While Walt was busy playing the concern troll in the Washington Post - "I'm only viciously anti-Israel for the good of the Israelis" - his partner was writing in the LRB, overcome with passions exceeding even his usual physical white-knuckle hatred for the Jewish State. What an absolute delight this guy must be:

The Obama administration has unambiguously declared that Israel's expansionist policies in the Occupied Territories, including East Jerusalem, are doing serious damage to US interests in the region... Biden reportedly told [Netanyahu]... "This is starting to get dangerous for us. What you're doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us, and it endangers regional peace."

If that message begins to resonate with the American public, unconditional support for the Jewish state is likely to evaporate...

Mark Perry, a Middle East expert with excellent contacts in the US military, described a briefing that senior officers working directly for General David Petraeus... 'Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardising US standing in the region... and could cost American lives.' Apparently, Mullen took this message to the White House, where it had a significant impact on the president and his chief advisers.

The Petraeus thing is a lie and Biden, when asked about his part of the story, replied "no, I never said that." Now you might think Mearsheimer was being intellectually dishonest, and you might point to his weasel phrase "Biden reportedly told" as proof. Ditto for how he neglected to mention that "Middle East expert" Mark Perry is a former Arafat adviser. But then you'd get to the bottom...

To show how Orwellian the lobby can be, Israel's supporters are also trying to make the case that Biden too was flagrantly misquoted and indeed, he never told Netanyahu that Israel's policies were putting American troops at risk.

... and you'd realize that he's just a run-of-the-mill conspiracy theorist who sees the shadowy hand of cabalistic influence everywhere ("the lobby" even got the Vice President to parrot their Orwellian talking points!) He goes on in the final paragraph to accuse Israel of being an apartheid state, making his insinuations of Orwellian manipulation particularly elegant.

We're a little over an hour away from this week's Omri Ceren Show, courtesy of One Jerusalem Radio. This week's episode - to which you can tune in live via either the main show page or the episode page - will revolve around Obama's ongoing diplomatic broadside against Israel. Since it's already paying dividends in the form of maximalist Palestinian demands backed by riotous Palestinian violence, we might as well discuss the overwhelming evidence that it was obviously premeditated and blisteringly hypocritical. That it will also set the peace process back by boxing in Abbas - again - is probably also worth mentioning. As always the decision-making process is as important as the decision, since apparently the people advising the President are either being ignored out of pique or being listened to out of ignorance.

On the TOCS technical/housekeeping side: I'm slowly getting caught up on remastering old episodes and working through old interviews. I've eliminated much of the choppiness from the first month of episodes, which you can now revisit here. The full 38 minute interview with Larry Greenfield, highlights of which aired last week, is now available on the One Jerusalem Audio page. Look out in the coming weeks for more reedited old episodes and more full versions of past interviews.

Anyway, today's official blurb:

Omri covers the Obama administration's diplomatic broadside against Israel. From Biden's initial "condemnation" over a minor mishap to Clinton's aggressive tirade against Netanyahu - to President Obama's personal orders to do both - the last week has brought the US-Israeli special relationship to the breaking point. Meanwhile anti-Israel partisans have unleashed a flurry of articles insisting that the US should scale back its support for Israel, some adopting almost classically antisemitic terms. Dan Diker calls in to provide an insider perspective on how the Israeli government is working to repair the crisis and minimize its damage.

All in all this hasn't been the best week the US-Israeli special relationship. But at least the crisis wasn't all totally predictable during the campaign!

References:
* Double Standards And Non-Standards [Omri Ceren Show]
* The Crisis [Halevi / TNR]
* Compare And Contrast: Israeli And Syrian "Insults" To Clinton [MR]
* Maybe Obama Deserved That Nobel Peace Prize After All [MR]
* Confirmed: US-Israeli Alliance Plummets Into "Historic Crisis," Obama Triggers Worst Relations Since Carter [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Jewish Politics
* Anti-Israel Diplomacy

The inevitable followup to Clinton's own timeline walk down, which was the inevitable followup to her walk down on "crippling sanctions." Keep in mind that France is probably the most hard line P5+1 country on Iran, and feast your eyes on the "strong sticks" that Obama is bringing to bear on the mullahs:

A United Nations resolution on new sanctions against Iran may not be ready until June and if a vote on it fails, European states could take unilateral measures instead, French and Finnish ministers said on Sunday. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said France remained determined to get UN backing for sanctions targeting Iran's nuclear program, but indicated that the support of Russia and China among the five permanent Security Council members was some way off... "Before June I hope, but who am I to hope or decide," he said, pointing out that France had originally hoped to get a UN sanctions package prepared in February, when it was chairing the Security Council

You know what's weird? A few weeks ago when it seemed like China was unmovable - and that military action was the only option - a rush of articles and statements came out saying the exact opposite. The AFP headlined with "Chances good for China to yield on Iran sanctions: experts," suggesting that Beijing wouldn't risk isolation over Iran. Reuters found their own experts to say the same thing. Then a month later British officials also said the exact same thing. But here we are and here China is still blocking any kind of robust restrictions regime, just like they've always done.

The WH is desperately trying to pretend that Obama's super-keen "strong sticks" profundity was something other than empty bluster. So maybe carve out a trade exemption for China so they'll symbolically affirm a broader hard line policy? Nope. How about unilateral action against Western companies that do business with Iran? Nope. It turns out that biting sanctions are politically impossible and roundabout sanctions are pragmatically unworkable. Even if Iran couldn't use states like Brazil to avoid restrictions - and they certainly can - the US can't even stop itself from funding sanctions-busting US firms. How are we going to enforce an international regime?

Meanwhile the Iranian nuclear program continues to roll ahead, soon to be protected by an upgraded air defense system. You can tell that we're nearing the point of no return. The Iran experts who used to insist that the mullahs had neither the political will nor the technical means for weaponization are now saying that Iran can be contained. Even Brzezinski agrees, and if anyone's good at reading the mullahs it's the guy who lost Iran to political Islam. Some experts have even explained - at length - why an Iranian bomb would be a great idea. Very sophisticated!

But not to worry, because their Iran expert friends think that China's about to get on board an effective sanctions regime. Any day now.

References and related after the jump...

I'm finally back in One Jerusalem Radio's Los Angeles studios, which you'd think would enhance the technical side of tonight's broadcast. Unfortunately there's a gigantic storm tearing apart the city - editing out the thunderclaps from the prerecorded interview with Lee Smith was a singular pleasure - so the studio might well be blacked out. If we do have electricity the show will go live as planned at 6:30pm PST / 9:30pm EST. You can tune in live to call in, hang out in the chat room, or just listen.

Huge show today. Lee Smith shows up to talk about his new book The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations. About halfway through I ask him about why liberal foreign policy experts get to just imagine the Middle East as they'd want it to be rather than as the cluster of warring tribes that it actually is. The conversation before and after goes into the precise level of disaster that can be expected, given that the WH seems bent on indulging in exactly those kinds of pseudo-sophisticated fantasies.

Dan Diker will be calling in from Israel to talk about Israel's efforts in Haiti, making the case that Israel's global leadership on disaster relief - coupled with a public diplomacy push on Twitter and YouTube - can't help but bolster the Jewish State's image. I'll be making my usual point that antisemites are simply too antisemitic - and have too many media enablers - for public diplomacy to make much of a dent. I obviously think I'm on the right side of that debate but Dan has "data" and "arguments," so take from that what you will.

References:
* The Pseudo-Sophisticated Horse - Lee Smith, Dan Diker [Omri Ceren Show]
* The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations by Lee Smith [Amazon]
* What Is the Arab World's Problem? [Lee Smith]
* ISRAEL: Sending soldiers of peace to Haiti [LAT]
* Israel builds a field hospital in Haiti. Anti-Zionists not fooled! [Gutmann / Telegraph]
* Haiti: An Israeli Public Relations Moment? [MediaLine]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Public Diplomacy
* Foreign Policy Experts

Iran's building next-generation centrifuges and has just formalized the construction of 10 new nuclear sites. Those 10 new facilities were supposed to lock in their "isolation" according to the White House. Instead Obama will push back the so-called drop dead date for a third or fourth time. I don't think anyone's under any illusions any more. This is what it is:

Obama has long proclaimed a Dec. 31 deadline for cooperation or retaliation of some unspecified kind. But Iran and, before it, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, has confidently counted on years of international dithering on enforcing printed sanctions. So naturally on ABC's "This Week" this week, George Stephanopoulos asked Obama adviser and ex-newspaper reporter David Axelrod about the approaching Obama deadline. Axelrod started to say something about talking but checked himself and spoke instead of "consequences." But, as often occurs in diplomatic-speak -- and politics-speak too, come to think of it -- it's what you don't say that's often more important than what you do utter. Axelrod declined to reiterate the Dec. 31 date.

Now you might think that Iran officially settled on confrontation months ago when Mottaki confirmed the "no" that had been coming from every Iranian lawmaker. Certainly his his followup - "we'll only accept the kind of swap where we don't have to really swap anything" - was seen as a diplomatic non-starter.

But what you don't understand is that Iran has actually been very secretly demonstrating a clear willingness to negotiate. Here's how it probably went down. First Iran decided to export their radical ideology and expand their sphere of influence by broadly and continuously supporting a Shiite insurgency in Yemen. Then we gave them a super-secret signal that we would look the other way by having a State Department Undersecretary announce at a conference that we don't think they're involved. Then Iran didn't do something that our experts retroactively decided they had been planning to do, which was a covert signal back from the mullahs that they were interested in negotiations.

Or maybe it happened differently. Maybe the signal was our continued inaction in response to Iran's bloody interference in Iraq. We didn't do anything. Then they invaded Iraqi territory. Then we still didn't do anything. Now they're staying on Iraqi territory. And that's a sign that they're open to low-level confidence building measures. Because why else would they grab territory except as a setup for making concessions during negotiations?

At least now we know what unblinking pretexts Obama's getting from his Iran advisers. They need to explain why all their nuanced Tehranology - which always ends with some new inscrutable justification for pro-Iran gestures - has merely emboldened Khamenei into confidently coming out as a hardline thug. It can't be that liberal foreign policy experts have spent the last few decades disingenuously denying that the Iranian political echelon is controlled by apocalyptic hardliners.

It's not that they produced paper after paper in the 90's predicting - incorrectly - that "moderates" would be electorally empowered if Albright made apologies and Clinton offered back channel concessions. It's not that they spent the Bush years howling - untenably - that offering a Grand Bargain would enable "conservative pragmatists" to "get Khamenei's ear." And it's certainly not that they made up tales - suspiciously - of Iranian wiggle room on nukes while lunatics were being installed as negotiators.

Sure it all looks exactly that way. And sure a genuinely nuanced analysis of Iranian ideology explains why it looks that way, since Khamenei's commitment to pan-Islamism would stymie state-level negotiations even if he wasn't the ultra-hardliner that he is.

But what you don't understand is that there are all these factions. And they're fighting with one another. And - even though it might appear like one side keeps winning, indicating either that there's no internal struggle or that it doesn't matter - you need to ignore that in the same way you ignore decades of failed diplomatic outreach. Just a few more weeks of sophistication and all this carefully calibrated groveling will yield a modus vivendi. You'll see!

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday an unsettled political situation in Iran may be complicating efforts to seal a nuclear fuel deal between Tehran and major world powers... "But it is going to take time, and part of the challenge that we face is that neither North Korea nor Iran seem to be settled enough politically to make quick decisions on these issues," he told Reuters in an interview at the White House.

Which is weird, because it certainly looks like the regime came to a quick decision. Here's how the talks have been going post-Qom, pegged either to the dateline or - where the lede was explicit - to when specific statements were made:

Each week, the members of the Watchers Council nominate one of their own posts and a second from outside the Council for consideration by other council members in a contest for the week's best post. And each week I inexplicably end up waiting till the subsequent Monday to post the nominations and the winners. Not this time: Sunday!

My own post dealt with how influential public diplomacy expert Marc Lynch advised the Obama administration to pick a fight with Israel, saw that strategy backfire as the Palestinians hardened their demands and fractured, and is now accusing Israel of "intransigence" in every other post he writes. He's a little bit bitter and it's getting kind of unseemly, though there's probably room for sympathy - the foreign policy left's recommendations have been exposed as naivete-soaked delusions, and that can't be fun. Right Truth's post on the ongoing Middle East-wide disasters triggered by State Department diplomacy and foreign policy pseudo-sophistication is to the point.

The Glittering Eye's post on health care probes a question that comes up again and again for foreign policy hawks: putting aside that the left can be relied on to appease our enemies and endanger our allies - see Bookworm Room's post - why is it that they're also so consistently useless and ideological even on domestic affairs? The word "meltdown" makes a couple of appearances.

But at least the GOP seems to have approximated something like a spine on health care. The rest of their stunts have put them at war with their own base, a situation that Rhymes With Right unpacks nicely. Not that the conservative grassroots are without their own potential problems, something The Provocateur lays out.

All of which is really a shame, because - per the Colossus Of Rhodey - the left is becoming unhinged to the point of open racism again. Usually they save that for election season. Ditto for the fangs they're showing about double-loyalty towards the Jewish State - complete with witch hunters who totally fail to implicate Israel but imply the opposite. See Joshuapundit on that last bit. Apparently the left is still addicted to the scapegoating rush they discovered during the campaign. It must feel really good.

References and related coverage after the jump...

But this time they pinky swear they'll be enthusiastic about supporting any US war effort. Not like when they promised to support "the necessary war" in Afghanistan if only we would abandon Iraq. For realsies this time.

This FP post from Carnegie Endowment for International Peace fellow David Rothkopf, subtly titled "Afghanistan is just not that important", is the second appearance in a week for this nuanced position. It includes the querulous insistence that Obama shouldn't be tied down by his over-the-top campaign posing, where he obnoxiously lectured Republicans about military priorities. Because why should Democrats have to run on what they actually intend to do? If they did that they might never get elected.

Of course changing circumstances require changing tactics, and if the left was making that argument it'd be a different debate. But that's not the argument they're making. They're not saying the Taliban or Al Qaeda have become less "the people who attacked us on 9/11," which was one of the left's tropes ad nauseam during the campaign. Instead they're saying - explicitly - that Afghanistan's just not that important. Now it's true that Obama convinced the American people to trust him as Commander in Chief by saying the exact opposite. But the left didn't really believe him at the time - they know Democrats have to say moderate-sounding things to get elected, and they don't hold that against them - so what's the big deal if he flip-flops now?

Of course The One will need a sophisticated-sounding excuse. And right on cue, here's the matriarch of the nutroots herself. In this post she's advocating that Biden should resign as part of a principled stance against putting more troops in Afghanistan, a decision she insists "generations to come will always be grateful for." Technically true, but obviously not for the reasons she thinks. Anyway:

If Biden truly believes that what we're doing in Afghanistan is not in the best interests of our national security -- and what issue is more important than that? -- it's simply not enough to claim retroactive righteousness in his memoirs. Though it would be a crowning moment in a distinguished career, such an act of courage would likely be only the beginning. Biden would then become the natural leader of the movement to wind down this disastrous war and focus on the real dangers in Pakistan.

That same post also had Huffington comparing Biden to Socrates. Unironically. Because when I think "the most honest and wisest of all men," I think about a a serial liar who, having declared that we have to bankrupt the country to avoid bankrupting it, this week announced that we're in a depressing. This is a thinker of such geostrategic genius that he managed to get every single thing wrong on Iraq, voting for the war, voting against the surge, and in between proposing a 3-way partition plan of such incandescent stupidity that factions engaged in a genocidal civil war came together to oppose it. This is ostensibly our military Socrates, a modern day warrior-scholar.

So in addition to being reflexive appeasers who coat their whimpering pro-surrender histrionics with tough-sounding pseudo-sophistication, leftists also appear to be thoroughly serious people.

References and previously after the jump...

You know, if I was a public diplomacy expert who spent the last decade staking my career on something like the Cairo speech, then I consulted for various principals in the leadup to the Cairo speech, then I watched the Cairo speech explode in Obama's face and send Israeli public opinion of the US President nosediving to levels heretofore unplumbed outside the Muslim world - if I was someone like that, I'd be pretty careful about sullenly blaming Obama's Mideast failures on Israel. At worst I'd casually mention it during Q+A's at invited University lectures. That way I could leave graduate students with the impression that it was the sophisticated opinion and link to them offhandedly if they ever published it.

I certainly wouldn't post it on my well-respected Foreign Policy blog, lest people read it and get the impression that I was overcompensating for something:

The [Goldstone Report] vote shows that Israel is paying a price for its short-sighted diplomatic strategy of confrontation with the Obama administration... Netanyahu has spent many long months doing everything in his power to subvert Obama's peace initiatives, defying the demand to freeze settlements and inciting American and Israeli public opinion against the President and against peace...

The passage of the [Goldstone Report] may slightly increase the odds of a Hamas-Fatah reconciliation agreement under Egyptian auspices... Given that the Egyptians are talking about holding two seperate signing ceremonies so that Hamas and Fatah don't have to be in the same room with each other, I doubt that any deal signed soon will amount to actual reconciliation...

Given how much importance the Israeli government has given to the Goldstone Report, [a US] veto might actually be used as a form of leverage. Obama's push for peace is at the brink of collapse almost entirely because of Netanyahu's intransigence. But the administration has thus far seemed highly reluctant to actually put any serious pressure on the Israeli government -- which has only emboldened Netanyahu and his enablers to dig in their heels further. The use of the veto to protect Israel from Goldstone should not be free.

See? Because Israeli public opinion used to be on the side of massive concessions but then Netanyahu "incited" Israelis "against the President and against peace." So any foreign policy experts who pushed Obama to "stand firm on settlements" as an anti-Netanyahu Israeli wedge issue in the context of currying favor in the Arab world - hypothetically, if such foreign policy experts were to exist - well, it wouldn't be their fault that their recommendations backfired spectacularly.

They couldn't have known that their expert expertise would have the President alienating Israeli leftists without much benefit in the Muslim world. The peace process isn't moribund because Obama's enemies-first allies-last strategy left Israelis feeling betrayed while inevitably failing to assuage eliminationist Palestinian sentiment. It's that Netanyahu mendaciously turned Israelis "against peace." Not their fault!

First thing's first. Biden is a moron. Trying to reverse engineer his statements is equivalent to using a Magic 8-Ball to unlock prophesies hidden in tea leaves. But just so we're all on the same page, here's the crucial part of that "green light" interview:

STEPHANOPOULOS: And meanwhile, Prime Minister Netanyahu has made it pretty clear that he agreed with President Obama to give until the end of the year for this whole process of engagement to work. After that, he's prepared to make matters into his own hands. Is that the right approach?

BIDEN: Look, Israel can determine for itself -- it's a sovereign nation -- what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Whether we agree or not?

BIDEN: Whether we agree or not. They're entitled to do that. Any sovereign nation is entitled to do that. But there is no pressure from any nation that's going to alter our behavior as to how to proceed. What we believe is in the national interest of the United States, which we, coincidentally, believe is also in the interest of Israel and the whole world. And so there are separate issues. If the Netanyahu government decides to take a course of action different than the one being pursued now, that is their sovereign right to do that. That is not our choice.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But just to be clear here, if the Israelis decide Iran is an existential threat, they have to take out the nuclear program, militarily the United States will not stand in the way?

BIDEN: Look, we cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do when they make a determination, if they make a determination that they're existentially threatened and their survival is threatened by another country.

Did Biden inadvertently signal that there was a secret agreement between Obama and Netanyahu, trading Netanyahu's recognition of a Palestinian state for a green light on Iran? Yossi Alpher, one of the Mossad's former Iran guys, thinks maybe. The WH walked back Biden's statement with boilerplate about engagement, but Mullen is publicly musing about how attacking Iran is a mere "political decision." And there is that half-analysis/half-preparing-the-public Bolton editorial.

