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In response to a worrying trend in U.S. politics, Lobe Log publishes Iran Hawk Watch every Friday. Our posts highlight militaristic commentary and confrontational policy recommendations about Iran from a variety of sources including news articles, think tanks and pundits.

*This week’s must-read is Trevor Thrall’s “Support for Whacking Iran: Who Needs Propaganda?” in the National Interest.

Mainstream Media and Pundits:

Matthew Kroenig in the Christian Science Monitor: The online publication of the Georgetown assistant professor’s  “Time to Attack Iran” in Foreign Affairs was met with several critical responses that demolished Kroenig’s pro-war argument, most notably by Stephen Walt and Paul Pillar. But Kroenig’s claims continue to be referenced, mainly by right-wing news publications, or in the case of the Christian Science Monitor, with an entire article slot given to Kroenig to rehash his original piece into “5 reasons to attack Iran”.

Past and Present U.S. Officials and Politicians:

Tom Ridge in Fox News: George W. Bush’s Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge says that the U.S. should “publicly support” the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) and “regime change in Iran”. Ridge erroneously implies that the MEK, which has killed U.S. and Iranian citizens and is a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, is Iran’s “democratic opposition”. But as many journalists and analysts have pointed out, the group’s leadership has no support among the vast majority of Iranians—pro-regime or not. Ridge is nevertheless one of several former U.S. officials who continue to make misleading claims about the group, which has spent millions through its affiliates on speaking fees for it well-known advocators. In response to the barrage of pieces like this one that were published at the peak of the MEK’s 2011 campaigning, I produced this compilation of articles exposing it for what it is (most of which were written by people opposed to the current Iranian government).

Side note: Last year, Georgetown law professor David Cole wondered out loud whether Ridge and other officials committed a federal crime by endorsing a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

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Frequent IPS News contributor Barbara Slavin writes:

The decision Monday by the European Union to phase out purchases of Iranian oil by Jul. 1 is timed to U.S. legislation that has the same deadline for sanctions against foreign banks that continue to do business with the Iranian central bank. However, European and U.S. experts on Iran cite the fear of a new war as a key reason for the EU decision.

“The French administration is worried about Israel attacking Iran this year,” a French researcher, speaking on condition of anonymity because he advises the French government, told IPS Wednesday.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague, answering questions Tuesday in the House of Commons, said the new sanctions are designed to “to lead us away from any conflict by increasing the pressure for a peaceful settlement of these disputes.”

The EU decision reflects Israeli success in pressuring both the United States and Europe. Israeli officials have repeatedly called for “crippling” sanctions against Iran, suggesting that might forestall their use of military force against Iran’s nuclear facilities – and collateral damage in terms of sharply higher oil prices and increased regional instability.

There is particular concern that Israel might act in 2012 out of concern that Iran is nearing nuclear weapons capability and in the belief that the Barack Obama administration would be obliged to support Israel in a U.S. presidential election year.

Read more.

Republished by arrangement with Think Progress

ormer House Speaker Newt Gingrich was on the offense at last night’s NBC News Debate attacking Mitt Romney’s past at Bain Capital and President Obama’s economic and foreign policy record. But in an attack on Obama’s handling of rising tensions over the Strait of Hormuz, Gingrich dramatically misrepresented the White House’s handling of the postponement of a joint military exercise with Israel.

Gingrich — supposedly a historian in his own right — disregarded the well-reported facts of an event that occurred less than two weeks ago and brought swift condemnations from both the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) and the Washington Post’s “Fact Checker,” Glenn Kessler. Gingrich, responding to a question from debate moderator Brian Williams about a military escalation if Iran attempts to close the Strait, told the audience:

And I would say that the most dangerous thing, which by the way, Barack Obama just did, the — the Iranians are practicing closing the Strait of Hormuz, actively taunting us, so he cancels a military exercise with the Israelis so as not to be provocative?

Watch it:

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J Street, the Washington-based “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace” advocacy group, has produced a video compilation of quotes by Israel-focused security analysts and officials who oppose overt Israeli military action against Iran.

Making Warbirds Instead of Thunderbirds

By William J. Astore

Republished by Tom Dispatch

Perhaps you’ve heard of “Makin’ Thunderbirds,” a hard-bitten rock & roll song by Bob Seger that I listened to 30 years ago while in college.  It’s about auto workers back in 1955 who were “young and proud” to be making Ford Thunderbirds.  But in the early 1980s, Seger sings, “the plants have changed and you’re lucky if you work.”  Seger caught the reality of an American manufacturing infrastructure that was seriously eroding as skilled and good-paying union jobs were cut or sent overseas, rarely to be seen again in these parts.

