The editors of The Post and Courier, one of largest newspapers in South Carolina, sound like they're getting information about foreign affairs from right-wing alarmist websites. In an irresponsible editorial yesterday, the newspaper scares its readers by inflating a recent trip that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made to Cuba into some looming national security crisis.

Given the support both nations have provided to international terrorists, the Iran-Cuba connection can only be viewed ominously. It would likely prolong the life of the appalling Cuban regime while giving Iran, which is preparing to field nuclear-tipped missiles within the next few years, a possible base of operations against the United States.

Cuba needs a new tenant that will, like the former Soviet Union, give it highly favorable terms of trade for its exports. In 1960 Fidel struck a deal with Moscow providing petroleum in exchange for sugar, and that deal, through ups and downs, kept Cuba's economy above water until 1990.

It also provided a base for Soviet military activities that almost led to nuclear war in the Cuban missile crisis, 50 years ago.

But the Cuban economy quickly went down when the Soviet Union collapsed, and not even Fidel's friendship with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, access to cheap Venezuelan oil and trading relations with most of the world have helped restore the old order.

The Castros may be willing to risk a new and more effective multinational embargo by trading with Iran, provided they get a good price.

Meanwhile, Iran is looking for trading partners, as it faces broader, tougher Western sanctions. More importantly, like the old Soviet Union, it is seeking points of pressure against the United States.

Mr. Ahmadinejad renewed his connections with other anti-American leaders in Latin America, including Mr. Chavez and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua.

While Iran's activities in Cuba are certainly a cause for concern, there is no reason for the level of alarm that is raised by The Post and Courier.

For starters, Iran and Cuba have had a good relationship for several decades, including during the Cold War. And Iran's not the only one. As the editors themselves acknowledge, Cuba has "trading relations with most of the world." In fact, Cuba even has limited trading relations with the United States, something many members of Congress would like to see expanded.

The editors are reading way too much into this visit. For instance, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff recently made a state visit to Cuba to discuss trade. How is Ahmadinejad's visit an indication Cuba wants to go towards authoritarian Iran but Rousseff's more important visit not a signal that Cuba is opening up?

In addition, no one seriously subscribes to the idea that Cuba supports international terrorists. As Jeffrey Goldberg recently wrote:

Here is some of what we know about Cuba. Cuba is an impoverished autocracy. Its superannuated leaders are gradually opening their country's economy. Cuba is reducing the size of its military, it has condemned al-Qaeda and it poses no national-security threat to the U.S. No serious intelligence analyst believes that Cuba is still funding or arming foreign insurgencies.

The Post and Courier editors also write that Iran is "preparing to field nuclear-tipped missiles within the next few years." There are many legitimate concerns about Iran's nuclear program and the intentions of its leaders, but there is no evidence that Iran will "field nuclear-tipped missiles" in the near future. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper have both said in recent weeks that Iran has not yet made the decision to develop nuclear weapons. Either the editors of The Post and Courier know more about Iran's intentions than the U.S. intelligence community or they're shooting from the hip with no concern for accuracy.

It's important for local papers to cover international issues, but in an editorial that deals with war and peace, the least they should do is to consider the facts.

In his pre-Super Bowl interview on Sunday night, President Obama went farther than ever before to assert that U.S. and Israeli interests are identical. Obama even one-upped Vice President Joe Biden, who has repeatedly said that there must be "no daylight — no daylight" between our policies and theirs.

Obama's statement was more disturbing because he was not speaking in the abstract but about the possibility of war with Iran. The president said, "My number one priority continues to be the security of the United States, but also the security of Israel."

I'll repeat that: "My number one priority continues to be the security of the United States, but also the security of Israel."

That is a remarkable statement, so much so that I'll leave it to someone with more impressive credentials than my own to challenge it. Paul R. Pillar is a 28-year veteran of the CIA who, before his retirement, became chief of analysis at the agency's DCI Counterterrorist Center. He now teaches at Georgetown and writes for The National Interest. He also served in Vietnam between 1971 and 1973.

Here is his reaction to the president's statement:

Wait a minute-shouldn't the security of the United States be the number one priority of the president of the United States? Rather than merely sharing the top spot on the priority list with some foreign country's security?