On the other hand: moron. The WH has expended not inconsiderable efforts to box in Israel diplomatically and militarily. Institutionally the administration is dominated by the Iran Lobby. Obama still seems fully committed to appeasement. No one gave Israel a green light for anything.

Biden was probably trying to invoke "national interest" as an explanation for why the Obama administration isn't and won't support Israel. He got a little tangled up trying to seem magnanimous, acknowledging Israel's national interest but overemphasizing it a little too much.

Nonetheless the liberal foreign policy community - the one that spent so much time publicly crowing about how Israel had been put on a leash - went into full hyperventilation mode. FP blogger Marc Lynch:

I'm not sure what purpose this article is supposed to serve, besides maybe "look at how my incisive internationalist views are being stymied by anti-terror legislation." As as an example of pseudo-sophisticated foreign policy expertise, though, it's nonetheless pretty elegant (on a Foreign Policy blog? I know, right?)

The template for liberal political argument: "[this thing that's happening right now] justifies [my pet policy]." That's how we get "an economic crash means we have to enact universal health care" after years of "a robust economy will allow us to enact universal health care." It's also how we get "an Ahmadinejad win justifies engagement" after a decade of "Iranian moderation justifies engagement." And it's how we get this treat:

Imagine if [Twitter] were like MSN Messenger: to be able to use it, you needed to download a file and install it on your computer. Well, if the comparison of Twitter with MSN Messenger is adequate, it means that the former would not be available to Iranians today! Just to remind you, MSN Messenger could not find a way around the tough licensing restrictions imposed by the U.S. government on software exports to the embargoed countries (of which Iran, is of course one). The end result is that MSN is no longer legally available for downloads in Iran...

Now, I am very curious about the rules that govern the export of various Twitter apps like Twirl or TweetDeck (which, basically, ARE desktop version of Twitter) to Iran. More specifically, wouldn't they fall under the same rules as MSN Messenger? It was never really clear to me whether those rules had anything to do with "strong encryption" - an excuse that has often been cited by Web hosting companies to avoid doing work with citizens of these embargoed countries - but let's not get into such arcane legal matters for now...

The U.S. is pushing on with its silly policies that have, alas, outlived their usefulness a decade ago... Otherwise, all these calls on Twitter to postpone maintenance are simply aimed at generating additional publicity without forcing American diplomats to do any real work. So, let me really challenge the State Department folks reading this blog: why not use this crisis to finally put an end to restrictions on the export of tools that are widely used all over the world without causing any threat to national security?

Just to make sure you're following along: Twitter is not restricted in the same way that MSN Messenger is, but if it was that would really suck so we should lift the restrictions on software like MSN Messenger that has advanced encryption. Which would be beside the point anyway, since the reason that Twitter is so useful is that it's a mass broadcast tool. It allows internal coordination between protesters - "Basiji are inside dorm 31, make a run for it!" - and outside publication of news. And the Twitter DM's double an instant messengers anyway. But wouldn't it be cool if none of that was true?

I'm not even necessarily against this particular policy recommendation. I can't imagine that our encryption restrictions are doing much to keep encryption away from the IRG. Maybe they're doing more harm than good.

It's the style of argument. It's how an ethos of expertise is developed using irrelevant factoids, channeled by Third Culture think tanks and MSM outlets, and then used to insulate counterproductive policies. Above and beyond being obnoxious and inane, it's undermining public discourse and ruining American foreign policy.

If you really want to help the Iranian protesters, check out Boing Boing's post on setting up proxies. Iran can block any individual news site or social networking site, but they can't block hundreds of millions of individual computers.

References:
* Foreign Policy Leftists: On Second Thought, The Iranian Election Was Totally Irrelevant [MR]
* State Department talks to Twitter but it should REALLY be talking to US Treasury [Morozov / net.effect]
* Liberal Foreign Policy Experts: This Ahmadinejad Reelection Was Just So Unpredictable! [MR]
* Lazyweb: turn the new version of Opera into an unstoppable grid of proxies for Iranians [Boing Boing]

Previously:
* State Department Sophistication Very Close To Triggering All-Out African War
* Diplomatic Sophistication Heartbreak: Tension Between Iranian Political Factions A Little Exaggerated
* Smug Liberal Sophistication Undisturbed By Decades Of Disastrously Wrong Domestic And International Predictions

Oh really? I was under the impression that it was a referendum on Iran's future. Roger Cohen seemed pretty sure that a cresting reform movement had coalesced into "a green tsunami, a transformative wave unfurling down the broad avenues of the Iranian capital." But now Juan Cole says that Obama should ignore the results because the Iranian President actually has no power?

Ladies and gentlemen, one of the reality based community's leading deliberative lights:

Less was at stake in these elections than many outsiders assumed, however, since the Iranian presidency is weak and most important policy is set by Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei (his title is the giveaway). The election was mostly about style, rather than substance. Mir-Hossein Moussavi complained that Ahmadinejad's bizarre downplaying of the Holocaust had made Iran a laughingstock, and that the incumbent had dictatorial tendencies. But... most of his differences with Ahmadinejad were on domestic policy, including his advocacy of more personal liberties, more rights for women, and a freer media environment, including private television channels.

The outcome of the election therefore changes little for the Obama administration. ... Obama is determined to deal with them by undercutting Iran on the Palestine issue by making strides toward a Palestinian state, by avoiding military confrontation, and by direct talks... These policies... should be pursued regardless of who holds the weak and ineffectual office of president in Tehran.

Since Cole is an eminent scholar devoted to pursuing facts regardless of their consequences - excepting that time when he admitted he's up to the exact opposite - I can only assume that this analysis is made in good faith. If Moussavi had won Cole would still have published an article denying the importance of the election. He would have grudgingly but forthrightly sided with the pro-Israel writers who've been downplaying Mousavi's importance for weeks. The phrase "Obama Effect" wouldn't have come up even once, on account of Cole's noted intellectual honesty.

But that wouldn't make his arguments about the implications of this election, which went down this way, any less stupid.

The significance of the mullahs' charade isn't just that it gives Ahmadinejad another four years. That's bad, but ultimately Iranian policy really is a function of the Byzantine intrigue around Khamenei. What the results show is that Khamenei is either an brazen hardliner or under the control of brazen hardliners. He was willing to risk the legitimacy of the entire Islamic Republic to reinstall a hard-line crony as President. If Cole is right and the Presidency really is symbolic, that makes Khamenei's ideologically bullheadedness even worse.

Either Ahmadinejad and his messianic ilk have the Supreme Leader's ear or they have enough power to force his hand. Either way it should be game over for negotiations. If they were intellectually honest, the foreign policy left would say "we've been pushing engagement for a decade because we said it might pry Khamenei away from the hard-liners, but now that seems like a lost cause."

Of course that's not how it'll play out. The White House has already declared that it's moving full speed ahead on dialogue. Obama's MSM and academic cheerleaders will continue with their agenda-oriented reasoning, where Ahmadinejad's loss would have been a watershed and Ahmadinejad's win doesn't matter. And they'll continue to coat their blustering with the most obnoxious kind of smug pseudo-sophistication.

But it should be game over.

References and previously after the jump...

This is like trying to potty train an academic. Khamenei made his decision as early as last August and told Ahmadinejad to prepare for a second term, publicly reiterating his support just a few weeks ago. Even if that wasn't true, Ahmadinejad's allies have taken over Iran's foreign policy apparatus and Interior Ministry, demonstrating that they either have Khamenei's ear or are powerful enough to force his hand. And even if that wasn't true, Ahmadinejad was surging electorally as late as mid-May, guaranteeing a vote at least close enough to rig.

But "Iran is dominated by hardliners" violates the party line of the Iran Lobby, the diffuse group of pro-Iranian journalists, academics and diplomats that has set up shop in the White House. So they went to work. In May the AP's Ali Akbar Dareini, having previously discovered that Ahmadinejad actually welcomed talks with Obama, now re-described Ahmadinejad as "hard-line" but reported that he was on the outs with Khamenei. This is a standard trope that gets trotted out whenever there's an engagement push: the Carnegie Endowment's Karim Sadjadpour was feeding it to journalists on the eve of Obama's Inauguration.

Ahmadinejad still needed a credible challenger though. In February it was definitely going to be Khatami, who was going to "alter Iran's direction." Except he bowed out, not least of all because hardliners were too powerful and blocked pro-Khatami websites.

So ostensible Iran experts moved on to Mousavi, who according to Rand guru Alireza Nader was a "promising presidential contender" who offered "a potential opportunity to alter the relationship between Iran and the West... including [the issue of] Iran's nuclear program." Robert Worth declared that "a vast opposition movement has arisen, flooding the streets of Iran's major cities with cheering, green-clad supporters of Mir Hussein Moussavi."

Trita Parsi, the head of the National Iranian American Council, is a Johns Hopkins PhD who wrote his anti-Israel dissertation under Fukuyama and Brzezinski. He used his academic ethos and HuffPo column to congratulate Congressional Democrats on not sanctioning Iran because "the momentum in the last week has clearly been with Moussavi." And Roger Cohen, of course, simply could not be contained:

This is just. so. precious:

Netanyahu, declaring "It is us or no one," said this week that his job was to "eliminate" Iran's threat. Israel's shifting "red line" on Iran, now avowedly months away, is at odds with U.S. intelligence, which holds that no Iranian decision on bomb production has been made and capacity is likely two to five years distant. It's essential that Obama cleave to an American framework that affords the time to overcome a 30-year impasse. He might remind Netanyahu that if anyone had asked five years ago if an Iran with 6,000 centrifuges, more than a ton of low-enriched uranium and a genie-out-the-bottle level of technical nuclear know-how was over Israel's "red line," the answer would have been, "Damn right."

Cohen and his Iran Lobby ilk spent a decade downplaying Iranian nuclearization. Whenever anyone highlighted the urgency of the threat, they waved around reports like the NIE - which State Department washouts had dutifully politicized - as the most sophisticated analysis evuh. And now that Obama's obnoxious "Bush continues to not let facts get in the way of his ideology" preening has given way to "of course Iran is building a nuke" - now that that's happening, they turn to Israel and say "well you didn't attack when everyone agreed that Iran was nuclearizing!" If nothing else, you have to admire the sheer gall of it.

And yes of course they're nuclearizing:

Short of the tremendous cost and risk of war, what would it take to get Iran to stop producing the nuclear material that one day could be used to build weapons? The short answer, according to an emerging consensus among arms inspectors, diplomats and Iranian officials struggling with the issue of Iran's nuclear program, is nothing... [Francois Nicoullaud, who served from 2001 to 2005 as Paris' envoy to Iran]... says the key to a solution is for the international community to accept Iran's production of enriched uranium and for the Iranians to accept an intrusive monitoring system that would set off alarm bells if they made any move toward weaponizing their avowedly peaceful program.

Which is weird, because when Ahmadinejad declared this week that Iran was going nuclear I thought he was kidding. Ditto for the 1,200 mile range missile Iran just tested, which I thought was exclusively for domestic consumption and not for geopolitical saber-rattling. That's how liberal foreign policy experts usually explain these things. Maybe some signals got crossed or something.

Though I am interested to know - when those alarm bells go off, presumably in the context of crisis triggered by a hot war, what will Obama's response be? I'm guessing more openness to the possibility of sanctions.

References and previously after the jump...

Stephen Walt, Apr. 28, 2009:

Iran has zero -- repeat, zero -- nuclear weapons today, and even if it were to acquire a few at some point in the future, it could not use them against nuclear-armed Israel without committing national suicide. Let me say that again: national suicide. And could someone please explain to Netanyahu that a group of devout Muslim clerics aren't likely to fire warheads at a land that contains the third holiest site in Islam?

Iranian Army General Commander Ataollah Salehi, speaking for the group of devout Muslim clerics who run Iran, May 4, 2009:

"I Do Not Think We Will Need More Than 11 Days to Wipe Israel Out Of Existence... Nothing can prevent Iranian missiles from targeting the heart of Israel, if Iran is subjected to a military strike by Israel. This was the response of the Iranian military commanders to the Israeli statements about a possible military strike against Iran, because of its insistence on obtaining nuclear energy. Yet an [Israeli] attack seems improbable to the Iranians, because Tel Aviv does not have the ability to go through a war with Tehran."

That was one day after Ahmadinejad made a nudge-wink observation that Israel is a "germ" that will soon be destroyed. He wasn't making any threats mind you. He was simply conveying his objective, level-headed sense for the course that international geopolitics is likely to take. And you can be sure of that, because he said so himself!

And that wasn't even the dumbest part of Walt's post. That part was when he cited NYT tool Roger Cohen as support for the argument that "there is no evidence that Ahmadinejad has any particular animus toward Iran's own Jewish community." The statement - and the column it came from - is of course a paradigm of slack jawed credulity. But whatever. Do you have a PhD? Do you work at the NYT? No you do not.

This isn't the first time that Walt has made a bad faith case that Israel's pathological enemies are just kidding about their genocidal boasts. But I liked the touch of condescension at the end of this one, where he instructed Netanyahu to let J-Street redraw Israel's borders. Because J-Street - they're pro-Israel.

References and previously after the jump...

I haven't been writing much about this tool. Partly it's because he thinks that Hamas isn't intransigent, that Iranian Jews feel safe, and that pragmatists are ascendant in Iran - and I'm just not sure how a post with only the words no, no, and no over and over again would play.

But more it's because he's just taking dictation from the Iran Lobbyists inside and outside the administration. Since those guys are going on the record elsewhere, Cohen's basically just a particularly venomous anti-Israel NYT stringer. Which doesn't seem like a good deal for him: if he became a reporter and moved to the Beirut bureau he could publish his editorials on the front page. Maybe he's worried that he'd have less room to suck up to his de facto ghostwriters by publicly campaigning for anti-Israel partisans to get administration posts. You can see how that would be a problem.

Still - come on:

Any such [Grand Bargain] is a game changer, transformative as Nixon to China (another repressive state with a poor human rights record). It can be derailed any time by an attack from Israel, which has made clear it won't accept virtual nuclear power status for Iran, despite its own nonvirtual nuclear warheads. "Israel would be utterly crazy to attack Iran," ElBaradei said. "I worry about it. If you bomb, you will turn the region into a ball of fire and put Iran on a crash course for nuclear weapons with the support of the whole Muslim world." To avoid that nightmare Obama will have to get tougher with Israel than any U.S. president in recent years. It's time.

This is an ostensibly objective human being sitting down, furrowing his brow, and concluding that - given the choice between buttressing an ally or shielding that ally's genocidal enemy - we should undermine our friends and protect our enemies. And to think that some conservatives have turned "they're not anti-war, they're just on the other side" into a catchphrase about the foreign policy left.

And no, of course negotiations won't work:

At the beginning of the year, George H.W. Bush offered an olive branch to Tehran, declaring in his inaugural address, "Good will begets good will. Good faith can be a spiral that endlessly moves on." The mood grew more euphoric in Europe. In 1992, the German government, ever eager for new business opportunities and arguing that trade could moderate the Islamic Republic, launched its own engagement initiative. It didn't work. While U.S. and European policy makers draw distinctions between reformers and hard-liners in the Islamic Republic, the difference between the two is style, not substance... The EU took the bait and, between 2000 and 2005, nearly tripled trade with Iran. It was a ruse. Iranian officials were as insincere as European diplomats were greedy, gullible or both. Iranian officials now acknowledge that Tehran invested the benefits reaped into its nuclear program.

Cohen and his ilk have been promising for decades that Western gestures would be met with Iranian moderation. That's turned out to be the exact opposite of true. I'm not sure how Cohen would explain that little brainteaser, but I bet it would have something to do with Israel.

And yes - but for Godwin's Law the title of this post would have included the phrase "play Czechoslovakia to Ahmadinejad's Germany." But rules are rules. Although I'm not sure why we have to hold up our end when the NYT is publishing this tripe side by side with their "What About All The Good Things Hitler Did" articles.

Not exactly a surprise given that he's a card-carrying member of the Iran Lobby. Still, another example of the subtly and moral fibre that's made him such a cause celebre on the foreign policy left:

Former US diplomat Charles W. Freeman says he doubts whether the current Israeli policies can guarantee the regime's survival in the Middle East. "I don't see how Israel can continue to survive in the long term as a state in the Middle East if it is not prepared to deal with respect and consideration with its Arab neighbors specially the Palestinians," Freeman, a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said in an exclusive interview with Press TV... Freeman also noted that he was disappointed when the administration of President Barack Obama refused to put its weight behind him over the offered position. "I was obviously disappointed that I didn't have support from the White House. But as I understand the way this administration works I shouldn't have been surprised," he said.

He's been complaining for weeks about how Obama left him twisting. Which - while it's arguably true - doesn't make it less any less unseemly for him to run to the Iranians to slam the US President. Especially not while the administration is trying to walk a fine line between obsequiousness and more sanctions.

Though it does make this quote from a few weeks back quite precious:

"It's a foreign country, and while maybe 40 years ago many of its values were convergent with ours, I think there's been a divergence of values," Freeman told the Forward in a phone interview. He argued that this trend is embodied most clearly in the rise of controversial right-wing Israeli politician Avigdor Lieberman... Israel's viewpoints dominate our understanding of its dispute with the Palestinians and its consequent estrangement from its other Arab neighbors.... Frankly, I don't see that need."

Fair enough. Instead we should seek allies with whom our viewpoints converge more closely. Like Iran. Or Freeman's Saudi funders. Or any country except the Jewish State that's preventing his life from being totally awesome. It's always something, isn't it?

Seriously, can't we all just agree that the guy is kind of a feverish and unstable conspiracy-monger who has an understanding of the Middle East that bears only the most tangential resemblance to reality? Or is that just what the Israel Lobby wants us to believe?

References and previously after the jump...

Stephen Walt has been condescendingly mocking people who think that Chas Freeman is a Saudi tool:

Jonathan Chait says I'm "paranoid," that I "went bonkers" in a recent blog post, and that my scholarship is "wildly hyperbolic." He says his real objection to Charles Freeman's appointment as chair of the National Intelligence Council is that Freeman is an "ideological fanatic" (isn't it odd that this quality went undetected during Freeman's lengthy career as a public servant?) and that Freeman's other critics were mostly worried about his relations with Saudi Arabia (as if this had nothing to do with their views on other aspects of our Middle East policy). Nice try, but it is abundantly clear to almost everyone that the assault on Freeman has been conducted by individuals -- Chait included -- who are motivated by their commitment to Israel and who are upset that Freeman has criticized some of its past behavior.

I'm not sure that "undetected" means what Prof. Walt thinks it means:

I thought I would see what former Secretary of State James Baker thought of Freeman. Chas Freeman appears twice in the index of James Baker's book The Politics of Diplomacy...

From the start, they [the Saudis] were always advocates fro the massive use of force. We knew that if it came to war, permission to launch from Saudi bases would be automatic. And we suspected that the King was also willing to bear any burden asked by his American benefactors. Even so, I was urged by our ambassador, Chas Freeman, to go easy on the numbers. "They're strapped for money," he told me before the meeting. "Don't press for too much right now." I disagreed. (p. 289)

Our ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Chas Freeman, suggested to me that perhaps we shouldn't ask quite so much of the Saudis. As a result of their previous commitments to Desert Shield, he said, they had a liquidity shortage that Saud hadn't wanted to admit to me. It seemed to me to be a classic case of clientitis from one of our best diplomats. "I'm going in front of the Congress and I'm asking them to go ahead and fund this effort," I said, "and I've got to explain that American blood will be spilled. If you think we're not going to ask the Saudis to pay for this, you've got another thing coming." It was the last I ever heard from him about going easy on the Saudis in terms of the costs of the operation. (p. 373).

