold your breath; it seems fairly unlikely that there will be calls for clemency from Washington and London.
Tariq Aziz is of course a Chaldean Christian, who along with the Assyrian Christians, have suffered terribly since the War, with more than half of their number now living in exile. Being the only Christian in a secular Ba’athist dictatorship was a factor apparently exploited by Saddam, with veiled threats being made periodically to Aziz’s family. I remember being in Iraq and hearing that Aziz feared Saddam, and that he was only too aware of the fragility of his family’s safety. Which is not to excuse Aziz for “following orders”, but it may go some way to explain why Aziz stayed in Baghdad even when it was obvious to him, if not Saddam, that America and Britain were deadly serious about invading. It was even rumoured at the time that Aziz was playing a double game towards the end – certainly that was my view when he was first incarcerated when the war ended. I fully expected him to be released in five years and retire to a bungalow in Beirut.
I reported from inside Iraq on two occasions just before the war began. I remember seeing Aziz in the foyer of the Al Rasheed hotel in Baghdad, playing court to the Nationalist Russian leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky and the late Austrian far right leader, Jorg Haider. Eventually my requests to interview him paid off. I was taken to the Foreign Ministry in a blacked out limousine, into an underground car park, and up in an elevator to the echoing corridors. Aziz was sitting alone in a large armchair, Iraqi flags to his left and right puffing on an extra large cigar. He told me that “I have met your Mr Heath and Mrs Thatcher, but not your Mr Blair”.
“Please tell Mr Blair that we have no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq”, said Aziz. “Please tell him that he is welcome to come here, or send anyone who wishes to see for themselves”. I wasn’t sure just how serious Aziz was with his offer, particularly since each attempt over the preceding week to be allowed to visit some of the sites identified by Western intelligence as containing WMD were turned down with ever more ludicrous excuses. But having interviewed the former head of the UNSCOM weapons inspections team, Scott Ritter at some length, I was pretty sure that Aziz was telling the truth about WMD when he said Iraq didn’t have any. At the time I was also an elected member of the UK Labour Party’s ruling National Executive, so I did pass the message on to Tony Blair, who looked at me quizzically. He later joked to junior Foreign Minister, Chris Mullin that “the Iraqis must be getting desperate if they are talking to Mark Seddon”.
Some months after the war ended, I began wondering what had happened to Tariq Aziz. After all he had handed himself over to the Americans when they arrived in Baghdad. I finally managed to track his wife and two sons down to a hotel in Amman, Jordan, where they were being looked after by Chaldean Christians. Mrs Aziz was distraught, as she had learned that her husband had suffered a heart attack in custody. She had finally managed to trace Tariq Aziz to a prison holding camp near Baghdad airport, and had but a very short note scrawled by her husband saying “Don’t worry, I am ok”, which had been delivered to her by the Red Cross. One of Aziz’s sons was already contemplating moving to America to qualify as a dentist, although I recall advising him at the time that he might need to change his name before he could get a visa, as ‘Saddam Aziz’ was unlikely to go down well with US Homeland Security.
Tariq Aziz is 74, and in poor health. He has been for a long time. Given his sentence, it seems unlikely that he will ever leave custody, except in a wooden box. But vengeance is clearly a powerful motivating force. Nor should he expect much help from many of those Western politicians who used to pay homage to him back in the 1980s, when Iraq was an invaluable ally against the Ayatollah’s Iran. I even remember seeing pictures of Donald Rumsfeld watching Iraqi rockets being fired on the Fawr Peninsula – rockets he had been very keen to sell them. Perhaps Aziz, who could tell the whole story of Western involvement in Iraq, before, during and after the war, is simply too embarrassing and potentially compromising a figure to be allowed to live out his days in prison.
Mark Seddon is a writer and broadcaster. He is the former United Nations correspondent for Al Jazeera English. He currently writes for among others, The Guardian, The Independent, Daily Mail, Spectator, New Statesman, and Private Eye. He is a former editor of Tribune.
Mark Seddon Last Modified: 27 Oct 2010 10:02 GMT
The decision passed down by Iraq's high tribunal to sentence Tariq Aziz, former foreign minister to death, has caused a stir in the international community. However, it is unlikely many, if any, will speak out against the decision [EPA]
So what really lies behind the decision by Iraq's high tribunal to pass a death sentence on Tariq Aziz, long serving Iraqi foreign minister and number two to Saddam Hussein? The decision has caused shock waves around the World, largely because the sentence has the feel of vengeance to it. The Iraqi High Tribunal took what must be a highly unusual step in effectively rescinding the earlier judgments against him. For Tariq Aziz’s twenty seven year sentence has effectively been reduced to a matter of months by his death sentence. Aziz has now been found guilty of “the persecution of Islamic parties”, whose leaders were assassinated, imprisoned or forced into exile.
