I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Topics: Palestinians, Israel, American Jews, Jerusalem, Israeli occupation, Israeli settlements, Meretz USA | 17 Comments »

By Dan Fleshler | August 5, 2008

One state advocates: More lessons from South Africa, Northern Ireland

What follows is another guest column from Tom Mitchell. As he notes in the first line, those who advocate a single, “secular” binational state in what is now Israel and the Palestinian territories often cite Northern Ireland and South Africa as examples of countries that resolved deep-seated ethnic conflicts and forged one, common nation. He analyzes the nature of the “power-sharing” in those two countries and concludes that, for a number of reasons, they don’t offer the lessons some hope that they offer.

The standard disclaimer applies: the views expressed in the article below do not necessarily reflect those of the Realistic Dove.

——————————————————————————————–

ISRAEL/PALESTINE, NORTHERN IRELAND
AND SOUTH AFRICA: COMPARATIVE
READINESS FOR POWER SHARING

By Thomas Mitchell

Introduction

Northern Ireland and South Africa are often cited as examples demonstrating that power sharing would work between Arabs and Israeli Jews in a single state. I contend that they demonstrate nothing of the kind. This is because the political situation in South Africa is very different from that in Northern Ireland and the Middle East, and it is too early to judge the ultimate success or failure of power sharing in Northern Ireland.

South Africa

In Palestine, Jews and Arabs have always considered themselves to belong to separate national movements. This is as true today as in 1948.

In contrast, the African National Congress (ANC) and its affiliate organizations have always insisted that they are South Africans just like the whites. It was the whites, especially the Afrikaners, who insisted on dealing with the majority in both ethnic and racial terms.

Afrikaners originally saw themselves as a separate nationality from even English-speaking whites and it took almost a century to change this perception. For demographic reasons, the ruling Afrikaner National Party promoted the concept of a white South African nation and began to co-opt English-speaking whites. By the early 1990s a majority of white South Africans—about three-fourths of English-speakers and about forty to fifty percent of Afrikaners were willing to consider majority rule with protections.

Another major difference: in Palestine, the native liberation movements have embraced “armed struggle” and refused to distinguish among sabotage, guerrilla warfare, and terrorism. This has produced in turn among the Israelis a greater tolerance of collateral damage to civilian Palestinians when combating this armed struggle. A similar process occurred in Northern Ireland involving British security forces collaborating with pro-state loyalist terrorists to combat the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

In South Africa, however, the whites’ National Party government was the main practitioner of terrorism, with the ANC eschewing it in favor of sabotage and limited guerrilla warfare.

In Israel and the Palestinians territories (and, for that matter, Northern Ireland), there are deep divisions among political parties and factions jockeying for power. In South Africa, the National Party and the ANC dominated the negotiations involving multiple parties. The ANC and the National Party could both safely ignore their rivals.

A referendum in 1992 established that President De Klerk had solid support for negotiations with the ANC over “power sharing.” The National Party negotiated poorly and ended up with a deal with little real power sharing President Nelson Mandela included the National Party and Inkatha in the first majority rule government in order to ensure initial political stability, but there was no mandatory power sharing mechanism. Even the federalist elements in South Africa are relatively minor.

Seeing this and the ineffectiveness of the National Party as an opposition party, most whites eventually changed their allegiance from the National Party and Afrikaner nationalists to the tiny, former anti-apartheid Democratic Party and made it the major white party.

Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine

In Northern Ireland, there were four main parties: two Irish nationalist and two British unionist. The two nationalist parties were the SDLP and Sinn Fein, the latter being the political wing of the IRA-—although they have always denied this. The two unionist parties were the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), the more moderate party, and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the more extreme led by the Rev. Ian Paisley, who headed the Free Presbyterian Church and engaged in anti-Catholic bigotry.

Because the IRA was four years delinquent in disarming and continued its criminal activities and violent intimidation in republican ghettoes, power sharing broke down repeatedly. Fiinally, the Democratic Unionists (DUP) replaced the Ulster Unionists (UUP) as the main unionist (pro-British/Protestant) party. The IRA’s political wing, Sinn Fein, also surpassed the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) to become the dominant nationalist party among the Irish (Catholics).

The DUP and Sinn Fein are now attempting to see if they can share power—or carve it up between them—more successfully than the more moderate UUP and SDLP did. This is the equivalent of expecting the Likud and Hamas to succeed in peace negotiations where Labor and Fatah failed.

