Obama’s Iran policy vague as internal admin departments fight for policy control

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One heck of an interesting article from Amir Taheri today that documents Obama’s indecision on an Iran policy, and the internal battles over control of that policy.

A MONTH after he took office, some analysts are starting to wonder whether President Obama has an Iran policy.

What of his controversial policy of opening an unconditional dialogue with the Khomeinist regime in Tehran? Hussein Qashqawi, the Foreign Ministry spokesman in Tehran, told a press briefing last week: “We have had nothing other than some talk about change.”

He has a point. For example, Richard Holbrooke’s recent demarche to Iran on stabilizing Afghanistan continues the policy of the Bush administration, which consulted Tehran from the start of the post-9/11 Afghan war. (The Bush team also consulted Iran about Iraq.)

~~~

The latest noise from the administration is that the president has ordered a “thorough review of policy on Iran.”


Did you think Obama had already reviewed a policy that he had vehemently condemned and opposed? Wrong: As in many other cases, he opposed Bush policy without bothering to study and understand it.

The starting point of all this was Obama’s campaign pledge to talk to Iran “anywhere, anytime and without conditions.” Now, however, one could compile a long list of conditions set by Rice, Clinton, Power and Jones: “Anytime, anywhere” is gone.

In fact, the administration will try to prevaricate until after Iran’s June 20 presidential election. The hope is that former President Muhammad Khatami, a mid-ranking mullah and the darling of the Davos crowd, will beat Ahmadinejad and offer Obama an acceptable interlocutor.

There is also the unfortunate fact of three UN Security Council resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran. Legally speaking, America can’t ignore them. Politically, it can’t stick to them without making Obama’s promise of “unconditional talks” meaningless.

Obama campaigned on his talk without preconditions… but has done little tangible action save making some token flowerly speeches about extending a hand. Yet, as Taheri points out, those pesky UN Resolutions stand in Obama’s “no preconditions” way.

But thus far, we’ve seen the Campaigner-in-Chief do more delegating than leading, outsourcing the architecture of the stimulus and the proposed Homeowners Affordability and Stabilization Act to Summers and (in the case of the latter) Geithner. Once the basics are founded, Pelosi and Reid take over for the ensuing mutilation.

Now, according to Taheri, Obama’s Iran policy appears to be an outsourced task as well… but the question is, to whom?

Meanwhile, it’s unclear who will be in charge of Obama’s Iran dossier. Initially, it was rumored that Dennis Ross, a seasoned diplomat and senior scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, would be solely in charge, reporting directly to the president. But, a month into the administration, it’s still not clear what role, if any, Ross will play.

And several heavy hitters are fighting over control of Iran policy.

Susan Rice, Obama’s UN envoy, opened the hostilities last month by formally claiming control. That invited a riposte from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who pointed out that nothing could be done about Iran without her say-so.

Then a third claimant entered the fray: Samantha Power, the former journalist who is believed to be Obama’s closest foreign-policy adviser. As director of the National Security Council’s Middle East desk, she insists that Iran falls on her turf. And National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones advances his own claims as the administration’s top Iran expert.

The result has been confusion.

Certainly there can be no love lost between Powers and Clinton, as the former ended up resigning from her Obama campaign advisory role after calling Hillary a monster. Once inaugurated, Obama wasted no time in reappointing her to his administration after Powers offered to bury the hatchet with a woman with whom she would have to work closely.

But if there is one thing we all know about the Clintons, they have memories like elephants.

The problem is, as Obama stalls and reviews… possibly trying to wait out the Iranian election… Iran pushes forward with it’s nuclear agenda. Considering the latest reports that that they have acquired enough uranium to build a nuclear bomb, this dodging the issue while trying to figure out what to do may have serious consequences.

As Hillary pointed out during the campaign, Obama has this pesky habit of dealing with international crises by scheduling a speech with lofty phrases as a substitute for policy… a habit he continues after gaining the power of the Oval Office.

