The modus operandi is exactly the same: an open letter to the president signed by most of the same neo-conservatives who signed onto PNAC letters from 1998 to 2005 and whose commitment to human rights and democratic values — as opposed to enhancing global U.S. military dominance and Israeli military hegemony in the Middle East — has always been somewhat suspect, to say the least.

That several genuine human rights activists — such as Amnesty International USA’s executive director, Larry Cox — should have chosen to associate themselves with such a group is remarkable and offers additional evidence that Kagan and Kristol are trying to reconstruct the neo-con/liberal coalition that pressed the Clinton administration to intervene in the Balkans during the late 1990’s.

Mind you, I have no great disagreement with the sentiments expressed in the letter, but, to the extent that prominent liberals publicly endorse it, neo-conservatives, who have always been more excited about American power than the spread of human rights around the world (or who believe that the two are somehow synonymous), regain respectability. You would think there would be a sufficient number of serious human-rights activists to write their own letter.

Here’s the FPI release, followed by the letter:

MEDIA ADVISORY

11 Dupont Circle, NW
Suite 325
Washington, DC 20036
Ph: (202) 296-3322

——————————————————————————–
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 1, 2009

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:

Jamie Fly - (202) 296-3322
Executive Director
jfly@foreignpolicyi.org

Ellen Bork - (202) 296-3322
Director, Democracy and Human Rights
ebork@foreignpolicyi.org

Experts Urge President Obama to Make Democracy and Human Rights a Priority on Russia Trip

WASHINGTON – A distinguished group of American foreign policy experts and rights advocates today urged President Barack Obama to make democracy and human rights a priority in his upcoming summit meetings with President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia. In a letter, the group asked President Obama to act on his previous statements that assert the universality of human rights and the link between democracy and security by meeting with human rights, civil society, labor and opposition political party leaders while in Moscow.

A positive U.S.-Russia relationship “requires a commitment by both countries to democracy and human rights,” the letter’s signatories wrote, urging President Obama to “reiterate that these values, which you have called universal, are inextricably linked to humane behavior at home and responsible behavior abroad. Furthermore, we urge you to meet with human rights, civil society, labor and opposition political party leaders while you are in Moscow.”

The letter’s signers are: Max Boot, Ellen Bork, William Courtney, Larry Cox, Lorne Craner, Larry Diamond, Jamie M. Fly, Jeffrey Gedmin, Carl Gershman, Morton H. Halperin, Bruce Pitcairn Jackson, Max M. Kampelman, Robert Kagan, David Kramer, Irina Krasovskaya, William Kristol, Tod Lindberg, Clifford D. May, Thomas O. Melia, A. Wess Mitchell, Joshua Muravchik, Danielle Pletka, Stephen Rickard, David Satter, Randy Scheunemann, Gary Schmitt, Dan Senor, Steven Sestanovich, Gare A. Smith, John Sullivan, William H. Taft IV, Peter Wehner, Kenneth R. Weinstein, Christian Whiton, Leon Wieseltier, Damon Wilson, Jennifer Windsor, Kenneth D. Wollack, and R. James Woolsey.

The Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that seeks to promote an active U.S. foreign policy committed to robust support for democratic allies, human rights, a strong American military equipped to meet the challenges of the 21st century, and global economic competitiveness. For more information, please visit www.foreignpolicyi.org.

July 1, 2009

The Honorable Barack Obama
President of the United States
The White House
Washington, DC

Dear Mr. President:

You have stated your intention to forge a positive relationship between the United States and Russia. We write on the eve of your summit meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev to express our belief that such a relationship requires a commitment by both countries to democracy and human rights and to urge you to reiterate that these values, which you have called universal, are inextricably linked to humane behavior at home and responsible behavior abroad. Furthermore, we ask you to meet with human rights, civil society, labor and opposition political party leaders while you are in Moscow.

Since Vladimir Putin became President in 2000, Russia has been on a downward spiral away from the democratic and economic reforms made in the 1990’s after the collapse of communism. Human rights activists, opposition political party leaders, lawyers and journalists are targets of brutal, even deadly attacks. Freedoms of speech and the media are increasingly limited by the state and the Kremlin has asserted growing authority over the economy, especially the energy sector.

We urge you to challenge Russian leaders about the lack of political and economic freedom in Russia. In your Cairo speech you stated that the freedom of speech, the ability to choose one’s own government and way of life, the rule of law and transparency “are not just American ideas; they are human rights. And that is why we will support them everywhere.” Moreover you noted the connection between democracy and security, asserting that “governments that protect these rights are ultimately more stable, successful and secure.” This principle gained even more salience as Russia’s invasion of Georgia last year revealed the lengths to which it will go to assert a sphere of influence in the region.