The problem in Israel/Palestine is that there is a major imbalance of power between the Israelis and the Palestinians, with the Palestinians refusing to acknowledge this difference in their negotiating style and demands. Palestinian rhetoric and terror, as well as Jewish history, have led to a profound mistrust of the Palestinians by Israelis; continued Israeli settlement of the West Bank before and during the Oslo process led to a similar Palestinian mistrust of Israelis. Zionism was founded as a political movement because Jews in Europe feared their Gentile neighbors. They predicted that the combination of Jewish lack of power, racial anti-Semitism, and radical nationalism would lead to a great tragedy for the Jews. The fact that this prediction came true in dimensions unimagined by the Zionists led to a powerful acceptance of the equation of security with sovereignty and military power. Over sixty years of conflict between the Palestinians and the Zionists has not led to a lessening of this feeling.

Irish republicans in the IRA gave up the armed struggle because they failed to make progress over three decades in their goal of driving the British out of Northern Ireland by force. Sinn Fein was not able to ostracize the unionists internationally to anywhere near the same extent that the ANC was able to ostracize the Afrikaners.

The SDLP was able to persuade Sinn Fein that their problem was with the unionists and not with London, and that only a political solution was possible.

Power sharing had been tried in 1974 and failed after five months, due to resistance from both the IRA and unionists. Ulster Unionist objections to the 1974 power sharing experiment were dealt with in the negotiations that led to the April 1998 Good Friday Agreement. The IRA gave up the legitimacy of military struggle in exchange for political struggle and the unionists agreed to some connections with the Republic of Ireland in exchange for Dublin giving up its claims to sovereignty over Northern Ireland.

This meant that the IRA was basically agreeing to a single state on unionist grounds. A one-state solution would only work in Israel/Palestine if the Palestinians were willing to come into Israel on terms acceptable to the Zionists. It is doubtful that there are such terms that both sides could accept. Israel certainly is not ready to surrender. Are the Palestinians?

Dr. Thomas G. Mitchell is the author of Native vs. Settler: Ethnic Conflict in Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland, and South Africa and of Indispensable Traitors: Liberal Parties in Settler Conflicts.

Topics: Palestinians, Israel, Zionism, one-state solution | 6 Comments »

By Dan Fleshler | August 3, 2008

Americans for Peace Now makes the neo cons panic about Syria

I can hear the alarms clattering in the minds of neo cons inside and just at the edges of the Bush administration, who have been increasingly upset that the U.S. is opening the door to diplomatic contacts with Iran. Despite arduous efforts, they were unable to prevent Israel from (gasp) negotiating with Syria under Turkish auspices. Now, the Syrian ambassador to the U.S., Imad Moustapha, has sent remarkably conciliatory signals to Israel and the U.S. in an interview with Ori Nir of Americans for Peace Now.

The story was picked up yesterday in Haaretz and elsewhere in the Israeli media, but has not gotten the attention it deserves in the U.S.

From the APN blurb:

“In an interview with APN spokesman Ori Nir, Ambassador Moustapha said that the current talks between Israel and Syria are “a historic opportunity of making peace with not only Syria and Lebanon, because we believe that in a way or another Syria plays the role of a gatekeeper between Israel and the Arab world…”

“…I was impressed by the ambassador’s candor,” said interviewer Nir, “let’s hope that the Bush administration picks up on this encouraging signal of Syrian determination to pursue peace.”

According to Ambassador Moustapha, Syria’s leaders “have been telling the Israelis for the past fifteen years: We want to make peace. We believe in a fair and comprehensive peace with you.” He added, “the only way forward – there is no third alternative – is to sit with us and make a peace agreement.”

Ambassador Moustapha also said: “We at the state of Syria are telling the state of Israel that we desire to end the state of war between us, to conclude peace between two states, to recognize each other and to live as peaceful neighbors with each other, within a normalized context. We think this is a very serious proposal (…) here is the grand thing on offer: let us sit together, let us make peace, let us end once and for all the state of war” between the two countries.

No doubt this will be dismissed as tawdry propaganda by those pro-Israel activists who have never met a peace plan they could live with. But why in the world would the Ambassador say those things if Syria weren’t EAGER for a historic settlement? Someone who has been involved in the Track 3 diplomacy that has moved these talks along told me that a Syria-Israel pact is “low hanging fruit.” The U.S. is obviously kept apprised of the ongoing negotiations, and is conveying messages, as needed, to Syria as well as Israel. But it is not merely unconscionable that the U.S. isn’t at the table, in the full view of the international community, offering to help in every way possible; it is truly insane.

