The Israel Lobby And Iran

I mentioned the Swift Boating of Chas Freeman and its implications on US/Israel policy. Andrew Sullivan thinks he's found a nut and has divined the real reason there was such vicious pushback on Freeman, who was clearly qualified for the job. There is a pretty big under-the-radar battle right now between Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, who recommended Freeman for the job of National Intelligence Council head, and the hard right in Israel, and this mainly concerns intelligence on Iran. Blair testified in an open session on Tuesday that Iran has not weaponized uranium or restarted its nuclear capacity. And frankly, the Israelis don't like what they hear.

Iran has not produced the highly enriched uranium necessary for a nuclear weapon and has not decided to do so, U.S. intelligence officials told Congress yesterday, an assessment that contrasts with a stark Israeli warning days earlier that Iran has crossed the "technological threshold" in its pursuit of the bomb.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair said that Iran has not decided to pursue the production of weapons-grade uranium and the parallel ability to load it onto a ballistic missile [...]

Israeli officials have a different view of Iran's goals.

"Reaching a military-grade nuclear capability is a question of synchronizing its strategy with the production of a nuclear bomb," Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, Israel's chief of military intelligence, told cabinet ministers, according to a senior Israeli official briefing reporters in Jerusalem. "Iran continues to stockpile hundreds of kilograms of low-level enriched uranium and hopes to use the dialogue with the West to buy the time it requires in order to move towards an ability to manufacture a nuclear bomb."

Blair said Israel was working from the same facts but had drawn a different interpretation of their meaning.

"The Israelis are far more concerned about it, and they take more of a worst-case approach to these things from their point of view," he said.

And so, extrapolating from that, Sullivan makes a succinct but compelling argument that the Israel lobby is trying to show their power to Blair, and by extension influence the internal debate on Iran.

The blackballing of Freeman is also about the intimidation of Blair. My concern remains that many of the same people that led us into the groupthink that gave us the worst intelligence blunder in American history are now dictating who gets to review intelligence for the next historic analysis: on Iran. I realized my mistake and have tried to adjust to allow for it. Others have dug in more deeply.

There's no question that the Israel lobby used the blackballing of Freeman to aggrandize their power in Washington and with the Obama Administration. In Walter Pincus' article, an AIPAC spokesman was outed as providing material about Freeman on background to reporters (good for Pincus). But character assassination is one thing. If there really is an attempt to hijack the interpretation of key data about the scope of the Iranian threat, it needs to be pummeled into sand.

The Administration's public statements on Iran have been a mix of carrots and sticks - and they've candidly spoken on both sides of the nuclear issue. Yet at the same time they may be seeking supply routes for Afghanistan through the country, inviting the country to international conferences, etc. It sounds to me like there's an internal struggle, and the Israel lobby is trying to gain a foothold. Needless to say, the result of either the US or Israel attempting to "take out" Iranian nuclear facilities would be catastrophic for the region and the world. It's simply incredible that we have to even fight this battle again, but Washington doesn't learn easily.

This Is A Silly Country

I can't believe that one of the biggest fights, on a bipartisan basis, in recent days has been over forcing out Chas Freeman, a knowledgeable and qualified candidate for Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, because he doesn't toe the party line of unthinking, unquestioning support for every policy Israel has ever undertaken. Not only did the anti-honest broker forces succeed, but Chuck Schumer sees fit to brag about it:

“Charles Freeman was the wrong guy for this position. His statements against Israel were way over the top and went beyond anything I have seen from any administration official. I repeatedly urged the White House to reject him, and I am glad they did the right thing.”

We have no debate on Israel inside Washington. You have to be mindlessly in support of whatever they do - in fact, you have to say that the role of the United States "is to support the decisions that are made by the people of Israel." Yet no country is infallible, no country is above criticism. That would be the logical view. But as a Jew expressing that, I would be called an anti-Semite and a racist. That's going to be an impediment to doing the necessary diplomacy, even with those groups we're not supposed to like, to create a stable peace in the Middle East.

Meanwhile airstrikes are STILL landing in Gaza. But it's important that someone with the capacity for critical thought isn't part of the Obama Administration.

UPDATE: Freeman is unhappy, and he has every right to be.

I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office. The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue. I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country. I agreed to chair the NIC to strengthen it and protect it against politicization, not to introduce it to efforts by a special interest group to assert control over it through a protracted political campaign.

There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government – in this case, the government of Israel. I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel. It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so. This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States.

The outrageous agitation that followed the leak of my pending appointment will be seen by many to raise serious questions about whether the Obama administration will be able to make its own decisions about the Middle East and related issues. I regret that my willingness to serve the new administration has ended by casting doubt on its ability to consider, let alone decide what policies might best serve the interests of the United States rather than those of a Lobby intent on enforcing the will and interests of a foreign government.

Well said.