One of Saddam’s main targets was – according to the high tribunal - the Islamic Dawa party of current Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite Muslim. Presumably there was enough proof to show that Tariq Aziz was involved with this persecution as well, and if so we can be fairly certain that retribution has indeed played a part in his death sentence. How ironic then that many Western Governments seemed so content for Saddam’s regime to contain Islamic parties at the time. But don’t hold your breath; it seems fairly unlikely that there will be calls for clemency from Washington and London.
Tariq Aziz is of course a Chaldean Christian, who along with the Assyrian Christians, have suffered terribly since the War, with more than half of their number now living in exile. Being the only Christian in a secular Ba’athist dictatorship was a factor apparently exploited by Saddam, with veiled threats being made periodically to Aziz’s family. I remember being in Iraq and hearing that Aziz feared Saddam, and that he was only too aware of the fragility of his family’s safety. Which is not to excuse Aziz for “following orders”, but it may go some way to explain why Aziz stayed in Baghdad even when it was obvious to him, if not Saddam, that America and Britain were deadly serious about invading. It was even rumoured at the time that Aziz was playing a double game towards the end – certainly that was my view when he was first incarcerated when the war ended. I fully expected him to be released in five years and retire to a bungalow in Beirut.
I reported from inside Iraq on two occasions just before the war began. I remember seeing Aziz in the foyer of the Al Rasheed hotel in Baghdad, playing court to the Nationalist Russian leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky and the late Austrian far right leader, Jorg Haider. Eventually my requests to interview him paid off. I was taken to the Foreign Ministry in a blacked out limousine, into an underground car park, and up in an elevator to the echoing corridors. Aziz was sitting alone in a large armchair, Iraqi flags to his left and right puffing on an extra large cigar. He told me that “I have met your Mr Heath and Mrs Thatcher, but not your Mr Blair”.
“Please tell Mr Blair that we have no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq”, said Aziz. “Please tell him that he is welcome to come here, or send anyone who wishes to see for themselves”. I wasn’t sure just how serious Aziz was with his offer, particularly since each attempt over the preceding week to be allowed to visit some of the sites identified by Western intelligence as containing WMD were turned down with ever more ludicrous excuses. But having interviewed the former head of the UNSCOM weapons inspections team, Scott Ritter at some length, I was pretty sure that Aziz was telling the truth about WMD when he said Iraq didn’t have any. At the time I was also an elected member of the UK Labour Party’s ruling National Executive, so I did pass the message on to Tony Blair, who looked at me quizzically. He later joked to junior Foreign Minister, Chris Mullin that “the Iraqis must be getting desperate if they are talking to Mark Seddon”.
Some months after the war ended, I began wondering what had happened to Tariq Aziz. After all he had handed himself over to the Americans when they arrived in Baghdad. I finally managed to track his wife and two sons down to a hotel in Amman, Jordan, where they were being looked after by Chaldean Christians. Mrs Aziz was distraught, as she had learned that her husband had suffered a heart attack in custody. She had finally managed to trace Tariq Aziz to a prison holding camp near Baghdad airport, and had but a very short note scrawled by her husband saying “Don’t worry, I am ok”, which had been delivered to her by the Red Cross. One of Aziz’s sons was already contemplating moving to America to qualify as a dentist, although I recall advising him at the time that he might need to change his name before he could get a visa, as ‘Saddam Aziz’ was unlikely to go down well with US Homeland Security.
Tariq Aziz is 74, and in poor health. He has been for a long time. Given his sentence, it seems unlikely that he will ever leave custody, except in a wooden box. But vengeance is clearly a powerful motivating force. Nor should he expect much help from many of those Western politicians who used to pay homage to him back in the 1980s, when Iraq was an invaluable ally against the Ayatollah’s Iran. I even remember seeing pictures of Donald Rumsfeld watching Iraqi rockets being fired on the Fawr Peninsula – rockets he had been very keen to sell them. Perhaps Aziz, who could tell the whole story of Western involvement in Iraq, before, during and after the war, is simply too embarrassing and potentially compromising a figure to be allowed to live out his days in prison.
