The 5+1 Treaty with Iran was a major victory - a step forward - for cooling down tensions in the Middle East and achieving world peace. It was a break by Obama with past American belligerence and unilateralism toward Europe and others, a hope for less American carnage and destruction in the Middle East. The agreement might also enable the US to work with Iran in fighting IS and in other matters of common interest, though Iran has allied with Russia in Syria. Still the US and Russia have common interests against IS - but ones that will not be achieved by bombing. Iran's ground forces, along with the courageous Kurds - currently being attacked by the Turkish government - are the only ones in a position to go after IS...
***
This agreement would thus enable the US not to tie itself destructively, perhaps fatally to Saudi Arabia and Israel, the two most reactionary regimes in the region, belligerent aggressors, and the monstrous treatment of Palestinians by Israel. It might encourage the US to move away from the Saudi aggression in Yemen which blew up 100 people at a wedding party last week (the US itself took out 19 people, including 3 children and 12 Doctors without Borders workers. in Northern Afghanistan two days ago...), and to begin to balance forces in the region diplomatically, to avoid further war. It thus might also begin to limit US craziness with drones - murdering people, often children and bystanders in addition to "suspects" in countries the US is not at war with (along with making himself an accomplice to torturers, the worst - or most criminal - thing that Obama - as President of the Empire - has done). The Treaty is thus a great achievement in foreign policy weakening the intense threat of larger war in the Middle East and nuclear war likely to be spawned by the one nuclear power in the region, Israel...
***
But the forces of American militarism as well as Israel seek to undermine the agreement. In tight relationship with what is worst in the US, Israel tests new weapons in Gaza and provides them as well as "training" American police forces. The cause of Black Lives Matter, the Palestinians, the Iranian dissidents/most Iranians (a US bombing, avoided by this agreement, would have strengthened the regime politically as a belligerent and reactionary force) is linked. Further, democracy in America for all ordinary people is strengthened by international negotiation/cooperation and moving away from further war.
***
The agreement is, in fact, harsh on Iran; nonetheless, it opens real possibilities of peaceful development. Therefore the fight by AIPAC and Netanyahu, backed by those who want unending war in the Middle East - i.e. Republicans in the Senate and Republican Presidential candidates, baying, baying, baying (Scott Walker, Huckabee and Graham compete for who can say the stupidest thing, sock-puppets of Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino magnate/bankroller of Romney and Netanyahu, and more deeply, the war complex). The US government officially spends nearly a trillion dollars a year on war (Chris Hedges recently estimated $1.7 in real terms) which could go to medical care, reconstituting the impoverished South, canceling student debt and the like; it needs "enemies" and constant wars, and is a large instrument inside the United States of the strengthening of inequality...
***
But as Peter Beinart strikingly indicates below, Israel has already exacted a huge price in America for the agreement. AIPAC spent $40 million fighting the agreement, and Obama had to promise potentially belligerent Democrats to maintain restrictions on Iran in exchange for their vote. He thus diminished the possibility of consolidating a move away from war in American politics, of pursuing joint purposes with Iran more explicitly (one may hope that he will do so, nonetheless). In addition, Obama's increased military "aid" to Israel, $4.5 billion per year, an increase from the already unparalleled $3 billion (and Clinton's promise of even more) is even more dangerous. It undermines the seriousness or straightforwardness of the deal to Iranians and others. Iran did not have to ally with Russia in Syria; the stupidity of the war complex instigated this.
***
As Rob Prince underlines in the second article, Obama at least rightly opposes selling Israel bunker-buster nuclear weapons which the Bennett-Cardin bill (two Democratic Senatorial monsters - it is not just the Republican crew...) originally contained. And he can resist it. But as yet another price exerted by the war lobby, Obama still crazily provides the Israeli government - upping the "aid", that is, sales by American weapons manufacturers subsidized with tax money taken from the American people - with nearly everything else. Bennett and Cardin are determined to douse any possibility of peace in the Middle East - and with Rand Paul having moved to the Right on Israel, Obama's new opening is under deep threat in the 2016 election.
