Iran

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Preparing for a Nuclear Iran

That's the message of the US's forthcoming $60bn arms-deal with Saudi Arabia. Or so says David Rothkopf anyway: [T]he reason that the U.S. government -- that would not have done a deal like this in the years right after 9/11 -- is willing and even a little eager to move ahead with the deal now is that the War on Terror is being overtaken among top U.S. concerns by the advent of a nuclear Iran.  Now, you may quibble by pointing out that Iran does not yet have nuclear weapons. But this is a purely academic argument. This deal is the latest example of behavior suggesting that the nuclearization of Iran is all over but for the bomb building in the eyes of U.S. and regional strategists. [...

Thursday

James Forsyth

Officials: Better than 50 percent chance that Israel will strike Iran next year

The Iran issue has dropped down the news agenda in recent months. But that doesn’t mean it has gone away. Even with the difficulties that Iran’s nuclear programme has faced, any decision on whether to try to use force to stop Iran becoming a nuclear-ready power will have to be taken in the next year or so as Jeffrey Goldberg’s brilliantly reported cover piece in the Atlantic reminds us. Goldberg writes, “I have interviewed roughly 40 current and past Israeli decision makers about a military strike, as well as many American and Arab officials. In most of these interviews, I have asked a simple question: what is the percentage chance that Israel will attack the Iranian nuclear program in the near future?

Thursday

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

The debate begins in lively fashion

The initial exchanges of the Queen's Speech Debate have just come to a close – and, I must say, it was all rather jolly.  Harriet Harman came prepared with gag after gag about the Tories' "marriage" to the Liberal Democrats, while David Cameron had a few about Harman's actual marriage to Jack Dromey.  There was much laughter, good-natured jeering and cat-calling.  So – business as usual. Underneath it all, though, there was a substantive clash between the two sides.  In a spritely performance, Harman wisely avoided an "investments vs cuts" style attack, instead charging the coalition with not having a mandate for many of its political reforms.  Whereas Cameron accused Labour of not facing up to its fiscal legacy.

Saturday

Peter Hoskin

The Tories have their eyes on Iran

You may not have expected anything less, but it's still encouraging to see the new government pay so much attention to Afghanistan. After David Cameron's meeting with Hamid Karzai last week, no less than three ministers have visited the country today: William Hague, Liam Fox and Andrew Mitchell. And Whitehall's number-crunchers are busy trying to find extra money for the mission. There's a sense, though, that all the attention actually represents an underlying shift in focus.

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

The G-men or the Granola Army

In the last stretch of political campaigns, things tend to get ugly as the real cost of winning and losing becomes clear. This one is no different, with its suggestions of tactical voting and disagreements about tactical weapons. The latter has become particularly viscious with a former spymaster, an ex-general and a former CT chief calling into question the securty and defence policies Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats. In their defence, the Lib Dems have positioned their biggest weapon, Paddy Ashdown, who fired a volley against Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, saying that "things had changed since he supplied intelligence to Tony Blair about Iraq and WMD". Bull's eye! But who is right - Britain's G-men or the Granola Army?

Thursday

James Forsyth

Does Clegg go for a Love Actually moment?

The foreign policy portion of tonight’s debate offers Nick Clegg several opportunities to bracket Labour and the Tories together. Both of them supported the war in Iraq, both won’t take the military option off the table when it comes to Iran and both believe in the centrality of the alliance with the US to UK foreign policy.   On this final point, it’ll be fascinating to see if Clegg launches a full-on assault on the view that the America alliance is the cornerstone of UK foreign policy.  He sketched out the arguments against thinking about the special relationship in a speech the other day and there’s no doubt he could score some populist points by accusing the other two parties of being overly deferential to Washington.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

The Lib Dems’ Iran Gaffe

It's a gaffe, of course, because it is both true and something you're not supposed to say. Be this as it may, it strikes me that while political professionals and grizzled foreign policy specialists may chunter about the Liberals' naivete and the rest of it, the general public will be less likely to complain that the party opposed to attacking Iran is the dangerous, mad party that can't be trusted. Both views, for sure, have some merit. And so do Brother Korski's questions: What would the Lib Dems do if negotiations fail? Negotiate some more? So what happens if the International Community agrees to military action? What would Nick Clegg do if diplomacy fails and Iran acquires a bomb, which it uses as a shield to protect Hezbollah, as the Shiite movement attacks Israel?