For decades, the United States was a beacon of hope to those behind the Iron Curtain who longed for their freedom. As you stated in Prague, after the Iron Curtain was lifted “freedom spread like flowing water. Just as we stood for freedom in the 20th century, we must stand together for the right of people everywhere to live free from fear in the 21st.”

As you go forward, we hope that you will maintain a clear-eyed assessment of Russia’s intentions and keep the above principles in mind in order to ensure that the effort to “reset” U.S.-Russian relations does not come at the expense of the Russian people or Russia’s neighbors.

Sincerely,

Max Boot
Ellen Bork
William Courtney
Larry Cox
Lorne Craner
Larry Diamond
Jamie M. Fly
Jeffrey Gedmin
Carl Gershman
Morton H. Halperin
Bruce Pitcairn Jackson
Max M. Kampelman
Robert Kagan
David Kramer
Irina Krasovskaya
William Kristol
Tod Lindberg
Clifford D. May
Thomas O. Melia
A. Wess Mitchell
Joshua Muravchik
Danielle Pletka
Stephen Rickard
David Satter
Randy Scheunemann
Gary Schmitt
Dan Senor
Steven Sestanovich
Gare A. Smith
John Sullivan
William H. Taft IV
Peter Wehner
Kenneth R. Weinstein
Christian Whiton
Leon Wieseltier
Damon Wilson
Jennifer Windsor
Kenneth D. Wollack
R. James Woolsey

National Review’s Rich Lowry:

A major irony in Bush’s policy is that Iran appears to be much better primed than Iraq for a transition to democratic government (although Iraq is managing it anyway). It hasn’t been devastated by sanctions and war the way Iraq was; its faux elections let people at least exercise their democratic muscles; and the country has a relatively well-developed civil society. [my emphasis]

Just give it some time, Rich!

More seriously, Lowry’s comment does cut to the core contradiction of the neocon position on Iran. The same people who so self-righteously hold themselves up as champions of the slain Neda and protectors of innocent Iranians want nothing more than to ramp up sanctions (which, as Fred Kagan forthrightly admitted, will have the immediate effect of killing innocent Iranians) followed in all likelihood by military strikes (the destructive effects of which should need no explanation.) The fact that war with Iran would likely consolidate the hardliners’ power and snuff out the opposition similarly does not seem to factor into the thinking of these courageous defenders of the Iranian people.

Daniel Halper writes in The Weekly Standard today:

On “The Early Show” this morning, Obama said that “what we can do is bear witness and say–to the world that the, you know, incredible demonstrations that we’ve seen is a testimony to–I think what Dr. King called the–the arc of the moral universe. It’s long but it bends towards justice.”

Perhaps this is so, but Martin Luther King didn’t “bear witness” to the civil rights movement in America–he was a courageous participant. Obama now has a choice: Will he be a courageous participant or a weak witness? Will he declare that the elections in Iran were rigged, or will he continue to say that he does not know?

As Halper is probably aware, there is one fairly significant difference between King’s relation to the civil rights movement and Obama’s relation to the current protests in Iran. King was, indeed, a “courageous participant” in the civil rights movement, but he was an American and a leader of the movement itself. Obama, by contrast, is neither an Iranian nor a leader of the Iranian protest movement — rather, he is the leader of a rival power that has a fraught history with Iran.

It is fairly obvious that the level of “participation” that would be desirable, or effective, for a homegrown civil society leader would be different from that of a rival foreign leader. But to illustrate this obvious fact more sharply, consider the following thought experiment. In 1963, as King delivers his famous speech to the March on Washington, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev delivers a public message of his own to the protesters. “We would like to tell these brave voices of freedom,” Khrushchev says, “that they have the full support and solidarity of the USSR. The Soviet Union and the United States Communist Party are ready and willing to perform any measures within our power to help our American brothers and sisters obtain their rights from this oppressive regime. And although Dr. King pretends that he holds no hostility toward the American capitalist system of government itself, and wishes only to secure the ideals of the American founding for all of its citizens, we all know that he and his supporters really yearn for complete regime change in Washington. We in Moscow will do whatever it takes to help you achieve this goal.”

Let us ignore the question of Khrushchev’s intentions here: whether he is motivated by genuine sympathy and desire to aid the civil rights marchers, or a more cynical hope of destabilizing a rival government, or a narcissistic and self-righteous wish to take credit for the marchers’ achievement in order to feel better about himself and appease his domestic critics. (And before anyone gets up in arms about “moral equivalence,” let me note than I am not equating Obama’s America and Khrushchev’s Russia, merely noting that Obama and Khrushchev occupy structurally similar positions as leaders of distrusted rival powers.)

Let us focus only on a simple tactical question: would Khrushchev’s statement aid the civil rights movement? Would it be welcomed by King and his associates? Why or why not?