***
"Dear Peter,
Another terrific and sad article - the Jeremiah quote is beautiful and the points about Cold War (and hot wars) beautifully drawn. It is grim that Obama had to lie about Iran; they are a nasty regime, but have not, lately invaded and occupied, for instance, Baja California and Canada whereas the United States has occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, its two neighbors. However use of maps is not big in mainstream American politics/commentary. And the Shia are but 7-10% of Muslims - again, never mentioned in the media - and thus, hardly likely to dominate the Sunnis in the Middle East. I agree with your profound point that AIPAC/Netanyahu have undermined the possibility of a thaw between the US and Iran and seek a renewed Cold War in the interest of Israeli aggression/Occupation. But despite "selling" more American weapons to Israel with taxpayer money (the "aid" upped from 30 billion to 45 billion over the next 10 years...), I hope Obama's intent is still to develop things with Iran, at least with regard to continuing to fight IS. And that this and other commonalities may lead, through openings for investment from others and US competition, to erosion of further sanctions and other openings over time. Even Hillary was better than Rand Paul on this - hard work for Rand Paul to achieve... - but as you point out, if she is elected, she would work to kill this possibility; Bernie Sanders would be a lot better and possibly Biden - Bernie is a hope...But turning us from war will take a big movement from below...
All the best,
Alan"
***
From Peter Beinart
IF AIPAC LOST THE IRANIAN NUCLEAR
FIGHT, IT WON TOO
In the fight over the Iran
nuclear deal, AIPAC has supposedly lost big. The organization will see “its
power and reputation in Washington diminished,” declared The New York Times. In
a column titled “The Iran Deal and the End of the Israel Lobby,” Jonathan Chait
pronounced AIPAC’s lobbying efforts “almost completely ineffectual.” An article
in The Nation suggests that in fighting the Iran agreement, AIPAC “may have
destroyed itself.”
I disagree. For those of us who
want America to spend less time fueling conflict in the Middle East, and more
time resolving it, the harsh truth is this: If AIPAC lost, so did we.
The reason is that although AIPAC
didn’t kill the nuclear deal, it has helped kill, at least for now, the
prospect of a fundamentally different relationship between the United States
and Iran. When the agreement was signed
in July, top Obama administration officials suggested that it might not only
curb Tehran’s nuclear program, but might also end America’s decades-long cold
war with the Islamic Republic. “I know that a Middle East that is on fire is
going to be more manageable with this [nuclear] deal, and opens more potential
for us to be able to try to deal with those fires,” said U.S. Secretary of
State John Kerry. U.S. President Barack Obama himself talked about a
“foundation for continued progress.”
You don’t hear that anymore. In
opposing the deal, AIPAC and its allies insisted that lifting sanctions would
empower Iran to foment evil in the Middle East. The administration could
have pushed back [!!]. After all, while Iran certainly supports bad actors
in the region (Hezbollah and Hamas chief among them), so do U.S. allies like
Saudi Arabia. In Syria, Iran’s ally President Bashar Assad is no worse than the
Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, or Jabhat al-Nusra (Nusra
Front), the Salafi groups that get support from the Sunni Gulf (and in
al-Nusra’s case, from Israel). In Yemen, Iran is aiding the Houthis and their
ally, former dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh (a former client of the United
States). But it’s Riyadh, not Tehran, that’s been accused of war crimes by
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch for its “indiscriminate” bombing
of civilian areas. In Iraq, Iran is America’s most militarily potent ally
against ISIS [actually, in action, it's the Kurds whom the US has sold out to
Erdogan, the would be Turkish dictator...].
Contrary to the narrative being
peddled by AIPAC, the wars in Iraq, Yemen and Syria aren’t morality tales about
Iranian aggression and “destabilization.” Iraq, Yemen and Syria are weak
states, which have become battlegrounds in a battle for regional power that
pits Iran against Saudi Arabia and its Sunni allies. The Sunni powers can’t win
these wars on the battlefield, and we shouldn’t want them to. The best hope for
ending the destruction is through a diplomatic process that includes Iran, the
Gulf States and outside powers like the United States and Russia. And that’s
more likely if Washington has a less hostile relationship with Tehran.