Daniel Korski

Nick Clegg and the 3 am phone call

Compared to many CoffeeHousers, I don’t find the Liberal Democrat’s foreign policy positions as problematic. Nick Clegg is smart, internationalist and has – unlike David Cameron and Gordon Brown (and Tony Blair) – plenty of foreign policy pre-leadership experience. But looking through the Lib Dem manifesto, I came across its pledge on Iran, which is quite problematic for a party that is keen to shed its beardie-wierdie, peacenik image and whose leader may even end up running the Foreign Office. The manifesto says that, on the one hand, the Lib Dems support “action by the international community to stop Iran obtaining nuclear weapons.” But the party also makes clear that they “oppose military action against Iran.

Sunday

Alex Massie

Obama and the Jews

Granted there was something about George W Bush that sent plenty of otherwise reasonably normal people a little nuts too and perhaps the nature of politics and technology today is such that this kind of crazy is inevitable regardless of who wins elections. But what, in the name of god, has Obama done to merit this kind of stuff from Glenn Reynolds? Possibly Obama just hates Israel and hates Jews. That’s plausible — certainly nothing in his actions suggests otherwise, really. OK! I guess that White House seder is proof of how deep the conspiracy runs? Evidently the administration is protesting too much. Only a White House riddled with anti-semites would feel the need to have a seder!

Saturday

Daniel Korski

The neocons were right

When your face has been slammed into a concrete pavement, as you take cover from the mortar fire, you struggle to think the best of your fellow man. I certainly did. I cursed the Iraqis who were firing at me, and swore at the Iranians who were arming them. Most of all, I thought "what the hell are you doing here, you idiot?" I could have stayed in my diplomatic posting in Washington, DC. I could have been satisfied with my work in Bosnia and Afghanistan. But I had to go to Basra. Duty, a hunt for adventure, a worry I was missing out and a feeling that we, I, you and me, owed it to the Iraqis to rebuild their country whatever the rights and wrongs of the original invasion, had led me to go. We brought the regime down, I thought, we had to build the country up.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Tony Blair’s Foolish Sabre-Rattling

Here's Tony Blair, speaking at AIPAC yesterday: We should be clear also. 
Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons capability.
 They must know that we will do whatever it takes to stop them getting it.  The danger is if they suspect for a moment we might allow such a thing. Emphasis added. This doesn't really differ from long-established US policy except that the Americans tend to be a little less vocal when it comes to pledging military action. Then again, they'd be the ones having to take the decision to attack and they, not Blair, would be the ones who'd have to deal with the consequences.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

The Limits of American Power: Israel and Iran Editions

I agree with Melanie Phillips that the principle reason there's no middle-east preace prcess worth the name is the Palestinian's reluctance to recognise and guarantee Israel's security. I believe there are other reasons too, mind you, that help to obstruct any path towards a proper and just settlement. Still, since Melanie doesn't believe there should be a Palestinian state, what does she think should be done? However much some people might wish it, the Palestinians cannot be wished away. They're not going anywhere. Right? And if this is so, then at some point some kind of a deal will have to be reached. Perhaps not for many years, but sometime for sure. Meanwhile, I'm somewhat perplexed by her estimation of American power.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Fox News “Realism”

Roger Ailes redefines realism: I see myself between the Hudson River and the Sierra Madres. I do not see myself at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel or Le Cirque here in New York. Those are people who aspire to different things. They’re the chattering class. They’re the people who think Ahmadinejad wants to have a chat with us and that we haven’t been reaching out to him enough. No, actually, Ahmadinejad wants to cut our heads off and blow us up with nuclear weapons. He’s made that clear. There is something about those people that makes them think, “Oh, he’s just kidding.” No, he’s not kidding. He wants to kill us.  I tend to be a realist about things. Emphasis added.