How strange. Walt is usually so vigilant in ferreting out foreign influences on US policymaking. Maybe he just really hates Chinese dissidents.

And for the record, the problem with Freeman isn't that he "has criticized some of Israel's past behavior." The China stuff aside, it's because believes that 9/11 happened because of US support for Israel. That, if you don't know, is bullshit. So putting him in charge of figuring out our enemies' motives makes as much sense as putting the guy who fundamentally misdiagnosed the Asian financial meltdown in charge of the US economy.

References:
* The best defense is to be offensive?: A response to Chait, Goldfarb, and Goldberg [Walt]
* James Baker on Chas Freeman [Mark Hemingway / NRO]
* Questions About Chas Freeman Go Beyond Israel (Updated) [Daled Amos]
* What Osama Bin Laden Doesn't Like About America [Parapundit]

Previously:
* The "Iran Lobby" Moves Into The White House
* Obama's New Saudi-Funded Spy Chief: "The Lobby" Controls US Publishing, Shuts Down Arguments About How The "Brutal Oppression Of The Palestinians" Caused 9/11
* Former Ambassador To Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman To Be Appointed To Top Intelligence Post, Join Obama's Anti-Israel Intel Team (Plus: He Blames US-Israel Ties For 9/11)

Oops!

Little more than a year after U.S. spy agencies concluded that Iran had halted work on a nuclear weapon, the Obama administration has made it clear that it believes there is no question that Tehran is seeking the bomb. In his news conference this week, President Obama went so far as to describe Iran's "development of a nuclear weapon" before correcting himself to refer to its "pursuit" of weapons capability.

Obama's nominee to serve as CIA director, Leon E. Panetta, left little doubt about his view last week when he testified on Capitol Hill. "From all the information I've seen," Panetta said, "I think there is no question that they are seeking that capability." The language reflects the extent to which senior U.S. officials now discount a National Intelligence Estimate issued in November 2007 that was instrumental in derailing U.S. and European efforts to pressure Iran to shut down its nuclear program. As the administration moves toward talks with Iran, Obama appears to be sending a signal that the United States will not be drawn into a debate over Iran's intent.

I really want to know the names of the politicized State Department washouts who hijacked the summary and committed the quasi-putsch. It's mostly curiosity: I just want to check the exact number of rungs they've been promoted under the new administration.

This is also as good a time as any to review the obnoxious smugness of the self-styled reality-based community. Here's Juan Cole musing about how Bush rejected the NIE because he snorts coke. Here's HuffPo tool Michael Roston pitying conservatives who have a "tenuous grasp on reality" because they're afraid that Iran is nuclearizing. And here's AMERICABlog railing against warmongering based on "false and misleading information."

You can play this game on your own. For extra entertainment, try searching for the ones where these erstwhile patriots snickered about the competence of the IAEA as opposed to the mendacity of the President of the United States. Magical.

UPDATE: Stolen from the Hot Air comments section, this is exquisit:

OBAMA: I think Iran continues to be a threat to some of its neighbors in the region, so they're still funding Hamas, they're still funding Hezbollah, and those are things we have to be concerned about. But it is absolutely clear that this administration and President Bush continues to not let facts get in the way of his ideology. And that's been the problem with their foreign policy generally. They should have stopped the saber-rattling, should have never started it, and they need now to aggressively move on the diplomatic front. Dec. 4, 2007.

When Iran ostensibly didn't have a surreptitious nuclear program, the US needed to diplomatically engage them. Now that the charade is over and even Obama admits that they're running a massive nuclear program - the US needs to diplomatically engage them. What's that about not letting facts get in the way of ideology?

References:
* U.S. now sees Iran as pursuing nuclear bomb [LAT]
* WaPo: NIE Conclusions Were Engineered By Easily Identifiable, Hysterically Anti-Bush State Department Washouts [MR]
* Bolton calls report on Iran 'quasi-putsch' [Free Republic]

Previously:
* Obligatory Post About The NIE Report - Anti-War Partisans Switch From Sophisticatedly Undermining War Effort To Being The Bestest And Most Objective Analysts Ever. Except Not.
* No Kidding: Obama To Pressure Israel On Its Nuclear Deterrent
* Iranian Cleric: Put A Bullet In Livni's Head (Plus: Smug Liberal Sophistication Unperturbed By Spectacularly Wrong Iran Predictions, Failed Anti-Iran Efforts)

The Iranians regularly get away with calling for genocide against all Israelis...

Iran's president says the fighting in Gaza between Hamas and Israel has shown that it is "not feasible" for what he calls Israel's "Zionist regime" to continue to live in the region. During a press conference Thursday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the fighting in Gaza has been "a great lesson for all," and that it shows "the absolute defeat and desperation of this (Israeli) regime." He added that "even for the supporters of the occupying regime and its leaders, it has become clear that the continuation of the Zionist regime's life in the region is not feasible."

... so what's the big deal about specifying just the Foreign Minister?

A high-level Iranian cleric has called for the shooting of the Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in a speech before worshippers, it was reported Saturday. Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said during Friday prayers that he wanted someone to shoot Livni. "Every time the picture of this woman is shown, I really wish that somebody would expend a bullet on her," he said according to a recording of the sermon obtained by the Associated Press.

That WSJ story from a few days ago outlined in excruciating detail how Iran has set up front companies to smuggle weapons material. It's not just through Dubai either: the sanctions regime is so hollow that Iran has been using US companies to move billions of dollars and to acquire lethal technology.

Proliferation experts are using lines like "there doesn't seem to be any real doubt or debate whether Iran is going for the bomb or whether Iran is using front companies to import things. Everyone agrees on that." Which is almost exactly true except it leaves out the politicized State Department washouts who hijacking the 2007 NIE and the CIA analysts who are still unsure whether Iran will build a bomb.

At the time the NIE was so clearly an anti-Bush powergrab that most of our allies said so out loud. But it was perfect for the "just say stuff" brand of liberal faux sophistication: gather enough ethos to make a politically expedient pronouncement, run out the clock while establishing irreversible facts on the ground, then when you're proven wrong just move on. For years Iran foreign policy experts promised that Iranian moderation was just around the corner. Not so much. Then sanctions were supposed to box in the regime. That obviously wasn't happening. So the NIE was a particularly convenient answer to conservatives who were concerned about Iranian nuclearization. It also happened to be wildly, spectacularly wrong. Not a problem:

Douglas Farah has a nice counterpoint to the pro-Al Jazeera panegyrics being published by the NYT and the LAT and the Guardian and the Huffington Post:

The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report ... has an interesting look at the growing Islamist agenda of the al Jazeera TV station, and the roots of the shift in the Muslim Brotherhood. It is an important observation since so much of the Arab world-as well as the Western media-look to the station to portray and interpret events, particularly the Hamas-Israeli conflict. It is easy to forget (and shockingly seldom reported) that Hamas is an organic part of the global Muslim Brotherhood, according to article 2 of its own charter. So that the Ikhwan would seek to control the main medium for the outside world to interpret the conflict is not at all unusual. The report looks at Wadah Khanfar (aka Waddah Khanfar), the station's General Manager, as the driving force behind al Jazeera's move toward embracing the Islamist agent... I am all for freedom of expression and the rights of others to get their message out. But I am also in favor of full disclosure of ownership and interests. Al-Jazeera is losing its right to claim to represent different voices, because the Islamist agenda has made it increasingly difficult for any other voices to be heard.

And here I was hoping that the sermon they broadcast calling on Allah to "kill all the Jews" was just an editorial oversight. Ditto for their celebratory party for vicious child killer Samir Kuntar. Guess not, huh?

Of course there's always the possibility that Al Jazeera's anti-Western agenda is why it's is getting props from liberal Western media outlets. But as a rule I dislike ascribing to mendacity anything that can be explained by a pathetic need to indulge in faux sophistication about the paradoxes of the Arab media. So let's go with that. For its part, Al Jazeera is repaying the generosity by making all of its one-sided, anti-Israel images free for Western media outlets who want to rebroadcast them. I wonder if anyone will take them up on the offer.

You should definitely check out that LAT piece, though, if only for the title. It's magical.

References and previously after the jump...

So if we know nothing else, we know that he's got a sound perspective on dynamics in the Middle East...

Most top U.S. military officials - even members of George W. Bush's administration such as National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley - did not recommend a "surge" or escalation of U.S. troops into Iraq when they were interviewed by the Iraq Study Group last fall, says group member Leon Panetta, a former White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton. Instead of a surge - which the president plans to announce in a speech to the nation tomorrow - these officials recommended at the time that more U.S. advisers be embedded in Iraqi units, Panetta says... I think it's sending the wrong message to the Iraqis... What concerns me is the president's message isn't going to make that clear, and that if the Iraqis fail to unite, there will be no consequences.

... and on the broader intelligence environment in general:

Panetta has managerial chops and a close relationship with Obama but virtually no hands-on intelligence experience. Perhaps more importantly, he's not tainted by associations with Bush-era detention, interrogation of surveillance policies like some of the other candidates who were considered. He's also a much bigger name.

Well at least he's against enhanced interrogative techniques. There's been a veritable epidemic of waterboarding going around so it's good that that's a priority.

References:
* Panetta: Why the Bush "Surge" Won't Work [Newsweek]
* CIA Bans Waterboarding in Terror Interrogations [ABC News]

Previously:
* New Obama Guidelines Already Undermining Military By Chilling Qualified Hires
* Obama's Latest Round Of Deeply Ironic Appointments
* Obama Foreign Policy Appointees: Israel To Blame For Mideast Instability, Sweeping Concessions Necessary

The Council's Christmas and Hanukkah selections are up. There's about about as much holiday cheer as you'd expect given the combination of foreign military instability, domestic political stupidity, and global economic recession. Although the Glittering Eye has a small way to cope with that last one.

The kind of political discourse coalescing around the gay marriage controversy is making me long for the days when the country's next civil war was going to be fought over abortion. Cheat Seeking Missiles examines the left's histrionics about Warren while the Rhymes With Right blasts Jerry Brown's move to use the California Court to overturn Prop 8. I'm actually inclined to believe that Warren was a genuinely bad choice. But litigating Prop 8 is a terrible idea even - especially (?) - from a progressive point of view. The point of the electoral system is to relieve pressure in between elections, allowing people to let off steam and reevaluate their position. Highhandedly and unilaterally deciding social issues is a recipe for backlashes and counter-movements. Cf. Mickey Kaus's Newsom Rule.

Speaking of populist leftist movements: Bookworm Room goes after the property-destroying means that liberal activists often avail themselves of. As far as ends are concerned: the Razor extensively explores the proto-fascist history of leftist anti-war sentiment. Small wonder that they often end up objectively on the side of domestic Islamic anti-progressives and foreign tyrants. See Right Truth on that first point and Soccer Dad on the second. And then see one of my increasingly pedantic posts on the idiotic faux sophistication that they draw upon from ostensible experts.

The Colossus of Rhodey takes apart the MSM's newest eye roll inducing Obama hagiography, the vaunted parallels between Obama and Lincoln. This is a theme that would be obnoxious on its own terms even without the make-believe Office Of The President Elect fully embracing it. Plus - per the Provocateur's post - it's particularly silly in a political environment where Obama has been undeniably tarnished by Blagogate. Not that you expect reasonable evaluation and analysis from media outlets who treated Biden like a genius - a theater of inanity that JoshuaPundit explores in the context last week's delicious Cheney interview.

References and previously after the jump...

His supporters urged him to do it and his weird offer of a nuclear umbrella set him up to do it. So it's not exactly a surprise that he's going to do it:

One Israeli official who should be busy during the presidential reign of Barack Obama is Shaul Horev, director general of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission. The new president and his choice for secretary of state, New York Senator Hillary Clinton, intend to revive international arms-control efforts... Israeli officials... are anxious about the erosion of their country's deterrent capability... Obama and Clinton promised that arms control would once again play a central role in American diplomacy... Last Sunday, Jim Hoagland, who writes a column on foreign affairs in The Washington Post, wrote that Obama should learn from president John F. Kennedy and call for worldwide nuclear disarmament. Hoagland's columns generally express the consensus of the U.S. foreign affairs establishment. Kennedy was the last American president to have tried to stop the Israeli nuclear project.

By "international arms-control efforts" lets be clear that they mean the new ostensibly neutral French campaign that - as an objective matter - is aimed directly at Israel. Because it's not as if the US is actually confused about Israel's nuclear program. They've got spies to see through that particular fog.

But follow the beauty of this bait and switch. For a decade the excuse was that the West could drag its feet on Iran because - worst case - Israel would establish a nuclear deterrent viz. a viz. the Islamic regime. That was Chirac's argument a year ago and it was Fallon's argument just this week...

Israel is one of the strongest countries in the Middle East and needs to stop giving in to a "fear factor" with regard to the prospect of a nuclear Iran, Adm. (ret.) William Fallon, the former commander of the United States Central Command (CENTCOM), told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. Adm. (ret.) William Fallon. In Israel for a regional security conference at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, Fallon told the Post that he could not understand why Iran would even contemplate using nuclear weapons against Israel unless the country wanted to be destroyed. "Do they wish to go away?" he asked, insinuating that a nuclear attack on Israel would elicit a devastating response.

... until now Iran is within months of going nuclear and suddenly diplomats want to erode the Israeli deterrent. Because that will make Iran stop cheating on obligations that they're cheating on for reasons that go far beyond Israel.

Remember that time when the Republican Presidential candidate repeatedly insisted that Israel's nuclear deterrent was not up for negotiation but 77 percent of American Jews voted against him anyway? Good times.

References:
* US Foreign Policy Experts To Obama: Take Away Israel's Nuclear Deterrent [MR]
* Obama: Since We All Know That Engagement With Iran Won't Work, How About A US Nuclear Umbrella For Israel? [MR]
* Will Obama press Israel to allow nuclear inspection of Dimona reactor? [Ha'aretz]
* French Disarmament Efforts Train Sights On Israel's Deterrent [MR]
* New book: US spies on Israel's nuclear program [JPost]
* Chirac belittles Iran bomb threat, then retracts [MSNBC]
* Former US admiral: Don't fear Iran [JPost]
* Exit Polls: 77% Of American Jews Confirmed Social Scientific Finding About How They're Total Morons [MR]

Previously:
* IAEA Aiding Covert Syrian Nuke Program By Building Overt Syrian Nuke Program
* Brzezinski: Israeli Campaign Against Iran Will Detonate US-Israel Relations
* Carter Advises Assad: Sit Tight, Wait For Obama

Well this came out of nowhere:

Jerusalem is carefully watching the posturing in Washington over top Middle East policy positions in the new administration, hoping this will provide clues into President-elect Barrack Obama's priorities. ... "There is a great deal of apprehension, with the feeling that who Obama picks for the top slots will give an indication [of] whether he wants to tackle the Iranian situation first, or deal first with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." For instance, if someone like former Mideast envoy Dennis Ross were selected to a top post, perhaps as Obama's special Middle East envoy or coordinator, this would signal to Israel that Obama first wanted to focus on Iran and the nuclear issue. If, however, he gave the nod to former US ambassadors to Israel Dan Kurtzer or Martin Indyk, the feeling is that his priority would be on the Palestinian-Israeli track.

Yeah. Obama's inclinations on the Middle East are inscrutable. He's merely been completely clear that he considers Israel to be the root of Middle East instability. Cashed out this approach means blaming Israel for Israeli-Palestinian deadlocks and approaching Iranian nuclearization as a problem of potential Israeli overreaction. Totally inscrutable.

Of course he's going to focus on Israel first. And of course Kurtzer is at the top of the envoy list:

It appears we may have a special envoy focusing on Arab-Israeli matters -- perhaps someone such as retired diplomat Daniel C. Kurtzer, former ambassador to Israel and Egypt and now at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Kurtzer was already fantasizing about being an envoy for Obama back in March. He's very eager to "play the role of 'honest broker'" (yeah - that kind of "honest broker.") The only upside to his appointment would be aesthetic. Just imagine: an Obama appointee who gets along with Netanyahu less than a President who publicly smeared "pro-Likud approaches" to Israel. It's breathtakingly sublime.

Best. Peace process. Ever.

References and previously after the jump...

Worth a post for two reasons: (1) Iranian media is deeply offended by some Hollywood film with an Iranian wrestler so this a nice compare-and-contrast and (2) public diplomacy scholars keep insisting that it's embarrassingly unsophisticated to talk about incitement in the Arab media and I'm not so sure about that:

First, an Arabic-speaker writes me, "Right now I'm watching Himam as-Sa'id, leader of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, on al-Aksa TV giving a speech (or rather a rant). He's screaming about how the Islamic armies will turn Palestine into a graveyard for the Jews."... then my friend... inserts some links to Western newspaper articles that claim the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood is really a moderate organization with which Western governments should dialogue...

If you want to understand the current spectrum of public debate in the Arab world, consider a television debate between Kamal al-Hilbawi, director of the London Center for the Study of Terrorism, and political analyst Nabil Yassin. The former is supposed to be the radical, the latter the moderate. Hilbawi endorses killing Israeli civilians, including children, because, he says they're all potential soldiers. He claims, "In elementary school, they pose the following math problem: 'In your village, there are 100 Arabs. If you killed 40, how many Arabs would be left for you to kill?..." Yassin responds by saying he is against murdering civilians: "I condemn the Israeli governments for teaching children such things, but I do not condemn the child, who still doesn't know how he will kill the Arabs in 20 years' time, when he becomes a soldier."... their debate shows us the permissible margin of discussion: The Arab radical lies that Israel is a nation of genocidal killers; the moderate retorts that of course it's true but the children aren't responsible for being brainwashed by those evil monsters.

That's not entirely fair. The permissible margin of discussion on Al Jazeera is actually much broader and includes the occasional defense of Israel and criticism of political Islam. But those fleeting moments are subverted by systemic anti-American bias and overwhelmed by instances of genocidal anti-Israel hatred. Which is how - regardless of the permissible margin of discussion - actual debates end up as "the Israelis must all be killed" vs. "only all adult Israelis should be killed." And compared to some Egyptian media outlets - even that is a veritable Quakers convention.

Almost difficult to understand why State's attempts to play Al Jazeera's game keep going spectacularly awry.

At any rate, yeah - math textbooks are a lot of fun. State mandated Israeli textbooks do the exact opposite of promoting Zionism so those accusations are nonsense. But math questions built around murdering Jews do make more than one appearance in post-Oslo Palestinian textbooks (although I should probably link to this idiot who claims that the report is a Zionist lie because he never saw anything like that in Israeli-created pre-Olso textbooks - good point). And in Gaza the newest curriculum has surreal math problems like "a truck is moving at a rate of 15 meters per second, at a distance of 200 meters, from left to right. How will you succeed in hitting this truck?" And in Saudi Arabia 10th grade textbooks discuss various fractions of blood money depending on where the murder victim falls on the Muslim/infidel man/woman grid. Math aside, in fact, I have a soft spot for Saudi textbooks in general. That's where I finally learned that the Jews are the apes and the Christians are the pigs. I had genuinely been wondering about that.

References and previously after the jump...

They just say stuff. Just unblinkingly say stuff. They're ostensible experts but they spout the most absurd things in the most obnoxious ways. And then when they turn out to be disastrously wrong - because that's what happens when you base policy on wrongheaded assumptions and tangled logic - they just move on. It's mind boggling.