Mark Seddon is a writer and broadcaster. He is the former United Nations correspondent for Al Jazeera English. He currently writes for among others, The Guardian, The Independent, Daily Mail, Spectator, New Statesman, and Private Eye. He is a former editor of Tribune.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Media war: WikiLeaks v the Pentagon
Analysing the media coverage of the latest WikiLeaks release reveals some interesting insights.
Danny Schechter Last Modified: 25 Oct 2010 16:07 GMT
The Pentagon is engaged in a different kind of conflictp; an information war with Julian Assange's WikiLeaks website has significantly eroded the credibility of US military planning, protocol and enactment [EPA]
It happened on a Friday, the anniversary of the first US casualties of the Vietnam War way back in 1957. It was also the anniversary, in 1964, of French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre’s announcement that he was turning down the Nobel Prize.
It was the day this year that the often shadowy WikiLeaks, chief nemesis of the Pentagon, maybe their worst nightmare - considered perhaps even more dangerous than the Taliban - surfaced again with the largest public drop of secret military documents in history. WikiLeaks is a public web site run by the Sunshine Press, a non-profit group.
WikiLeaks introduced the significance of their immense treasure trove of secrets on their website this way: “The 391,832 reports ('The Iraq War Logs'), document the war and occupation in Iraq, from 1st January 2004 to 31st December 2009 (except for the months of May 2004 and March 2009) as told by soldiers in the United States Army. Each is a 'SIGACT' or Significant Action in the war. They detail events as seen and heard by the US military troops on the ground in Iraq and are the first real glimpse into the secret history of the war that the United States government has been privy to throughout.”
This time around, and unlike the earlier dissemination of what they called Afghan "war logs," they sanitized these documents to remove names that might become targets for retribution. The gesture did not satisfy the Pentagon, which said they would provide aid and comfort to the enemy. Forcibly retired General Stanley McCrystal called the release "sad."
The Los Angeles Times reported, "In addition to the Times, the documents were made available to the Guardian newspaper in London, the French newspaper Le Monde, Al Jazeera and the German magazine Der Spiegel, on an embargoed basis."
The New York Times said it had edited or withheld any documents that would "put lives in danger or jeopardize continuing military operations." It said it redacted the names of informants, a particular concern of the defence department.
The Pentagon had been bracing for the release for months. Fearing more compromises of national security and more embarrassment for practices they wanted hidden, they had set up a WikiLeaks war room staffed with 120 operatives in anticipation.
A special intelligence unit called the Red Cell was involved. The task has been to prod the American spy networks to operate in a cleverer and more intelligent manner. (Ironically, WikiLeaks had leaked some of their internal reports earlier.)
One report dealt with perceptions abroad that the US supported terrorists. Another was oriented toward how to sell support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in Western Europe, counseling that “counting on apathy is not enough."
I can testify to their savvy. I met members of the unit at a University of Westminister conference on war and terrorism in London in September. There were three of them. Two stood out because of their crew cuts and military demeanor. A third was a Muslim woman. They were clearly on a reconnaissance mission probably linked to WikiLeaks detection since it had been reported that English students were helping the covert citizen agency target covert government activities.
I spoke at some length with their leader, an active-duty army major, who told me that his unit in Iraq handled high-value prisoners, including Saddam Hussein. (They escorted him to the hangman, he revealed.) He was very friendly and made no secret of his affiliation but clearly was not at a leftist academic conference to collect footnotes.
As we know now, the Pentagon was unable to stop the release, but may have pressured WikiLeaks not to name names. We may never know what happened until WikiLeaks finds some document about their anti-WikiLeaks operations.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange accused the Pentagon of more than document editing. CNN reported, "The founder of WikiLeaks was denied a Swedish residency permit on Monday and said his whistleblowing website had been cut off by a company that handled many of its donations. Julian Assange blamed the financial cutoff on the US government, which denied any involvement.”
He had earlier intimated the United States might have been behind the other incidents in Sweden that led to his being accused of sexual harassment: so-called "honey pot traps" used in seduction scenarios have always been part of espionage operations.
A week earlier, an American veteran of the Iraq "surge" published an open letter urging the administration to heed the revelations and change its policies.