It’s too early to declare a winner of the prize for “most unhinged right-wing commentary on the Iran crisis,” but National Review Online’s Andy McCarthy (currently a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies) makes a strong bid for it with his post today. While most right-wingers are taking the line that Obama sympathizes with the protesters, but is failing to stand up for them strongly enough, McCarthy argues that Obama’s response to the Iran situation is in fact based on his deep ideological sympathy for Khamenei and Ahmadinejad. “The fact is that, as a man of the hard Left, Obama is more comfortable with a totalitarian Islamic regime than he would be with a free Iranian society,” McCarthy writes. This is because Obama is an adherent of “radical Leftism,” an ideology which has “much more in common [with radical Islam] than not, especially when it comes to suppression of freedom, intrusiveness in all aspects of life, notions of ’social justice,’ and their economic programs.” (However, McCarthy neglects to mention the Frank Gaffney thesis that Obama might simply be a radical Muslim himself.)

Although Obama’s personal wish would be an outright win for Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, McCarthy notes that “[i]t would have been political suicide to issue a statement supportive of the mullahs, so Obama’s instinct was to do the next best thing: to say nothing supportive of the freedom fighters.” He concludes:

It’s a mistake to perceive this as “weakness” in Obama…Obama has a preferred outcome here, one that is more in line with his worldview, and it is not victory for the freedom fighters. He is hanging as tough as political pragmatism allows, and by doing so he is making his preferred outcome more likely. That’s not weakness, it’s strength — and strength of the sort that ought to frighten us.

McCarthy’s rant was extreme enough that it prompted a rare rebuke from his boss, National Review editor Rich Lowry. However, it’s worth noting that this is far from the craziest conspiracy theory about Obama that McCarthy has espoused. In my mind, that prize has to go to his October 2008 classic, “Did Obama Writes ‘Dreams From My Father’ … Or Did [Bill] Ayers?”

Clifford D. May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, is outraged that the New York Times website published a blog post stating that, “Cliff May argued that torture is justified against Muslims because they’re Muslim.”

The “slander(ous)” accusation that he supports torturing Muslims originates–as he is quick to point out–in a blog post by Adam Serwer on Tapped–the “group blog” of The American Prospect.

May summarized his email exchange with Mark Schmitt, editor of The American Prospect, in a June 18th article on the National Review Online.

Why, I asked Schmitt, “would your magazine print something like this about me?” I asked, too: “Are you oblivious to the possibility that telling such a lie will incite some crazy to attack me or my family?”

He replied: “We (and the Times) should have provided a link, but of course you know it was a reference to your much-discussed written comments on The Corner of April 24.”

I did not, but I looked up that post on The Corner and found that I had explicitly written that I oppose torture. I had thought to add, however, that I understood there would be those who will label as “pro-torture” anyone who dares argue that there “may be methods of interrogation that are unpleasant but fall short of torture.”

I went on to quote Abu Zubaydah, the captured al-Qaeda terrorist who, according to the CIA memos released by the Obama administration, told his interrogators: “Brothers who are captured and interrogated are permitted by Allah to provide information when they believe they have reached the limit of their ability to withhold it in the face of psychological and physical hardships.”

This struck me as an important and potentially life-saving insight into the thinking of militant Islamists. “Imagine an al-Qaeda member who would like to give his interrogators information, who does not want to continue fighting, who would prefer not to see more innocent people slaughtered,” I wrote. “He would need his interrogators to press him hard so he can feel that he has met his religious obligations — only then could he cooperate.”

Indeed, May, in his April 24th post on The Corner–from which the accusation that he supports torture was drawn–makes the tired case that he is not in favor of torture but sees the need for “psychological and physical hardships” when interrogating “Islamists”.

May’s decision to use Abu Zubaydah as the poster child for “enhanced interrogation” is particularly strange considering that Zubaydah was quite possibly mentally ill and provided very little useful information once he was waterboarded and subjected to “enhanced interrogation”.

Nevertheless, the US government expended considerable resources tracking down phony leads provided by Zubaydah.

Ron Suskind examined the interrogation of Zubaydah in his book, The One Percent Doctrine.

On CNN’s Situation Room Suskind told Wolf Blitzer, “…essentially what happened is we tortured an insane man and jumped screaming at every word he uttered, most of them which were nonsense.”

Although May might be able to make an argument that he isn’t in favor of what former Justice Department attorney John Yoo would narrowly define as “torture” it does seem that he is borrowing some logic from the witch trials of the late 1600s.

In the witch trials–particularly those led by witch hunter Matthew Hopkins in the eastern counties of England–one of the “tests” administered to suspected witches was a swimming test. Women weighted down with rocks were thrown into lakes. If they floated they were a witch and subsequently hung or burned at the stake. If they sank and drowned they were cleared of the charges.