Iraq - Fred Kaplan, Slate, Apr. 22, 2008:

Iran is outsmarting us in Iraq: One thing is for sure: It is time to start talking with the Iranians. First, they control too many of the pieces for us not to engage them diplomatically. Second, it turns out that we do have some common interests (for instance, crushing Sadr in Basra). Might it be possible to leverage those interests to induce cooperation, or extract concessions, in other realms where we have differences? Third, Maliki clearly has no qualms about talking with the Iranians when it suits his purposes.

Actually the proper course was to wait for the surge - about which Kaplan was a self-described skeptic for dozens of very sophisticated reasons - to stabilize Iraq until local tribes felt safe gambling against sectarianism. Today Iran's influence in Iraq has been sharply reduced both politically and militarily. But why should that matter?

Nuclear proliferation - Joe Cirincione, Center for American Progress, Sept. 14, 2007:

How generous:

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's administration will offer Israel a "nuclear umbrella" against the threat of a nuclear attack by Iran, a well-placed American source said earlier this week. The source, who is close to the new administration, said the U.S. will declare that an attack on Israel by Tehran would result in a devastating U.S. nuclear response against Iran. But America's nuclear guarantee to Israel could also be interpreted as a sign the U.S. believes Iran will eventually acquire nuclear arms.

First of all, of course it's a sign that Obama is willing to roll with a nuclear Iran. Which is weird because Dennis Ross and Marty Peretz assured American Jews that preventing Iranian nuclearization was at the top of Obama's agenda. Maybe they were just offering pretexts so Obama voters could vote how they already wanted to vote. Stranger things have happened.

Listen: this obviously wasn't an offer meant to be taken seriously.

No one - conspiracy mongers excepted - really believes that the US would risk a nuclear war over Israel. No US President is going to risk legitimating a WMD attack on New York because Iran wiped out Tel Aviv. After all: who will complain if - in the aftermath of an Iranian nuclear first strike - the Obama White House responds only with "tough international diplomacy" that "makes it clear to the Iranians" that their actions are "unacceptable." The Israelis?

The Iranians certainly don't think much of a US nuclear umbrella. This is a country that just called France's ambassador to the carpet because Sarkozy said that Ahmadinejad's threats against Israel were "unacceptable." That's the level of commitment that Iran has to getting "Israel should be destroyed" put on the spectrum of legitimate public debate. They've looked at history. They've seen that the West appeases genocidal lunatics when those lunatics to move the diplomatic goal via ever greater unblinking insanity. They've acted accordingly.

Which is one of the many, many reasons why the Israelis - like the Iranians - don't really think much of Obama's offer:

Granting Israel a nuclear guarantee essentially suggests the U.S. is willing to come to terms with a nuclear Iran. For its part, Israel opposes any such development and similar opposition was voiced by officials in the outgoing Bush administration. "What is the significance of such guarantee when it comes from those who hesitated to deal with a non-nuclear Iran?" asked a senior Israeli security source. "What kind of credibility would this [guarantee have] when Iran is nuclear-capable?"

The Obama people knew in advance that people would roll their eyes at this suggestion. So why even make the offer? Two potential reasons:

Of course he will:

Israel can no longer expect "blank cheques" from Washington once president-elect Barack Obama's administration takes over in January, a former US ambassador to the Jewish state said on Sunday. "The era of the blank cheque is over," said Martin Indyk, director of the Centre for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institute who is considered close to incoming secretary of state Hillary Clinton... "President Obama surely will want to work with Israel on this (Middle East) agenda. But there are obligations on both sides..." Indyk said.

It's true enough that Obama's rhetoric is about "obligations on both sides." But for some reason the only concrete measures he lists are about Israeli behavior:

When Obama talks about concrete measures, he lists only demands of Israel, such as alleviating pressure on Palestinian daily life and freezing settlement construction. He mentions no parallel demands of the Palestinians, such as a need for them to fight terrorism or undertake democratic governmental reforms. All this suggests that as part of his general view of American global priorities, Obama will be more attentive to Palestinian rights than Israel's security needs.

That should have also been pretty obvious from his choice of advisers. And yet Obama boosters continue to insist that Obama's choices aren't openly hostile to Israel. Which is strange because they seemed pretty hostile back before they were officially appointed:

The two dogmas of foreign policy sophistication on the Middle East: (1) the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the source rather than a symptom of Middle East political pathologies and (2) the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be resolved if Israel was willing to make reasonable concessions. Brzezinski covered the first dogma yesterday so - in the spirit of bipartisanship - here's Rice to demonstrate the second:

Despite frequent negotiating sessions, two trips to the region by Bush and eight more by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the sides have little to show for their efforts and have acknowledged the year-end target will not be met. "Even though there was not an agreement by the end of the year, it is really largely because of the political situation in Israel," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters aboard Air Force One as Bush back from a summit in Peru.

Not really news since she's been saying that since June. But worth noting as the kind of incisive foreign policy analysis you'd expect from someone who opposed the surge but described Hezbollah's takeover of Lebanon as a "positive step."

And of course - as left-leaning peace process diplomats now admit openly - it's actually Palestinian political instability that suffocates the peace process. Abbas can't make peace and Hamas won't make peace. But somehow that turns out to be Israel's fault. Because if it wasn't then Israeli concessions wouldn't translate into a peace deal. And then it wouldn't be possible to diplomatically stabilize the Middle East. And then where would the State Department be? So Rice is angling to have UN call for a new Arab state. Because why not?

And because I've now gotten two obnoxious emails on this question in two days: the problem with misguided US foreign policy toward Israel isn't just that it screws a major US ally. It's that diplomats who focus obsessively on Israel do it as a result of willful denial about political Islam. If you believe that political Islam is a global threat driven by a pathological ideology expressed through asymmetric and urban warfare - then Israel is incidental. But if you really need terrorism to be an misguided response to underlying political problems - which is to say, if you're the State Department - then Israel becomes the central issue. Which is why domestically the US-Israel alliance is such an ideological bloodbath. And why misguided approaches to Israel aren't really about Israel.

References:
* Brzezinski: Israeli Campaign Against Iran Will Detonate US-Israel Relations [MR]
* Rice: Peace deal delayed due to political situation in Israel [YNet]
* Condi: Failure Of Inevitably Doomed 2008 US Peace Deal Is Israel's Fault
* Fried Rice [Power Line]
* Iran Takes Over Hezbollah After Hezbollah Takes Over Lebanon (Plus: State Department Naturally Urging Israel To Cede More Land... To Hezbollah) [MR]
* Former Peace Process Diplomats To Obama: Renewed Peace Process Guaranteed To Fail [MR]
* Olmert, Livni vs. Rice's Plan for UN Vote on PA State [A7]

Previously:
* New Data Confirms Old Data: Blaming Israel For Gaza's Medical Collapse Is A Vicious Lie
* World Bank: Failure Of Corrupt, Mismanaged, Civil War Hampered Palestinian Economy Is Israel's Fault
* UN: It's Israel's Fault That The Palestinians Are Dumping Raw Sewage Into The Mediterranean

So Obama said that he's interesting in talking to Iran...

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama said on Sunday that the West must engage in "tough but direct diplomacy" with Iran, but emphasized that Tehran's vocalized threats against Israel stand "contrary to everything" the United States believes in. He also said that he was prepared to offer Iran economic incentives to stop its nuclear program, but warned that sanctions could be toughened if it refused.

... but the Iranians say they're not interested in talking to Obama:

Iran has rejected a suggestion by US President-elect Barack Obama that a carrot and stick policy of economic incentives and additional sanctions might persuade the Iranian government to change its behavior. Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hasan Qashqavi, said Monday that Obama's proposed policy was unacceptable and had failed in the past. Qashqavi reiterated Iran's refusal to suspend enrichment Monday and said the US must recognize Iran's "nuclear right" before the country would dispel concerns about its program.

Which is really weird because just a few weeks ago they were saying that they're not interested in talking to Obama. So it's surprising to hear them say that they're not interested in talking to Obama.

And Qashqavi's right that the status quo with Iran has always been the Obama-style carrot-and-stick approach. Or - as IAEA chief ElBaradei just called it - the "failed" carrot-and-stick approach:

MR, 08/26/08:

You know why [Obama thinks] a nuclear Iran would be a disaster for global security? Because Israel might do something stupid... it's not that there's something inherently problematic about letting an apocalyptic Islamic state acquire nuclear weapons but rather that those jumpy Israelis will overreact. Otherwise nuanced American foreign policy diplomats would be able to deftly steer everyone into a tranquil sea of stability.... so when Israel gets around to bombing Iran in response to explicitly genocidal threats coming from across the Iranian political spectrum: who do you think an Obama State Department will blame for "destabilizing" the region?

Former Obama foreign policy adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, 12/08/2008:

Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security adviser to Jimmy Carter, said in an interview with Haaretz over the weekend that Israel will do harm to its relations with the United States if it insists on lobbying Washington for an American military strike on Iran... "One [piece of] advice that I would give the Israeli government is not to engage in this campaign for an American attack on Iran, because I don't think America is going to attack Iran, and if it did, and the consequences would be disastrous." "It wouldn't be particularly good for American-Israeli relations, and there will be a lot of resentment against [Israel]," he said. "There already has been some after the war in Iraq."

What. A. Tool. The Iraq war only caused anti-Israel resentment because Brzezinski and his ideological ilk blamed it on Israel - despite how Sharon advised Bush against it and even though US Jews overwhelmingly opposed it. And now Israel is supposed to let a genocidal regime get nuclear weapons because Walt and Mearsheimer published an unseemly screed that effectively used anti-Semitic tropes to exaggerate AIPAC's strength. Outstanding.

It's probably not worth mentioning that rumors of Israeli pressure on the US government in the context of Iran might actually help engagement succeed. An Iranian regime that genuinely believes that the US is gearing up for an attack is an Iranian regime that might be more willing to take some economic incentives and call it a victory.

Because this is how it's going to be during the Obama administration. Liberal foreign policy experts can't admit that their ideas about the Middle East are kind of silly and that deep-seated ideological differences make tension inevitable. So they pull the equivalent of the drunk who looks for his lost keys under a lamp because that's where there's light: they blame Israel of the entire length and breadth of Middle East instability and pressure Israel to make concessions. And to justify their anti-Israel obsession they cling to nonsense about how Israel is the barrier to Israeli-Palestinian peace.

So when Obama's engagement with Iran fails it's going to be because Israel radicalized US policy makers. Not because even the French know that talks are doomed to fail. Not because Iran is cool to sitting with Obama anyway. But because Israel thinks US military action against Iran would enhance global security - something the Washington Post suggested two years ago.

It almost seems like Obama's victory has trapped Israel between letting Iran get nukes or detonating US-Israel relations. If Israel waits to attack Iran gets nukes. If Israel attacks now they get blamed for knocking the knees out of Obama's foreign policy. And - the best part - Israel will get scapegoated for failed talks anyway because they "inflame the region" by not "taking risks" for peace. If only someone had mentioned this before the election.

References and previously after the jump...

This is one of those times when the faux sophistication of foreign policy experts gets outright obnoxious:

Appearances can be deceiving. Six months ago, when Dmitry Medvedev was inaugurated as Russia’s new president, many hoped there would be a thaw in U.S.-Russia relations. The soft-spoken lawyer has never worked for the KGB. His reputation as a liberal seemed to contrast sharply with his predecessor, Vladimir Putin. However, for the past six months it seems that President Medvedev has been working hard to dismantle his liberal image and revive memories of the Cold War. Putin had a reputation for being tough, but it was under Medvedev that Russia used excessive force against Georgia, occupying part of its territory and crushing its military.

Well yes, one would have hoped for a thaw in US-Russia relations. If one was a total fucking idiot. As if Medvedev's policies are anything but what Putin tells Medvedev his policies are. I mean, really? That's the nudge-wink game we're playing now? That there was going to be a change in Moscow's foreign policy because Putin replaced the stenciling on his door? Come on. Of course Putin's still unofficially in charge. Of course he's going to again be officially in charge soon enough.

But just as an exercise: according to this article, foreign policy experts predicted "a thaw in US-Russia relations. Fair enough. Except Russia has projected its naval presence into the Western hemisphere with nuclear-powered cruisers, launched new-generation nuclear ICBMs from subs, developed and marketed the world's most advanced tank busting rocket to target the US and its allies, and cracked down on domestic dissidents. And that's just last week. A couple weeks before that Putin was threatening to publicly hang the President of a potential NATO ally by his balls. So maybe not so much with foreign policy sophistication.

At least there's the hope of another wave of Alexandra Kosteniuk bikini pics. Or Alina Kabaeva semi-nude pics. Or whatever.

References and previously after the jump...

The US should send Baker and Carter to coerce Israel but sit idly by while African civilians are slaughtered and jihadists run rampant? She'll fit right in:

ABC News has learned that Dr. Susan Rice has emerged as the leading candidate to be President-elect Obama's nominee as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations... Dr. Rice, a member of President Bill Clinton's National Security Council and a former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, was involved in President-elect Obama's campaign as a senior foreign policy adviser.

From John Bolton - who merely gave the UN a taste of its own irony - to Susan Rice in 2 and a half years. And all it took was the Democratic Congress who bounced him out and the Democratic President who'll install her. At least the US will have one last opportunity to object to the Nazi-level anti-Semitism of Durban II - a conference that the EU, by the by, is now helping to pay for. I doubt that Bush's people will have to block any more objectively pro-terrorist binding UN resolutions though - anti-Israel partisans will probably just wait a few months on those.

But at least we can count on our good will being reciprocated:

And the majority of those taking Canada's generous aid and siding with Iran are...wait for it....Islamic....More than half the countries receiving long-term overseas aid from Canada are among the bloc rebuffing a major, Canadian-led human rights campaign at the United Nations, analysis shows. Thirteen "development partners" of the Canadian International Development Agency - Ottawa’s aid arm - opposed Canada’s position in a key opening vote of this year’s bid to highlight Iran’s human rights abuses.

The worst part: this is going to wreck havoc on the "rice diplomacy" site searches that I use to find old posts. Eh - that's what I get for neglecting the honorific "Secretary Rice" that I might've used for exclusion. Yet another bitter lesson about the necessity of decorous respect for my betters.

References:
* Barack Obama and Israel [Lasky / American Thinker]
* Obama and His Advisors Not Ready for Prime Time [Larry Johnson]
* Soft Rice [Power Line]
* Rice Likely to UN for Obama (Susan, Not Condi) [Tapper / Political Punch]
* Nuts and Bolton [Steyn / Spectator]
* Watchdog groups brace for 'Durban 2' [JPost]
* The EU caves on Durban II [Israpundit]
* US still blocks UNSC vote on Gaza [JPost]
* UN: Over Half the Countries Receiving Major Aid From Canada Voted With Iran to Throw out Canadian-led Censure of the Mullahs Human Rights Abuses.... [Zippers]

Previously:
* Obama Defenders: What Brzezinski Guy? (Plus: That's Not Even Their Worst Argument)
* Arab Foreign Policy Experts: Obama's "Islamic Family Roots" Will Make The Muslim World Like Us (Plus: Obama State Dept Going Pretty Much How You'd Expect)
* 70 Percent Of American Jews Ready To Say "We Didn't Know" When Obama Detonates US-Israel Alliance (Plus: They Most Definitely Know)

Zimbabwe is about to go from bad to worse because of a massive cholera outbreak. So he's not exactly wrong...

Carter issued a statement Tuesday condemning what he said was Harare's decision to renege on an agreement to allow him, Annan and Machel into the country. He also offered a damning assessment of the Mugabe regime. "After almost three decades of governmental corruption, mismanagement and oppression, Zimbabwe has become a basket case, an embarrassment to the region and a focus of international concern and condemnation," he said.

... he's just a shameless hypocritical simpleton:

Carter had barely settled in at the White House in 1977 when he set about establishing his presidency as different. Instead of leading with the pragmatic idealism that marked most successful U.S. presidencies, the former governor of Georgia said he would base his leadership on a new, ill-defined concept of "human rights."... In Rhodesia, Carter kept up sanctions begun under his predecessors. But he went further by undermining the election of Bishop Abel Muzorewa as prime minister in 1979 to protest the exclusion of candidate Robert Mugabe. In response to Carter's pressure, new elections were held, giving Mugabe the victory he has held onto as Africa's worst dictator.

What next? A tirade against the mullahs who took over after Iran after he sold out the Shah?

At least we haven't just elected a human rights-inclined President who ran on the exact same empty slogans that propelled Carter into the White House - and thus Mugabe into Zimbabwe and the mullahs into Iran:

Britain, France, and Germany are done being polite about Iran's nuclear program. And it only took 5,000 working centrifuges and enough material for a nuclear bomb before they got to that conclusion. But maybe Obama's planned high level meetings can fix things. I mean - Bush tried 28 times and failed. But maybe the 29th time will be the charm. Sure Iran says they'll keep refusing to meet while they build game-changing weapons...

The very appearance of this new missile is a living testimony to the failure of the world community to curb the trade in missile technology, not to speak of curbing the malicious ambitions of Iran's mullahs. The Iranians dubbed the missile launched on Nov. 12 "Sajeel," but its general layout was indistinguishable from the description of the "Ashura," which was flight-tested about one year ago, apparently without success.

To the uninformed eye, the Sajeel/Ashura resembles the familiar Shahab-3, an evolved clone of the North Korean 1,300-kilometer No Dong single-stage, liquid propelled ballistic missile. In fact, some commentators pooh-pooh'd the new missile as another manifestation of the ever-evolving Shahab-3 design. Nothing is further from the truth. Perhaps the most striking feature of the new missile is its very newness. This is not another permutation of the No Dong formula - this is a brand-new missile... While still lagging behind the latest in the United States or Russia, the Sajeel/Ashura displays several mature features and signifies Iran's graduation into world-level missilery... The appearance of the Sajeel/Ashura signals... It highlights Iran's single-minded pursuit of ballistic missile capability in every conceivable technology.

... but hope! Actually its more likely that Obama's approach will leave him with no alternative but to appease Iran. But hope! For instance, the Presidents of 6 major US universities will be touring Iran soon. Because the Iranians - they seem interested in talking.

References:
* EU 3 accuse Iran of "utter disrespect" [Middle East Forum]
* Iran centrifuge claim worries J'lem [JPost]
* Inevitable: Iran Has Enough Material For A Nuke (Plus: US Foreign Policy Sophisticates Urge Obama To Abandon Sanctions Because "Threats" Don't Work) [MR]
* Bush Administration Contacts with Iran [Middle East Forum]
* Iran Rejects Talks With Obama, Foreign Policy Sophisticates Confused [MR]
* Iran's Game-changer [Defense News]
* Wishful Thinking and Iran [Middle East Forum]
* U.S. Academics Tour Iran [CBS News]

Previously:
* Vast Financial War On Terrorism Going Kind Of OK, Actually
* Al Qaeda Misses Memo About How Sunnis And Shiites Don't Cooperate, Thanks Iran For Critical Financing And Infrastructure
* US Warns Israel Against Pre-Obama Attacks On Iran Or Hamas

Hey, turns out that Sunnis and Shiites do cooperate to attack Western targts and spread political Islam. You wouldn't expect that just because it's been confirmed by multiple speeches, statements, and declarations since the early 1990s:

Delivery of the letter exposed the rising role of Saad bin Laden, son of the al-Qaeda leader, Osama as an intermediary between the organisation and Iran... The letter, which was signed by Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's second in command, was written after the American embassy in Yemen was attacked by simultaneous suicide car bombs in September. Western security officials said the missive thanked the leadership of Iran's Revolutionary Guards for providing assistance to al-Qaeda to set up its terrorist network in Yemen, which has suffered ten al-Qaeda-related terror attacks in the past year, including two bomb attacks against the American embassy. In the letter al-Qaeda's leadership pays tribute to Iran's generosity, stating that without its "monetary and infrastructure assistance" it would have not been possible for the group to carry out the terror attacks. It also thanked Iran for having the "vision" to help the terror organisation establish new bases in Yemen after al-Qaeda was forced to abandon much of its terrorist infrastructure in Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Sure AQ still gets most of their money from Saudi Arabia. But what al-Zawahiri is saying is that Iran funds smarter not harder - which, in addition to being true, is exactly the kind of thing that can reinvigorate the Iranian terrorist brand in a $50/barrel world.