Josh Stieber wrote:
Dear members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and other willing parties, this is an anticipatory letter aimed to advise you on your response and responsibility for the coming WikiLeaks release, expected on October 23rd. Based on the White House’s response to the last leak about Afghanistan, the temptation seems strong to once again divert attention away from accountability. I write as a young veteran who once fully embraced the concept of a preemptive war to keep my fellow citizens safe and, as President Bush declared, because 'America is a friend to the people of Iraq.' I now hope to preempt your response to the information regarding that war in which I fought.
The full brunt of the US response has yet to be felt. The media outlets that worked with WikiLeaks have a new scoop of unprecedented depth and dimension. Yet the different ways media outlets reported the disclosures reveals continuing media biases against allegations of torture.
The New York Times played up the revelations in a page-one spread but downplayed their meaning writing: "…the Iraq documents provide no earthshaking revelations, but they offer insight, texture and context from the people actually fighting the war".
Not surprisingly, reports of widespread torture that American forces knew about,and in some cases reported with nothing done, is not "earthshaking". Unreported civilian deaths numbering 15,000 are also minimized. The Times devoted more ink to evidence of abuses by Iraqi forces without mentioning most were trained by Americans who were the occupying power. It fleshes out US military allegations of Iranian intervention more than reports of killings by American soldiers, an emphasis that conveniently contributes to the demonization of Iran by American politicians.
Contrast this with the Guardian coverage which called its package "Iraq: The War Logs," and goes high with revelations of "serial detainee abuse" and "15,000 [previously] unknown civilian deaths".
The Times approach infuriated writer Rob Beschizza, who came up with what he called "The New York Times Torture Euphemism Generator".
"Reading the NYT's stories about the Iraq War logs, I was struck by how it could get through such gruesome descriptions - fingers chopped off, chemicals splashed on prisoners - without using the word 'torture.' For some reason the word is unavailable when it is literally meaningful, yet is readily tossed around for laughs in contexts where it means nothing at all."
Oddly, the New York Times-owned Boston Globe had no reservations in using torture in its headline.
The New York -ased Columbia Journalism Review surveyed global coverage and, weirdly, criticized Al Jazeera for a video it produced: "All in all, Al Jazeera's coverage of the secret files is straightforward, except perhaps for a six-and-a-half minute documentary video posted prominently throughout the site, a video that is awkwardly edited and features weird, cable-TV-style reenactments and dramatic readings of some of the reports." This condescending comment betrays a lack of insight into the differences between TV coverage and newspaper formulas.
While all of the press seems to be reporting the story, few media outlets are going back to their own coverage and acknowledging how they had failed at the time, to report many of the atrocities we now know the US military knew about, and covered up. One glaring example: the killings that took place in Fallujah, where Al Jazeera correspondents were banned.
Much of the media, as we now see, especially leading American media outlets, were complicit in a multi-year cover-up of truths and crimes that continue to this day, not just in Iraq or Afghanistan, but in our living rooms at home.
Danny Schechter, made the film Plunder The Crime of Our Time about the financial crisis as a crime story (Plunderthecrimeofourtime.com) and blogs for Mediachannel.org.
Danny Schechter Last Modified: 25 Oct 2010 16:07 GMT
The Pentagon is engaged in a different kind of conflictp; an information war with Julian Assange's WikiLeaks website has significantly eroded the credibility of US military planning, protocol and enactment [EPA]
It happened on a Friday, the anniversary of the first US casualties of the Vietnam War way back in 1957. It was also the anniversary, in 1964, of French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre’s announcement that he was turning down the Nobel Prize.
It was the day this year that the often shadowy WikiLeaks, chief nemesis of the Pentagon, maybe their worst nightmare - considered perhaps even more dangerous than the Taliban - surfaced again with the largest public drop of secret military documents in history. WikiLeaks is a public web site run by the Sunshine Press, a non-profit group.
WikiLeaks introduced the significance of their immense treasure trove of secrets on their website this way: “The 391,832 reports ('The Iraq War Logs'), document the war and occupation in Iraq, from 1st January 2004 to 31st December 2009 (except for the months of May 2004 and March 2009) as told by soldiers in the United States Army. Each is a 'SIGACT' or Significant Action in the war. They detail events as seen and heard by the US military troops on the ground in Iraq and are the first real glimpse into the secret history of the war that the United States government has been privy to throughout.”
This time around, and unlike the earlier dissemination of what they called Afghan "war logs," they sanitized these documents to remove names that might become targets for retribution. The gesture did not satisfy the Pentagon, which said they would provide aid and comfort to the enemy. Forcibly retired General Stanley McCrystal called the release "sad."