If the U.S. auto industry has recently shown sparks of new life (though we’re not making T-Birds or Mercuries or Oldsmobiles or Pontiacs or Saturns anymore), there is one form of manufacturing in which America is still dominant.  When it comes to weaponry, to paraphrase Seger, we’re still young and proud and makin’ Predators and Reapers (as in unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones) and Eagles and Fighting Falcons (as in F-15 and F-16 combat jets), and outfitting them with the deadliest of weapons.  In this market niche, we’re still the envy of the world.

Yes, we’re the world’s foremost “merchants of death,” the title of a best-selling exposé of the international arms trade published to acclaim in the U.S. in 1934.  Back then, most Americans saw themselves as war-avoiders rather than as war-profiteers.  The evil war-profiteers were mainly European arms makers like Germany’s Krupp, France’s Schneider, or Britain’s Vickers.

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The former executive editor of the New York Times, Bill Keller, has seriously entered the to bomb or not to bomb Iran debate that was invigorated by Foreign Affairs after its publication of Matthew Kroenig’s hotly contested “Time to Attack Iran“.

Keller, now an op-ed columnist for the newspaper, supported the U.S.’s war on Iraq and expressed regret over his actions years later (whether it was enough is debatable). But his article and accompanying blog post are important additions to a discussion about Iran that has been dominated by pro-war agitators in prominent news publications for too long.

Keller’s pointed sarcasm in the beginning of “Bomb-Bomb-Bomb, Bomb-Bomb-Iran?” echoes arguments (which are not referenced) by analysts like Paul Pillar and Stephen Walt about the absurdity of Kroenig’s pro-war case. He also counters alarmism by pro-war hawks, especially neoconservatives, by acknowledging that the Iranian leadership is “not suicidal”, and defies claims that the administration has been soft on Iran by reminding us that President Obama’s policy has in fact been “consistent” with George W. Bush’s and “promises to be tougher”. Keller excludes discussion about the role of the Israel lobby in pushing punitive measures in Congress and fails to consider how crippling sanctions could result in a cornered and hopeless Iran acting out on its threats, but he ends his article by highlighting a central flaw of all bomb Iran arguments:

That short-term paradox comes wrapped up in a long-term paradox: an attack on Iran is almost certain to unify the Iranian people around the mullahs and provoke the supreme leader to redouble Iran’s nuclear pursuits, only deeper underground this time, and without international inspectors around. Over at the Pentagon, you sometimes hear it put this way: Bombing Iran is the best way to guarantee exactly what we are trying to prevent.

As many readers will know, recent weeks have seen a concerted neoconservative campaign against the Center for American Progress (CAP) and Media Matters on trumped-up charges of “anti-Semitism”. (Specific targets have included our former colleagues Ali Gharib and Eli Clifton, now at CAP, as well as Media Matters’s M.J. Rosenberg and CAP’s Matt Duss and Zaid Jilani.) Former AIPAC spokesman Josh Block laid out the plan for the campaign in an email to a right-wing listserv, in which he urged the neoconservative journalists on the list to “amplify” charges that Block had provided to Politico’s Ben Smith.

While the backlash that followed the email revelations cost Block his position at the Truman National Security Project — unsurprisingly, since the email showed the self-professed liberal working behind the scenes with the right to try to discredit two of the most prominent Democratic organizations — a familiar roster of neocon writers and bloggers have taken up Block’s call to go after CAP. Thankfully, these transparent attempts to police the discourse have been unsuccessful, and have thus far served largely to discredit Block and other supposed liberals aiming to push the Democratic Party in a more hawkish direction. But it’s worth thinking in more depth about the reasons for the attacks, and why they’re happening now.

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In response to a worrying trend in U.S. politics, Lobe Log publishes Iran Hawk Watch every Friday. Our posts highlight and examine militaristic commentary about Iran from a variety of sources including news articles, think tanks and pundits.

*This week’s must-reads are two pieces in the New York Times: Shibley Telhami and Steven Kull’s “Preventing a Nuclear Iran, Peacefully” and Roger Cohen’s “Don’t Do it, Bibi”

Mainstream Media and Pundits:

Mark Helprin in the Wall Street Journal: To date no “Iran Hawk Watch” has been complete without something by the Wall Street Journal in it. This week the Journal’s editorial board shared the stage (see the following entry) with U.S. novelist and Israeli military veteran, Mark Helprin. In “The Mortal Threat From Iran”, the Claremont Institute senior fellow touts alarmist, unsubstantiated arguments like the kind we saw during the lead-up to the Iraq war. According to retired Colonel Larry Wilkerson who served as Chief of Staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Helprin’s claim that if “1,100 metric tons of cocaine were smuggled from South America without interdiction” we can’t dismiss the possibility of “Iranian nuclear charges of 500 pounds or less ending up in Manhattan” recalls an infamous rumor prior to the 2003-invasion of Baghdad that “little Iraqi RPVs” were going to “fly off tramp steamers sailing along the east coast of the U.S., and deliver chemical and biological agents onto unsuspecting crowds in Washington, DC, Virginia, and Maryland”. Col. Wilkerson added that the article is not only “risible” it’s “disgusting.”