He continues:

Any national political leader in the United States should be expected to give clear, consistent, overwhelming priority to U.S. interests-never equating, much less subordinating, them to the interests of any foreign state. Relationships with foreign governments can be useful in advancing U.S. interests, but they are always means, not ends. ... Suffice it to note that the policies of the current government of the foreign state in question are not only not to be equated with U.S. interests but are seriously damaging those interests, whether through risking war with Iran, undermining efforts short of war to resolve differences with Iran, or associating the United States with a highly salient and unjust occupation. Even with an alternative government that was less destructive (to Israel's own interests, let alone to those of the United States), the interests of the United States should not be equated with the interests of this foreign state any more than to those of Denmark, Thailand, Argentina or any other foreign country, no matter what fondness individual citizens may feel toward those or other places.

Pillar goes on to mention the statements of the various Republican candidates (except Ron Paul) whose pledges to Israel are even more self-abnegating from an American point of view. He reserves special scorn for Newt Gingrich's top donor, Sheldon Adelson, (expected to soon move over to the Romney campaign) who has said that he regrets serving in the U.S. military over Israel's. Romney, Gingrich, and Santorum have all made clear that, to them, Israel is not a foreign country but an adjunct of the United States (somewhere near Florida, perhaps). 

The good news — if there is any — about these statements from the president and his opponents is that it is unlikely any of them are sincere.

I certainly do not believe that Obama, in any way, puts Israel's interests on par with those of the United States. Not even close. Frankly, I don't think the Republicans do either.

The ugly part is that these candidates believe that making such statements is necessary to please donors (and perhaps some voters).

Where would they get that idea?

Well, they get it from the various organizations (led by AIPAC) that constitute Binyamin Netanyahu's lobby in America, as well as from members of the House and Senate who are Bibi's cutouts. (Check out AIPAC's website.)

That is why Obama caved on the issue of Israeli settlements (going so far as to veto a United Nation resolution condemning the, even though it was completely in sync with long-standing U.S. policy). That is why we pulled out all the stops to prevent the United Nations from recognizing a Palestinian state. That is why Obama insists that war with Iran remains "on the table" while unconditional negotiations with the Iranian regime have apparently never been contemplated. And that is why it is quite possible that the United States could find itself at war with Iran either directly or because we join Israel in a combined military assault.

Pillar points out that in the same interview Obama said the U.S. is "going to make sure we work in lockstep" with Israel on Iran. As Pillar notes:

If working in lockstep means that Israel defers to U.S. interests and preferences, that would be fine for the United States. But of course the deference nearly always works the other way around.

After all, it is America that is the superpower while Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid in the world.

It should be said that the Israeli people (most of whom oppose war with Iran) do not benefit from the supine position in which our politicians approach their government. As for the two Iran hawks running Israel's foreign policy, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, they can hardly be blamed if they view these statements as evidence that the United States will not oppose anything they do. Congress, of course, will do what AIPAC tells it to do.

In short, Israel is freer to get us and itself into a war with Iran that will cost God knows how many lives and shock the world economy into a deeper recession than the one we are in. Knowing Netanyahu and Barak, it will be hard for them to resist this temptation.

On March 4, some 10,000 AIPAC delegates from around the country with gather in Washington for the group's annual policy conference. The president and some 350-400 members of Congress will be in attendance. (Candidates from both parties will raise huge sums of money in special side rooms deemed independent of AIPAC so that the organization can continue to claim that it does not fund candidates.)

And the message the politicians will hear is that AIPAC is ready for war. If the past is prologue, every reference to diplomacy by speakers from the president on down will be met by silence. Every reference to war will be met with thunderous applause.

The government officials and candidates will go home happy to have pleased some key donors. The Israeli government officials will go home believing that America will back absolutely anything they choose to do. As for the American people, they will barely know that any of this is happening.

Harvard University historian Niall Ferguson is out with a new piece in The Daily Beast arguing for an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. "There are plenty of arguments against an Israeli attack on Iran," the subhead of the article explains. But "all of them are bad." Ferguson writes:

There are five reasons (I am told) why Israel should not attack Iran:

1. The Iranians would retaliate with great fury, closing the Strait of Hormuz and unleashing the dogs of terror in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iraq.

2. The entire region would be set ablaze by irate Muslims; the Arab Spring would turn into a frigid Islamist winter.

3. The world economy would be dealt a death blow in the form of higher oil prices.

4. The Iranian regime would be strengthened, having been attacked by the Zionists its propaganda so regularly vilifies.

5. A nuclear-armed Iran is nothing to worry about. States actually become more risk-averse once they acquire nuclear weapons.