Thursday

Daniel Korski

Mossad’s suspected actions in Dubai may be a crime, but will they help Israel?

One of Israel's most potent weapons has been the mixture of awe and fear with which its spy services are held. Now that Mossad is suspected of killing Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai, and using fraudulent British passports in the process, newspapers will dredge up stories about the Entebbe Raid, the killing of Black September by Mossad agents and other daring-do acts. The other reaction to the suspected assasination of the arm-smuggling Hamas official will be indignation about the extra-judicial nature of Israel's action. But these made-for-Hollywood stories and the West's moral indignation mask some uncomfortable truths. That Mossad, its domestic equivalent Shin Bet and Israeli commandoes are bureaucratic organisations. Like all public bodies, sometimes they succeed, sometimes they fail.

Thursday

Alex Massie

Only War Can Save Obama

Still, if we want to talk about cynicism I offer you, as Exhibit A, Daniel Pipes who believes, apparently seriously, that Obama can rescue his Presidency by going to war with Iran: He needs a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a light-weight, bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations. Such an opportunity does exist: Obama can give orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran’s nuclear-weapon capacity. [...]Just as 9/11 caused voters to forget George W. Bush’s meandering early months, a strike on Iranian facilities would dispatch Obama’s feckless first year down the memory hole and transform the domestic political scene.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Because of Blair, Britain will now be shaped by the world

It's striking how Tony Blair, the most successful election winner in Labour party history, is now so despised in the country that gave him three landslides. This matters politically, because he has - I fear - poisoned the cause of liberal interventionism. I look at this in my News of the World column today. Blair's Chicago speech of 1999 laid out what I regarded as a bold and coherent foreign policy case. It was time to stop letting genocides happen because they take place within the borders of sovereign states protected by the UN Security Council. I agreed with him when he said that, if the Rwandan genocide happened again, we would have a moral duty to act there. But if it happens again, what are the chances of Britain joining a multi-national coalition? Pretty close to zero.

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Blair wants to tell Iranian tales

Iran. That’s the news story which poor Mr Blair is trying to spin to the panel – but they don’t pick up on his hints. It would have all been all right in Basra – he’d like to say - if it hadn't been for those pesky Iranians. As Prime Minister, if he blamed Iran in public then that would have had implications. He’d have had to follow up on it. But now he wants to tell us, or he would if those chaps on the panel would kindly probe him on it. When he was talking to Baroness Prashar he tried to start: “If what you’d ended up having was an indigenous violence or insurgency, or criminality and looting and so on…” She wasn’t interested “We’ll come to that later…” and handed over to Chilcot.

Monday

Alex Massie

The Fox News Effect

According to James Carville there'd be 67 Democratic Senators if it weren't for those ghastly chaps at Fox News. As with everything Carville says this must be taken with a pinch of salt. Nevetheless one need not look too hard to discover evidence of the impact Fox has had on American journalism* in precincts far from and not naturally disposed to take their orders from Roger Ailes' command-bunker. Why, the very same edition of the New York Times contains an excellent example of how Fox's "framing" of an issue has leached into the mainstream. In the paper's Week in Review section Helene Cooper "examines" the burning issue of whether Barack Obama is a wimp or a warrior... The answer is, of course, that like all Democrats Obama is a wimp.

Monday

Peter Hoskin

What will 2010 mean for Iran?

If you're looking ahead to 2010, it's a safe bet that Iran is going to be an even bigger issue than it was this year.  The violence currently rocking the country is an echo of June's presidential election, and a reminder, too, of the continuing internal pressure that the Iranian regime faces.   The question now is whether that will be joined by external pressure of some form.  After provocation after procovation on Tehran's part, it's hard to envision the West keeping its "hand of friendship" outstretched much longer.  But it's also unlikely that  Barack Obama – his eyes on the domestic polls – will want to talk too tough after committing 30,000 more troops to the unpopular Afghan conflict.