But neither the Saudis nor the
Israelis want that. They’d rather see the civil wars in Iraq, Syria and Yemen
rage on than legitimize Iran's influence there. And they fear a better
relationship between America and Iran because it reduces their leverage. After
all, the more working relationships America has in the Middle East, the less
reliant it is on its traditional allies.
That’s where AIPAC comes in. It
may have lost the fight against the nuclear deal. But along with Saudi Arabia,
it has won the fight to preserve the cold war between America and Iran. To win
over Democrats being pressured by AIPAC to oppose the deal, the White House
promised that even as it was lifting nuclear sanctions on Tehran, it would
consider imposing new ones for Iran’s ties to terrorism and abuses of human
rights (This despite the fact that Iran’s most prominent dissidents
overwhelmingly oppose sanctions). The United States has reportedly provided Riyadh
with some of the cluster bombs it is using in its brutal campaign against the
Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen. According to the Rand Corporation’s Alireza
Nader, America remains officially opposed to any Iranian role in the
negotiations to end Syria’s civil war. And Hillary Clinton is promising that
she’ll be even more hostile to Tehran than Obama. “This is not the start of
some larger diplomatic opening,” she promised last week. Instead, America will
“confront” Iran and its allies “across the board.”
To be fair, there are also
powerful forces in Tehran that want to keep the U.S.-Iranian relationship icy.
Iran’s conservatives, who have long used the supposed American threat to
legitimize their brutal rule, know a warming relationship with Washington could
erode their power. But that’s precisely why Iran’s democratic dissidents want
the nuclear deal to lead to something more. And it’s part of the reason
Americans should too.
Although hawks sometimes
romanticize America’s half-century long conflict with the USSR, cold wars are
ugly things. They turn entire countries into battlegrounds (Vietnam, Angola and
Nicaragua in the 1970s and 1980s. Syria, Iraq and Yemen today). And they make
it easier for dictatorships (and even democracies) to stifle dissent at home.
Yes, AIPAC failed to stop the
Iran nuclear deal. But in its broader mission of preserving the U.S.-Iranian
cold war, AIPAC, with its strange bedfellows in the Persian Gulf, are still
winning. And as long as they do, the United States is unlikely to help end the
terrible wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen or to help the long-suffering Iranian
people achieve freedom. In the words of Jeremiah, “Summer is gone. But we have
not been saved.”
***
Rob Prince's blog:
The Iran Policy Oversight Act of
2015 – A Prescription for Fueling an Intensified Middle East Arms Race.
OCTOBER 1, 2015
The Iran
Deal: What the Obama Administration giveth, Congress (tries to) taketh away?
In the aftermath of Congress’s
failure to sabotage the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – the agreement
negotiated between six countries, the EU and Iran to limit the Iranian nuclear
energy program in return for lifting sanctions – the Obama Administration,
along with its partners in the agreement have pushed ahead to implement it. But
is this a case of “What the Obama Administration giveth, the Congress taketh
away? At the behest of neo-conservatives, AIPAC, Christians United For Israel,
some in Congress, however, including some original Democratic supporters of
JCPOA, are actively working to undermine the very same agreement.
Referred to as “AIPAC’s Plan B” by
some, there are several threads to political sabotage effort.
• After endorsing the result of the
P5+1 negotiations with Iran, Colorado’s Democratic Senator, Michael Bennet
threw in his little caveat: along with Maryland’s U.S. Senator Ben Cardin of
Maryland (who came out square against the Iran agreement) he, is sponsoring
legislation that The Cardin-Bennet proposal adds weight to this two-track
policy which might be entitled “Talking Peace While Still Planning For War”
Still peddling the myth of the Iranian threat Cardin and Bennet called the “Iran Policy
Oversight Act of 2015,” which Cardin insists is “consistent with
the administration’s interpretation of the agreement,” to the contrary, it is
meant to throw a major monkey wrench into implementing the Iran deal. In Iran’s
eyes it amounts to negotiating for peace with Teheran while simultaneously
strengthening Israel’s ability to unilaterally attack Iran. The bill exudes
hostility towards both Iran and the Iranian leadership. As it is written, it
comes through more as a something threatening war rather than an attempt
towards the normalization of relations. As such, it will more than likely draw
strong objections from the White House as well as its P5+1 partners and Iran.