I am here to tell you that these arguments are wrong.

What comes next is not what you would expect; Ferguson does not explain why these concerns (which are straw man arguments he's summarized in ridiculous ways) are wrong, as you'd expect, but jokes away the worries without even mentioning the real dangers of war. Like Matthew Kroenig's much-discussed article in Foreign Affairs, which tried to make the case for a U.S. strike, Ferguson mentions potential consequences of war but makes no serious effort to address the five points he's outlined. Both writers suffer from the same flaw: downplaying failure while being overly optimistic about success.

Any doubt that Ferguson takes war with Iran lightly is eliminated by his depiction of an imaginary conservation between President Obama and David Axelrod in which the president orders his people to provide support for an Israeli attack on Iran — "line up those bunker busters" — but only after hearing that he isn't polling well in Florida.

Frivolity aside, the piece is most noteworthy not for what is mentioned but for what Ferguson avoided writing about: An aerial attack on Iran's nuclear facilities will not stop the country's nuclear program, and almost certainly will convince decision-makers there that they need to weaponize to protect against future attacks. As Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has made clear, an attack would at most delay Iran's program by a few years. That fact alone should be enough to put much of this dangerous speculation to rest.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney likes to talk a good game on foreign policy. He says that when he's president, America will once again be the greatest country in world, implying that we've fallen behind because of the policies of the Obama administration. After winning the Florida primary earlier in the week, he again repeated the "Pants on Fire" claim that "President Obama has adopted a policy of appeasement and apology."

Beyond the necessity of appeasing the base by attacking the incumbent president, Romney hasn't shown any meaningful knowledge of world affairs, much less demonstrated that he understands that the world around him is changing in dramatic ways and that as president, he'd have much less power to dictate how the world should be run.

In a piece in the Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria highlights some of things candidate Romney should learn (or come to accept) in the weeks and months ahead if he actually wants to be taken seriously on foreign policy.

Twenty years ago Turkey was a fragile democracy, dominated by its army, that had a weak economy constantly in need of Western bailouts. Today, Turkey has a trillion-dollar economy that grew 6.6 percent last year. Since April 2009, Turkey has created 3.4 million jobs - more than the European Union, Russia and South Africa put together. That might explain Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's confidence and his country's energetic foreign policy.

Look in this hemisphere: In 1990, Brazil was emerging from decades of dictatorship and was wracked by inflation rates that reached 3,000 percent. Its president was impeached in 1992. Today, the country is a stable democracy, steadily growing with foreign-exchange reserves of $350 billion. Its foreign policy has become extremely active. President Dilma Rousseff is in Cuba this week, "marking Brazil's highest-profile bid to transform its growing economic might into diplomatic leadership in Latin America," the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. Brazil's state development bank is financing a $680 million rehabilitation of Cuba's port at Mariel.

For three decades, India was unable to get any Western country to accept its status as a nuclear power. But as its economy boomed and Asia became the new cockpit of global affairs, the mood shifted. Over the past five years the United States, France, Britain and others have made a massive exception for New Delhi's nuclear program and have assiduously courted India as a new ally. I could go on.

These three emerging powers are seeking a greater role in the international system. Turkey and Brazil, in particular, are charting independent foreign policies that might be in the best interest of their respective nations, but not always in line with Washington's objectives. India, too, which has strengthened military ties with the U.S., is sometimes unwilling to go along with U.S. policy. The country recently announced, for example, that it would continue to buy oil from Iran.

So far on the campaign trail, Romney has had little to say about Turkey, Brazil, or India. When Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) foolishly said during a debate that Turkey was governed by "Islamic terrorists," Romney remained silent. He should have come to the defense of an important NATO ally, one that accepted a missile defense system on its soil and has sought to play a constructive role in the Arab Spring.

Romney doesn't display the sort of nuanced understanding of foreign affairs that is critical to determining effective policy in the 21^st century. In his worldview, you always agree with and work with your allies and constantly seek to isolate and undermine your foe and adversaries. But allies, especially critical allies, don't always behave the way you want them to. And sometimes, you need to work with foes and adversaries to achieve your larger goals. For instance, Romney, a vocal critic of the New START Treaty, might not comprehend that the administration's so-called reset with Russia is critical to isolating Iran. Romney has promised to "reset President Obama's 'Reset' with Russia," meaning a reversal to the Bush administration's failed efforts at ignoring Russia and hoping that its power would magically go away.