The Los Angeles Times reported, "In addition to the Times, the documents were made available to the Guardian newspaper in London, the French newspaper Le Monde, Al Jazeera and the German magazine Der Spiegel, on an embargoed basis."
The New York Times said it had edited or withheld any documents that would "put lives in danger or jeopardize continuing military operations." It said it redacted the names of informants, a particular concern of the defence department.
The Pentagon had been bracing for the release for months. Fearing more compromises of national security and more embarrassment for practices they wanted hidden, they had set up a WikiLeaks war room staffed with 120 operatives in anticipation.
A special intelligence unit called the Red Cell was involved. The task has been to prod the American spy networks to operate in a cleverer and more intelligent manner. (Ironically, WikiLeaks had leaked some of their internal reports earlier.)
One report dealt with perceptions abroad that the US supported terrorists. Another was oriented toward how to sell support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in Western Europe, counseling that “counting on apathy is not enough."
I can testify to their savvy. I met members of the unit at a University of Westminister conference on war and terrorism in London in September. There were three of them. Two stood out because of their crew cuts and military demeanor. A third was a Muslim woman. They were clearly on a reconnaissance mission probably linked to WikiLeaks detection since it had been reported that English students were helping the covert citizen agency target covert government activities.
I spoke at some length with their leader, an active-duty army major, who told me that his unit in Iraq handled high-value prisoners, including Saddam Hussein. (They escorted him to the hangman, he revealed.) He was very friendly and made no secret of his affiliation but clearly was not at a leftist academic conference to collect footnotes.
As we know now, the Pentagon was unable to stop the release, but may have pressured WikiLeaks not to name names. We may never know what happened until WikiLeaks finds some document about their anti-WikiLeaks operations.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange accused the Pentagon of more than document editing. CNN reported, "The founder of WikiLeaks was denied a Swedish residency permit on Monday and said his whistleblowing website had been cut off by a company that handled many of its donations. Julian Assange blamed the financial cutoff on the US government, which denied any involvement.”
He had earlier intimated the United States might have been behind the other incidents in Sweden that led to his being accused of sexual harassment: so-called "honey pot traps" used in seduction scenarios have always been part of espionage operations.
A week earlier, an American veteran of the Iraq "surge" published an open letter urging the administration to heed the revelations and change its policies.
Josh Stieber wrote:
Dear members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and other willing parties, this is an anticipatory letter aimed to advise you on your response and responsibility for the coming WikiLeaks release, expected on October 23rd. Based on the White House’s response to the last leak about Afghanistan, the temptation seems strong to once again divert attention away from accountability. I write as a young veteran who once fully embraced the concept of a preemptive war to keep my fellow citizens safe and, as President Bush declared, because 'America is a friend to the people of Iraq.' I now hope to preempt your response to the information regarding that war in which I fought.
The full brunt of the US response has yet to be felt. The media outlets that worked with WikiLeaks have a new scoop of unprecedented depth and dimension. Yet the different ways media outlets reported the disclosures reveals continuing media biases against allegations of torture.
The New York Times played up the revelations in a page-one spread but downplayed their meaning writing: "…the Iraq documents provide no earthshaking revelations, but they offer insight, texture and context from the people actually fighting the war".
Not surprisingly, reports of widespread torture that American forces knew about,and in some cases reported with nothing done, is not "earthshaking". Unreported civilian deaths numbering 15,000 are also minimized. The Times devoted more ink to evidence of abuses by Iraqi forces without mentioning most were trained by Americans who were the occupying power. It fleshes out US military allegations of Iranian intervention more than reports of killings by American soldiers, an emphasis that conveniently contributes to the demonization of Iran by American politicians.
Contrast this with the Guardian coverage which called its package "Iraq: The War Logs," and goes high with revelations of "serial detainee abuse" and "15,000 [previously] unknown civilian deaths".
The Times approach infuriated writer Rob Beschizza, who came up with what he called "The New York Times Torture Euphemism Generator".
"Reading the NYT's stories about the Iraq War logs, I was struck by how it could get through such gruesome descriptions - fingers chopped off, chemicals splashed on prisoners - without using the word 'torture.' For some reason the word is unavailable when it is literally meaningful, yet is readily tossed around for laughs in contexts where it means nothing at all."
Oddly, the New York Times-owned Boston Globe had no reservations in using torture in its headline.