In his April 24th post, May wrote:

…(W)e now know that Islamists believe their religion forbids them to cooperate with infidels — until they have reached the limit of their ability to endure the hardships the infidel is inflicting on them. In other words: Imagine an al-Qaeda member who would like to give his interrogators information, who does not want continue fighting, who would prefer not to see more innocent people slaughtered. He would need his interrogators to press him hard so he can feel that he has met his religious obligations — only then could he cooperate.

May’s justification for exposing suspected terrorists to “psychological and physical hardships” is not so different from Hopkins’.

Witch hunters of the 17th century and Cliff May share the belief that the “special” qualities of others, justifies subjecting them to forms of physical torment which would be considered unacceptable in other circumstances. The “special” qualities of witches and “Islamists” requires that they be subjected to “physical and psychological hardship” in order to extract information, the truth, confessions etc…

For Hopkins, witches had a mysterious tendency to float. The collateral price was the death of innocent women.

For May, ‘Islamists’ might want to help authorities but can only do so if subjected to “physical and psychological hardship”. The collateral price is the occasional torture of some innocent people and a dangerous precedent of the US sanctioning interrogation techniques widely believed to be cruel and inhumane.

In both cases, the “special” and often dehumanizing qualities attributed to a victim were used as justification to commit acts that would be considered unacceptable were the victim not a witch or ‘Islamist’.

May doesn’t mention the potentially difficult situation faced if a suspect is subjected to “psychological and physical hardship” but isn’t guilty of participating in terrorist activities. Presumption of innocence doesn’t play a big role in May’s model for helping ‘Islamists’ cooperate with ‘infidels’ or in Hopkins’ method for determining the guilt of women accused of witchcraft.

But that doesn’t seem to be his area of concern. He’s far too busy trying to make sure that suspected terrorists’ “religious obligations” are met through “physical and psychological hardship”.

Perhaps Cliff May missed his calling by four-hundred years.

As a short follow up to Daniel’s post yesterday on Krauthammer’s Projections, I wanted to quickly mention that the neocons are not only projecting their wants and desires for the Middle East onto Iranians, but also onto President Obama.

On Thursday, the neoconservative editorial board of the Wall Street Journal went so far as to indirectly suggest, by using an anonymous quote from an administration official, that Obama actually wants the crisis in Iran to end swiftly with an Ahmadinejad victory:

His foreign policy gurus drew up an agenda defined mainly in opposition to the perceived Bush legacy: The U.S. will sit down with the likes of Iran, North Korea or Russia and hash out deals. In a Journal story on Monday, a senior U.S. official bordered on enthusiastic about confirming an Ahmadinejad victory as soon as possible. “Had there been a transition to a new government, a new president wouldn’t have emerged until August. In some respects, this might allow Iran to engage the international community quicker.” The popular uprising in Iran is so inconvenient to this agenda.

It’s shocking enough to make such a suggestion, but all the more shocking considering that it is the ideological comrades of the WSJ editorial board who, ahead of the election, explicitly expressed support for an Ahmadinejad victory (cf. Daniel’s post on Neocons for Ahmadinejad).

Iran’s Leader, Ayatollah Khamene`i, gave everyone a piece of his mind in his Friday speech. Here are my reactions:

First, and perhaps more important than the words themselves, was the fact that Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani did not attend. This is extraordinary. Khamene’i and Rafsanjani were fellow revolutionaries in 1978-79. They have been associates – sometimes close colleagues – for more than 50 years. Many believe that Rafsanjani was instrumental in getting Khamene’i his position as Leader. Rafsanjani today heads the Assembly of Experts, which is responsible for monitoring the performance of the Leader, among other things. This was possibly the single most fateful speech by Khamene’i in his 20 years as Leader of the Islamic Republic. How could Rafsanjani not attend? Did he simply boycott the event? Was he under house arrest? It probably didn’t help that several of Rafsanjani’s children were arrested in the previous 24 hours. We have never had such a graphic demonstration of political differences within Iran’s ruling elite.

Another non-attendee, presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, whom I regard as an almost accidental leader, now faces some of the most fateful decisions in at least the past twenty years of the Iranian revolution. He decided to run for president as a relatively unknown and uninspiring candidate who could offer solutions to some of Iran’s more pressing problems, especially on the economic side. His greatest attribute was the fact that he was “anybody but Ahmadinejad.” But his appearances with his charismatic wife, often holding hands, and the invention of the “green wave” struck a chord in the Iranian body politic. Then the extraordinary revulsion at the regime’s electoral numbers left a leadership void. He stepped in, rather tentatively at first, and filled that role. Two days ago he told the crowd that he was “willing to make sacrifices.” He realizes that there is zero tolerance by Iran’s rulers for anyone suspected of leading an opposition movement. His top supporters and associates have already been jailed, and he could face the same fate – or worse.

