WASHINGTON - In a major address on Middle East policy on Monday, Senator John
McCain, the presumptive Republican candidate for president, pledged to maintain
the George W Bush administration's hard line against Iran and expressed strong
skepticism about the ability of the current Palestinian leadership to reach a
peace accord with Israel.
McCain, who was speaking at the opening session of the annual policy conference
of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), called for
much tougher international sanctions against Iran, including a "severe limit on
Iranian imports of gasoline" and a "worldwide divestment campaign" directed
against companies doing business with the Islamic Republic, as a
means of forcing it to freeze its alleged nuclear weapons program.
And he ridiculed his likely Democratic rival in the November elections, Senator
Barack Obama, for proposing unconditional talks with the Iranian leadership on
a range of issues, despite the fact that a new poll just released by the Gallup
organization found that nearly six in 10 US voters, including nearly half of
all Republican respondents, believe a US-Iranian summit would be a "good idea".
"... [W]e hear talk of a meeting with the Iranian leadership offered up as if
it were some sudden inspiration, a bold new idea that somehow nobody has ever
thought of before," he said. "Yet, it's hard to see what such a summit with
President [Mahmud] Ahmadinejad would actually gain, except an earful of
anti-Semitic rants, and a worldwide audience for a man who denies one Holocaust
and talks before frenzied crowds about starting another."
"Such a spectacle would harm Iranian moderates and dissidents," he went on, "as
the radicals and hardliners strengthen their position and suddenly acquire the
appearance of respectability."
McCain's remarks were the latest in an ongoing rhetorical tit-for-tat between
him and Obama, whose views on engaging Iran without conditions reflects the
views of much of the US foreign policy establishment, including even two of his
key policy advisers, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and
neo-conservative thinker, Robert Kagan. They have called for direct talks with
Tehran if, for no other reason, than to rally public and international opinion
behind the US in any future confrontation.
But, in addressing AIPAC, the most powerful group of the collection of
organizations known as the "Israel lobby", McCain appeared determined to show
his agreement with those in Israel and the US Jewish community who believe that
a nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable.
And, while he did not repeat the Bush administration's mantra that "all
options", including a military attack, should remain "on the table" in dealing
with the alleged threat, he suggested he would resort to such measures when he
focused on the post-Holocaust promise of "never again".
"[W]hen we join in saying 'never again', that is not a wish, a request, or a
plea to the enemies of Israel. It is a promise that the United States and
Israel will honor, against any enemy who cares to test us," he declared to
enthusiastic applause in the cavernous Washington Convention Center.
Indeed, just about half of his four-page speech was taken up by Iran, which is
also AIPAC's number one priority for its three-day event this year.
After two and a half days of speeches, including by Obama and Senator Hillary
Clinton, as well as the top leadership of both parties in Congress, as many as
7,000 members of the group from all over the country will trek to Capitol Hill
to press their lawmakers to quickly approve pending bills in Congress that, if
approved, would impose a new set of sweeping unilateral sanctions against Iran
and companies that do business with it.
AIPAC includes a wide range of national Jewish groups, such as Americans for
Peace Now and Israel Policy forum, that favor engagement by the US - directly
or indirectly - with a number of Israel's regional foes, including the
Palestinian Hamas, Lebanon's Hezbollah, Syria, and even Iran itself.
However, its neo-conservative leadership remains, for the most part, strongly
opposed to such a strategy - in defiance of the current Israeli government,
which has itself become increasingly involved in recent weeks in indirect talks
with Hamas, Hezbollah and Damascus.
Indeed, aside from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, both the plenary and
workshop speakers who will address the conference are overwhelmingly dominated
by hardliners both from Israel - the only high-ranking invitee from the Labor
Party, former deputy defense minister Ephraim Sneh, for example, resigned from
the party just last week - and from the US.
Speaking immediately after McCain's address, former deputy assistant secretary
for the Near East, Elizabeth Cheney - who is also Vice President Dick Cheney's
daughter - deplored Israel's failure "to do what was needed to be done to
Hezbollah" in the 2006 war and the Bush administration's failure to enforce
"red lines" against Iranian advances in the region. Washington, she declared,
must clearly state that if Iranians "don't give up diplomatically [to United
Nations demands that it freeze its nuclear program], they will face military
action".
The anti-engagement tone of the conference contrasted strongly with the results
of a new poll released by Gallup on Monday. Conducted from May 19 to 21, the
survey found that two-thirds of the more than 1,000 respondents, including 79%
of Democrats, 48% of Republicans and 70% of Independents, favored presidential
meetings with "leaders of foreign countries considered enemies of the United
States".
And, while Iran leads the list of top US enemies in the world, according to the
latest poll, 59% of respondents said it would be a good idea if the US
president met with his counterpart.
"Basically, McCain seems to be stuck in the Bush administration's rut of not
finding a way to deal effectively with Iran," said Rand Beers, a former senior
counter-terrorism official at the US State Department, who has served under
four US presidents, including both Bush and his father, George Herbert Walker
Bush.
"If you go through his policy proposals, he's basically arguing that Iran ought
to surrender before we are prepared to engage them, and, since it is highly
unlikely they are about to do that, and since it is unacceptable to John McCain
that Iran has nuclear weapons, we are walking down a path toward inevitable
conflict ...," he said.
While McCain devoted most of his remarks to Iran, he also showed little
confidence in the Middle East peace conference held in Annapolis, Maryland,
last year which, he said, awaits a "Palestinian leadership willing and able to
deliver peace". He also rejected engagement of Hamas, insisting that "a peace
process that places faith in terrorists can never end in peace".
Indeed, the few words he devoted to the prospects for an Arab-Israeli peace
settlement - he omitted all mention of Turkey's ongoing mediation effort
between Syria and Israel - struck at least one expert, Jon Alterman, who heads
the Middle East studies at the centrist Center for Strategic and International
Studies in Washington, as both "shocking" and "strange", given the fact that
presidential candidates have historically devoted most of their remarks to the
AIPAC conference to that issue.
On Lebanon, McCain said peace would only be possible when there were "no
independent militias, no Hezbollah fighters, no weapons and equipment flowing
to Hezbollah". He said the US should provide more economic assistance, as well
as military aid, to its central government in order to compete with Syria and
Iran there.
Jim Lobe's blog on US foreign policy, and particularly the
neo-conservative influence in the Bush administration, can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/.
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