Topics: Israel, Iran, Bush Administration, neoconservatives, Americans for Peace Now, Syria | 29 Comments »

By Dan Fleshler | July 29, 2008

Philip Weiss attacks J Street. Why he’s wrong.

Philip Weiss and I have been communicating after he attacked J Street on MondoWeiss. A good many issues were broached, but one of his arguments is that J Street ought to be appealing to a much broader constituency than American Jews who feel some attachment to Israel. Some of his acolytes, true to form, said there was no fundamental difference between J Street and AIPAC, we are all just racist Zionist Jews providing cover for Israeli oppression (and, true to form, some said we are all disloyal to America). Here is my response (slightly revised from the one I sent Phil):

Phil,

The Israeli-Arab problem is America’s problem. Solving it can and should be a high priority for all Americans. It is critically important for a wider, more broad-based coalition of Americans –Jewish and non-Jewish—to counter the right wing Jewish and Christian Zionist furies. I completely agree with you. Church groups, Arab American organizations, unions, everyone who wants evenhanded American diplomacy should weigh in. Some of them already do, often working side by side with my camp: e.g., Churches for Middle East Peace, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, centrist and left wing evangelicals trying to show that John Hagee doesn’t speak for them, the Arab American Institute and the American Task Force on Palestine.

There is nothing stopping you and all of your fans from organizing all Americans. Go ahead, if you want to.

But you will notice that all of those other groups are organizations based on specific religious or ethnic identities. We all understand that it is in America’s interests to end the nightmare of the occupation, but we all bring other aspects of our identities to the table.

Some of your fans resent the whole idea of American Jews having ANYTHING to say about this issue. Do they also think those who are organized as Catholics, or Arab Americans, should have no say? Or should self-identified Jews just step back and shut up and let “real Americans” fix the mess the Zionists have made? Guess what? Even if that proposition weren’t offensive and racist, it would a disastrous political move.

Right now, the political reality is that the conventional Israel lobby in the Jewish community has persuaded politicians that it speaks on behalf of the only Jews who matter, and that retribution awaits those who cross it. (The Christian Zionists have had similar successes with some in Congress, so that evangelicals like the Sojourners also don’t get taken seriously enough).

One way to help change this political reality is to demonstrate that another, large, vocal, politically engaged part of the American Jewish community exists, and that it will support American leaders who don’t always do what the conventional lobby wants. That is not the only thing that needs to be done. But it is one of the things that needs to be done.

I can’t possibly convince the people who comment on your posts why there is a big difference between AIPAC and J Street or Brit Tzedek ‘v Shalom or APN. I, and others, have been trying to counter AIPAC and the right wing of the Jewish community for many years. We’ve lost. We’ve blown it. But we’ve tried. I was among those who called for the U..S. and Israel to talk to the PLO long before the Oslo years. APN, on whose board I serve, was one of the few Jewish groups that supported GH Bush on penalizing Israel financially because of its stance on the settlements. As far as I’m concerned, targeted financial penalties should be on the table now. Did I and others make mistakes? Zillions of them. But if people see no distinction between those positions and AIPAC’s, there is no sense in discussing it further.

Right now, though I have a very specific goal that J Street and others share. The specific goal is to help create a political environment in which the next president feels like he has the leeway to exert necessary pressures on both sides, rather than just one side, of the Israeli-Arab conflict. It is to give the president the sense that he will have broad-based support from a vocal, strong constituency if, for example, he tells the Israelis to stop the madness of continuing settlement expansion and, if they don’t, imposes real costs.

And yes, of course, just stopping expansion is not the end goal; getting the settlers out of there is the goal, but the freeze has to be the first step. The next step will be more difficult but that has to be taken, too.

The mission in life of some American Jews is to prevent American pressure of any kind on any Israeli government. All the other policy matters you are talking about –e.g, whether they want Jerusalem to be united or not—are important, but they are much less important than whether the U.S. has the diplomatic flexibility it needs to take a balanced approach instead of a one-sided approach.

As you know, I have been hard at work writing a book about all of this. And I can tell you that based on my own, rather painful experience in the American Jewish trenches and a good many interviews with members of Congress, their aides, and American officials from several administrations, I KNOW the following to be true: politicians need to hear from many more American Jews, including political contributors, who will say that AIPAC and the rest of the conventional lobby do not speak for them. That is the political reality. That is the battle J Street and its allies are trying to wage. But it is only part of the battle. I hope there is a broader coalition of Americans, speaking together as Americans, who press our government to get more engaged in this conflict and do what needs to be done in order to preserve the possibility of two states. Be my guest. Go out and organize!