• Within the same “Iran Policy
Oversight Act, another line of attack against the Iran deal was announced, and
quickly supported by two icons of U.S Middle East militarism and
interventionism, both longtime supporters of Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin
Netanyahu’s policies. Dennis Ross and David Petraeus published
a joint oped in the Washington Post calling on the Obama Administration to add
Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs) to an already promised $1.9 billion
high-tech arms sale to Israel which entails, even without the MOP sales, the
Israeli purchase of some 32100
high tech bombs and missiles, not a bad little haul. Ross is a
former high level State Department official with close ties to Israel.
Petraeus, former C.I.A. director, head of the U.S. Central Command and one of
Washington’s key military leaders involved in the Iraq War. Joining these two
known neo-cons is Robert Satloff,
currently executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy,
an AIPAC spin-off whose policy positions have a long history of a narrow
pro-Likud-Israeli bent. All three, Ross, Petraeus, Satloff opposed
the Iran deal and did everything in their power to defeat it.
2. 30,000 pound bunker
buster bombs – The new peace messenger?
An early draft of
the Iran Policy Oversight Act of 2015 raised hackles both
in Teheran and Washington. It called for offering Israel the MOP as well as the
means for delivering it; later drafts do not insist on this, nor do they
discourage such weapons’ transfers. Even if the demand was recently dropped in
subsequent drafts, watch how, like the proverbial bad penny, AIPAC and Co.
will renew the call for giving Israel the MOPs, and along with it the B-52s or
B-2 bombers necessary to launch the missile. The entire bill should be opposed
and voted down, with or without the MOP system inclusion.
Massive Ordnance Penetrators –
superbombs, reminiscent of the worst days of the Cold War. In times past, it
was a race to see who could build the biggest nuclear weapon, the U.S. or the
Soviets, with each one outdoing the other triggering yet another round of
nuclear weapons insanity. Fast forward to 2015, now it is a race to see who can
build the most explosive “bunker buster” bomb, which country can build one that
can penetrate deeper in the ground with more explosive power to take out
underground military and nuclear facilities like those in Iran. The earlier
generation of 5000 pound bunker busters didn’t have enough firepower to
destroy Iran’s underground military production system, so that one 6,7 times in
size and with much greater penetration and explosive power was engineered and
tested by the U.S. military. It is, by any standard, a weapon of mass
destruction and should be banned, outlawed for use, not sold or offered for
free to the Israelis. These bombs are so powerful, that while technically
conventional they reach the firepower of tactical nuclear weapons (which were
also conceived, among other things, as possible bunker busters).
The earlier generation of 5000
pound bunker busters didn’t have enough firepower to destroy Iran’s
underground military production system, so that one 6,7 times in size and with
much greater penetration and explosive power was engineered and tested by the
U.S. military. The MOP, by any standard, a weapon of mass destruction and
should be banned, outlawed for use, not sold or offered for free to the
Israelis
At 30,000 pounds, the MOP – or as
it is formally known – the GBU-57 (GBU=guided bomb unit) – is the largest
non-nuclear weapon in the U.S. missile arsenal. The 30,000 pound massive
ordnance penetrator, or MOP for short, is a bunker buster missile developed
jointly by Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin in 2002. It burrows some 200
feet under the ground before detonating.The research got renewed energy though,
when during the U.S. led 2003 invasion of Iraq it was discovered that an
analysis of sites targeted with the then-existing bunker buster bombs “revealed
poor penetration and inadequate destruction.” After U.S.