References:
* Iran receives al Qaeda praise for role in terrorist attacks [Telegraph]
* Just A Reminder: Sunnis And Shiites Historically United In Anti-Western Global Jihad (Plus: "History" Also A Pretty Good Answer To Obama's Engagement With Syria) [MR]
* Guess who leads the world in terrorist financing? [Hot Air]

Previously:
* Iran: Of Course Sunnis And Shiites Cooperate, Iran Will Never Abandon Hamas
* Iran Misses Memo About How Sunnis And Shiites Don't Cooperate, Gives Syria Cutting Edge Offensive Missiles (Plus: Expert Sophistication Wrong On Iranian Nuclearization. Again)
* Guess who leads the world in terrorist financing?

From nuclear software codes stolen with impunity through international dithering to the inevitable conclusion:

Iran has now produced roughly enough nuclear material to make, with added purification, a single atom bomb, according to nuclear experts analyzing the latest report from global atomic inspectors. The figures detailing Iran’s progress were contained in a routine update on Wednesday from the International Atomic Energy Agency... Iran had made 630 kilograms, or about 1,390 pounds, of low-enriched uranium... that was enough for a bomb, but they cautioned that the milestone was mostly symbolic, because Iran would have to take additional steps. Not only would it have to breach its international agreements and kick out the inspectors, but it would also have to further purify the fuel and put it into a warhead design — a technical advance that Western experts are unsure Iran has yet achieved... "They know how to do the enrichment. Whether they know how to design a bomb, well, that’s another matter."

As Hot Air notes that last part is mostly pro forma. Iran is more than willing to sit on their material while they build up the knowledge required to maintain a virtual arsenal. There's nothing in the NPT or in international law against "knowing lots of stuff." What's at stake is creating and having enough nuclear material for a bomb. Full stop. Thanks to moronic Iran analysts who spent decades promising moderation and to suppine diplomats who spent years giving Iran breathing room - the Islamic regime seems to have cleared that hurdle. If they haven't they soon will - the Bushehr reactor goes online next year.

Now these same egregiously wrong analysts are teaming up with Obama's anti-Israel, pro-Iran intelligence team to get him to stop pressuring Tehran:

Well that was totally unpredictable wasn't it?

General James L. Jones is widely rumored to be Obama's preferred candidate to be White House National Security Adviser... Jones prepared a report on Israel's policies in the territories... The World Tribune said it "blasted Israel's role" for "hampering the movement of PA forces, blocking plans for weapons shipments and technology to the Palestinians and resisting coordination." ... Obama said this about Jones: "Let me tell you who I associate with... If I'm interested in figuring out my foreign policy, I associate myself with my running mate, Joe Biden or with Dick Lugar...or General Jim Jones, the former supreme allied commander of NATO."

Totally, totally unpredictable:

John Brennan... is rumored to be Obama's pick to head the CIA. Brennan published a long article on Iran in July 2008... "... U.S. national security would be best served if Washington publicly acknowledged and explored the roots of this shift in Iranian state support for terrorist activities ... the new U.S. administration must be willing to exercise strategic patience....It would not be foolhardy, however, for the United States to tolerate, and even to encourage, greater assimilation of Hezbollah into Lebanon's political system.

The US should exercise "strategic patience" with Iran - who as of today has four navy bases in the Gulf, is building up its conventional arsenal, and is at most two years away from a nuke - plus support Hezbollah's takeover of the Lebanese government. All because Iran is becoming more moderate. This is definitely a guy with his finger on the pulse of geopolitical dynamics.

Now a little background on Jones's current posting: he was sent to the Middle Eats last year at Rice's behest to pressure Israel into making concessions. Israel has made some of those concessions even though State's trusted Palestinian moderates are still threatening to launch wars. Not enough for Jones: he's currently at work creating a paper trail that blames Israel for Middle East violence and outlines a vision of a Palestinian state:

And you were hoping he'd settle for just ignoring top military experts on missile defense. Here's CIA Director General Michael Hayden on Nov. 13, 2008:

Without directly referring to the CIA's offensive blitz of unmanned missile attacks in the tribal areas of Pakistan, the CIA boss said the US had successfully isolated the al Qaeda leader bin Laden, referring to him in the present tense. "He appears to be largely isolated from the day-to-day operations of the organization he leads," Hayden said in a speech delivered to the Atlantic Council in Washington.

And now here's President-Elect Barack Obama three days later:

Kroft: Where does capturing or killing Osama bin Laden fall?
Mr. Obama: I think it is a top priority for us to stamp out al Qaeda once and for all. And I think capturing or killing bin Laden is a critical aspect of stamping out al Qaeda. He is not just a symbol, he’s also the operational leader of an organization that is planning attacks against US targets.

So either Bin Laden managed to reinsert himself into Al Qaeda's operational hierarchy in three days or Obama is so fixated on his "bomb nuclear-armed Pakistan" campaign bluster that he's ignoring security briefings. And since they don't really have wifi in isolated Waziristan caves... Perhaps self-declared "Adviser in Chief" Joe Biden - breathtakingly idiot that he is - is actually being allowed to speak regularly with the President-Elect. That would be unhelpful.

But what do I know? Obama is going to defeat anti-Western enemies by forcing them to embrace "new symbols." A guy like that - obviously he's got a good sense for the gravity of political Islam's challenge. Plus WaPo is quoting anonymous "senior U.S. military officials" who "welcome" his approach. So that's that.

How about a quid pro quo: Al Qaeda hands over Bin Laden and Obama keeps his promise to abandon Iraq like AQI wants him to? Everybody gets their "top priority" and nobody has to go home empty-handed.

The video of the interview is after the jump...

Everything old really does appear to be new again:

The Middle East is in danger of accumulating large stocks of nuclear material over the next decade that could be used to produce over 1,700 nuclear bombs, a U.S. research center has projected in a newly released report. The Institute for Science and International Security, headed by David Albright, one the world's top experts on nuclear weapons and the prevention of nuclear proliferation, recently released its report urging president-elect Barack Obama to take a number of measures to avoid such an outcome, including convincing Israel to halt production of its nuclear weapons... "As an interim step, the United States should press Israel to suspend any production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. Toward this goal, the United States should change its relatively new policy of seeking a cutoff treaty that does not include verification. The Bush administration's rejection of the long-standing U.S. policy of requiring verification was a mistake that the incoming administration needs to rectify."

Because the one thing that will cause threshold countries like Libya and Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Syria to give up their nukes is knowing that Israel has disarmed. What's that? They're actually going nuclear because they want to attack Israel or because they're terrified of an Iranian Bomb that's probably inevitable and may well already be past the point of no return? Well then it seems like pressuring Israel wouldn't really accomplish anything except weakening Israel. Weird.

No but seriously, Israeli concessions always work. Israel's Arab and Muslim enemies never sign nudge-wink agreements that everybody knows only Israel will be pressured to uphold. Look how well USNC 1701 is working out in Lebanon. And the Camp David Accords with Egypt - nothing but success. And of course literally every agreement with the Palestinian Authority is being upheld.

But at least when Israel's current and future enemies back out of international agreements after pocketing irreversible Israeli concessions - at least in those cases Israel can count on the US and Europe to uphold their security guarantees to the now-weakened Jewish State. At least there's that.

References and previously after the jump...

Well sure they seem awful united when they're meeting to undermine Israel or plan their retaliation to "slights against Islam." But that makes no sense, right?

[AQI leader Abu Omar al-Baghdadi's] message... connect with a dominant theme throughout not only al-Qaida's command but also the jihadist forces and regimes around the world. Ideologically, despite their divisions and diverse strategies, the Salafists and Khomeinists have a common approach on how to deal with the United States. And this attitude has been embodied by multiple speeches, statements, and declarations since the early 1990s. From the powerful doctrinal positions of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi on al-Jazeera, al-Qaida's Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, to Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the "agenda" is one: the United States must pull its forces outside the region and keep them inside its own borders. Baghdadi and many other jihadist commanders, commentators and activists see the big picture as an effort, or a jihad, against all kuffar (infidel) forces in the region. In his speech addressed to the new U.S. leadership, al-Qaida Iraq's "emir" also warned France and Russia from interfering inside the borders of his future caliphate.

But hey - maybe we can still use their differences to split them apart, like peeling Syria away from Iran? That's certainly the idea behind Obama's very first move as President elect, when he sent his virulently anti-Israel adviser Robert Malley to Damascus. That visit seems to have had the opposite effect of moving Assad towards peace. But maybe if they tried again really sincerely? Yeah, not so much:

Headline: "Facing Obama, Iran Suddenly Hedges on Talks." Yeah. Suddenly. Total bolt out of the blue. Like no one could have predicted that Iran would reject talks after Khamenei set insane preconditions for dialogue and then explicitly stated that he wasn't open to talks under any conditions. Especially now that the European Court is banning one of the last bits of leverage that the West had.

What world do these tools live in? It must be just a blur of glitter and colors where they wander around in a state of perpetual amazement. For fuck's sake:

Since 2006, Iran's leaders have called for direct, unconditional talks with the United States to resolve international concerns over their nuclear program. But as an American administration open to such negotiations prepares to take power, Iran's political and military leaders are sounding suddenly wary of President-elect Barack Obama. "People who put on a mask of friendship, but with the objective of betrayal, and who enter from the angle of negotiations without preconditions, are more dangerous," Hossein Taeb, deputy commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, said Wednesday, according to the semiofficial Mehr News Agency.

It almost seems like they were using the promise of talks to buy time from a credulous international community. Also: to provide thin pretexts so oversophisticated morons in the liberal American foreign policy community could undermine the Bush administration.

The mullahs are also claiming that they've successfully tested solid-fuel rockets capable of hitting Israel. Just in case you were wondering what they intend to do with that nuclear weapons program that American foreign policy experts assured us they didn't have but that they now believe could produce a bomb by 2009:

Which is weird because (a) he's not a Muslim and (b) to the extent that he does have Islamic family roots it would cause Muslims to shun him as an apostate. But whatever:

"Arabs are very excited," said Mustafa, editor of Democracy Review, an Egyptian quarterly. "People are imagining that he is a Muslim like them and that he is going to bring a new America that is friendly." Obama's race, Islamic family roots and promise of change give him an opening to blunt militancy rooted in decades of white colonial rule and sharpened by the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq... Al-Qaeda has noted Obama's potential to make progress in repairing America's reputation among Muslims, damaged under President George W. Bush, said Rohan Gunaratna, director of a terrorism study center at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University. "Obama will be able to change the perception among Muslims, even moderates, that the United States under President Bush was attacking not terrorism, but the Islamic world," he said. Militants were "discussing on jihadist Web sites that if Obama comes to power, it will risk a very significant defeat for them."

Any successful public diplomacy toward the Muslim world basically requires embracing their pathological anti-Semitism in a way that even a sophistication-enamored Democratic Congress has been unwilling to do. But still, I don't think these experts entirely wrong. If Iran is any example the Muslim world is pretty eager to be appeased. That's the same as "changing their perception," right?

And just because I have nowhere else to put these and this post is kind of about diplomacy: John "let's send Baker and Carter to coerce Israeli concessions" Kerry is currently a front runner for Secretary of State. Another front runner? Susan Rice, the woman who gave him that idea in 2004.

References:
* Obama Complains About Smears From Jewish Groups... And He's Not Totally Wrong (Plus: He's Still Kind Of Wrong) [MR]
* Was Barack Obama a Muslim? [Daniel Pipes]
* Obama Appeal in Muslim World May Tone Down Militants (Update2) [Bloomberg]
* State Department's Arab TV Station: Israel Conducting "Holocaust Against 1.5 million Palestinians" [MR]
* Speaker Of Iranian Parliament: Of Course We Want Obama To Win [MR]
* That Settles That [MR]
* Who will Obama pick? The latest scuttlebutt [FP Passport]
* Barack Obama and Israel [American Thinker]

Previously:
* US Ambassador's Highly, Highly Dubious Declaration: Israel Is About To Give Away Jerusalem
* US Public Diplomacy - Winning Arab Hearts And Minds By Promising To Sell Out Israel
* State Dept. More Enthusiastic Than Ever About Coercing Israeli Concessions, Arming Palestinian Soldiers (Plus: Editor-in-Chief Of Int'l Arabic Daily: Gaza Is Another Afghanistan)

There are really smart anti-war libertarians who - while harboring no delusions about the threat of political Islam - think that we should approach the Muslim world by overwhelming it with capitalism. The neo-conservative response is that fanatic ideology trumps even the lure of consumerism. This is what academics like to call an empirical question:

Bahrain's parliament is pressing the Gulf Arab emirate's government to reopen the country's Israel Boycott Office, which was closed two years ago under pressure from Washington. Prior to its closure, the boycott office had overseen government efforts to bar entry to Israeli-made goods in accordance with the Arab League's economic and trade embargo against the Jewish state. At a meeting held late last week, the legislature's committee on foreign affairs, defense and national security also called for an end to all formal contacts with the Jewish state. "Now that the committee has agreed on reopening the office, we request the Foreign Ministry to support the decisions by the representatives of the people and to put an end to all forms of contact between Bahrain and the Zionist entity," committee chairman Adel al-Mouawda said, according to Gulf News.

Technology plus pathological ideology inevitably equals technology in the service of pathological ideology.

References:
* Bahrain may reopen Israel Boycott Office [JPost]
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - Saudi Marriage Official Advises Your Husband Not To Have Sex With You When You're His 1 Year Old Toddler Wife [MR]

Previously:
* Arab And Muslim Countries Reject French Book Fair Because It's Just Too Jewish
* UN Children's Fund: Israeli Billionaire Just Too Jewish To Give Money To World's Children (Also Too Jewish For The UN: Ultra-Liberal Reform Jews)
* We Can't Win This One With Capitalism

Ever since Obama declared that Iran is relatively "insignificant threat," I've been trying to figure out exactly how little I should be worried. On a scale of "totally insignificant" to "pretty fucking scary", where do you think intercontinental missiles rank?

The head of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency said Friday that Iran was not far from attaining the means of using missiles against all of Europe and against the US in five to six years, Israel Radio reported. Lt. Gen. Henry A. Obering III was speaking in Prague in an effort to convince the Czech Parliament to approve a US missile defense installation in the country's territory.

Keep in mind that these are intercontinental ballistic missiles backed by newly revealed clandestine nuclear experiments that some are saying have already borne fruit. So that may or may not change things:

Iran has recently tested ways of recovering highly enriched uranium from waste reactor fuel in a covert bid to expand its nuclear program, according to an intelligence assessment made available to The Associated Press. The intelligence, provided by a member of the 145-nation International Atomic Energy Agency, also says a report will soon be submitted to the Iranian leadership for a decision on whether to go ahead with the project.

And while everyone's got their calculator out, how about Iranian-sponsored suicide attacks?

Following the recent U.S. strikes in Pakistan and Syria, Iranian Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani threatened suicide attacks against the U.S. Speaking in the Majlis, he warned the U.S. that "its adventurousness would have a price that it would not be able to control," and that the response to its aggression would not take the form of diplomatic protest. He added that "the way to prevent this American behavior, which was reflected in acts of aggression, is to react in a strong and unpredictable way that was bequeathed to us by the martyr Fahmideh, [2] and employed by Hizbullah in the 2006 Lebanon War, which constituted a ringing slap [in the] Zionists' [face]...

I'm also eager to know where freeing high-level jihadists and attacking US troops in Iraq fall on the scale, but those stories are already a few months old and everybody knows that Obama only has to answer for the now. Cf. meeting with Ahmadinejad without preconditions, Wright, dismantling the US military, Khalidi, uncertainty about whether Israel is an important ally, ACORN, "nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people", Ayers, promising to make energy prices "skyrocket," etc.

At least Iran seems willing to reciprocate the kind of diplomatic overtures that are at the center of Obama's foreign policy. What's that? Khamenei has signaled ironclad opposition to any thaw in relations:

Meryl has an interview up demonstrating that Mehdi Karroubi - the media's new moderate Iranian cleric - is exactly as moderate as all the other MSM-sanctified Iranian moderates. Not that it'll matter:

The failure of reformists to form a united front increases Ahmadinejad's chances of being re-elected, although the president is under fire for Iran's high inflation, which has hurt many of his core support-base amongst the provincial poor. It was not yet clear whether Ahmadinejad would obtain unanimous support of the conservative faction or if neo-conservatives would name their own candidate, as they did in the March parliamentary elections. Ahmadinejad is also said to enjoy the support of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who, according to the constitution, has the final say in all state affairs. But some of the ayatollah's advisers, including former foreign minister Ali-Akbar Velayati, have openly criticized the president's policies.

Well as long as "some of the ayatollah's advisers" are willing to distance themselves from a genocidal lunatic who takes orders from an invisible prophet on how to ignite a global nuclear apocalypse - well then no worries, yeah? Which is a relief, because leading US nonproliferation experts now say Iran could have 60 nukes in the next two years and even the French think that negotiations won't work:

Turns out that Biden more or less made up his dramatic, monumental, history-altering role in Congress's Bosnia stand:

During last week's debate with his counterpart on the Republican ticket, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Biden twice gave himself credit for shifting U.S. policy on Bosnia... But, despite the bravado, Biden was not a key player in the legislation that ultimately forced Bill Clinton to lift an arms embargo imposed by the United Nations on Bosnian Muslims fighting the Serbs, according to congressional officials involved in the issue and a review of Biden's speeches and voting record... Biden's foreign policy expertise -- honed over 36 years in the Senate -- is the main reason Obama selected him as his running mate and offers the strongest contrast with Palin.

36 years in the Senate and Biden still doesn't know shit and yet is utterly convinced in his own genius. His 2006 partition plan for Iraq was so stupid that Sunnis and Shiites - who were engaged in a civil war - united to oppose it. His understanding of Al Qaeda's strategy and territorial presence is the opposite of true. He clearly doesn't understand McKiernan's strategy in Afghanistan - not a surprise, since he also doesn't know the difference between brigades and battalions.

In fairness to him, though, he might just be listening to the bevy of liberal foreign policy specialists who have been getting things wrong about the Middle East for the better part of five decades. Click through for more.

So the IAEA confirms that Iran is building nuclear missiles - missiles which they've repeatedly boasted about launching at Israel:

The U.N. nuclear monitoring agency shared new photos and documents purporting to show that Iran tried to refit its main long-distance missile to carry a nuclear payload... Part of the report spoke of what appeared to be drawings and calculations by Iranian engineers on reconfiguring its Shahab-3 missile to be able to carry a nuclear payload...The presentation "showed board members for the first time photographs and documents of work undertaken in Iran on the redesigning of the Shahab-3 missile to carry what would appear to be a nuclear weapon," said Gregory L. Schulte, the chief U.S. representative to the IAEA... the senior IAEA official doing the briefing "told us that information they have is very credible."

And the IAEA confirms that Iran has overcome the technological hurdles to large-scale enrichment - not exactly a shock since they put thousands more centrifuges online last month:

Iran has substantially improved the efficiency of its centrifuges that produce enriched uranium, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Monday, indicating that the nation has overcome some of the technical challenges that had plagued its enrichment program. In a six-page report, the agency charged the Iranians with continuing to stonewall about what some Western governments suspected was Iran’s past research on designing a nuclear weapon. The agency acknowledged that it had failed “to make any substantial progress” in its investigation.