Topics: Israel lobby, Palestinians, Israel, American Jews, Israeli occupation, AIPAC, Americans for Peace Now, Israeli settlements, American Task Force On Palestine, J Street, Philip Weiss | 54 Comments »

By Dan Fleshler | July 25, 2008

Ameinu forces us to confront the realities of occupation

Ameinu is showing clips from a video documentary that got a lot of attention in Israel in 2005 and deserves to get even more attention now. For two years, Haim Yavin, the venerable Israeli anchor for the government-run Channel 1 TV, roamed the territories with a simple video camera, talked to Jewish settlers, soldiers, Palestinians, Israeli peace activists and others in order to document, in heartrending detail, the moral price of the occupation. The result was a five-part series that the settler leadership tried but failed to prevent from airing three years ago.

Yavin has said he made the documentary “so that I and those like me can’t say we didn’t see it, we didn’t hear it, we didn’t know.” The rest of us also need to stop making that excuse, and face up to the realities that are vividly conveyed by Yavin and the people he interviews

The first, very brief clip on the Ameinu web site focuses on Hebron, and includes an interview with a laconic Israeli soldier who describes what it feels like when Jewish settlers casually urge him to shoot Palestinian children. Also worth reading is a call to action, which proposes an orderly withdrawal of settlers now, before it’s too late. It does so from a decidedly Zionist perspective which will make both Jewish right wingers and anti-Zionists uncomfortable, but is a message that should resonate with Ameinu’s chief, target audience: affiliated American Jews.

When the series first aired, some Israeli reviewers express much more impatience with the settlers than Ameinu does. Here was the emotional reaction from Raanan Shaked in Yedioth Ahronoth (6/1/05):

The breath becomes short, the heart is choked with anger. This is the only human response to The Land of the Settlers. No, there is actually another reasonable reaction: After watching The Land of the Settlers, every caring Israeli, every humane Israeli, should get up next Saturday, go to the settlement nearest to his place of residence, and drag its inhabitants, kicking and screaming, across the road to the side of sanity. This is what comes out of The Land of the Settlers, the personal territories journal of Chaim Yavin, who reaches an impressive professional peak here as a documentary journalist. Although it may not be new on an informative level, The Land of the Settlers will astound you, mainly by placing on the screen, over the course of many hours, the hard core of the shameful insanity of the settlers in the territories, along with the tacit approval of the Israeli governments, along with the helplessness of the army…

What makes this video even more important now is that the plight of Palestinians in the territories has gotten even worse than it was when Yavin aired it…Ameinu is also distributing the whole series at a discount.

Finally, I will extend yet another apology for the infrequency of my posts. I should be able to pay more attention to this blog within the next few weeks, after I complete the manuscript of my long-awaited, soon-to-be-classic book on America’s conventional Israel lobby and what, if anything, can be done to transform or replace it.

Topics: Palestinians, Israel, Zionism, Israeli occupation, Israeli settlements, Ameinu | 37 Comments »

By Dan Fleshler | July 15, 2008

What are Iran’s motives?: A guest column

Tom Mitchell sent me the following, cogent analysis of Iran’s nuclear weapons program –assuming it exists. I would very much like to believe that what he writes is true. The money quote:

“For understandable historical reasons, Israelis take any threats made against them literally. They should keep in mind that Mao spoke with the same reckless abandon that Ahmadinejad does about war. Yet Mao’s China, after testing nuclear weapons in 1964, let the potential go largely undeveloped with a few nuclear bombers hidden away in caves to deter the Soviets from about 15 years. It was the more pragmatic Deng who developed China’s nuclear capacity in the 1980s. Iran’s mullahs have profited well from the revolution by their appropriation of properties and their control over trade licenses. Would they really want to risk this comfortable arrangement in a nuclear war for the pleasure of knowing that they had damaged Israel for twenty minutes before they are wiped out?”

That assumes, of course, that we are dealing with rational actors in Iran, or at least it diminishes the possible role of irrationality in foreign policy. Isn’t that assumption a gigantic leap of faith?