It works like this: The president makes a speech, orders a review and appoints a special emissary. Sympathetic newspapers praise the president’s prudence and wisdom compared to President George W. Bush’s gung-ho, trigger-happy foreign policy. The special emissaries are shown on TV going to faraway places and taking pictures with exotic foreign leaders. Think-tank experts then go on TV to remind us that Obama is dealing with problems that are “complex and multidimensioned.”

The hoped-for impression is that the problem has been taken care of, allowing the president to move on to tackle some other aspect of his Herculean task.

This John Kerry’esque “I have a plan” illusion gets peppered with photos ops of dialogue attempts. But, as Taheri points out – and in case you missed this in the first excerpts above – this differs not an iota from the previous POTUS.

What of his controversial policy of opening an unconditional dialogue with the Khomeinist regime in Tehran? Hussein Qashqawi, the Foreign Ministry spokesman in Tehran, told a press briefing last week: “We have had nothing other than some talk about change.”

He has a point. For example, Richard Holbrooke’s recent demarche to Iran on stabilizing Afghanistan continues the policy of the Bush administration, which consulted Tehran from the start of the post-9/11 Afghan war. (The Bush team also consulted Iran about Iraq.)

While Obama dodges any substantial “change”, and vacillates on just who he plans to outsource his Iranian policy to, Steve Rosen of the Middle East Forum blog (normally a supporter of Obama’s appointees) documents what he considers a very disturbing Obama appointment to the National Intelligence Council. This, of course, only serves to make what should be clear Iranian policy more muddy.

According to Laura Rozen at the Foreign Policy blog, Chas W. Freeman, Jr., the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, will become chairman of the National Intelligence Council, and may at times participate in daily intelligence briefings to President Obama.

This is a profoundly disturbing appointment, if the report is correct. Freeman is a strident critic of Israel, and a textbook case of the old-line Arabism that afflicted American diplomacy at the time the state of Israel was born. His views of the region are what you would expect in the Saudi foreign ministry, with which he maintains an extremely close relationship, not the top CIA position for analytic products going to the President of the United States.

Here is a sample of his views on Israel, from his Remarks to the National Council on US-Arab Relations on September 12, 2005:

“As long as the United States continues unconditionally to provide the subsidies and political protection that make the Israeli occupation and the high-handed and self-defeating policies it engenders possible, there is little, if any, reason to hope that anything resembling the former peace process can be resurrected. Israeli occupation and settlement of Arab lands is inherently violent. …And as long as such Israeli violence against Palestinians continues, it is utterly unrealistic to expect that Palestinians will stand down from violent resistance and retaliation against Israelis. Mr. Sharon is far from a stupid man; he understands this. So, when he sets the complete absence of Palestinian violence as a precondition for implementing the road map or any other negotiating process, he is deliberately setting a precondition he knows can never be met.”

Here is another example from 2008:

“We have reflexively supported the efforts of a series of right-wing Israeli governments to undo the Oslo accords and to pacify the Palestinians rather than make peace with them. … The so-called “two-state solution” – is widely seen in the region as too late and too little. Too late, because so much land has been colonized by Israel that there is not enough left for a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel; too little, because what is on offer looks to Palestinians more like an Indian reservation than a country.”

So here we are… Obama dances indecisively, his admin members jockey for individual power and influence, and he throws an anti-Israel Saudi into a prime position at the NIC. So far it looks like that evil and nefarious Bush architect, Karl Rove, may be right about the Obama administration merely winging it.

One has to wonder how all this waxing eloquent vs leadership will play with Netanyahu, ready to assume his Prime Minister position in Israel. His past Iranian policies were hardline, but right now the world expects BiBi to be more “center right”, matching the election composition of new Israeli parliament.

Center right or not, Netanyahu wasted no time in telling the world what he thought about Iran.

Immediately after he was invited to become the next prime minister by President Peres, Mr Netanyahu lost no time in restating his warnings about a nuclear-armed Iran, calling it the greatest existential threat faced by Israel since its creation. His words came a day after the UN announced that Tehran had acquired sufficient uranium to build a nuclear bomb — a “red line” development Israel has said it will not tolerate.