The New York -ased Columbia Journalism Review surveyed global coverage and, weirdly, criticized Al Jazeera for a video it produced: "All in all, Al Jazeera's coverage of the secret files is straightforward, except perhaps for a six-and-a-half minute documentary video posted prominently throughout the site, a video that is awkwardly edited and features weird, cable-TV-style reenactments and dramatic readings of some of the reports." This condescending comment betrays a lack of insight into the differences between TV coverage and newspaper formulas.
While all of the press seems to be reporting the story, few media outlets are going back to their own coverage and acknowledging how they had failed at the time, to report many of the atrocities we now know the US military knew about, and covered up. One glaring example: the killings that took place in Fallujah, where Al Jazeera correspondents were banned.
Much of the media, as we now see, especially leading American media outlets, were complicit in a multi-year cover-up of truths and crimes that continue to this day, not just in Iraq or Afghanistan, but in our living rooms at home.
Danny Schechter, made the film Plunder The Crime of Our Time about the financial crisis as a crime story (Plunderthecrimeofourtime.com) and blogs for Mediachannel.org.
And the real enemy is ...
The US will continue to fail to convince Arabs that Iran, not Israel, poses the greatest threat to regional stability.
Lamis Andoni Last Modified: 25 Oct 2010 16:10 GMT
Ahmadinejad received a rapturous welcome on his first visit to Lebanon since taking office in 2005 [EPA]
No sooner had Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, left Beirut last week, than Jeffrey Feltman, the US secretary of state for Near East affairs, arrived in the Lebanese capital.
Washington wasted no time in seeking to counter what it views as Iran's growing influence across the Arab world and Ahmadinejad's message of resistance to Israel.
But it is precisely that message that has so far foiled the US' relentless efforts to form a regional security pact to isolate and confront Tehran. Washington has failed - and will continue to fail - to convince Arabs that Iran, not Israel, is the real enemy.
A sectarian formula
This does not mean that Iran's agenda in the region has been entirely palatable to Arab states. It has been complicit in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, where its position remains opportunistic and deeply sectarian.
But Washington has no issue with that aspect of Iranian foreign policy. It was, after all, the US invasion that fed sectarian divisions within Iraq. And Washington has been happy to champion Shia political parties within the country in order to suppress its rich pan-Arab identity - all while being opposed to the Lebanese Shia group, Hezbollah.
That Washington does not have a favourite sect is not evidence of its commitment to secularism. It supports different sectarian formulas in Iraq and Lebanon to guarantee that neither country poses a threat to Israel.
In Lebanon, sectarianism has been employed to prevent national unity. And when that has not been sufficient Israeli wars have been used to quell resistance - whether by a Palestinian coalition with Lebanese leftists and pan-Arabists in 1982 or by Hezbollah in 2006.
But these wars backfired: The 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon created Hezbollah, while the Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000 and the 2006 war anointed the movement as the only Arab force to defeat Israel in a major battle.
Marginalising Palestine
Through Hezbollah's triumphs, Iran has consolidated its influence in Lebanon and enhanced its image as the region's counter power to Israel. For in Iran, just as in the Arab world, confronting Israel helps to legitimise a regime.
The Iranian regime stepped into this role almost immediately after the 1978 revolution that transformed the country from a gendarme for US interests and an Israeli ally into a champion of the Palestinian cause.
Even the Iran-Iraq war failed to unanimously rally Arabs against Tehran, as evidenced when a 1981 US-backed summit intended to form an axis against Iran was boycotted by most Arab parties, including the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). The majority of Arabs simply refused to see Iran as posing a greater threat than Israel.
In fact, the eruption of the first intifada in 1987 came about partly as a reaction to another US-backed summit, which sought to establish Iran as the main enemy of the Arab world - and in so doing to marginalise the Palestinian cause.
Yasser Arafat, the then PLO leader, was snubbed by the Jordanian hosts of the summit and by other Arab regimes, prompting him to boycott the official dinner and to declare that Palestine remained the core issue for the region. This attempt to humiliate the PLO provoked visible anger in the West Bank and Gaza Strip - a sentiment that was openly expressed during the intifada when it erupted less than a month later.
Fake peace process
But the US did not learn its lesson. More than two decades later it is still trying to create an Arab axis against Iran, while expecting Arabs to ignore Israeli occupation and aggression. And while a US-backed so-called 'moderate' axis comprising Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and Kuwait does exist - brought together by legitimate and fictional fears of Iranian meddling in their affairs - none see a bigger threat to regional stability than Israeli expansionism.