Khamene`i ‘s words were stark and simple. To paraphrase: the election is over, I fully support the person (Ahmadinejad) who won, it was fair, Iranians all trust their Islamic leaders, there will be no annulment, get over it and get off the streets or there will be harsh consequences, and besides it is all the work of outside agitators, especially the United States and Britain.

Tonight the streets of Tehran rang out with cries of allahu akbar and “death to the dictator,” suggesting that opposition has not vanished.
A major demonstration has been announced by Mousavi for Saturday. If it proceeds and is substantial in numbers, it will be the first open flouting of opposition to the Leader, with the support of a number of key regime leaders, in more than twenty years.

Iran has always had the capacity to surprise. There are frantic decisions being made right now in the top leadership of the Revolutionary Guards, in the Leader’s office, in Mousavi’s team, and in kitchens and living rooms across the country as Iranians decide what they are going to do next. They don’t know how this will work out, and neither do we.

We do know that what they decide will be very important to the future of Iran, to Middle East politics, and to American policy. President Obama today went as far as he could prudently go by declaring:

I’ve said this throughout the week, I want to repeat it, that we stand with those who would look to peaceful resolution of conflict and we believe that the voices of people have to be heard, that that’s a universal value that the American people stand for and this administration stands for. And I’m very concerned, based on some of the tenor and tone of the statements that have been made, that the government of Iran recognize that the world is watching. And how they approach and deal with people who are — through peaceful means — trying to be heard will I think send a pretty clear signal to the international community about what Iran is and is not… . this is not an issue of the United States or the West versus Iran; this is an issue of the Iranian people.

But what he didn’t say was that it directly affects his policy of engagement. As long as the crisis persists, there is no chance that he can initiate meaningful negotiations with Iran.

He is also under immense and growing pressure – largely from people who deeply opposed the concept of engagement from the start – to take sides.
And the pressure will grow, especially if there is a bloodletting by the regime in Iran. Obama’s statement today strikes me as typically precise and about as far as he can go without sliding into partisanship that will inevitably lead to escalating confrontation.

Despite the siren calls to give full vent to American outrage, short of widespread carnage he should recognize that such statements will not assist the beleaguered opposition in Iran. On the contrary, it will increase their vulnerability, raise false hopes of U.S. physical intervention, and will provide an excuse for the regime to carry out the kind of brutal repression that they are threatening, all in the name of fighting imperialism.

Shouts of outrage are fine by folks like me on the web, but the U.S. government should never forget that its primary task is to do no harm. It may be hard to hold your tongue, but then nobody ever said foreign policy was easy.

Interestingly, I attended a talk today at the National Foreign Trade Council by Keith Weissman, the former AIPAC official who was indicted under the Espionage Act along with Steve Rosen. Weissman, who had been AIPAC’s leading expert on Iran, has made distinctly dovish remarks — in stark contrast to his alleged former co-conspirator — since his indictment’s dismissal last month, opened his remarks about U.S. policy toward Iran at the present moment with the same advice as Sick ended his. “First, do no harm,” he said, describing Obama’s response to the current crisis so far as “good, …very good.”

Charles Krauthammer’s most recent column on Iran offers a concise distillation of neoconservative pathologies about the Middle East, and a demonstration of why the Iranian protesters’ self-proclaimed best friends in the U.S. may prove to be their worst enemies. In the course of excoriating Barack Obama for his alleged abandonment of the protesters, Krauthammer displays a deep indifference to the actual wishes and needs of the protesters that is extremely common among those pushing for more robust American interference in the Iranian crisis.

“The demonstrators,” Krauthammer informs us, “are fighting on their own, but they await just a word that America is on their side.” As it happens, Obama has offered many words of support for the protesters’ right to peaceful demonstration, but has stopped short of the full-throated denunciation of Khamenei and Ahmadinejad that Krauthammer evidently wants. Regardless, what is striking about Krauthammer’s assertion is that he does not deem it necessary to offer a shred of evidence to support it. He simply takes for granted, in the face of a fair amount of evidence to the contrary, that Iranians want a more aggressive U.S. intervention into the crisis. In this respect Krauthammer is representative of right-wing commentary on the Iran situation, which has been primarily concerned with striking the requisite “Churchillian” and “Reaganite” poses while displaying a remarkable disinterest in what actual Iranians might want or think. After all, why let the wishes of our intended beneficiaries get in the way of a fine opportunity for self-congratulatory moral posturing?

But Krauthammer is not done reading the minds of the Iranian people:

[P]eople aren’t dying in the street because they want a recount of hanging chads in suburban Isfahan. They want to bring down the tyrannical, misogynist, corrupt theocracy that has imposed itself with the very baton-wielding goons that today attack the demonstrators…What’s at stake now is the very legitimacy of this regime — and the future of the entire Middle East. This revolution will end either as a Tiananmen (a hot Tiananmen with massive and bloody repression or a cold Tiananmen with a finer mix of brutality and co-optation) or as a true revolution that brings down the Islamic Republic.