Considering the not-so-united path of Obama’s Middle East team, Taheri may be spot on in his final summary:

Remember you first read it here: Obama has no policy on Iran or any of the other major issues of foreign policy, including the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia and China. He hopes to avoid endorsing the policies of his predecessor but is at a loss as to what could be done differently. The result is political paralysis.

Political paralysis generally results in status quo “leadership”… if that’s what it can be termed from a guy who spent years convincing us of his abilities to lead us to “change”. Or perhaps that change is primarily confined to driving the US domestic economy into the ground.

So until our Campaigner-in-Chief can make up his mind, I suspect we will be seeing Obama continue to embrace the Bush foreign policy… as in the Afghanistan detainees, his continuation (if not stepped up) of military action in Pakistan using the Bush drone/Predatory tactics, escalating Afghanistan with his own “surge” (surprisingly unopposed), and assuming the Bush legal stance on the “extraordinary rendition lawsuit” in California (as reported by our own FA author, Scott).

While Obama may quietly embrace the Bush foreign policy until he stops “winging it”, and figures out what to stand for, you can be sure his “political paralysis” will be carefully masked by speeches saying the contrary.

In the case of Iran… the bigger question is will Obama and his power-jockeys figure out a genuine direction before they have that nuclear bomb built? And will it be soon enough for BiBi’s Israel?

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As in many other cases, he opposed Bush policy without bothering to study and understand it.

Well, there’s a shocking development. And by “shocking,” I mean it’s like being told “water is wet” and “the sky is blue.”

Israel won’t wait. They can hit Iran for a few days/weeks and then stop. If they stop, Iran can only attack back using proxy terror groups (which are already in open war w Israel), and to strike back Iran would have to strike through US forces. I have to believe that any ballistic missiles fired from Iran to Israel (OVER US FORCES) cannot possibly be interpreted as non-threatening to US forces.

Nope. If Israel is smart, they’d attack and use the US as a buffer, shield, and even force the US into the proxy fighter role. Obama’s got to force Iran to stop before Israel does.

My bet is that he lacks the balls, but we shall see, and we will see in the next few weeks. Waiting till July ain’t an option.

Is this another ‘It’s above my pay grade” plan of Obama’s?

It’s not just Israel that is not happy with a nuclear armed Iran with a lunatic at the helm – Egypt, the Saudi, the emirates are terrified of an nuclear Iran and do not want to be the only moslem state without nuclear capability.

Sat in a lecture today hosted by Edward Turzanski, senior fellow, foreign policy research institute.

(Excerpt below) Military Gospel Wisdom according to Science of War Strategist ‘General’ Homer Lea

Homer Lea was accused by American white-guilt liberals of being a ‘racist’ for his views on the wisdom of zero growth population policies, and his criticism of two faced pacifists arbitrationists; who pretend that war can be avoided, by refusing to address the scientific science of war causes of wars.

What very few journalists are willing to report are population policy issues as causal factors of international disputes, resource wars, etc. Egs. No journalist mentions the Vice Presidents 1986 Task Force on Terrorism, that concluded that ‘terrorism is a result of overpopulation colliding with finite or depleting resources. (“HOW and WHY Journalists Avoid the Population-Environment Connection”, by Univ. of SW Louisiania)

For example how many journalists reporting on Pakistan or Gaza, include the following population policy information that:

PAKISTAN: 30-40 % of Pakistan’s male population is between the age of 15 and 29. Over the last 80 years, Pakistan’s population exploded from 20 million in 1927 to 165 million today. If the United States had grown at the same rate as Pakistan, instead of 300 million the U.S. population would now be 960 million. Today, three or four Pakistani boys compete for one place in society, or for the property left by their father. The other three angry, frustrated young men are considered easy cannon fodder material for recruitment into radical groups and terror organizations. (Battle of the Youth Bulge: Copy at: bleader-brittish-brave.blogspot.com)

GAZA: According to a Palestinian census, the population of Gaza jumped by 40 percent between 1997 and 2007. West Bank officials expect the Gaza population, which they estimate at 1.4 million, to double over the next 21 years. (Gaza’s Baby Boom, Truthdig)

Civilisation has not changed human nature. The nature of man makes war inevitable. Armed strife will not disappear from the earth until after human nature changes.