These countries have often urged the US to advance Israeli-Palestinian peace in order to enable them to effectively help in countering Iran. But consecutive US administrations have instead pushed a fake peace process focused more on solidifying Israeli supremacy than addressing the root causes of the conflict. The current administration's 'enthusiasm' for a resumption of the stalled Israeli-Palestinian talks is no different and is motivated more by a desire to provide a cover for its drive against Iran than achieving a suitable and just settlement to the conflict.
Israel is now openly lobbying the West to either declare war on Iran or to support an Israeli strike against the country - or at least its nuclear facilities. It uses the Iranian president's rhetorical threats to justify this, but for all Ahmadinejad's words it is Israel that is engaged in the real and systematic destruction of lands and lives.
But the US and Israel do not fear that Iran poses a real, existential threat. It is the deterrence Iranian power represents that they seek to eliminate, thus allowing Israel to freely pursue its aggressive expansionist policies.
For its part, the US is opposed to the existence of a regional power that it does not consider an ally. So when Ahmadinejad was warmly welcomed in Beirut, Feltman made an unscheduled visit to protest against "Iran meddling in Lebanon's affairs".
The former US ambassador to Lebanon, known for his constant meddling in Lebanese affairs, was declaring Lebanon - and with it the Arab world - to be within the US' sphere of influence.
Vying for influence
This is not to say that Iran is not also vying for regional influence - something stressed by an Iranian parliamentarian who declared that Ahmadinejad's visit asserted "Iran's supremacy". And there is no doubt that Iran's agenda is not always compatible with Lebanese or, more broadly, Arab interests. But its support for Hezbollah in its battles against Israel has elevated its status among the Arab public in a way that no anti-Iranian Arab axis can deny or top.
The real problem is that US meddling and support for Israel obstructs any critical discussion of Iran's role in the region. The US has no interest in such a discourse because it simply expects Arabs to endorse its own agenda, including normalising ties with Israel even as it continues to suppress Palestinian rights.
But none of the US' Arab allies would dare - or could afford - to follow the American line completely, particularly if this includes a strike against Iran. For Arab governments would then be pressed to explain their support for a war against Iran, when they have so clearly failed to confront Israel.
The US-led war against Iraq shattered any illusions that the US could bring stability or democracy to the region - a fact that even its staunchest Arab allies are aware of. And there is a growing awareness that both Iran and the US - and in a different way, Turkey - have been vying to fill a political gap resulting from Arab weakness.
But Washington is truly delusional if it thinks it can defeat Iran by convincing Arabs that its pro-Israeli agenda could bring peace and stability, let alone justice to the region.
Lamis Andoni is an analyst and commentator on Middle Eastern and Palestinian affairs.
Lamis Andoni Last Modified: 25 Oct 2010 16:10 GMT
Ahmadinejad received a rapturous welcome on his first visit to Lebanon since taking office in 2005 [EPA]
No sooner had Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, left Beirut last week, than Jeffrey Feltman, the US secretary of state for Near East affairs, arrived in the Lebanese capital.
Washington wasted no time in seeking to counter what it views as Iran's growing influence across the Arab world and Ahmadinejad's message of resistance to Israel.
But it is precisely that message that has so far foiled the US' relentless efforts to form a regional security pact to isolate and confront Tehran. Washington has failed - and will continue to fail - to convince Arabs that Iran, not Israel, is the real enemy.
A sectarian formula
This does not mean that Iran's agenda in the region has been entirely palatable to Arab states. It has been complicit in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, where its position remains opportunistic and deeply sectarian.
But Washington has no issue with that aspect of Iranian foreign policy. It was, after all, the US invasion that fed sectarian divisions within Iraq. And Washington has been happy to champion Shia political parties within the country in order to suppress its rich pan-Arab identity - all while being opposed to the Lebanese Shia group, Hezbollah.
That Washington does not have a favourite sect is not evidence of its commitment to secularism. It supports different sectarian formulas in Iraq and Lebanon to guarantee that neither country poses a threat to Israel.
In Lebanon, sectarianism has been employed to prevent national unity. And when that has not been sufficient Israeli wars have been used to quell resistance - whether by a Palestinian coalition with Lebanese leftists and pan-Arabists in 1982 or by Hezbollah in 2006.