Once again, Krauthammer takes for granted, without seeing fit to offer any evidence, that the protesters loathe the Islamic Republic itself and that their goal is to topple it. But as Ali Gharib has written, Moussavi himself and the protesters as a whole have been driven primarily by a desire to reform the Islamic Republic rather than to topple it, and to get back to the principles of the 1979 revolution rather than to abandon them. The chants of “Allah O Akbar” that have been so central to the demonstrations are certainly a savvy political move, but undoubtedly reflect more deeply held belief as well. However, the actual aspirations that seem to motivate the protesters do not fit Krauthammer’s Manichean framework — in which the Islamic Republic in any form is unmoderated evil, and can only be overthrown, not reformed — so these aspirations are conveniently ignored.

Having dispensed with the Iranians as they are, and created in their place the ardently pro-American secular revolutionaries that he would like them to be, Krauthammer then lays out a vision of liberal transformation in the Middle East that will be familiar to anyone who remembers the grandiose claims made in the run-up to the Iraq war. Regime change in Tehran will “do to Islamism what the collapse of the Soviet Union did to communism — leave it forever spent and discredited.” It will “launch a second Arab spring,” bolstering Iraq and Lebanon, isolating Syria, and emasculating Hezbollah and Hamas. He does not mention the so-called “moderate” Arab states, perhaps because they shatter his “pro-democracy” pretext — after all, it would not do for the second Arab spring to sweep out Mubarak and bring in the Muslim Brotherhood. Nor does he mention the Palestinians outside of Hamas, but presumably they will at long last recognize themselves as a defeated people and acquiesce to whatever arrangement Israel sees fit to grant them.

Without getting into the merits of Krauthammer’s vision (I personally think it is no less far-fetched in 2009 than it was in 2003), how could anyone possibly believe that this is what the protesters are fighting for? It would be rather remarkable, to say the least, if the goals and aspirations of Moussavi and his supporters turned out to be identical with the goals and aspirations of the Wall Street Journal editorial board and the American Enterprise Institute.

This tendency toward projection has always been characteristic of neoconservative foreign policy thinking, even if it is rarely as obvious as in Krauthammer’s column. Constantly inclined to view foreign policy as a Manichean struggle between light and darkness, the neoconservatives have never really been able to grasp that anyone might be in the middle, and that the Iranian or any other people might share some — but not all — of their goals. Thus the assumption that if Iranians are repelled by the authoritarian abuses of the their government, they must by the same token be secular, pro-American, anti-political Islam, anti-Islamic Republic, and clamoring for the United States to free them from their oppressors. It does not seem to occur to them that although many of the protesters may be secular, many are devout Muslims; that although some may want to overthrow the Islamic Republic, most respect its basic legitimacy; that although most want to avoid confrontation and conflict with the West, few are overflowing with admiration for America or Israel; that although none want to instigate a regional nuclear holocaust, the vast majority support nuclear power as a matter of national pride.

It has frequently and rightly been said in recent days that the U.S. should avoid an over-enthusiastic embrace of the demonstrators because the regime will use it to delegitimize them and paint them as tools of a hostile power. What has not been said enough is that any attempt to coopt the protests in the service of American goals risks delegitimizing the movement not merely among the public at large but among its own members. By and large the protesters have no interest in being enlisted in the grand battle between Islam and the West that the “clash of civilizations” crowd so ardently seeks. If their self-proclaimed American supporters persist in trying to turn their admirable political struggle into something that is alien to them — by insisting that in marching against fraud and repression they are really marching against Islam, against the 1979 revolution, and for American interests — then these alleged supporters may succeed only in convincing the protesters that the movement is something they want no part of.

On Tuesday, Danielle Pletka and Ali Alfoneh of AEI published a New York Times op-ed claiming that the real and unnoticed story of the Iranian elections is that the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) have “effected a silent coup d’etat” overthrowing the clerics. Pletka and Alfoneh (a frequent collaborator of AEI’s Michael Rubin and Frederick Kagan, who have been spearheading the think tank’s anti-Iran campaign) took a notably dim view of the protesters’ prospects, arguing that “the uprising is little more than a symbolic protest” that has been crushed by the IRGC.

But on Wednesday, Michael Ledeen lashed out at Pletka and Alfoneh, calling their op-ed “embarassingly silly”. Ledeen argues that far from being ineffectual, the protesters are actually on the verge of toppling the Islamic Republic, and that the IRGC and clerics are united against them. (This is in line with Ledeen’s longstanding view that the secular-minded and pro-American Iranian populace despises the Islamic Republic and is simply waiting for American aid to rise up and overthrow it.)