And now there are credible reports that disappeared 6 nukes' worth of uranium. So obviously the natural response - proposed by the very best minds that our State Department has produced - is to talk to Iran about it:

Five former U.S. secretaries of state on Monday announced their support for talks with Iran, with all five saying the United States should not wait to launch diplomatic engagements with the Islamic Republic. The former chief diplomats, Madeleine K. Albright; James A. Baker, III; Warren Christopher; Henry A. Kissinger; and Colin L. Powell issued their support for talks during a roundtable discussion entitled "The Next President: A World of Challenges," held at Washington D.C.'s George Washington University.

It's really too bad that Brzezinski wasn't there. That would've been perfect.

References:
* IAEA info suggests Iran worked on nuclear missile [AP]
* Iran's Revolutionary Guards: Zionist Entity in range of our missiles [Ha'aretz]
* Nuclear Agency Says Iran Has Improved Enrichment [NYT]
* Iran says 4,000 atomic centrifuges working: report [Reuters]
* Iran renews nuclear weapons development [Telegraph]
* Former U.S. secretaries of state say they support talks with Iran [Ha'aretz]
* Obama's Foreign Policy Advisers Not Exactly Fans Of The Jewish State (Plus: Brzezinski Snubs Israel After Tete-A-Tete With Assad) [MR]

Previously:
* State Department Discovers Iran Supports Terrorism
* Reuters Publishes State Department Leak: US Attack On Iran Would Be All-Out War
* Smug Liberal Sophistication Untroubled By Undeniable Evidence That Hardliners Are Winning In Iran

At least this means that that Syria will break off its cooperation with Hezbollah, since as foreign policy experts tell us Sunnis and Shiites never cooperate:

Iran is consolidating its grip on Hizbullah and has instituted a number of structural changes to the Lebanese group, under which Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah no longer enjoys exclusive command over its military wing, top Israeli defense officials have revealed. According to the officials, following the Second Lebanon War, Iran decided to step up its involvement in the Hizbullah decision-making process and has instituted a number of changes to the terror group's hierarchy, under which Nasrallah has to receive Iranian permission prior to certain operations. "There is real Iranian command now over Hizbullah," a top IDF officer said. "This doesn't mean that Nasrallah is a puppet, but it does mean that whenever he pops his head out of his bunker he sees an Iranian official standing over him."

This comes as Hezbollah is expanding its war against Jews into Venezuela and its war against Israel globally (although their campaign to make Venezuela judenrein is probably just anti-Zionism - so no worries). As for the war in the Middle East, the Hezbollah-controlled Lebanese government wants you to know that they're never going to stop trying to conquer Israel:

While forces within Siniora's western-backed coalition demanded that military action to liberate occupied lands be carried out "under the aegis of the state," now the government guidelines state that Hezbollah has what is essentially an independent right to take action. "Lebanon, its army, its people and its resistance [Hezbollah] have the right to take action to liberate lands that have remained occupied at the Shaba Farms, the hills of Shuba village and the northern portion of the village of Ghajar, with all legitimate means possible, and to resist Israeli aggression."

Remember that time last year when the US gave Lebanon cutting-edge military tech? If only it had been easily foreseeable that the weapons would end up under Hezbollah control. Not that Hezbollah is particularly short on weapons - last April UN peacekeepers found a cache of illegal Hezbollah weapons and promptly ran away. A little afterwards Syria switched from covertly smuggling in weapons to just openly arming Hezbollah. Some of the State Department's other brilliant ideas for solving the Hezbollah crisis, after the jump.

You know why a nuclear Iran would be a disaster for global security? Because Israel might do something stupid:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama declared Monday that the world must press Iran through sanctions and diplomacy to stop its nuclear program, so that Israel does not feel its "back is against the wall" and that it therefore has no choice but to attack... Obama stressed that Israel, "one of our strongest allies in the world," would feel hugely threatened given claims by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that he would wipe it off the world map... "My job as president would be to try to make sure that we are tightening the screws diplomatically on Iran... We've got to do that before Israel feels like its back is to the wall"

What an exquisite example of the soft anti-Israel faux sophistication shared by virtually every single Obama foreign policy adviser: it's not that there's something inherently problematic about letting an apocalyptic Islamic state acquire nuclear weapons but rather that those jumpy Israelis will overreact. Otherwise nuanced American foreign policy diplomats would be able to deftly steer everyone into a tranquil sea of stability. It's not explicitly anti-Israel. It's merely objectively anti-Israel - the implication being that Middle East crises are caused not by the genocidal declarations of Israel's enemies but by Israel's reactions to those intentions. And so when Israel gets around to bombing Iran in response to explicitly genocidal threats coming from across the Iranian political spectrum: who do you think an Obama State Department will blame for "destabilizing" the region?

Actually, Putin's Georgia landgrab showed exactly how Obama's predispositions play out when actual wars erupt. JPost's judgment: Carter-esque. When Russia started bombing, Obama's first impulse was to call for an immediate ceasefire. Now replace Russia with Hezbollah and Georgia with Israel - and you have exactly the same fake neutrality that was used to stop Israel from winning Lebanon II. This tired leftist internationalist impulse - to ignore the objective facts on the ground and pretend that everybody is starting from the same position - inevitably rewards the aggressor who gets to pocket the benefits of the initial violation. Obama's second impulse - to request UN intervention - was actually dumber than it would be in a Russian context than it would be in an Israeli context. But that's only because Russia has a de jure veto in the UNSC while Israel's Arab enemies only yield de facto vetoes in the GA. It's his instinct and his judgment that'll end up with him selling out American allies to global jihadists and a resurgent Russia while he dithers about compromise and international mechanisms.

On the other hand, Pro-Obama Jewish activists are going hi-tech to answer whispering campaigns about how he's a Muslim. I don't actually think that's a significant problem - about the same number of people believe he's a Muslim who believe that UFOs exist - but good for them. Now if only they could explain why their candidate's instincts won't lead to cascading international disasters - that would be super. No wonder the Democrats aren't letting Carter speak in Denver. It would make The One's climactic acceptance speech redundant. And then what would they do with the rented stadium?

References:
* Obama: World must pressure Iran [JPost]
* Obama's Foreign Policy Advisers Not Exactly Fans Of The Jewish State (Plus: Brzezinski Snubs Israel After Tete-A-Tete With Assad) [MR]
* Obama's "Pro-Israel Advisers" Don't Actually Exist. As Such. [MR]
* Idiots [MR]
* Obama's Carter-esque reflexes [JPost]
* MR Translates Journalistic Cliche - "Compromise" Means "Israeli Surrender" [MR]
* Jewish Democrats go hi-tech to fight anti-Obama 'hate mail' [Ha'aretz]
* Obama: World must pressure Iran [JPost]
* Carter at Dem Convention: My Meeting with HAMAS [BtB]

Previously:
* Mel Levine's Defense Of Obama: He'll Make Obsessed Anti-Israel Lunatics Love The US. Presumably By Magic.
* Obama Complains About Smears From Jewish Groups... And He's Not Totally Wrong (Plus: He's Still Kind Of Wrong)
* Top Obama Foreign Policy Adviser: No Seriously, We Are Totally Going To Screw Israel When We Get Into Power

Remember how in the 1990s foreign policy experts were sure that Khatami was going to make Iran safe for Western diplomacy- because Khatami only talked about cleansing the earth of Zionist corruption in vague terms? And then how when that didn't work diplomatic dialogue was going to be saved by conservative pragmatists - they only want to wage nuclear wars against Israel because they think can win them. Relying on Iranians who want to win nuclear wars is important because the alternative is that the Iranian regime is actually being led by apocalyptic lunatics.

The problem is that the Iranian regime really does seem to be led by apocalyptic lunatics. Ahmadinejad pretty regularly declares that the 12th imam it just around the corner. Even Iran's nuclear negotiator is more or less committed to bringing about the end of the world. So the people who are out in front - kind of crazy.

Foreign policy experts get around pesky evidence - things like Iran's "statements" and "actions" - by talking about how the lunatics aren't the ones who are really in charge. While it may seem that way to neoconservative warmongers, sophisticated liberal foreign policy elites are privy to the secret battles and power plays that actually set Iranian policy. So while it might look like Ahmadinejad and Jalili are trying to start a nuclear war, there's supposed to be a pitched battle between conservative pragmatists and lunatics for Khamenei's ear. Turns out not so much:

Iran's Supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged hard-line Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to plan for a second four-year term, Iranian official news agency IRNA reported Sunday. According to the report, Khemenei told Ahmadinejad that he should not think his administration is serving its final year and that he has to work as if he will stay in power for another four years. Earlier on Sunday, Khamenei was quoted as praising Ahmadinejad for "standing up to" the West in a dispute over the country's nuclear program, amid growing domestic criticism of the president's management. Khamenei offered unusually glowing praise of Ahmadinejad, who upon his election in 2005 sparked a confrontation with the West by resuming uranium enrichment and also prompted worldwide condemnation for denouncing Israel. The country's spiritual leader has rarely, if ever, expressed such support for any other Iranian politician.

Not to worry. I'm sure there's some secret coded message in Khamenei's glowing praise. Something that's actually a reason for the US to engage in some Hopeful and Changeful diplomacy. And I'm sure that State's Iran people or someone at the CFR will be explaining it to the NYT's readership soon enough.

References:
* Smug Liberal Sophistication Untroubled By Undeniable Evidence That Hardliners Are Winning In Iran [MR]
* Iran's Ribbentrop [TCS Daily]
* Idiots [MR]
* Ahmadinejad Declares Coming Return Of the Mahdi [MR]
* Super! Iran's New Nuclear Negotiator Dedicated To Bringing About The End Of The World. Yes, Really. [MR]
* 'Ahmadinejad should plan another 4-year term' [JPost]

Previously:
* State Department Discovers Iran Supports Terrorism
* Bolton: Israel Will Attack Iran By January (Plus: New EU Sanctions Somewhat Underwhelming, Still Better Than What Obama Will Do)
* Iran: Israeli Self-Defense is a Cause for War

Remember how we pedantically said that no amount of incentives can get Iran to stop nuclearizing because there's nothing that they want more than nuclear weapons? And then remember how negotiations went on for two years after we wrote that because foreign policy sophisticates really believed that Iran's statements to the same effect were just complicated "signals" that didn't mean that at all? And remember how it turned out that the mullahs really meant what they said? Which is right now:

Iran won't consider any proposals in talks with the West that would require it to stop enriching uranium, said the country's foreign minister Sunday. "No incentive weighs equally with the rights of Iranian nation," said Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini. He also told reporters in Teheran that uranium enrichment is an "indisputable right" for Iran. Last week, the US and other world powers offered Iran a package of incentives in an attempt to lure Teheran back into negotiations over its disputed nuclear program.

Hey, we don't mean to let the cat out of the bag on this one, but - they're committed to getting nukes.

References:
* Mathematical Proof That Negotiating With Iran Is Stupid. Not Wrong. Stupid. [MR]
* Iran rejects incentives to stop enriching uranium [JPost]

Previously:
* Iran: We Won't Give Up Nukes If You Threaten Us. We Also Won't Give Up Nukes If You Don't Threaten Us. (Plus: Iran Suspends Talks On Iraq)
* Iran Gets Cheeky on Nuclear Weapons
* State Department And Pentagon Plotting Insubordination, Pretty Much Lying To Prevent Action Against Iran

Just so everybody's clear:

Iran's top leader said his country would not bend to international pressure and give up its nuclear program, according to state television. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in all state matters, said Iran would continue its nuclear program despite Western efforts to thwart it with sanctions. "No threat can hinder the Iranian nation from its path," he said.

And of course the global "what the fuck" reply to the NIE has done absolutely nothing to stop the left from insisting that talk of Iranian nuclearization is just so much neocon warmongering. But maybe an incentives package will dissuade Tehran. Sure we've been skeptical to the point of pedantry about the possibility - but maybe it could happen:

An Iranian diplomat says the West's package of incentives is aimed at damaging Tehran's image and bringing more pressure on it. "They (Western powers) expect Iran to exchange its valuable achievements with their worthless incentives, but they should know that the Iranian officials and people are united in defending their great achievements on the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes," Iran's Ambassador to Indonesia, Behrouz Kamalvandi, said in a meeting with the Indonesian Parliament Vice Speaker, A.M. Fatwa.

Or not. At least Iran isn't upgrading its ties with Egypt with an eye on slipping nonconventional weapons into Gaza. And at least NATO SecGen Scheffer isn't convinced that Iranian nuclearization will trigger an unstoppable tsunami of global proliferation.

And at least Obama's commitment to dialogue is exactly the kind of thing that works with the Iranians:

Iran says it will not hold a new round of talks with the US on security in Iraq until American forces end their current assault against Shiite militias. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini's announcement Monday is the first official confirmation that the talks will be suspended. Iran's semi-official Fars news agency quoted an unnamed senior Iranian negotiator Saturday as saying new talks were not possible with continued US attacks against the Iraqi people.

Super.

References:
* Ayatollah: Iran won't stop nuke program [JPost]
* 'Iran may have resumed nuclear program' [JPost]
* Mathematical Proof That Negotiating With Iran Is Stupid. Not Wrong. Stupid. [MR]
* 'West's incentive package worthless'
* Renewed Iran-Egypt Ties? [JPC]
* NATO chief: More nations could follow Iran and North Korea [JPost]
* Iran suspends talks with US over security in Iraq [JPost]

Previously:
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - Iran Has Legal Slavery And Rape Of Prepubescent Girls. They Call It "Temporary Marriage".
* Obligatory Post About Iran's "Hezbollah Radiation Will Destroy Israel" Threat (Plus: Mugniyah Assassination Dramatically Demonstrates Absurdity Of Liberal Foreign Policy Sophistication)
* Iran: Israeli Self-Defense is a Cause for War

Heh:

Paraphrasing a reader's suggestion, foreseeing an Oval Office address near the end of Obama's first term: "The Prime Minister Ahmadinejad who ordered the nuclear strike on Tel Aviv yesterday... is not the same man I met in Tehran at our summit back in 2009."

The problem being, of course, that this isn't really a joke. The left's emphasis on self-styled sophistication - their "only we're smart enough to understand what Arab leaders really mean when they say they want to wipe out Israel" conceit - has caused them to get the Middle East wrong again and again. Despite Iran's obvious and increasing intransigence during the 1990s, foreign policy experts were sure that reformists were just about to sweep to victory. And then when that didn't happen they insisted that newly categorized "conservative pragmatists" were going to take the day. Wrong and wrong. Despite Iran's obvious role in linking Hezbollah and Mugniyah, these same experts insisted for decades that Mugniyah was anything but a Hezbollah operative. Laughingly wrong. Despite a broad consensus across the Iranian regime that the Islamic Republic should nuclearize, the foreign policy left focuses on subtle intrigues that may or may not exist. Not really important. Despite Iran's obvious progress toward the bomb, they came up with the suggestion that we didn't have to worry because Iran could never get enough of their Pakistani-bought centrifuges to work. Problem solved. And then of course there's the whole "Sunnis and Shiites don't work together" smugness with which the left greets any suggestion that Iran is backing terrorism against Israel. Right.

Obama's foreign policy advisers are part of a community - and they embody a certain way of thinking - that has gotten every major question about Iran wrong. They have consistently given the Islamic Republic the benefit of the doubt based on counterintuitive hunches grounded in inscrutable assumptions. And they'll do it right up until Iran successfully tests a nuclear weapon. And then - after having spent a decade preventing the US from addressing Iranian proliferation - they'll complain that none of this would have ever happened if only they had been in charge.

References:
* It Turns Out the Critics Knew Wright Better Than Obama Did [Campaign Spot]
* Smug Liberal Sophistication Untroubled By Undeniable Evidence That Hardliners Are Winning In Iran [MR]
* Obligatory Post About Iran's "Hezbollah Radiation Will Destroy Israel" Threat (Plus: Mugniyah Assassination Dramatically Demonstrates Absurdity Of Liberal Foreign Policy Sophistication) [MR]
* Mathematical Proof That Negotiating With Iran Is Stupid. Not Wrong. Stupid. [MR]
Iran Misses Memo About How Sunnis And Shiites Don't Cooperate, Gives Syria Cutting Edge Offensive Missiles (Plus: Expert Sophistication Wrong On Iranian Nuclearization. Again) [MR]
* Hezbollah Outreach To "Sunnis Who Are Loyal To Hezbollah" Not So Kind To Expert Expertise Of Foreign Policy Experts Who Deny Sunni-Shiite Cooperation [MR]
* State Department And Pentagon Plotting Insubordination, Pretty Much Lying To Prevent Action Against Iran [MR]

Previously:
* Obama's Sophistication Is Actually Kind Of Unsophisticated, Incoherent
* New Poll Shows Peace-Loving Palestinians Somewhat Less Than Peaceful
* State Dept: That Syrian Nuclear Reactor We Tried To Protect Was No Big Deal Anyway

It's not a ban on actual jihad being waged by actual jihadists. Because if they were doing that, that would actually be something. This is just a ban on labeling it the way that everyone else on the planet - from the victims to the terrorists - labels it. Because the best way to solve a problem is to go out of your way to obfuscate it:

Condoleeza Rice has approved a new lexicon for State Department usage, absolutely forbidding the use of the terms "jihad" and "jihadist" by any State Department official. The argument... [is] that by using the word jihad, we're validating the jihadist claim to be waging jihad. Of course, it's ridiculous to think that the U.S. State Department carries any validating authority within the Islamic world to determine what is Islam and what isn't... Also, the claim is that by using the word "jihad," we are insulting the peaceful Muslims who are waging the daily jihad of the struggle against sin, the struggle against the dirty dishes, etc. And that's great, if that's what any Muslim actually believes is the sum and substance of jihad, but it is an understanding of jihad that is at odds with the Qur'an, the Sunnah, and all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence.

But at least it's not unsophisticated! Although it's still not as stupid as that Orwellian "anti-Islamic activity" stunt that the Brits pulled a few months ago. And as long we're banning words - any chance we can get the State Department to ban the word "espionage" because it reeks of anti-Semitic double-loyalty insinuations.

You're thinking no?

References:
* New State Department lexicon forbids use of the words "jihad" or "jihadist" [Spencer]
* We're Going To Miss Westminster Abbey - Britain More Or Less Gives Up [MR]
* ANALYSIS: New espionage affair may be old story, but will greatly damage Israel [Ha'aretz]

Previously:
* State Department Deliberately Circumvents Anti-Terrorism Laws, Funds Hamas
* State Department: How About We Screw Terrorism Victims, Protect Palestinian Terrorists In US Courts? (Plus: One Jerusalem Launches Campaign)
* Mere Rhetoric: State Department Tries To Cleanse Obviously Illegal "No Jews Allowed" Application But Is Too Fucking Stupid To Turn Off Track Changes

What a tool:

Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama on Wednesday disagreed with former President Jimmy Carter's overtures toward Hamas, saying he would not talk to the Islamist group until it recognized Israel and renounced terrorism... Obama said the greatest threat to Israel comes from Iran and said the United States should talk to Iran directly. "My approach to Iran will be based upon aggressive diplomacy," he said. "What it means is that we come to the table with a very clear set of objectives and a very clear set of demands -- that Iran ceases from pursuing nuclear weapons, that it stops funding Hezbollah and Hamas, that it ends its noxious statements about Israel and the threats directed towards Israel," he said.