But these wars backfired: The 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon created Hezbollah, while the Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000 and the 2006 war anointed the movement as the only Arab force to defeat Israel in a major battle.
Marginalising Palestine
Through Hezbollah's triumphs, Iran has consolidated its influence in Lebanon and enhanced its image as the region's counter power to Israel. For in Iran, just as in the Arab world, confronting Israel helps to legitimise a regime.
The Iranian regime stepped into this role almost immediately after the 1978 revolution that transformed the country from a gendarme for US interests and an Israeli ally into a champion of the Palestinian cause.
Even the Iran-Iraq war failed to unanimously rally Arabs against Tehran, as evidenced when a 1981 US-backed summit intended to form an axis against Iran was boycotted by most Arab parties, including the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). The majority of Arabs simply refused to see Iran as posing a greater threat than Israel.
In fact, the eruption of the first intifada in 1987 came about partly as a reaction to another US-backed summit, which sought to establish Iran as the main enemy of the Arab world - and in so doing to marginalise the Palestinian cause.
Yasser Arafat, the then PLO leader, was snubbed by the Jordanian hosts of the summit and by other Arab regimes, prompting him to boycott the official dinner and to declare that Palestine remained the core issue for the region. This attempt to humiliate the PLO provoked visible anger in the West Bank and Gaza Strip - a sentiment that was openly expressed during the intifada when it erupted less than a month later.
Fake peace process
But the US did not learn its lesson. More than two decades later it is still trying to create an Arab axis against Iran, while expecting Arabs to ignore Israeli occupation and aggression. And while a US-backed so-called 'moderate' axis comprising Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and Kuwait does exist - brought together by legitimate and fictional fears of Iranian meddling in their affairs - none see a bigger threat to regional stability than Israeli expansionism.
These countries have often urged the US to advance Israeli-Palestinian peace in order to enable them to effectively help in countering Iran. But consecutive US administrations have instead pushed a fake peace process focused more on solidifying Israeli supremacy than addressing the root causes of the conflict. The current administration's 'enthusiasm' for a resumption of the stalled Israeli-Palestinian talks is no different and is motivated more by a desire to provide a cover for its drive against Iran than achieving a suitable and just settlement to the conflict.
Israel is now openly lobbying the West to either declare war on Iran or to support an Israeli strike against the country - or at least its nuclear facilities. It uses the Iranian president's rhetorical threats to justify this, but for all Ahmadinejad's words it is Israel that is engaged in the real and systematic destruction of lands and lives.
But the US and Israel do not fear that Iran poses a real, existential threat. It is the deterrence Iranian power represents that they seek to eliminate, thus allowing Israel to freely pursue its aggressive expansionist policies.
For its part, the US is opposed to the existence of a regional power that it does not consider an ally. So when Ahmadinejad was warmly welcomed in Beirut, Feltman made an unscheduled visit to protest against "Iran meddling in Lebanon's affairs".
The former US ambassador to Lebanon, known for his constant meddling in Lebanese affairs, was declaring Lebanon - and with it the Arab world - to be within the US' sphere of influence.
Vying for influence
This is not to say that Iran is not also vying for regional influence - something stressed by an Iranian parliamentarian who declared that Ahmadinejad's visit asserted "Iran's supremacy". And there is no doubt that Iran's agenda is not always compatible with Lebanese or, more broadly, Arab interests. But its support for Hezbollah in its battles against Israel has elevated its status among the Arab public in a way that no anti-Iranian Arab axis can deny or top.
The real problem is that US meddling and support for Israel obstructs any critical discussion of Iran's role in the region. The US has no interest in such a discourse because it simply expects Arabs to endorse its own agenda, including normalising ties with Israel even as it continues to suppress Palestinian rights.
But none of the US' Arab allies would dare - or could afford - to follow the American line completely, particularly if this includes a strike against Iran. For Arab governments would then be pressed to explain their support for a war against Iran, when they have so clearly failed to confront Israel.
The US-led war against Iraq shattered any illusions that the US could bring stability or democracy to the region - a fact that even its staunchest Arab allies are aware of. And there is a growing awareness that both Iran and the US - and in a different way, Turkey - have been vying to fill a political gap resulting from Arab weakness.
But Washington is truly delusional if it thinks it can defeat Iran by convincing Arabs that its pro-Israeli agenda could bring peace and stability, let alone justice to the region.
Lamis Andoni is an analyst and commentator on Middle Eastern and Palestinian affairs.
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