High or low, the ambitions of the heterogeneous masses that now riot and revel within the confines of this Republic only regard it in a parasitical sense, as a land to batten on and grow big in, whose resources are not to be developed and conserved for the furtherance of the Republic’s greatness, but only to satisfy the larval greed of those who subsist upon it’s fatness.

If there is any patriotism worth having it belongs alone to the primitive principles of the Republic, to the militant patriotism of those who in simple, persistent valour laid with their swords the foundation of this national edifice and who after seven years of labour cemented with their own blood the thirteen blocks of its foundation. The continuation of this building, and the endless extension of the Republic, the maintenance of its ideals and the consummation, in a world-wide sense, of the aspirations of its founders, constitutes the only pure patriotism to which an American can lay claim or, in defence of, lay down his life.

The idea of International Arbitration as a substitute for natural laws that govern the existence of political entities arises not only from a denial of their fiats and an ignorance of their application, but from a total misconception of war, its causes and its meaning.

The source or origin of war must always be searched for, not in disputes between states, but deep down in the bowels of one or all of them. There alone will be heard those bruised noises, political, industrial or revolutionary, sooner or later to end in that eruption of mankind called – war. Disputes or disagreements between nations, instead of being a source or cause of war, are nothing more nor less than the first manifestations of approaching combat, or are the preliminaries thereto. To remove them by arbitration, or any other means, is at best but procrastination.

Only when arbitration is able to unravel the tangled skein of crime and hypocrisy among individuals can it be extended to communities and nations. As nations are only man in the aggregate, they are the aggregate of his crimes and deception and depravity, and so long as these constitute the basis of individual impulse, so long will they control the acts of nations.

Investigation shows that whenever two nations have become engaged in warfare they have been advancing on converging lines of self-interest and aggrandizement. When the contact takes place, the struggle for supremacy, or even survival is at hand. This inevitable hour is approximately fixed and determined by the angles of convergence plus the sum of the relative speed by which the nations are moving along their respective lines. Thus it is that, when the angle of convergence of both or even one of the nations is acute and the speed or progress along one or both of the converging lines correspondingly great, war results in a few years or decades.
~ “Military Gospel, according to Homer Lea ~

JMCSwan

welcome lara!

MataHarley,

HomerLea:: http://www.military-gospel.co.nr
(Sorry didn’t realise you never heard of Google; or you prefer being spoonfed. Ain’t got a problem with providing links; always do. And most of the time I get banned for posting links. Go Figure)

Own thoughts: Well there are plenty of own thoughts above, in my previous post. NOt sure which one’s you didn’t understand.

For those confused about the fact that population policy is the foundation of all goverments economic, political, military etc. policies: See: http://www.navyjag-humint.co.nr or http://www.pin2gong-humint.co.nr or http://www.exponential-yewgenics.co.nr

Plenty written on the subject, but certain authorities (particularly those who prefer to encourage high population growth, or who prefer to handout $lave and Cannon Fodder Breeding Welfare $$$ to the poor to increase future Cannon Fodder prospects) aren’t too enthusiastic about even discusson zero population growth policies; let alone implementing them. They prefer having a large underclass of poverty stricken slums and ghettos filled with ignorant masses, to easily manipulate by the use of ‘fear’ against lawabiding taxpaying citizens.

For example:
** I spent thirty days in a mental institution, when the South African Goverment got so paranoid about my demands they place POpulation Policy Issues and Zero Population Growth as a Discussion Topic for the Johannesburg Sustainability Summit; the South African Goverment determined that my demands for a discussion of population policy issues at the Summit were ‘insane’.