Special Forces scoured Afghan caves looking for Osama Bin Laden, the program
was intensified. An initial successful test explosion of
one such bomb took place as early as March, 2007 at the White Sands Missile
Range in New Mexico where the first atomic bomb was tested, but the final
product did not come off the production line until September, 2011 when the Air
Force took delivery of 20 bombs. Shortly thereafter, in February 2012, Congress
approved $81.6 million to further develop and improve the weapon
The research development of the MOP
proceeded at the Air Force Research Laboratory, Munitions Directorate, Eglin
Air Force Base, Florida with design and testing work performed by Boeing. With
unprecedented explosive power, the MOP’s very size presents “delivery”
problems. The bomb itself is so heavy that only the biggest bombers in the
American fleet could even be considered – B-52s and B-2 bombers and they had to
be retrofitted and strengthened to carry such a heavy workload.
3. The Tweedle Dee and
Tweedle Dum of U.S. Middle East Wars: Petraeus and Ross?
The question of whether or not
Israel should get the MOP bunker buster bombs was already on the table two
years ago, in 2013, when the Obama Administration and Israel’s Netanyahu
government were negotiating a major U.S. arms sale to Israel. Ross and
Petraeus’ proposal is to “sweeten the deal” to include the MOP. That earlier
weapons’ sale package, discussed below, included some of the most sophisticated
weaponry in the American arsenal: aircraft for mid-air refueling and missiles
that could cripple an adversary’s air defense system (and thus make the country
more vulnerable to bombing).
As is often the case, the Israelis
upped the ante and asked for more, specifically recently 2011 tested MOP bunker
busters, the new giant bomb designed to penetrate earth and reinforced concrete
to destroy deeply buried sites. But, alas the Obama Administration refused the
Israeli request.
In May (2015), in part to soothe
their stated concerns over the Iran nuclear deal, the Obama Administration
authorized a $1.9 billion sale of highly sophisticated weaponry to Israel, much
of it with “bunker buster” potential that can penetrate and destroy underground
military sites such as Iran’s underground nuclear facilities. According to an
article in the International
Business Times, it included 3000 Hellfire
missiles for Israeli Air Force Apache helicopters, as well as
hundreds of laser guided bombs and missiles and two kinds of bunker buster bomb
packages: 50 BLU-113 Super
Penetrator and 700 BLU-109 Penetrator bunker buster
missiles. (BLU= Bomb Live Unit).
The business newsletter, The Motley Fool, provides
a more extensive list of what the $1.9 billion deal consists of. While some
attention has focused on the possible sale of MOPs, very little discussion has
centered on the rest. Being sold are:
14,500
KMU-556C/B Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) tail kits, built by Boeing(NYSE:BA)and
used to convert ordinary Mk-82, -83, and -84 “dumb” bombs into “smart bombs”
guided by GPS
4,500 actual
1,000-lb Mk-83 bombs
3,500 500-lb
Mk-82s
(But apparently
no 2,000-lb Mk-84s — which Israel is able to produce domestically)
4,100 GBU-39
Small Diameter, precision GPS-guided glide-bombs (also from Boeing)
50 BLU-113
5,000-lb “bunker buster” bombs from General Dynamics (NYSE:GD),
each capable of penetrating through 20 feet of reinforced concrete
1,500 Paveway
laser-guidance kits from Raytheon (NYSE:RTN),
which can be attached to the Mk-83 bomb
700 similar
Paveway kits for attachment to BLU-109 bunker busters (but no actual BLU-109s)
3,000
AGM-114K/R Hellfire Missiles from Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT)
250 AIM-120C
Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles from Raytheon
500 of Boeing’s
DSU-38A/B Detector Laser Illuminated Target kits for guiding JDAM-modified
smart bombs to their targets
The BLU-109 first came into service
in 1985; it is still in use today and is a part of the military arsenals of
Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Israel,
the Netherlands, Norway, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom and United Arab Emirates.
The BLU-113 Super Penetrator, at
4400 pounds, was, until the development of the its 30,000 cousin, the largest
bunker buster weapon in the U.S. arsenal. Produced by the National Forge
Company, the weapon carries some 675 pounds of tritonal explosives.
Tritonal mixes the traditional explosive TNT with aluminum powder to produce a
greater explosive mix than TNT.
Like the stronger bunker busters,
Hellfire missiles shot from helicopters are meant to penetrate hardened targets
– such as tanks and underground bunkers. An earlier transfer of Hellfires was
suspended in the summer of 2014 over concerns that Israel was using them
against civilian targets during its attacks on Gaza.