Regardless of the issues at stake, it is quite striking to see neocons go after their own in such harsh language. We suspect that Ledeen’s bellicosity may have less to do with his actual policy disagreements with Pletka and Alfoneh, and more to do with the fact that Pletka is rumored to have purged Ledeen and others from AEI last year, necessitating his move to his current perch at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

In an article posted on the website of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz early this morning, Dennis Ross reportedly revealed that he had been abruptly “reassigned”.

Since late February, Ross’ position in the Obama administration has been that of “Special Adviser for the Gulf and Southwest Asia” to US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton [see Jim Lobe’s LobeLog post on Feb. 23]. Despite a title that makes no mention of Iran, it has been widely accepted in diplomatic circles and by the media that Ross was in charge of the State Dept.’s Iran portfolio. Ravid claimed that Ross would now be dealing primarily with “regional issues related to the peace process.”

According to Ravid:

Washington sources speculate that a number of reasons moved the administration to reassign Ross. One possibility is Iran’s persistent refusal to accept Ross as a US emissary given the diplomat’s Jewish background as well as his purported pro-Israel leanings. Ross is known to maintain contacts with numerous senior officials in Israel’s defense establishment and the Israeli government.

Ross began his career as a high level policymaker during the Carter administration, working in the Pentagon under Paul Wolfowitz. His track record as a foreign policy hawk continued during the Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, and Bush 43 presidencies. A Fellow of the hardline pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), Ross was an advocate of the policies of the neoconservative Project for a New American Century (PNAC).

At the time of Ross’ appointment, objections were raised as to his appropriateness for the highly sensitive post, not only in light of his neoconservative contacts but because of his bluntly expressed “liberal hawk” views.

Iran’s leaders have long insisted that they are not anti-Semitic and have nothing against Jews who are not Zionists. Iran’s 25,000 Jews elect their own member of the Majlis, the Iranian parliament. They continue to resist inducements offered by the Israeli government to emigrate to Israel. A delegation of rabbis from Neturei Karta, a small ultraorthodox anti-Zionist Jewish subsect that participates in anti-Israel demonstrations, has been warmly welcomed in Tehran. The marginal group has defended Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and welcomed his 2007 visit to New York, in constrast to mainstream Jewish organizations who protested the visit.

But Ross is hardly an anti-Zionist, nor can he claim any pretense of neutrality on issues concerning Israel. Ross served as the chairman of the Board of Directors and the “Professional Guiding Council” of the Jewish People’s Policy Planning Institute (JPPPI) between its founding in 2002 and February 2009, when he assumed his State Dept. post. Although JPPPI describes itself as an “independent think tank,” its website notes that it was established by the Jewish Agency, an Israeli quasi-governmental organization. Links provided on the JPPPI website include AIPAC and Jewish organizations such as the American Jewish Committee, which have been increasingly involved in advocating a hardline position toward the Islamic Republic.

Ravid noted that “Diplomatic sources in Jerusalem surmised that another possibility for Ross’ ouster is his just-released book, Myths, Illusions, and Peace - Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East.” Ross’ co-author, David Makovsky, is a former journalist who is now a WINEP fellow.

According to Ross and Makovsky, the primary rationale for the US to attempt diplomatic engagement with Iran is not because the effort will succeed, but because failure, which they view as inevitable, will eventually elicit support among allies of the US and Israel for harsher measures against Iran: “Tougher policies–either militarily or meaningful containment — will be easier to sell internationally and domestically if we have diplomatically tried to resolve our differences with Iran in a serious and credible fashion.” These tougher policies include the possibility of military action. The book, released last Thursday, opposes any linkage between progress on Israeli-Palestinian issues and unwavering US opposition to an Iranian nuclear program.

Questions about the differences between the hardline positions advocated in the book and the Obama administration’s approach have been raised twice during the past three weeks during State Dept. press briefings. On June 10, State Dept. spokesman Ian Kelly was asked:

QUESTION: If -– a question you were asked a couple of weeks ago about what Dennis Ross wrote in his book –- you didn’t have an answer for us at that time. But there’s a school of thought in the Middle East and that the President, President Obama, seems to subscribe to it, is that if you solve Israel-Palestine, that will help solve other problems in the region. Dennis Ross, in his book, says that’s not necessarily the case. I was wondering if you have any comment on that.

MR. KELLY: Dennis Ross co-wrote this book before he became a member of the Administration, and I’m just – I’m not going to comment on anything that he said in the book.

Kelly had given a similar reply to a reporter on May 29, except in his earlier answer, he had stated he was unfamiliar with the book’s contents and therefore was unable to comment.