I have met a former CIA analyst who monitored Iran’s weapons systems in, I think, the early 1990s. He might be one of the 50 people in the world with enough information about Iran to be credible. He said that other Iranian presidents and leaders have also threatened Israel’s destruction or at least, as in Ahmadinejad’s case, publicly relished the possibility of Israel’s destruction. He never took their threats very seriously, considered them to be political posturing…until recently. This time, with this president, he’s not sure. He’s not certain that Ahmadinejad, whose imman in Qum apparently believes a major war will pave the way for the appearance of the ‘hidden imman” (the Sh’ite messiah), would be averse to triggering a catastrophe. And those who say this president has no power might be right, but his following is with the Revolutionary Guards, and there is no telling what they are capable of, or where they will fit into the Iranian power structure next month or next year or ten years from now…

Again, I am not one of those 50 people with enough knowledge to venture more than an educated guess about Iran…But what if this guy is correct?

Here is Tom’s piece in its entirety.

IRANIAN NUCLEAR POLICY AND MOTIVES

Before we should contemplate any action against Iran over its nuclear policy we should attempt to ascertain its motives. I see how the following possible motives for the development of nuclear weapons or a potential for nuclear weapons by Teheran:

1) Iran wants to fulfill its destiny and sacrifice itself in order to destroy the Zionist state. This is what most Israelis and their American supporters impute to Tehran based on statements by President Muhammed Ahmedinajad. It should be noted that in Iran the president has little more power than does the Israeli president. The real executive position is held by the unelected Supreme Leader chosen by the pro-regime mullahs.

2) Iran fears regime change by the United States as a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It figures that a nuclear deterrent in the form of at least one deliverable weapon may make it immune from regime change.

3) The nuclear weapons program was started as a reaction to the danger from the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein and has been maintained as a result of bureaucratic inertia.

4) The nuclear weapons program is seen as a cover to allow Tehran to subvert its neighbors and spread its ideology and influence in the Middle East and Muslim world without fear of regime change.

5) Tehran wants to provoke a confrontation from the West—especially the Great Satan in Washington or the Little Satan in Jerusalem—on an issue that it assumes that most of its population will support it on.

I would argue that Tehran’s motives are a combination of motives 2 though 5. The fact that the only member of the “Axis of Evil” to be attacked by the United States was the weakest regime, the one with the weakest conventional army and little air force or navy and with no nuclear potential, has been noted by Tehran. We negotiate with Pyongyang out of fear and a healthy respect for the power of nuclear weapons rather than out of any respect for its sovereign rights.

The Manhattan Project in the United States was begun out of fear of a non-existent Nazi nuclear weapons program and then the A-bomb was used against Japan after Germany’s surrender. Tehran’s nuclear effort was actually begun under the Shah with American support. Tehran developed a weapon’s program in reaction to Saddam Hussein’s attack against Iran in September 1980. This occurred partly in reaction to Tehran’s efforts to spread its revolution to Iraq.

Wherever there are sizeable Shi’ite populations in the Middle East Tehran is active attempting to either subvert the ruling Sunni or Christian (Lebanon) regime or support the Shi’ite regime (Iraq). Tehran views Shi’ite Muslims the way the Bolsheviks viewed industrial workers in Europe in the early 1920s—as potential allies and revolutionaries to spread the revolution.

Iran has the only population of pro-American Muslims in the Middle East. This must be viewed as both a great insult and frustration and a great danger by the ruling theocracy. It needs to find a way of changing the popular opinion of America before the regime is overthrown. Most rulers tend to look at adversaries as mirror images: Western liberals see their opponents as liberals and subversives see their opponents as attempting to subvert them. The fact that the U.S. partially aligned itself with Iraq in the 1980s Gulf War is seen as justification and proof of the validity of these fears, as are statements by American conservatives and Israelis. The United States has had a policy of regime change in Iran as it had one in Iraq. Thus, there is some validity for these fears. Plus, revolutionaries by their nature tend to be paranoid, as they fear their opponents doing to them what they accomplished earlier to the ancien regime.

Ordinary Iranians consider themselves as entitled to possess nuclear weapons as Pakistan or India and probably more so than Israel. And as long as Tehran remains ambiguous about its nuclear intentions, it will retain widespread internal and international support for its stand. Any military action by either Israel or the United States against Iran will rally the population around the regime. It would also likely cause a split in the West similar to that which occurred in 2003 when the U.S. invaded Iraq. Tehran may be looking to split Washington from Europe or Israel from the U.S.

The best thing to do is to continue to operate multilaterally with Europe while gradually ramping up sanctions. Sanctions can be seen as aggressive but not an act of war—they may cause many Iranians to rethink their stance on nuclear power.