In authorizing this sale, the U.S.
Defense Department made a curious – and not particularly credible – statement:
“The United States is committed to
the security of Israel, and it is vital to US national interests to assist
Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defence
capability…Israel, which already has these munitions in its inventory, will
have no difficulty absorbing the additional munitions into its armed forces.
The proposed sale of these munitions will not alter the basic military balance
in the region.”
4. Signaling Iran that
despite the nuclear agreement, the US and Israel are still preparing for war
against Iran?
The Petraeus-Ross proposal, as is
the Iran Policy Oversight Act it supports, is reckless in the extreme and would
go far in fueling an already hot Middle East arms race that much further.
As an April, 2014 NY
Times article pointed out:
“The weapon, called a Massive Ordnance Penetrator, weighs
about 30,000 pounds — so much that Israel does not have any aircraft capable of
carrying it. To do so, Israel would need a B-2 bomber, the stealth aircraft
that the United States flew nonstop recently from Missouri to the Korean
Peninsula to underscore to North Korea that it could reach its nuclear sites.”
Having spent a good deal of time and money to upgrade the MOP, military sources
told the Wall Street Journal that
several bombs, dropped one on top of each other had the explosive power
necessary to destroy fortified Iranian nuclear facilities
At the time, the 2014 NY
Times article continued “The Obama administration [was] reluctant to
even discuss selling such capability to the Israelis.” Nor are they anxious to
make such a concession to Israel today. As Ross and Petraeus know well, to make
the GBU-57 operational, the United States would also have to throw either B-52
or B-2 heavy bombers into the mix, a move which
Ross, reaching a step beyond the limits of sanity, supports.
First of all transferring B-52s or
B-2 bombers is in violation of the 2010 START Treaty which prohibits it. It is
fantasy to think that the Iranians or Russians would stand idly by. As Kingston
Reif noted in an on-line article at War on the Rocks notes,
even some Israeli military figures are less than enthusiastic about receiving
MOP weaponry:
“Transfer of the MOP to Israel
would also be highly provocative. For example, retired IAF Maj. Gen. Eitan
Ben-Eliahu, a former commander of the IAF, has said that introduction of the
B-52s would trigger a whole different level of conventional arms race in the
region and prompt Russia to sell “10 times more” of the advanced S-300 air
defense system to Iran. Moreover, What signal would Washington be sending to
Iran if one of its first moves after agreeing to the JCPOA were to greatly
strengthen the ability of Israel to unilaterally attack Iran? Such a move would
not be particularly conducive to getting implementation of the deal off on the
right foot.”
For example, retired IAF Maj. Gen.
Eitan Ben-Eliahu, a former commander of the IAF, has said that introduction of
the B-52s would trigger a whole different level of conventional arms race in
the region and prompt Russia to sell “10 times more” of the advanced S-300 air
defense system to Iran. Moreover, What signal would Washington be sending to
Iran if one of its first moves after agreeing to the JCPOA were to greatly
strengthen the ability of Israel to unilaterally attack Iran?
But all this was too much for even
the Obama Administration which has lobbied against including MOP weapons in the
Bennet-Cardin bill. Lately Cardin has backed off a bit stating that “it is
premature to speak of specific weapons systems that may be part of an enhanced
regional security strategy.” “An enhanced regional security strategy”…a
typically strange way of calling what is essentially an enhanced regional arms
race by another name.
Furthermore, while tempting to
upgrade its arsenal with such a weapon, Israel is lukewarm to the proposal as
the technical challenges for supporting it are many. It has only one air base,
Nevatim, that could handle such a missile program and its runways would have to
be upgraded to support the larger bombers. As a U.S. News and
World Report article added,“Israeli experts also
warn that the tiny country would have to invest a fortune in related
infrastructure — simulators, training, facilities, mechanical systems and
experts — to handle such weapons.” On the other hand, should such a deal be
finalized it would permanently draw in the United States military in such a
manner that the U.S. military presence in Israel, already considerable, would
be permanent.
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