But Helprin shamelessly concluded his preachment by bellowing that any President “fit for the office” should “order the armed forces of the United States to attack and destroy the Iranian nuclear weapons complex.” A curious statement considering how he admits in the beginning that Iran does not have nuclear weapons. But who needs facts or tangible targets when you are allowed to end an article in a serious news publication with the following:

When [the Iranians] have complied, and our pilots are in the air on their way home, they will have protected our children in their beds—and our children’s children, many years from now, in theirs. May this country always have clear enough sight and strong enough will to stand for itself in the face of mortal threat, and in time.

Amen?

Wall Street Journal: The Journal unfortunately made Hawk Watch twice in one week. This unsigned editorial, like last week’s, is carefully worded along with unsubstantiated claims used to justify terrorism such as this one (emphasis is mine):

As a supervisor in the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz Mustafa Ahmadi Roshan was engaged in building a nuclear bomb…His death will serve a useful purpose if it convinces a critical mass of his colleagues to cease pursuing an atomic critical mass.  That wouldn’t be a bad way to bring the confrontation over Iran’s nuclear programme to a peaceful conclusion.

If columnist Bret Stephens (rumored to be the author of the unsigned pieces) or the WSJ have evidence that Roshan was “engaged in building a nuclear bomb”, why don’t they present it to the U.S. and Israel, both of whom haven’t come to this conclusion despite their superior surveillance capabilities? To quote nuclear engineer and former IAEA director, Robert Kelley:

Iran deserves tough scrutiny…At the same time, we should not again be held hostage to forgeries and the spinning of data to make the worst case. If Iran is developing nuclear weapons, let it be proved through the analysis of current, solid information — not recycled, discredited data. If there is to be a war with Iran, let’s not have a repeat, afterward, of the anguished articles and books from officials who kept their misgivings to themselves. Let’s get all the facts on the table now.

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Josh Rogin, the Cable guy at foreign policy.com, has a very important piece on statements made this evening by George W. Bush’s former NSA and CIA chief regarding the wisdom, or rather unwisdom, of a U.S. (or Israeli) attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. It’s an important addition to what appears to be the growing consensus among the national-security greybeards. Colin Kahl’s recent piece in Foreign Affairs, to which Rogin refers at the end of his post, is also worth checking out.

Phil Weiss caught this before me, but I think it’s relevant to ask what a President Gingrich would do if multi-billionaire Sheldon Adelson, by far the biggest contributor to Gingrich’s Super-PAC, Winning Our Future, asked him to do something on Bibi Netanyahu’s behalf that Newt might not think is in the U.S. national interest?

That’s the question that is raised implicitly — but, unfortunately, not followed up on — by the quick exchange aired on ABC’s “Rock Center” between Ted Koppel and Gingrich:

TED KOPPEL: But what do these multimillionaires expect [from contributing to super-PACs]?

NEWT GINGRICH: They want their candidate to win.

KOPPEL: But there has to be a ‘so what?’ at the end of that. If you win, what does Adelson get out of it?

GINGRICH: He knows I’m very pro-Israel. And that’s the central value of his life. He is very worried that Israel’s going to not survive.

Perhaps this helps explain some of Gingrich’s more-outrageous statements during the campaign, such as his reference to Palestinians as “terrorists” and an “invented people” and his call for the U.S. to join with Israel in any conventional attack on Iranian nuclear facilities (to ensure that Israel doesn’t use its nuclear weapons in such a strike). It also suggests that, at least insofar as he’s been able to communicate with Gingrich, Adelson’s top priority is Israel, not his hostility for labor unions and devotion to private enterprise, as some have suggested. Israel is the number one issue for him. And, so, if Netanyahu (or Lieberman) wanted to cleanse all those “terrorists” from the West Bank and asked Adelson to press a Pres. Gingrich not to object and to veto any UN Security Council resolution that might condemn such actions, and a new government in Egypt and Jordan’s King Hussein threatened to tear up their respective peace treaties with Israel, how would the former speaker react?

Mitchell wrote more about the Adelson-Gingrich connection here just last week.

Watch Gingrich’s response to Koppel’s questions below:

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