For understandable historical reasons, Israelis take any threats made against them literally. They should keep in mind that Mao spoke with the same reckless abandon that Ahmadinejad does about war. Yet Mao’s China, after testing nuclear weapons in 1964, let the potential go largely undeveloped with a few nuclear bombers hidden away in caves to deter the Soviets from about 15 years. It was the more pragmatic Deng who developed China’s nuclear capacity in the 1980s. Iran’s mullahs have profited well from the revolution by their appropriation of properties and their control over trade licenses. Would they really want to risk this comfortable arrangement in a nuclear war for the pleasure of knowing that they had damaged Israel for twenty minutes before they are wiped out?

So, Israel, if it has not already done so, should develop a secure second-strike capability through the development of nuclear-armed submarine launched cruise missiles. If Washington wants to help Israel, this is how it can help. Israel can then live with the same threat that the West lived with for some forty years during the Cold War.

Topics: Israel, Ahmadinejad, Iran | 9 Comments »

By Dan Fleshler | July 6, 2008

Ackerman, Pence Deny Calling for Iran Blockade

The plot thickens. Politico’s John Bresnahan reports that:

Reps. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.) and Mike Pence (R-Ind.) have issued a letter today stating that a non-binding resolution they offered on Iran does not call for a military action against that country…

…While the resolution (I repeat, non-binding) also includes a specific denial that it authorizes use of American military force - “Whereas nothing in this resolution shall be construed as an authorization of the use of force against Iran” - it has, understandably, led some to believe that it is tantamount to a declaration of war against Iran.

“These assertions are absolutely false and, frankly, utter nonsense,” Ackerman and Spence wrote. “The resolution states plainly and distinctly that “nothing in this resolution shall be construed as an authorization of the use of force against Iran;” the economic sanctions the President is urged to seek are explicitly placed in an international context; and the methods contemplated for achieving these sanctions are no different than those currently being employed to implement existing UN Security Council sanctions on Iran, namely enforcement of export controls by UN member states within their own borders.”

What to make of this? I have no ax to grind or premise to prove here. That is the nature of this blog; I annoy everyone across the political spectrum, at one time or another. So I would like someone who is convinced that this resolution calls for a blockade to explain why, if these Reps wanted such a thing, they would go out of their way to deny it?

The resolution doesn’t have any legal standing; it’s just a forceful message, encouraged by AIPAC. It is easier for Member of Congress to be more hawkish in non-binding resolutions than they would otherwise be in bills that have the force of law; the former documents are generally more convenient vehicles for political grandstanding. So, it would seem to me that if they wanted to convince voters they were super-tough, they would have no reason to deny that they were calling for a blockade. Are they reassuring constituents who are nervous about war-mongering? If so, isn’t that good news? Or, am I being spun by some kind of nefarious, manipulative “War Party” in ways I am too naive to grasp? If so, how?

Topics: Israel, Iran, AIPAC | 81 Comments »

By Dan Fleshler | June 26, 2008

Parsi: Israel would benefit from U.S. accommodation with Iran

Here is a bit of sanity and reason from Trita Parsi. It has been excerpted here and there, but the only way to do it justice is to cut and paste the entire piece from Foreign Policy.

As I’ve noted before, there are perhaps 50 people in the world who have a sufficiently detailed understanding of Iranian politics and its nuclear development program to provide recommendations that are worth considering. I am not one of them. Neither, apparently, is anyone in the Bush Administration. Parsi is.

Mismarriage of Convenience

Analysis by Trita Parsi

Iran and Israel are stuck in a dysfunctional relationship that neither party can escape on its own. Here’s how to break up their fight.

————————————
Last week, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)—the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group—held its annual policy conference in Washington, and it went as you might expect. Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain roused the faithful with a call to tighten the noose on Iran and mocked those who favor a more diplomatic approach. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice explained that negotiating with Iranian leaders would be pointless “while they continue to inch closer to a nuclear weapon under the cover of talk.” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called for “all possible means” to be used to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. A few days later, Israel’s Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz warned that an attack on Iran is “unavoidable” as long as Tehran “continues with its program for developing nuclear weapons.”

As if to underscore these arguments, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad obligingly played the role of villain, predicting ominously from Tehran that Israel will “soon disappear off the geographical scene.” Against this backdrop, it’s safe to say that few at AIPAC were convinced by newly minted Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama’s call for direct U.S. talks with Iran (though the Illinois senator did win many new friends at the conference this year). In fact, AIPAC and Israeli leaders fear that any bargain between Washington and Tehran would come at their expense and have heightened their rhetoric accordingly.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Although Iran and Israel will not be signing any mutual defense pacts anytime soon, the two countries aren’t destined to be implacable foes. If anything, Israel could be a prime beneficiary of a rapprochement between Washington and Tehran.