Ross’ appointment to the Iran portfolio at the State Dept. has been regarded by advocates of rapprochement and engagement as curious as well as counterproductive. “It’s paradoxical that Obama, who made opening a dialogue with Iran into a crucial plank in his campaign, would hand the Iran file to Ross,” Robert Dreyfuss wrote in The Nation on April 8:

Widely viewed as a cog in the machine of Israel’s Washington lobby, Ross was not likely to be welcomed in Tehran–and he wasn’t. Iran’s state radio described his appointment as “an apparent contradiction” with Obama’s “announced policy to bring change in United States foreign policy.” Kazem Jalali, a hardline member of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee, joked that it “would have been so much better to pick Ariel Sharon or Ehud Olmert as special envoy to Iran.” More seriously, a former White House official says that Ross has told colleagues that he believes the United States will ultimately have no choice but to attack Iran in response to its nuclear program.

About a month ago, Jim Lobe raised the “intriguing question” here on LobeLog as to whether there were signs that Ross might be headed for trouble. Two recent articles, one in the Wall Street Journal by Jay Solomon (US, Allies Set October Target for Iran Progress) and the other in Haaretz headlined US Puts October Deadline on Iran Talks, also by Ravid, reported that Ross had set an autumn target date for concluding the first round of talks between the US and Iran during a meeting with an unnamed senior European diplomatic official. Nevertheless, Jim noted, Kelly explicitly denied there was any “deadline” or even a “notional timeline” for progress in talks with Iran.

Today’s intriguing question would seem to be not “Why was Dennis Ross ousted as Obama’s envoy to Iran?”, but rather, was he? If he was, why does the State Dept. appear to be denying it? Why has the story disappeared from the Haaretz website?

If Ross wasn’t ousted, why would Barak Ravid, a respected journalist for what is arguably Israel’s most credible newspaper, claim that Ross had said he was? Would Ravid have invented the story of Ross’ revelation to Haaretz with no basis in fact? Did Ross “leak” the news (as he often appears to, particularly to Israeli journalists), believing it to be true, or perhaps to vent his displeasure with the Obama administration’s expressed determination to engage Iran? Or had a decision in fact been made in the State Dept. to shift Ross to another position, which has since been reversed on account of developments in Iran?

Update: At today’s State Dept. daily press briefing, Ian Kelly was asked about Ross’ current employment status. His answer was unequivocally ambiguous:

QUESTION…are a lot of reports about Dennis Ross, based on one specific report in an Israeli newspaper. What’s his status? Has he been fired?

MR. KELLY: He has not been fired.

QUESTION: Is he being ousted?

MR. KELLY: He is not being ousted.

QUESTION: Is there an abrupt change to responsibilities?

MR. KELLY: I — there is — there is — look, he is in — he is in the building today. I was in his office today. He’s working very hard on the same issues that we’ve been discussing the last, whatever it is, 15 minutes. And you know, if and when there is some kind of personnel announcement, I’d be happy to let you know. […]

QUESTION: … assigned to another position at the White House?

MR. KELLY: Anything’s possible. I could be fired today, too. I mean…

… if you guys keep probing me on this.

QUESTION: Isn’t it true that he’s been reassigned to another position at the White House?

MR. KELLY: Like I said, I have — there — I have no personnel announcements.

QUESTION: So the secretary has full confidence in Dennis Ross to continue in his present role?

MR. KELLY: Absolutely.

QUESTION: So Dennis Ross — Dennis Ross is going to continue in his role as adviser to the secretary on — what was it? –….Southwest Gulf affairs?

MR. KELLY: He is — as I say — he is working very hard. He worked hard throughout the weekend and he’s continuing to do his job today.

QUESTION: Has the book that he and David Makovsky have published recently caused any problems for him internally in this administration?

MR. KELLY: No. No. It’s a very good book, by the way. I started reading it over the weekend. …

QUESTION: Oh, so you’re doing reviews from the podium (inaudible). […]

QUESTION: Was there any concern about this authorship of this book, of some of the opinions that he and his co-author expressed in the book…

MR. KELLY: No.

QUESTION: … during the time leading up to his appointment?

KELLY: No, not at all.

QUESTION: Why not?

MR. KELLY: Well, I mean — Mr. Ross is — he is in the administration now. He is a very close adviser of the secretary on a number of issues related to Iran and the region. But he also came out of — came out of the academic community and he — he’s entitled to — he was entitled to his opinion. He wrote the book before he came on board here.

QUESTION: But, I mean, his opinion and his book and everything notwithstanding, are you saying that Dennis Ross is not being reassigned to another position at the White House?

MR. KELLY: I’m saying he’s working very hard here at the State Department.

QUESTION: But you’re not saying no?

MR. KELLY: I’m saying he’s working very hard here at the State Department.

QUESTION: Well, I’m not saying he’s…

MR. KELLY: I’m not going to predict the future…

Another Update: Time Magazine is now reporting that Ross is not going out but up, and that he will have more control over Iran policy:

Dennis Ross, the Obama Administration’s special adviser on Iran, will be leaving his post at the State Department to become a senior adviser at the National Security Council (NSC) with an expanded portfolio, Administration officials told TIME.
…