US and Israel fold on Iran deadline

The gist of this artice: All the President's Leaks   by veteran Iran policy hand Gary Sick, is that President Obama has backed down from the January first deadline for Iran sanctions, instead proposing something else, "Targeted Sanctions" and has gotten Israel to accept it somehow. He cites articles in the New York Times and the Washington Post:

 

So, Mr. President, here you are on Jan. 1. The "deadline" is upon you. Your allies and your opponents in Congress are ready to hit you with a dilemma -- either impose crippling sanctions or look like an appeaser. ...

 

First, give an exclusive interview to the Washington Post just before the New Year's "deadline" that makes two major points: (1) The administration's policy of engagement has succeeded in creating turmoil and fractures within Iran's leadership, i.e. the policy has been a success, not a failure; and (2) the administration is planning for highly targeted sanctions that will hit the Revolutionary Guards rather than the average Iranian citizen. That sends a clear signal to the congress that its infatuation with petroleum sanctions is not replicated in the White House, for all the reasons listed above, and to the über hawks that there will be no rush to war with Iran in the new year. At the same time, launch a major rhetorical campaign by the president in support of the civil and political rights of the Iranian opposition....

 

Of course, having fed the Washington Post, the New York Times is jealous and needs its own exclusive. Provide that over the New Year holiday by letting as many as six top administration officials meet privately and anonymously with two NYT reporters to let them in on some more secrets: (1) In another cunning success, the administration has outed the covert Iran bomb production facility at Qom thereby rendering it useless; (2) hint that the administration may be responsible for sabotaging Iran's centrifuges, which accounts for the fact (completely unacknowledged until now, despite being reported for the past two years by the IAEA) that Iran is not actually using about half of its installed centrifuges; (3) reiterate that the coming sanctions are to be aimed at the Revolutionary Guards, not the average Iranian citizen, and are likely to succeed because the regime is so weakened internally; and (4) declare unequivocally that the Iranian "breakout capability," i.e. its ability to shift from nuclear energy to actually building a bomb, is now years away.

 

This also works. The two NYT reporters, though apparently a bit confused about this U-turn in threat assessment from only three months ago, dutifully report what they have been told. The administration is credited with several successes, and the reporters seem convinced that the White House is showing toughness and skill in derailing the Iranian nuclear rush to the bomb. In the meantime, the reporters scarcely note that the administration is not declaring the negotiations dead after all and is pursuing the Turkish option of a uranium swap. No mention of a deadline.

 

Finally, the NYT reports that the Israelis have been persuaded that the targeted sanctions now being discussed are worth trying "at least for a few months." That was attributed to a senior Israeli official on the basis of back channel talks, but it had actually been announced by Prime Minister Netanyahu to the Knesset a week earlier in a speech that received almost no attention in the U.S. No more talk of deadlines, crippling sanctions or air strikes.

 

So all the tough talk about Iran, according to this article, ended not with a bang, but with a whimper. Nobody really noticed! Gary Sick is convinced that the new policy will lead to negotiations and a happy end. There is no basis for that in any pronouncement of the Iranian government, which reiterated monotously over the entire process of negotiations with Europeans and Americans that it will not give up its nuclear development program and also made it clear that it believes that the US is powerless to stop it.

 

I think Gary Sick is wrong about prospects for negotiations, but of course he is an authority, so who am I to say?   Then again, Gary Sick was formerly convinced that the Islamic Republic of Iran has a democratic government. And I think he is also wrong about the prospects for near term regime change in Iran.

 

It is probable that Gary Sick's optimism about negotiations is shared by the administration. The rationale for this optimism is basically that the alternative is unthinkable. The United States will not go to war with Iran to save its interests in the Middle East, because the political support is lacking for such a war after the Iraq fiasco. Furthermore, Chinese opposition will kill any meaningful sanctions bid, so that is not going to happen either. That leaves what option?  

 

What is amazing, is that nobody in Israel, neither politicians nor journalists, seems to have taken note of the fact that January 1 came and went and nothing happened on the Iran issue.

 

What is depressing, is that American and Israeli officials strutted about as though they really had a plan for dealing with Iran, and something was going to happen on January 1, but when the deadline came, it turned out that there was no plan and everyone is clueless.

 

The amazing Mr. Ahmadinejad, Muhammad Ali of international statecraft,  has done it again:

 

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the Muhammad Ali of international statecraft. He floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee. He presents an attractive target and tempts a response, but by the time the blow lands, he is not there any more. The blow hits thin air.

This time he may have delivered a knockout punch, and his slow-witted victims don't even realize it!

 

Ami Isseroff