It might sound inconceivable that Iran, whose leaders since 1979 have used the most venomous rhetoric against the “little Satan,” would ever moderate its stance toward Israel. Yet a careful review of the past three decades shows that Iran’s hostile rhetoric is more a product of opportunism than fanaticism. Iran and Israel have even been willing to work together quietly at times, despite their conflicting ideologies.

The reason is simple: When forced to choose, Tehran invariably chooses its geostrategic interests over its ideological impulses. In no other area is the decisiveness of the strategic dimension of Iran’s foreign policy clearer than when it comes to Israel. When these two pillars of Iranian foreign policy have clashed, as they did in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war, Iran’s geostrategic concerns have consistently prevailed. Tehran quietly sought Israel’s aid, and the Jewish state made many efforts to place Iran and the United States back on speaking terms. Faced with an invading Iraqi army and finding its U.S.-built weaponry starved of spare parts by a U.S. embargo, Tehran was in desperate need of help from Israel. Israel, in turn, was more than eager to avoid an Iraqi victory and to restore the traditional Israeli-Iranian clandestine security cooperation established under the shah, the mullahs’ fierce anti-Israeli rhetoric notwithstanding.

Iran never discarded its Islamic and anti-Israeli ideology, but for years it did refrain from translating that ideology into operational policy. It has been only for the past 15 years, for example, that Iran has come to play such a spoiler role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Why now? Today, the ideological and strategic currents of Iran’s foreign policy are aligned, and the results are visible in every corner of the region: a surging Hezbollah in Lebanon, a more deeply entrenched Hamas in the Palestinian territories, a radicalizing Shiite population in Iraq.

Quelling these potential threats requires understanding why Iran behaves the way it does. On a strategic level, Iran opposes Israel because it perceives the Jewish state as seeking its exclusion from regional affairs. Iran thinks Israel is working assiduously to counter its interests, whether in Washington or Ashgabat. Israel is seen as a major obstacle in initiating a U.S.-Iran dialogue and has played a critical role in putting Iran’s nuclear program atop the international agenda. Even Ahmadinejad’s highly ideological broadsides against Israel have come to have a strategic purpose. Playing the anti-Israeli card helps Iran overcome the Persian-Arab and Shiite-Sunni divide, Tehran reasons. Harsh rhetoric against Israel goes down well with the Arab street, increasing tensions between Arab governments and their publics, which in turn prevents the Arabs from signing up with Tel Aviv against Tehran.

The key to eliminating the danger Iran could pose to Israel lies in arranging these two forces of Iranian foreign policy—strategic interest and ideology—to counter each other once again. Threats of war and sanctions cannot achieve this end, however. Only through a larger accommodation—Iranian political rehabilitation in the region in return for an end to destructive Iranian behavior—will Iran let go of its open hostility toward the Jewish state. Brought in from the cold, Tehran’s cost-benefit analysis would change dramatically. The Islamic Republic would be careful not to undermine its own geopolitical status with ideology-driven anti-Israeli and anti-American behavior.

This is not a new formula, nor is it untested. China refuses to discard its communist pretense, but global integration has made it loath to put communist economic principles into practice due to the devastating impact it would have on its economic interests.

But why would Iran seek serious negotiations now, opponents of diplomacy might ask, when it appears to be having its way in the Middle East? Because the Iranians are eager to consolidate their gains through talks with the next U.S. administration and win American recognition for their role in the region. Those who would reject dialogue cannot have it both ways. They can’t argue that Washington shouldn’t negotiate because it lacks leverage (which isn’t true—for one, only the United States can lift its sanctions and support Iran’s inclusion in a new regional security architecture) and simultaneously claim that Tehran prefers the status quo and isn’t interested in talks precisely because Iran does have leverage.

In reality, the United States need not pressure Iran to come to the negotiation table; it need only demonstrate that it is serious about reaching a strategic understanding. What will induce Tehran to play ball is not a threat, but the promise of achieving a legitimate regional role without surrendering its pride. For Israel, that could be a good thing. A tamed Iran—integrated into the region’s political and economic structures and the forces of globalization—is much less dangerous than an angry and isolated Iran that defends its interests by fanning the flames of anti-Israeli extremism in the region. That’s a concept supporters of Israel and AIPAC should find useful.