** 12 months in an African prison, on a Political Necessity Trial (More on that at http://crimeninuria.blogspot.com/)

MY READ ON OBAMA, IRAN AND POPULATION POLICY:

Very, very succinctly (this is my theory, I do not state it as fact, it is my read on the Crypto GeoStrategic Great Game):

TPTB (‘Illuminati’ for want of a better term) arranged for the ‘Mulatto’ to get the necessary ‘good media’ (who is capable of being publicly blackmailed by his lack of citizenship/birth certificate) to become the ‘El Prezidente’. They needed a ‘Mulatto’ for a few reasons; but one of them is that they need a Person of Colour (highly respected) to tell da World’s Poeple of Colour: ‘YA GOTTA STOP BREEDING LIKE BLOODY RABBITS; OR ELSE….. IF NOT, TO IMPLEMENT THE PRINCIPLES OF THE NUCLEAR TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS (Copy at http://www.armigideon-titanic.co.nr): Namely: “Nuclear Freedom is the Recognition of Mutual Coercion, Mutually Agreed Upon Procreation Values Necessity” (Remember Bidden’s Warning about Obama was going to be tested, to do something that he would need allot of support on, cause it would not be popular?).

Now da Mullatto Prez, either got his cohones turned to marshmallows, or he be following the predictable Mulatto behaviour by going on a ‘Go Slow Strike’…. ; cause he ain’t (yet?) got the cohones….

So, dat’s my succinct ‘read between the lines’ of the Geo Strategy Games being played.

Lara
________________________

Scott,

Hi. Thanks for the Welcome.

Lara

MataHarley,

As far as I am aware there is a link at ‘Lara Braveheart’ which — without having to learn how to google — takes you right to a blog where if you wanted to follow any of my alleged ‘white supremacist’ writings, or to warn your ignorant friends, who don’t investigate before they draw conlcusions, such as yourself, to stay away from.

My apologies, I did not know that Flopping Aces was a Black Supremacist Forum; or a Forum of a bunch of lame social worker Poverty Pimps who pretend they ain’t ‘Superior’. No big deal. I ain’t too hot on the PRETEND I AM NOT WHO I AM, kind of thing. I find it ain’t useful; it’s called DENIAL (actually many honest religions call it ignorance; and in one religion, the gravest sin is ignorance).

So, apologies, Mata Harley: shall not bother you anymore with my alleged ‘white supremacism’. If you are ever seriously interested in a serious conversation about root causes population policy issues, and the consequences of exponential functions on population procreation, crime, terrorism, politics, debt based ‘economic growth’, fractional banking, fiat currencies, usury, etc. I’d be more than happy to discuss those issues with you; if you are serious to listen. But if you are only interested in being proven right, and in being superior.

Let me save you the trouble. YOU ARE CORRECT. YOU ARE SUPERIOR. DUE TO YOUR SUPERIORITY AND SUPREMACISM, YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO ENQUIRE INTO ANYTHING I HAVE SAID, OR WRITTEN — ME BEING INFERIOR — SINCE NOTHING I SAY, NO MATTER HOW HONEST, NO MATTER IN WHAT RADICAL HONOURSTY CONTEXT, COULD BE JUSTIFIED.

Anyway, no big deal. My apologies for having bothered you with my opinions. My apologies that you are not interested in them. My apoloiges that your superirority, and my filth means you ain’t got any interest in an honest conversation, to attempt to take a walk in my shoes.

Should you ever change your mind. Feel free to contact me. I shall accordingly respect and honour your wishes not to be bothered by my filthy views and presence.

Respectfully,

Lara Johnstone
Any impartial person; interested in further enquiry:
Background Info: http://www.jagia-07146.co.nr

Dear God, I have never seen anyone say so little in sooooooo mannnnyyyy wooorrrrrddddsssss…..

It’s amazing how someone who spews doctrine that is so obviously based in racism (vis a vis eugenics) can claim that they are an “activist on behalf of zero-tolerance for racism”

Ewwwww…. she uses Wyoming as an example in the drivel she spews on the link she gave…..I think I need to go shower now….

“I have never seen anyone say so little in sooooooo mannnnyyyy wooorrrrrddddsssss…..” Are we talking about Lara B or Larry W?

At least when you are done reading one of Larry’s posts, you know what he said, even if he is wrong. Lara B comes across like an unmedicated schizophrenic that’s been awake for 72 hours straight.

Well, danged, Mata. You went straight for the finest point and wiped out any helpful additional thoughts I could have added to the discussion of the post by Lara .. uh, Croft?