Romney just can't be taken seriously on foreign policy until he acknowledges that Latin America is more than Chavez and Castro, that the Middle East is more than Israel and Iran, and that as much as he might worry about Russia and the rise of China, the two Security Council countries are critical to doing anything meaningful on the world stage. On his campaign site, he pledges to "deny Russia any control or veto over the system." Come on; that's ridiculous.

Mitt Romney will tell his base what they want to hear. But it's clear that the Republican frontrunner is nowhere close to understanding how challenging it is to make policy in an ever-evolving world arena. Hackneyed rhetoric might sell on the campaign trail, but it certainly won't at the United Nations or Geneva.

News on the Iran front is getting more and more complicated. I am not referring to the situation at Iran's nuclear facilities but to the one here in Washington, where Congress, deep into election-year fundraising and thinking about the March AIPAC policy conference, is crafting yet another sanctions bill. There is no reason to go into the details. But suffice it to say, this new set of sanctions, like the rest, will primarily hurt ordinary Iranians, not the government. As one Iranian citizen, writing under a pseudonym, described the situation this week in the New York Daily News:

These days, ordinary Iranians like my mother are becoming increasingly aware of a new economic reality in their lives. Sanctions already in place have plunged the country's economy into a crisis; more robust sanctions that will be enacted come spring on our financial system and oil trade will cause even more pain for an already-suffering populace.

Isn't life in Iran difficult enough under the regime of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei? Why punish ordinary people more?

Did we punish the Poles or the Bulgarians for living under communism? Did we punish the people of the Soviet Union because their government had a nuclear arsenal primed to destroy us? No. In fact, we gave the people of those countries food. As President Richard Nixon (like President Ronald Reagan later) liked to remind us, our adversary was the leadership of the Soviet Union, not the average citizens in the different Soviet republics.

But that is not how we have been approaching the Iran. Not by a long shot.

In A Single Roll of the Dice, a comprehensive new book about U.S.-Iran relations since President Obama came to office, Iran expert Trita Parsi examines the effect that the purely punitive approach (i.e., sanctions) can have on changing the Iranian government's behavior.

Specifically, Parsi points out that "sanctions have become an alternative to policy" rather than an instrument of policy. He explains that "if diplomacy is pursued again" it must be "for the sake of resolving the conflict, not for the sake of creating an impetus for more sanctions."

Abandoning a sole reliance on sanctions is Parsi's first of six recommendations for establishing a diplomacy track with Iran that will succeed.

The second is "do not put unnecessary limitations on U.S. diplomats." Diplomats should not be limited to one official channel but should engage in dialogue with the multiple power centers that exist throughout the country.

If direct engagement with these political centers and factions is not immediately possible, negotiators must be willing to give them time so as to neutralize these stakeholders' inclinations to scuttle a deal of which they were not a part. Pressuring Iran's fractured political system to give a quick "yes" usually results instead in "no."

Unfortunately, Parsi's advice on this score has already been contradicted in the recently passed AIPAC-drafted sanctions law, which not only circumscribes a diplomat's ability to talk to Iranians but forbids any diplomacy without advance approval by congressional committees. (This patently unconstitutional provision is unlikely to withstand court challenge, although AIPAC certainly won't bless such a challenge.)

Third, he says, the U.S. and its allies should accept that Iran will not abandon all enrichment of uranium, especially at levels that are necessary for medical reasons (radioactive isotopes) but are too low for use for weapons. Iran is already enriching uranium, so that train has already left the station. In fact, the United States has already accepted Iranian enrichment, but is under pressure from Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to hold the line against any enrichment. Parsi writes:

At this stage the only feasible negotiations are those regarding how enrichment in Iran can be inspected, verified, limited and controlled.

Fourth, diplomacy cannot be limited solely to the nuclear issue but should also include the human rights situation:

A healthy, sustainable relationship with Iran cannot be built if the current reservoir of American soft power among the Iranian population is squandered for the sake of a nuclear deal. Just as Iranians' respect and admiration for American achievements, values and culture would be jeopardized in the event of a military attack on Iran, silence on human rights will also likewise deplete this crucial strategic asset.

Fifth, take advantage of our NATO ally Turkey's relationship with Iran:

While Washington has been uncomfortable with Turkey's perceived leniency toward Iran, it has overlooked how Turkey's maneuvering has checked Iran's attempts to fill the vacuum caused by America's decline in the region. ... Instead of treating Turkey's approach with suspicion, Washington and the EU should utilize Turkey's ability to elicit Iranian cooperation.