Topics: Israel lobby, Israel, Iran, AIPAC | 2 Comments »

By Dan Fleshler | June 24, 2008

Yes, a blockade of Iran is an act of war

I take it back. Sorry, MJ. I blew that last one. What has possessed me to search for moderation like a thirsty man in a desert?

First of all, the original title of the previous post referred to a “boycott,” not a “blockade.” The latter, when enforced, is an act of war. The title has been corrected.

Our Teddy, as usual, got to the heart of the matter in his comment:

“So anything or anyone that leaves Iran will get inspected by the Americans, whenever the Americans feel like it? That means the Americans will claim the right to hop on board Iranian ships?

“Maybe that wouldn’t be an “act of war,” technically. I don’t know one way or the other. But it wouldn’t be a passive boycott enforced on American or European shores. It would be enforced by American naval officers and marines aggressiely [sic] patrolling Iranian waters.”

The only semi-positive news here is that the resolutions were non-binding.

Topics: Israel | 8 Comments »

By Dan Fleshler | June 22, 2008

Is a blockade of Iran an “act of war?”

MJ Rosenberg, just alerted me to his latest post in TPM Cafe. The headline:”169 House Members (77 Dems) Push For WAR NOW with Iran.”

Alarming. But is it alarmist?

MJ, an American hero (I mean that!), is concerned about House Resolution 362 and S. Res. 580. I described the House bill in my previous post, as part of an effort to show that AIPAC does not appear to be pressing for an attack on Iran. Maybe it is, but I did not think the evidence could be found in those bills or in the policy conference that promoted them. MJ, apparently, disagrees. He asserts:

The bill’s “action clause” would put us at war with Iran by immediately imposing a blockade.

The resolution cleverly states that “nothing in this resolution shall be construed as an authorization of the use of force against Iran” assuming, apparently correctly, that potential co-sponsors won’t know that a blockade is an act of war.

Here is the heart of the bill:

Congress hereby “demands that the President initiate an international effort to immediately and dramatically increase the economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on Iran to verifiably suspend its nuclear enrichment activities by, inter alia, prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran; and prohibiting the international movement of all Iranian officials not involved in negotiating the suspension of Iran’s nuclear program….”

Note: The blockade described in the bill is identical to the one JFK imposed on Cuba in 1962 which almost plunged the world into nuclear war. The huge difference is that we knew the Soviet Union had installed missiles in Cuba, 90 miles from Miami, and was about to equip them with nuclear war heads. A rather immense difference from the Iran situation today.

Is imposing a blockade “an act of war?” I’ve tried to figure out whether that equation holds up in international law. The only useful comment I’ve uncovered comes from a piece by Dale Russakof in the Washington Post (8/20/1990) on Bush 41’s confrontation with Iraq. (You can only read the article, as far as I can tell, if you are a Highbeam subscriber):

Barry Carter, professor of international law at Georgetown University Law Center, who is not involved in the current crisis and therefore speaks untortured English, said that the word, blockade, while traditionally associated with war, has no “legally significant meaning different from quarantine, interdiction or the like…It’s the act of stopping a ship that is a hostile act, whether you call it quarantine, blockade or interdiction.”

In other words, if the U.S. actively stops a tanker from carrying petroleum to Iran, that is an act of war. Calling for a blockade is not.

Is that splitting hairs? Did I let AIPAC off too easy? Perhaps. MJ doesn’t mention AIPAC, but doesn’t need to. Some claim AIPAC was directly responsible for the resolutions. Whether or not that is true, the bills are clearly something they have done more than endorse: they sent thousands of lobbyists to the Hill to push for the bills the day after their recent extravaganza at the DC Convention Center.

I have written, in no uncertain terms, that the organized American Jewish community needs to find the courage to publicly rebuke the pre-emptive war fetishists in its midst. Even if the U.S., Israel, Iran’s neighbors and Europe find a nuclear-armed Iran to be an intolerable risk –and that is arguable– it would be senseless to bomb its nuclear facilities unless and until every conceivable diplomatic option is attempted. It is also foolish for American policy to rely completely on sticks and offer no real carrots. MJ has written the same thing.

But that doesn’t change my view that, at least in this case, AIPAC and its Congressional allies stopped well short of overt warmongering. What is it that I’m missing here? In these non-binding resolutions, they tried to ratchet up the economic and political pressure. That’s a far cry from adapting the mentality of Richard Perle and Norman Podhoretz others who appear to relish the idea of one last firestorm before Bush and Cheney leave.

Topics: Israel | 19 Comments »

By Dan Fleshler | June 22, 2008

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