Rewarding Hamas by having an ex-President meet with them - and ask them to accept Israel - is totally out of bounds. But meeting with Iran - and asking them to ask Hamas to accept Israel - is the height of foreign policy sophistication. All this seems to be the case even though there's at least a very, very tiny chance that Hamas can be talked into pretending to agree to a temporary ceasefire. There is, on the other hand, quite literally zero chance that Iran will give up its nuclear ambitions.

The Obama platform: we're only willing to talk with the genocidal lunatics who are too insane to even consider pretending to recognize Israel. Because that's the Hopeful approach.

References:
* Obama criticizes Carter's Hamas meeting [YNet]\
* Hamas leaders, Carter to discuss siege, Schalit [JPost]
* Mathematical Proof That Negotiating With Iran Is Stupid. Not Wrong. Stupid. [MR]

Previously:
* Mel Levine's Defense Of Obama: He'll Make Obsessed Anti-Israel Lunatics Love The US. Presumably By Magic.
* Top Obama Adviser Explains Iraq War: Turns Out, It's The Jews' Fault. Again. (Plus: Ha'aretz Political Correspondent’s Pro-Obama Apologism Getting Increasingly Desperate)
* Hamas leaders, Carter to discuss siege, Schalit [JPost]

Guess they don't hate each other that much after all:

At least 20 Hizbullah fighters have been killed during military training in Iran, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Watan reported Thursday evening, quoting the Director General of the Islamic Union in Lebanon, Muhammad Ali Husseini. The Lebanese official did not say exactly how the fighters were killed, but he made clear that "Hizbullah regards those killed while training in Iran as holy ones who died fulfilling their duties, and this concerns not only Shi'ites, but also Sunnis who are loyal to Hizbullah." "The training in Iran lies at the heart of our connections with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard", said Husseini... since November 2006, 4,500 Hizbullah fighters have been sent to Iran for training, with each round of training lasting three months. Every month, 300 Hizbullah fighters fly from Beirut to Teheran, with many of them coming from the villages south of the Litani River, said the report.

When the West is finally forced to confront Iran in ten or fifteen years - either in response to a cataclysmic wakeup call or as a last whimpering sigh of resignation - you can be quite sure that there will still be people saying that Iran has no confirmed connections to terrorism. These will be the same geniuses who spent years sneeringly deriding the "neoconservatives" and "Likudniks" who were lying about Mugniyah's connections to Hezbollah. Because Hezbollah assured them that there were in no way tied to Mugniyah. Right before they declared him a "pillar" of their endless genocidal war against Israel

References:
* Obligatory Post About Iran's "Hezbollah Radiation Will Destroy Israel" Threat (Plus: Mugniyah Assassination Dramatically Demonstrates Absurdity Of Liberal Foreign Policy Sophistication) [MR]

Previously:
* Iran Misses Memo About How Sunnis And Shiites Don't Cooperate, Gives Syria Cutting Edge Offensive Missiles (Plus: Expert Sophistication Wrong On Iranian Nuclearization. Again)
* The Denial of the Obvious By Reference to the Irrelevant: Center-Left Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics
* Palestinian Terrorist Poisoning Plot Not So Kind To Expert Expertise Of Anti-US, Anti-Israel Foreign Policy Experts Who Deny Sunni-Shiite Cooperation, Advocate Embrace Of Fatah

Where to begin with this tool? How about that he's being sent to the Middle East to determine whether Israel is responsible for Palestinian violence - and that his record when it comes to determining how much blame Jews should get for Muslim violence isn't exactly stellar:

A new U.N. Human Rights Council official assigned to monitor Israel is calling for an official commission to study the role neoconservatives may have played in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. On March 26, Richard Falk, Milbank professor of international law emeritus at Princeton University, was named by unanimous vote to a newly created position to report on human rights in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. While Mr. Falk's specialty is human rights and international law, since the attacks in 2001, he has devoted some of his time to challenging what he calls the "9-11 official version." ... Mr. Falk said, "It is possibly true that especially the neoconservatives thought there was a situation in the country and in the world where something had to happen to wake up the American people. Whether they are innocent about the contention that they made that something happen or not, I don't think we can answer definitively at this point. All we can say is there is a lot of grounds for suspicion"

But don't let the nudge-wink muttering about a neo-conservative cabal (read: "Jews and the Christians they've corrupted") distract you from what's really awesome about this particular foreign policy superstar. He's been at the forefront of the academic activist left for decades: from his not-exactly-regretful expert "diagnoses" of the Vietnam War to his insistence that an "objective observer" would treat President Bush like the "surviving German leaders [who] were indicted, prosecuted and punished at the Nuremberg trials". And of course, wherever you find foreign policy sophistication you're certain to find oh-so-nuanced apologism for the genocidal Iranian mullahs. This little gem comes from the pre-embassy sacking months of early 1979 - when foreign policy academics went out of their way to explain how Carter and Brzezinski's decision to lose Iran to Islamism was nothing less than geopolitical brilliance:

It’s not Falk’s first trip down Lunatic Lane, either. Falk was part of Ramsey Clark’s expedition to meet with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in early 1979 to celebrate the end of the Shah’s rule. Falk wrote in February of that year in the New York Times that Khomeini was a moderate, with progressive policies, happy to allow political dissent: The news media have defamed him in many ways, associating him with efforts to turn the clock back 1,300 years, with virulent anti-Semitism, and with a new political disorder, "theocratic fascism", about to be set loose on the world. He has also indicated that the non-religious left will be free to express its views in an Islamic republic and to participate in political life, provided only that it does not "commit treason against the country" by establishing foreign connections — a lightly-veiled reference to anxiety about Soviet interference. To suppose that Ayatollah Khomeini is dissembling seems almost beyond belief.

Falk and his foreign policy colleagues spent the next 30 years sliding from one argument to another - but always with the same advocacy. In the 1980s it was that the US should suck up to Iran because the Islamists themselves were moderate - but then they turned out to be batshit crazy. So in the 1990s it was that the US should suck up to Iran because it would bolster seemingly unpopular-but-actually-popular reformists led by Khatami - except Iran elected Ahmadinejad. So post-9/11 it was that the US should suck up to Iran because obscure internal Iranian political maneuvering was about to bring pragmatic conservatives into power at the expense of Ahmadinejad and his allies - except that turned out to be a border-line idiotic predication.

If foreign policy specialists were merely stupid you'd at least expect them to come up with the right answer some of the time. And if not, then at least some of their wrong answers should - out of sheer probability if nothing - come up as something other than "the US should suck up to intransigent anti-Western enemies." Strangely, that never happens.

References:
* Sophisticated UN Diplomat: Yup, Jews Are Pretty Much Nazis [MR]
* U.N. Official Calls for Study Of Neocons' Role in 9/11 [NY Sun]
* Resisting the global domination project [HinduOnNet]
* Who’d have guessed? New UN-HRC investigator a Truther [Hot Air]
* "Unprecedented" Power Grab By Iranian Ultra-Hardliners Casts Doubt On "Pragmatists Are Winning" Liberal Sophistication [MR]

Previously:
* Leftist Sophistication Watch: Shiites And Sunnis Do Work Together, Iran Admits Funneling Money To Hamas
* Obama's Sophistication Is Actually Kind Of Unsophisticated, Incoherent
* State Department Sophistication Very Close To Triggering All-Out African WarA

What better way to respond to Iran's 6,000 new centrifuges - ostensibly a five-fold increase their enrichment capacity - than by begging them to mediate a disgraceful US withdrawal from one of the front lines in the global war against political Islam?

Shifting the focus of the presidential race to the Iraq war, John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton bickered during Senate hearings about bringing troops home, while Barack Obama repeated his position that a dialogue must be held with Iran if the US seeks to improve the situation in Iraq. According to Obama, while he wants US troops out of Iraq, he would not initiate a precipitous withdrawal. And he said talking regularly to the Iranians is critical to getting to the point where it would be safe to end American involvement. "I do not believe we are going to be able to stabilize the situation without them," Obama said.

And on that note - here's a story about how the real struggle in American Judaism is between the most anti-Israel candidate evuh and the woman who smooched Suha Arafat after that conspiracy monger smeared Israeli Jews with an age-old blood libel. of course it is:

For Nancy Feinberg, 82, the election is also "all about change," but she is casting her lot with Barack Obama. "I like what he says about everything," said Feinberg as she welcomed volunteers at an Obama campaign office in suburban Philadelphia. Despite their disparate ages and divergent choice of candidates, these two Jewish women have much in common: Both are registered Democrats, both reside in Philadelphia suburbs that make up Montgomery County, and both are passionate about and are working hard to help their candidates win in the critical Pennsylvania primary on April 22.

Also, both are idiots. Not as wall-to-wall retarded as Ohio Jews. But still not very good at picking sides.

References:
* Good News: Iran Adds Another 6,000 Centrifuges To Natanz [MR]
* 'We can speed up enrichment 5-fold' [JPost]
* Obama again calls for talks with Iran [JPost]
* Suburban Jews could swing vote in Pennsylvania [JPost]
* Terrorist Apologist James Zogby: It's Totally Awesome How Democratic Jews Boost Arab-American Political Platforms [MR]
* Ohio Jewish Democrats: "Hey, How About We Make The Most Anti-Israel Candidate Evuh The Next US President?" [MR]
* Confirmed: Republicans More Supportive Of Israel Than Democrats By "Significant Margin" [MR]

Previously:
* Isn't It About Time For Democratic Jews To Stop Electorally Empowering The Ahmadinejad-Supporting Left?
* More Democrats Repeat Anti-Semitic Canards, Embrace Particularly Anti-Semitic Sounding Parts Of Walt And Mearsheimer
* Memo To Democratic Jews: "US Engagement In The Peace Process" Is Bad For Israel, Barack Obama Edition

Underneath his otherwise empty campaign, at least Obama has managed to sell an image of honesty. And we didn't really mind when he was a touch hypocritical in his post-racial but somehow still racialized message of healing - because good for him for being able to walk that rhetorical line. But his campaign has gotten particularly annoying in their resort to insultingly bad arguments. These are the arguments that - no matter what side of the political spectrum you embrace - are just bad. Like when he was accused of stacking his campaign's shadow State Department with seething anti-Israel hacks and he responded by saying that (a) he hadn't done that and (b) he had pro-Israel people to balance out any anti-Semiticish advisers. And then his first answer and his second answer both turned out to be false.

He didn't write his speech. His campaign isn't modest. And now it seems like he's not even trying to stay in the ballpark of reality:

Not so much lies as a sort of slippery sleight-of-mouth. I'm starting to really dislike Obama. "Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation... came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land." Segregation was not "the law of the land" in the 1950s. It was the law in a minority of states. "For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger … occasionally … finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews." If, as Obama seems to be claiming, those are the sentiments only of Wright's generation, how come those whooping and clapping their approval in those sermon clips include lots of young people?

Brzezinski gets them in trouble on Israel? He's not an adviser - except he is.

Goolsbee gets them in trouble on NAFTA? He wasn't speaking for the campaign - except he was.

A pastor who preached to him for 20 years, baptized his children, married him to his wife, and provided the inspiration for his career making book is an anti-Semitic American-hating conspiracy monger? Just some crazy uncle who's really angry at Jews. For some reason that can't be discussed - because that would be divisive.

Bad arguments.

Not that this is stopping our Obama-adoring academic friends from hailing yesterday as the single greatest political speech of their lifetimes. These are people who were adults during the Challenger speech. So obviously all the snark about Obama's cult of personality is misplaced.

Not that Obama has a monopoly on staggeringly bad arguments. One might say that they're becoming endemic to Democratic Party advocacy. The delegate fight should be a welcome correction to that trend. Whatever the opposite of "correction" is.

References:
* Obama Defenders: What Brzezinski Guy? (Plus: That's Not Even Their Worst Argument) [MR]
* Obama's "Pro-Israel Advisers" Don't Actually Exist. As Such. [MR]
* The Politics of Hope Spin [NRO The Corner]
* Obama and "Making History" [NRO The Corner]
* Obama's Lies [NRO The Corner]
* Obama’s NAFTA Dance: Goolsbee “misquoted” [Hot Air]
* Chickenhawk v2.0: Gloria Steinem, Wes Clark shrug at McCain’s military service [Hot Air]

Previously:
* Obama Now Actively Channeling Rabid Anti-Israel Academics, Adopting Their Dumbest Anti-Israel Euphemisms
* Lebanon - Another Country Where Obama Can Make Things Much Worse
* Obama Really Getting The Hang Of Anti-Israel Diplomatic Code Words

When Mughniyeh was killed in Damascus on the same day that Brzezinski was there talking about how the US and Syria have a shared interest in regional stability - well, some very good Syria experts thought that Obama would have to tone down his Anti-US Global Apology Tour "dialogue" promises. The odds for a recalculation are not particularly promising, since it appears that Obama doesn't have the first clue about the Syria-Lebanon situation:

Someone got Barak Obama to comment on Lebanon. While he spoke against Syrian and Iranian meddling, and urged the disarming of Hizbullah, he also gave us this gem: "Washington musts rectify the wrong policy of President George Bush in Lebanon and resort to an efficient and permanent diplomacy, rather than empty slogans," he added. He also said that the US must cooperate with its European and Arab allies to sponsor an inter-Lebanese consensus on a stable and democratic Lebanon. Readers of this blog will find this painfully hilarious, and possibly indicative of Obama's ignorance of the situation in Lebanon. I don't expect the presidential hopeful to read Lebanese news every day, but really, the situation has gotten so repetitive that it should be clear that the above statement is at best moronic. What kind of diplomacy that has not been tried before by the "Europeans and Arab allies" will help Lebanon? I am not going to defend the Bush administration's policy in Lebanon. It may reek of "empty slogans" at times, but how does talking to criminals create solutions? And pray explain how supporting the Hariri tribunal, as Obama said he does, can be reconciled with chatting up the ones who killed him?

That's from an actual foreign policy expert who actually reads and writes things about Lebanon and Syria. And yet his reasoning doesn't appear to have penetrated the left's ostensibly fact-obsessed reality-based community (weird, that). And both sides declaring themselves ready for all out civil war, engagement and diplomacy are working out great in Lebanon. More non-military hope and change will definitely solve the problem.

References:
* Responses to "Imad Mughniyah is dead" [David Schenker]
* Obama, Lebanon and the myth of change [From Beirut To The Beltway]
* March 14 puts war on the table [From Beirut To The Beltway]
* Meanwhile, Lebanon Is Kind Of Going To Hell - Good Job, State Department! [MR]

Previously:
* Hezbollah: Yeah, We're Definitely Going To Start Another War
* Lebanon On Brink Of Civil War (Plus: State Department Prepares To Import Same Strategy To West Bank)
* State Department Strategy Of Shielding Hezbollah During Lebanon II Working Out Great As Presidential Elections Postponed Again

Just wow:

We're beginning to suspect that this isn't just playacting for his rabid anti-war bas. No wonder the military is nervous:

Still, the mostly conservative retired officers, industry executives and current defense officials interviewed by The Washington Times cite Mr. Obama's lack of experience in national security. They also point to his determination to pull American combat units from Iraq at a time when a troop surge has reduced violence, damaged al Qaeda and allowed the Iraqi government to progress toward Sunni-Shia-Kurd reconciliation. "We're very concerned about his apparent lack of understanding on the threat of radical Islam to the United States,"... Mr. Obama also has stirred concern in national security circles by pledging to talk to the leaders of rogue nations, such as Iran and North Korea, without preconditions.

But at least he's got hope!

References:
* IN 52 SECS WHY BARACK OBAMA CANNOT WIN A GENERAL ELECTION [jcjcd / YouTube]
* Military fears 'unknown quantity' [Washington Times]

Previously:
* Obama Now Actively Channeling Rabid Anti-Israel Academics, Adopting Their Dumbest Anti-Israel Euphemisms
* Obama's Foreign Policy Advisers Not Exactly Fans Of The Jewish State (Plus: Brzezinski Snubs Israel After Tete-A-Tete With Assad)
* Obama Really Getting The Hang Of Anti-Israel Diplomatic Code Words

Looks like the Senator's been studying very diligently at the knees of his anti-Israel advisers. Last week he sneeringly smeared his pro-Israel opponents as Likudniks, the nudge-wink euphemism of choice for rabid anti-Israel academics like Juan Cole and Walt and Mearsheimer. This week he's shifting from academic euphemisms to diplomatic ones. YNet interviewed him and didn't bother asking anything about Brzezinski, Malley, Susan Rice, Samantha Power or the rest of his anti-Israel foreign policy team. But they did give him a dozen opportunities to repeat empty slogans about supporting Israel - or, more specifically, Israel's aspirations for peace - and knock down idiotic myths that he's a Muslim. So it was really informative and productive. Still, this quote will be handy in 12-18 months:

I know how much Israelis crave peace. I know that Prime Minister Olmert was elected with a mandate to pursue it. I pledge to make every effort to help Israel achieve that peace, although I will not try to dictate its terms. The principles that will guide me are 1) that Israel's security must be guaranteed; 2) that the status quo is unsustainable over time, and the best long-term guarantee of Israel's security is a negotiated two-state solution with the Palestinians, if it can be achieved; and 3) that Israel has to remain a Jewish state and the Palestinian state must be viable. But success is not guaranteed. Israel must have confidence that the Palestinian leadership is both committed to peace and is able to follow through on its commitments. So the approach we have to take with respect to negotiations is that you sit down and talk, but you have to suspend trust until you can see that the Palestinian side can follow through.

The slight-of-hand is the word "viable", which was formally introduced into the peace process only recently. It functions as a not very subtle placeholder for massive Israeli concessions:

But between the lines, the thing that was debated on this session of the "Middle East Institute" annual conference is the familiar phrase "viable Palestinian state". Look how often it is used now: Saeb Erakat of the PA used it yesterday in a Financial Times Commentary. Haaretz's Amira Hass used it the day before. The argument repeats itself in numerous news items and opinion pieces: Can it be "viable" in the small territory of Judea and Samaria? How should it be connected to Gaza? And what if the settlement blocks stay - especially those of Ariel and Ma'aleh Adumim - does this render viability impossible?

The State Department, especially, loves the phrase.

References:
* We're Considering the Possibility that Walt and Mearsheimer Might Not Be Faking Their Ignorance [MR] [MR]
* Obama lays out plan for confronting Iran [YNet]
* Obama Now Actively Channeling Rabid Anti-Israel Academics, Adopting Their Dumbest Anti-Israel Euphemisms [MR]
* Obama's Foreign Policy Advisers Not Exactly Fans Of The Jewish State (Plus: Brzezinski Snubs Israel After Tete-A-Tete With Assad) [MR]
* Israel's interests take primacy - an interview with Dore Gold [bitterlemons]
* The true meaning of a viable Palestinian state [Ha'aretz]

Previously:
* Syria Responds To US Peacemaking Team By Sentencing Political Dissident [MR]
* Obama Complains About Smears From Jewish Groups... And He's Not Totally Wrong (Plus: He's Still Kind Of Wrong) [MR]
* "Unprecedented" Power Grab By Iranian Ultra-Hardliners Casts Doubt On "Pragmatists Are Winning" Liberal Sophistication [MR]

This one's probably not a "we will nuke Israel" threat of the kind usually made by Iranian moderates and elected officials. It's the age-old "Jews are cancer" metaphor that's driving this threat to commit genocide - the part where he may or may not imply slipping a nuke to Iran's terrorist proxy is just a happy coincidence:

"The cancerous growth Israel will soon disappear," Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps commander Muhammad Ali Jafari wrote to Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the FARS news agency reported Monday. In a letter of condolences following last week's assassination of Hizbullah terror chief Imad Mughniyeh, Jafari said: "I am convinced that with every passing day Hizbullah's might is increasing and in the near future, we will witness the disappearance of this cancerous growth Israel by means of the Hizbullah fighters' radiation [therapy]." In the letter, in which Jafari consoled Nasrallah over the death of the "martyr," he continued: "There's no doubt that the death of this loyal fighter will strengthen the resolve of all revolutionary Muslims and fighters in the struggle against the Zionist regime, particularly the resolve of those who fought by this martyr's side."

