WASHINGTON - The incoming administration of president-elect Barack Obama should
move quickly to engage Iran without preconditions and promote an Israeli-Syrian
peace accord, according to two veteran Middle East experts whose views are
likely to have influence over Obama's just-announced foreign policy team.
Obama should also "make a serious effort from the outset to promote progress
between Israel and the Palestinians", propose its own solutions to the parties
"sooner rather than later", and enlist the active support of the Arab League in
its success, according to Richard Haass and Martin Indyk, senior Middle East
aides under presidents George H W Bush and Bill Clinton, respectively.
They also called for Obama to consider providing nuclear guarantees and
enhanced anti-ballistic missile defense capabilities to Israel if negotiations
to curb Iran's nuclear programme fail or do not achieve quick success, to
dissuade the Jewish state from attacking Tehran's nuclear facilities on its
own. Such an umbrella could also extend to Washington's Arab allies in part to
prevent a regional arms race.
At the same time, "the option of a military response - launched by either the
United States or Israel - needs to remain in the background precisely because
without it, Tehran might see a diplomatic initiative by a new, young US
president as an opportunity to play out the clock until Iran can cross the
nuclear threshold."
Their recommendations, laid out in both an article to be published in the
January-February edition of Foreign Affairs and a new book, entitled Restoring
the Balance released jointly by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)
and the Brookings Institution in Washington on Tuesday, appear designed to
provide a relatively detailed roadmap for Obama's top policymakers. Notably
secretary of state-designate Hillary Clinton; Pentagon Chief Robert Gates; and
his national security adviser, retired General James Jones; as well as the
president-elect himself.
They come at a moment of intense speculation about where Obama wants to take US
policy, especially in the Middle East, the region that has dominated
policymakers in the administration of George W Bush since the September 11,
2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
The professional, institutional, and even personal affiliations of both Haass
and Indyk, as well as their own policy-making experience, underline the
potential significance of their recommendations for the incoming team, whose
ideological inclinations range from moderate Republican "realists", like Gates,
to pro-Israel liberal internationalist Democrats like Clinton.
Haass has served as president of the New York-based CFR, the country's most
prestigious foreign policy think tank, since he resigned as the State
Department's director of policy planning under former secretary of state Colin
Powell shortly after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He was a protege of George H W
Bush's national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, as were Powell, Gates and,
to a somewhat lesser extent, Jones. During the Clinton administration, Haass
headed the foreign policy section of the Brookings Institution, Washington's
oldest and perhaps most venerable think-tank.
Indyk, who served in several Middle East-related posts, including ambassador to
Israel and assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, under
Clinton, heads the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, whose
president, Strobe Talbott, was Clinton's deputy secretary of state and
long-time personal friend of the Clinton family. Before joining the Clinton
administration, Indyk was closely tied to the so-called "Israel Lobby" having
worked as research director for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
(AIPAC) and as founding director of AIPAC's spin-off, the Washington Institute
for Near East Policy (WINEP).
Restoring the Balance, the culmination of an 18-month project, was
overseen by a bipartisan board of advisers co-chaired by Haass and Talbott that
included Clinton's former national security adviser Sandy Berger and Scowcroft
among other leading foreign policy figures. It also includes chapters on
specific issues by a number of Brookings and CFR scholars who have served in
past administrations and may very well secure key posts in Obama's team, such
as Michael O'Hanlon, Kenneth Pollack, Suzanne Maloney, Bruce Riedel, Gary
Samore, Daniel Byman, and Steven Simon.
In presenting the book, both Indyk and Haass stressed that the chapters
represented the views only of their authors and not of the two institutions or
the project's board of advisers. Indeed, the chapters on US policy toward Iran,
by Maloney and Ray Takeyh, and on the Arab-Israeli conflict, by Stephen Cook
and Shibley Telhami, are noticeably less hawkish toward Iran and Hamas,
respectively, than that written by Indyk and Haass themselves.
The title "Restoring the Balance" itself appeared to refer both to reducing the
emphasis on Iraq that has dominated US policy in the Middle East for the past
seven years, and to re-focusing US efforts in the region much more on diplomacy
and multilateralism - what Obama himself called the "core vision" of his
foreign policy when he introduced his new team on Monday in Chicago.
On Iraq, Haass and Indyk warned against both a "too rapid withdrawal" that
could generate renewed instability there and a "too slow withdrawal" that could
leave US forces tied down and "unavailable for other priority tasks, including
backing [Obama's] diplomacy vis-a-vis Iran in particular with the credible
threat of force."
Indeed, they write that Obama's "principal focus will need to be on Iran"
because it could make sufficient progress in its uranium-enrichment programme
to have a credible nuclear weapons capability in as little as two to three
years.
To prevent or delay that eventuality, the two authors argue for Washington to
engage in direct and unconditional negotiations that would offer Tehran both
more carrots - including reduced sanctions, security guarantees, and normalized
relations - backed up by bigger sticks, including more stringent financial
sanctions and a multilateral ban on Iranian gasoline imports. While there is no
guarantee such an approach would succeed, "lower oil prices do create a context
where prospects for diplomacy would be enhanced," Haass said on Tuesday.
Ultimately, Washington could accept an enrichment program in Iran under
enhanced international safeguards to ensure that it cannot develop a "breakout
capability", according to the two authors, who also note that there is "no
realistic prospect of toppling the Iranian regime, either through military
action or through support of an internal uprising".
At the same time, Washington should pursue bilateral talks over normalization,
Iran's backing of Hamas and Hezbollah, and its role in Iraq, possibly within
the context of a broader regional negotiation similar to the six-party talks
with North Korea.
On Arab-Israeli talks, the two authors argue that the Syrian track - which the
George W Bush administration, despite pleas from the mediator, Turkey, and the
outgoing Israeli government headed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, has refused
to promote - offers the greatest chance of success both because Damascus,
unlike the Palestinian Authority, "is in a position to fulfill a peace
agreement, and the differences between the parties appear to be bridgeable".
"Moreover, the potential for a strategic realignment [by Syria] would benefit
the effort to weaken Iran's influence in the sensitive core of the region,
reduce external support for both Hezbollah and Hamas, and improve prospects for
stability in Lebanon. In other words, it would give President Obama strategic
leverage on Iran at the same time as he would be offering its leaders a
constructive way out of their security dilemma."
Progress on the Syrian track could also bolster the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian
track, which should be continued by Obama, despite the deep divisions on both
sides of the table, according to the two authors. Unlike Bush, however, Obama
should propose solutions to issues at which the parties reach impasse and even
"outline in some detail his views of the principles underlying a final
settlement" in order to encourage progress.
He should also seek "renewed involvement" of the Arab states in the process,
which would be made easier if the US and its Quartet partners - the United
Nations, the European Union and Russia - can prevail on Israel to halt its
settlement activity.
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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