Finally, "Washington must play the long game, with a focus on the long-term benefits of engaging Iran and the dangers of noncommunication."

This is not a radical idea as is evidenced by the message delivered by Admiral Mike Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said last year, "We are not talking to Iran, so we don't understand each other. If something happens, it is virtually assured that we won't get it right — that there will be a miscalculation which would be extremely dangerous in that part of the world."

All the recommendations on Parsi's list can be summed up in one word: Talk.

I'll add my own recommendation to the list: Do not back down when AIPAC barks or directs its congressional cutouts to scream bloody murder every time it suspects that the U.S. is considering diplomacy with Iran.

I remember from my days at AIPAC that the thing it was most afraid of was that a president would break with the policy it dictated and explain to the American people why. As the former (and most effective) executive director of AIPAC, Thomas Dine, often said to me, "If the president takes to the airwaves and explains why his position is in the U.S. interest and the position we are pushing isn't, it will be us who folds, not him."

I have only highlighted one section of Parsi's book, but the rest is just as smart and incisive. To date, it is the best book there is on U.S.-Iranian relations in 2012. Warhawks in Iran and Israel and neocons in Washington won't like this book (they will find Parsi's propensity for dividing blame among Iran, the United States and Israel maddening) but, for the rest of us, it provides just what we need — a well-written history of how we got to the brink of war with Iran and how we can still avoid it. I hope President Obama reads it; I have no doubt that he agrees with Parsi that diplomacy, not more pain and killing, is the answer to the looming threat of war.

Talk about déjà vu all over again.

In September 2010 The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg wrote, in a much ballyhooed article, that "there is a better than 50 percent chance that Israel will launch a strike [against Iran] by next July," meaning the summer of 2011.

This coming Sunday, the New York Times Magazine will feature a story by Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, who writes, "I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012."

The two articles are very similar. It is almost as if Bergman is merely updating Goldberg, primarily by postponing the supposed date for the attack by a year. That is necessary because Goldberg's prediction did not pan out — just like the repeated predictions that Iran would have a nuclear weapon by a particular date keep being pushed back. (Here is former CIA official Bruce Reidel predicting an Israeli attack on Iran in 2007. Here is former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton predicting that Israel would bomb Iran in 2008. Here is leading Israeli Iran hawk, General Ephraim Sneh, predicting that Israel would act by the end of 2009. The attack keeps receding farther into the horizon.)

There are many more such predictions, just as there are many more articles like those by Goldberg and Bergman.

The most striking (even jarring) similarity between the two articles is that both pieces note that an Israeli attack on Iran would fail to prevent development of an Iranian bomb and that the collateral effects of an attack would be utterly horrific. Both cite Israeli intelligence officials who make just those points. (Check out this new J Street video, which quotes Israel's most prominent intelligence experts explaining why attacking Iran would be disastrous.)

Here is Goldberg in 2010 on what the ramifications would be once the Israelis begin to bomb Iran, regardless of whether the attack succeeds or "fail[s] miserably to even make a dent in Iran's nuclear program:

[The Israelis] stand a good chance of changing the Middle East forever; of sparking lethal reprisals, and even a full-blown regional war that could lead to the deaths of thousands of Israelis and Iranians, and possibly Arabs and Americans as well; of creating a crisis for Barack Obama that will dwarf Afghanistan in significance and complexity; of rupturing relations between Jerusalem and Washington, which is Israel's only meaningful ally; of inadvertently solidifying the somewhat tenuous rule of the mullahs in Tehran; of causing the price of oil to spike to cataclysmic highs, launching the world economy into a period of turbulence not experienced since the autumn of 2008, or possibly since the oil shock of 1973; of placing communities across the Jewish diaspora in mortal danger, by making them targets of Iranian-sponsored terror attacks, as they have been in the past, in a limited though already lethal way; and of accelerating Israel's conversion from a once-admired refuge for a persecuted people into a leper among nations.