Nice to see that Hezbollah and Iran are finally acknowledging some responsibility for Mugniyah. For decades they've had foreign policy elites and journals gullibly repeating their nonsense about how they've got no connections to a man responsible for the murder of thousands:

Kind of makes you doubt the geniuses who published the NIE and terminally undermined global efforts against Iran's nuclear program. Because, you see, these people apparently have no idea what they're doing:

If Israel did it - the widespread assumption - it would join the mysterious bombing of a Syrian facility last September in contributing substantially to improving Israel's security standing in Washington. Israel's image was greatly tarnished in the failed Second Lebanon War, and the effort to rebuild its deterrence includes gaining American as well as Arab attention. If America did it, it would come as a great surprise to most experts in Washington. They refused Wednesday to assume America had a hand in the matter, damning evidence of the low regard in which the CIA is held.

Not that the US intelligence community is looking particularly good right now anyway, what with the whole totally politicized and mostly wrong NIE:

Iran has reportedly begun to deploy a new generation of machinery to produce nuclear fuel, a development bound to intensify a debate in Washington about whether a recent National Intelligence Estimate accurately portrayed Tehran’s progress toward the ability to build a nuclear weapon. The testing of the new machinery, centrifuges known as IR-2s, was disclosed by European diplomats and American officials and was reported over the past two days in Europe... Experts said Iran’s design for the IR-2 centrifuge showed considerable technical creativity... the IR-2 was “more ingenious” than its predecessor, an unreliable machine called the P-1, with the "P" reflecting its Pakistani origins. The official insisted on anonymity because of the political delicacy of the issue.

Money line from another story about the expanding "wow, we sure fucked that up" gallery of NIE recriminations: "If I had 'til now to think about it, I probably would change a few things... I would have included that there are the component parts, that the portion of it, maybe the least significant, had halted." That's the Director of National Intelligence talking. Super.

References:
* The U.S. and Mughniyah / Not just 'who' but also 'where' [Ha'aretz]
* Iran Is Reported to Test New Centrifuges to Make Atomic Fuel [NYT]
* U.S. Spy Chief Retreats on Iran Estimate [NY Sun]

Previously:
* Obligatory Post About The NIE Report - Anti-War Partisans Switch From Sophisticatedly Undermining War Effort To Being The Bestest And Most Objective Analysts Ever. Except Not.
* Obligatory Followup To Obligatory Post About The NIE Report - The NIE Unbelievably Punted On The Single Most Important Iranian Nuke Question (Plus: Israel Looking To React Now That Bush Is Handcuffed And Iranian Hardliners Are Crowing About Victory)
* WaPo: NIE Conclusions Were Engineered By Easily Identifiable, Hysterically Anti-Bush State Department Washouts

Turns out that Sunnis and Shiites don't really hate each other as much as foreign policy experts told us they do:

Syria has successfully developed a new surface-to-surface missile that would enable it to target Israeli installations such as airports, ports and factories with greater accuracy, according to briefings recently presented to senior ministers... Syria developed the new missile with Iranian support, which is a further indication of the tight strategic bonds between the two countries. Much of these strategic ties revolve around military and intelligence cooperation... Damascus and Tehran shared technical know-how that has allowed Syria to upgrade the Iranian-made Zelzal surface-to-surface missile. The missile has an operational range of approximately 250 kilometers and is capable of carrying an especially large warhead.

Not that this will stop the very same sophisticates from inventing another totally unpersuasive excuse to ignore Iran and Syria next time around. It never does. This is, after all, who they are and what they do.

Or: remember Jeffery Lewis's snide comments about anti-Iranian hysteria - because he was personally (personally!) unconvinced that Iran could keep their Pakistani-bought centrifuges running? Technically correct, so two points for that. But several thousand points off for being retarded, since Iran solved their problems by building next generation centrifuges that they maintain just fine.

Also: this.

References:
* Iran helps Syria develop missile that can target Israeli installations [Ha'aretz]
* Sunni vs. Shi'ites: Why They Hate Each Other [TIME]
* Smug Liberal Sophistication Untroubled By Undeniable Evidence That Hardliners Are Winning In Iran [MR]
* The Denial of the Obvious By Reference to the Irrelevant: Center-Left Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics [MR]
* Think tank: Iran has built its own nuclear black market [Hot Air]
* Iran 'takes next step in nuclear programme' [Telegraph]
* "Unprecedented" Power Grab By Iranian Ultra-Hardliners Casts Doubt On "Pragmatists Are Winning" Liberal Sophistication [MR]

Previously:
* French Intifada Continues With 77 Police Officers Injured. Liberal Sophisticates Blame France, Exonerate Youths Of Inscrutable Ethnic Origin [Videos]
* Hey, Turns Out That Ahmadinejad Might Be Someone The West Has To Worry About After All
* Russia And China Agree To Help Stop Iran (Except They Don't (And Except They've Been Rewarding Iran With More Trade))

Remember how yesterday Iranian reform was around the corner because Khamenei was publicly slapping Ahmadinejad around? Yeah, no:

When voters go to the polls on March 14 to select members of Parliament, they may be able to choose only between conservative candidates and other conservative candidates, leaders of Iran’s main reform party said Wednesday. With more than 7,200 candidates registered to run for 290 seats in Parliament, officials with the party, the Islamic Participation Front, said it appeared that 70 percent of reformist candidates had been disqualified. The decisions are not final and will not be completed until early March, but the early indications are that the religiously conservative forces in control of every branch of government will try to block a comeback by the reformists close to Mohammad Khatami, the former president. “Such a large number of disqualifications is unprecedented,” said a statement by the reformist party posted on the Emruz Web site.

The truth of this debate is that there is kind of a political battle in Iran. But it's a battle between clerics who want to destroy America by bringing about the end of the world and clerics who want to destroy America by seeing if proxy terrorism and demographic suffocation can do the job (although both sides are most definitely agreed that Israel needs to get nuked ASAP). Sometimes Ahmadinejad and his apocalyptic friends win and sometimes - like yesterday - the so-called conservative pragmatists win.

So the condescending Democratic sophisticates who insist that Iran should be engaged because moderates are winning - they're either idiots or dwell in a sunny and magical fantasy world. But even the foreign policy intellectuals - who have moved the goalposts from their 1990s faith in moderates to their 2000s gamble on conservative pragmatists - are wrong:

Hey, you know how Democratic leaders and liberal foreign policy experts have been insisting that Ahmadinejad is a tool that we don't have to worry about? Turns out that's not true:

It's a big week for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. For the first time in his life, the Iranian president joined millions of other Muslims in Saudi Arabia for the annual Hajj pilgrimage. Images of a serious and unusually well-groomed Iranian president consulting the Koran in Iran before boarding his plane to Saudi Arabia have appeared in the world media... Ahmadinejad is the leader of the Shiite Islamic Republic, a country that has jolted the entire Middle East and frightened its Sunni neighbors in recent years with its push for Shiite political and religious superiority. That push is being accompanied by patient work on a nuclear program and ingenious deception and time-delay tactics to keep Western critics at bay. Saudi Arabia, the leader of the Sunni bloc, is one of Iran's frightened neighbors. And yet, it was Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah who made the surprising friendly gesture, inviting Ahmadinejad to Mecca for the Hajj.

Oh, and it also turns out that - despite expert opinion to the contrary - Sunni and Shiite Muslims can overcome their sectarian animosity enough to see themselves toward uniting. Who knew?

References:
* Gulf states are scared [YNet]
* Bill Richardson: Ahmadinejad Is Nothing To Worry About, We Should Engage Iran [MR]

Previously:
* Religion Of Peace Hosts Peaceful Pilgrimage Where Peaceful Sunnis And Shiites Unite To Chant About War And Genocide
* Smug Condescending Sophisticates Admit They've Been Lying Through Their Teeth About Israeli Security I - UN Admits Hezbollah Is Rearming
* Josh Marshall, Liberal Sophisticate: Conservatives Should "Grow Up" About Ahmadinejad's Desecration Of Ground Zero

The Center for American Progress wants you to know that this is France's fault, because these "youths" feel "alienated." The thing about that idea is that it's totally retarded:

Could be worse. To be honest, we kind of expected him to blame Israel. Maybe they're waiting for things to get a little bit worse before the "root causes" equal "Israel" scapegoating starts. Hot Air says things are getting slightly better, although Bryan points out that that's not saying much:

See Pamela's extensive coverage here and especially here for updates. They're using shotguns.

References:
* Shepard Smith grills CAP analyst on French riots [pundital / YouTube]
* Burning Paris, night 3 [Hot Air]
* ChicaGo Le Havre -> Affronte la BAC [Daily Motion]
* War in France [Atlas Shrugs]
* "I do hope that France will survive" [Atlas Shrugs]

Previously:
* France Identifies the Real Threat To the Lebanon Ceasefire: Israel.
* Turns Out France Really Does Hate Israel
* No New Sanctions On Iran. Sophistication On Display.

You know, we really thought that this new round of sanctions would work. Guess not:

Iran has produced its own nuclear fuel pellets of enriched uranium for the first time to power its under construction heavy water research reactor, Vice President Gholam Reza Aghazadeh said Saturday according to the state news agency. Iran has long been working on its uranium enrichment capability to fuel its developing nuclear power program, including a 40-megawatt heavy water nuclear reactor under construction in Arak in the center of the country. The announcement indicates they have finally completed the nuclear fuel cycle.

All that sophisticated liberal analysis of how Iran can't possibly have the infrastructure to go nuclear - not so sophisticated, it turns out? Which isn't stopping Obama from relying on the same community of advisers for his Iran policy:

At the top of his foreign policy agenda is Iran. Tehran is still Washington’s No. 1 state nemesis, but the new President Obama has a different approach: Unlike his predecessors who eschewed talking to Iran’s leaders, Mr. Obama will engage in aggressive personal diplomacy and offer economic incentives and a possible promise not to seek regime change if Iran starts cooperating with United States foreign policy goals. In short, Mr. Obama will talk to Iran without pre-conditions. As he told The New York Times in an interview last month,"“I think it is important for us to send a signal that we are not hellbent on regime change, just for the sake of regime change, but expect changes in behavior." He added that he would be "willing to talk about certain assurances in the context of them showing some good faith."... Most foreign policy analysts agree with Mr. Obama - on the surface.

Of course they do.

References:
* Iran: New Sanctions Will Be Met By "Tidal Wave Of Resistance" [MR]
* Iran: We have nuke fuel pellets [AP]
* No Conditions for Talking to Obama, but Many Questions [NYT]

Previously:
* Russia Gives Iran Cutting-Edge Anti-Ship Missiles To Give To Hezbollah
* Photographs To Help Explain Why There Are No Homosexuals In Iran [Content Warning: Graphic Photos] (Updated: Video Added)
* Iran: Israeli Self-Defense is a Cause for War

Sometimes we really have to wonder: are liberals un-seriously smirking about what they can get away with or are they just that stupid:

Remember, HuffPo’s lament yesterday was that righty bloggers were supposedly practicing a double standard between Nancy Pelosi’s wearing of the hijab and Laura Bush’s - a claim that blew up in their face when it turned out this site and LGF had both criticized Laura Bush before HuffPo’s post was even written. Now, to save face, here comes Think Progress acknowledging that we (well, LGF at least) criticized her - and that we were wrong to do so, because her deigning to wear the Islamic equivalent of a chastity belt is a glorious celebration of someone else’s culture... there are no conservative bloggers remotely as servile towards their political leadership as Media Matters and Think Progress are to theirs. You won’t hear any Republican candidates boasting about having started LGF; you won’t find any Bush cronies with their fingerprints on Hot Air.

Old theory: these are just not serious people. New theory: could be that they're just that stupid:

A hair lock snipped from Ernesto "Che" Guevara before his burial in 1967 sold for $100,000 at auction Thursday to a Houston-area bookstore owner who called the Marxist "one of the greatest revolutionaries of the 20th century." Bill Butler, 61, won the 3-inch tress clipped from Guevara’s mane after placing the only bid, which matched the reserve price. Butler, who bid over the phone, said he was a collector of 1960s items and that the hair lock would fit in well. "A lot of his writings are still worth reading today," said Butler, whose comments were relayed by a Heritage employee who spoke to him on the phone immediately after the auction.

What an idiot.

References:
* Lefty spin yesterday: Righties won’t condemn Laura Bush; Lefty spin today: Righties will condemn Laura Bush [Hot Air]
* Lock of Che Guevara's hair sells for $100,000 [MSNBC]

Previously:
* The Ugly Left - Failed Singer Reunites With Harvard Brat, Threatens To Kill President Bush. Ms. Coulter Responds [Video]
* Matthew Yglesias: Anti-Semitic Genocidal Maniacs Are Hip, Terrorists Are Fashionable (UPDATED AND BUMPED: Yglesias Article From Today Predictably Anti-Semitish)
* Israeli Flag Is Offensive, Bush=Hitler Poster Not So Much

This'll be all over the JBlogosphere in a couple hours, and we don't have anything particularly interesting to contribute. It's the kind of thing that we would make up as a punchline to a really over the top post about the State Department - something like "what's next - getting advice on how to pressure Israel from Jimmy Carter?" Except it's for real:

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has sought the advice of former US presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton ahead of a planned Middle East peace parley scheduled to take place in Annapolis, Maryland, in November or December. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Saturday that Rice met with Carter this week. The two reportedly discussed the peace talks Carter brokered between Israel and Egypt in the late 1970s. The White House called the meeting with Carter positive and "to the point."... The State Department also reported that Rice has recently conferred with former UN Middle East envoy Dennis Ross, as well as her predecessors James Baker, Henry Kissinger, and Madeline Albright. Rice has stated that she intends to devote the rest of the 14 months remaining in her term to establishing an independent Palestinian state while ensuring Israel's security.

Condi Rice got advice from Jimmy Carter and James Baker about how to make peace in the Middle East. That's just totally fucking fantastic.

References:
* Rice confers with Carter and Clinton [JPost]

Previously:
* Jimmy Carter - Not Necessarily Pro-Nazi, But Not Categorically Anti-Nazi Either
* Carter "Nauseated" By Jewish Settlements
* In Just Seven Short Paragraphs, Jimmy Carter Tells 2 Lies, Makes 2 Incoherent Arguments, Takes an Anti-Israel Stance that the State Department Mocks, and Just Generally Annoys the Hell Out of Us

Oh well this is just perfect:

Saeed Jalili... is a known follower of Khomeini's "simple living" lifestyle philosophy. During his stint as a Foreign Ministry official, he served at a number of departments where, apparently, he did not make use of amenities made available to employees... Jalili is known to have worked until the early hours of the morning in his office in his efforts to strengthen the co-operation of Iran with Southern hemisphere countries. This was part of the "south-south" strategy, according to which it was believed that Ahmadinejad's government would be able to look for and find alliances with countries such as Venezuela.

It is also reported that that Ahmadinejad has consulted Jalili on a number of key moves... for most of his career at the Foreign Ministry, Jalili worked closely with Mojtaba Hashemi Samare, a leading messianic and a close ally of Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, the most well-known and high-ranking messianic cleric in Iran... Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi is a former member of the Hojattieh, a messianic splinter group which was disbanded by Ayatollah Khomeini in the early 1980s because of its extremist views. The sect's goals are to sow chaos - the goal of which is to incite a massive war, presumably necessary to speed up the return of the Shi'ite messiah, known as the Mahdi.

After the forced disintegration of the sect, Mesbah Yazdi moved to the holy city of Qom, where he ran the Imam Khomeini Foundation and the Haghaniye school. From there, he passed on his messianic beliefs to young clerics and revolutionaries whom he hoped one day would reach senior government levels. One of his early successes was Hashemi Samare, who in the early 1990s managed to find a position inside Iran's Foreign Ministry... His main job there was to make sure that Iranian ambassadors were staying true to revolutionary beliefs... in his office, instead of a picture of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, he hung a portrait of the messianic Mesbah Yazdi.... Samare has looked for, and recruited fellow messianics. No one else would be allowed to work with him... one of these associates included... Ahmadinejad...

Jalili's closeness with Hashemi Samare, and his appointment as the head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) and as the head of Iran's nuclear negotiation team shows that the messianics have scored another major victory in placing one of their allies in a senior political position.

This guy is a true believer. He and his associates draw their lifestyle, their theology, and their politics from an organization that was disbanded by Khomeini for being too crazy. He really wants to bring about the destruction of the world.

The international community's response is leaning toward more negotiations and the threat - always the threat - of more sanctions that Iran has repeatedly blown off. But at least engagement will undermine the hardliners and bolster moderates. That's what foreign policy experts have been predicting for years, and look how well it's paid off. Just a couple more tries and everything will be OK.

References:
* Another major victory for messianics [JPost]
* Smug Liberal Sophistication Untroubled By Undeniable Evidence That Hardliners Are Winning In Iran [MR]

Previously:
* UN Sec-Gen Is Either Lying Or Very, Very Stupid
* Iran Declines To Contradict Every Single We Know About Iran, Will Instead Continue Building Nukes
* Iran Elected To UN Human Rights Council, Appointed To Plan Anti-Racism Conference. Hey, Why Not?

You know how liberal sophisticates have been condescendingly insisting that Iran should be engaged because its moderates are winning. This is the insufferable "conservatives are too stupid to understand the complicated internal dynamics of Iran" line of argument. Opps:

Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, viewed by the West as a moderating influence in Tehran, resigned before crucial talks with Europe this week over Iran’s nuclear program, signaling that officials here may have closed the door to any possible negotiated settlement in its standoff with the West... with Mr. Larijani’s resignation, it appears that the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in all matters of state, has fallen in squarely behind the president. Mr. Ahmadinejad represents the most radical face of the leadership, which has defied the United Nations Security Council twice and sped up the process of uranium enrichment... it appears that the top leadership has settled on a single, radical track. “This is definitely a major political change, and not necessarily a positive one,” said Saeed Leylaz, a political analyst and former government official. “It might mean that Iran is speeding up its activities and is becoming more radical, especially now with higher oil prices.”

Since 2005, Iran has taken a two-pronged approach to its nuclear conflict with the West, allowing Mr. Larijani to negotiate with Europe and the International Atomic Energy Agency, while Mr. Ahmadinejad said that there was no room to negotiate and that Iran would not back down. While the most immediate impact of the announcement bears directly on nuclear negotiations, which are supposed to resume Tuesday between Iran and the European Union, it also speaks to a broader consolidation of power for Mr. Ahmadinejad and his allies in domestic affairs... American officials have occasionally seemed perplexed about who is guiding policy in Iran; just last month, a senior American official said it appeared that Mr. Larijani’s influence was on the rise. IRNA reported that the president appointed Saeed Jalili, the deputy foreign minister for European and American affairs, to replace Mr. Larijani. Mr. Jalili is an ally of the president and is considered by political analysts here to be a more hard-line figure than his predecessor.

When the weakest of weak sanctions were imposed on Iran at the beginning of the year, the foreign policy left leapt to scream about the virtues of a diplomatic solution. Sample:

* CFR Jan 2007: "Khameini and other elements within Iran's ruling class appear intent on reining in Ahmadinejad."

* STRATFOR Jan 2007: "The Iranians are moving toward a conciliatory approach on all fronts, which has been made possible in part by what appears to be a re