Here is Bergman this week on ramifications of an attack:

In the end, a successful attack would not eliminate the knowledge possessed by the project's scientists, and it is possible that Iran, with its highly developed technological infrastructure, would be able to rebuild the damaged or wrecked sites. What is more, unlike Syria, which did not respond after the destruction of its reactor in 2007, Iran has openly declared that it would strike back ferociously if attacked. Iran has hundreds of Shahab missiles armed with warheads that can reach Israel, and it could harness Hezbollah to strike at Israeli communities with its 50,000 rockets, some of which can hit Tel Aviv. (Hamas in Gaza, which is also supported by Iran, might also fire a considerable number of rockets on Israeli cities.) According to Israeli intelligence, Iran and Hezbollah have also planted roughly 40 terrorist sleeper cells across the globe, ready to hit Israeli and Jewish targets if Iran deems it necessary to retaliate. And if Israel responded to a Hezbollah bombardment against Lebanese targets, Syria may feel compelled to begin operations against Israel, leading to a full-scale war. On top of all this, Tehran has already threatened to close off the Persian Gulf to shipping, which would generate a devastating ripple through the world economy as a consequence of the rise in the price of oil.

Nonetheless, both authors predict with a certain level of assurance that Israel will attack anyway. In essence, they are saying that the Israeli government of Binyamin Netanyahu is as insane as neoconservatives say the Iranian government is. They are saying that, yes, attacking Iran might lead to the devastation of Israel, even the destruction of the Jewish state, but that the government of Israel might do it anyway.

Why? Because it honestly believes that the Iranian government is so dedicated to a second Holocaust that it would risk its own annihilation, not to mention the eradication of the Palestinian people as well as destruction of some of the holiest sites in Islam in its own initial nuclear attack.

Sorry. I don't believe it. I don't believe the Iranian government is either insane or suicidal; I don't believe the Israeli government is insane or suicidal.

And I doubt the authors believe that either. It is not Israel's elimination they are worried about; it is the elimination of Israel's nuclear monopoly and its regional hegemony. The Israelis themselves admit as much, with Defense Minister Ehud Barak telling Charlie Rose last year that if he were an Iranian government official, he would probably want a weapon, too — not to destroy Israel but because "they look around, they see the Indians are nuclear, the Chinese are nuclear, Pakistan is nuclear, not to mention the Russians." And the Israelis, obviously.

Bottom line: The purpose of these articles is not to predict an Israeli attack but to force the United States government into piling on sanction after sanction (with war always an option) rather than pursue a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

It makes no sense. And yet, due to the pressure of the pro-war lobby, it is diplomacy that is barely on the table, while war, always the direst option, is front and center. That was plain when President Obama delivered his State of the Union address earlier this week.

Referring to Iran, President Obama said this:

Look at Iran. Through the power of our diplomacy, a world that was once divided about how to deal with Iran's nuclear program now stands as one. The regime is more isolated than ever before; its leaders are faced with crippling sanctions, and as long as they shirk their responsibilities, this pressure will not relent. Let there be no doubt: America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal.

But a peaceful resolution of this issue is still possible, and far better, and if Iran changes course and meets its obligations, it can rejoin the community of nations.

Obama's remarks were measured. The first part was tough, almost threatening, ending with a clear allusion to the possibility of war.

The shorter second part referring to a "peaceful resolution" spoke to the president's preference: avoiding another Middle East war.

So how did Congress react?

It was silent until Obama stated that he would take "no options off the table." That allusion to war caused the chamber to erupt in cheers. The second piece, the reference to a "peaceful resolution" was met with silence, except for scattered applause from perhaps a dozen legislators.

Bergman's article (like Goldberg's earlier piece) is designed to keep things just this way. Sanctions up to a point. War, if deemed necessary, farther down the road. And ideally a war fought by the United States and not Israel, to preserve not Israel's security but its regional hegemony.

If the American people allow that to happen, we are truly out of our minds.

The good news is that President Ahmadinejad now says he is ready for negotiations (whether the country's supreme leader is may be another story). How about President Obama just agreeing to talk — for once without conditions dictated by the pro-war lobby.

But who am I kidding? It is the lobby, and its cutouts in Congress, who are driving this issue. And they want war. That is probably one reason Goldberg and Bergman are so sure it will happen. The lobby usually gets what it wants.

An article in Tuesday's New York Times suggests that there is a method to the madness of the Republican presidential candidates' hawkish rhetoric on Iran. I had thought that the reason all the Republican candidates (with the exception of Ron Paul) are such noisy warmongers is because that is their natural proclivity — and because it pleases donors (like Sheldon Adelson, Newt Gingrich's big campaign funder) who base their political choices on Binyamin Netanyahu's desires.

But Times reporter Mark Landler suggests that one of the results of this year's conveniently timed Iran crisis is to present President Barack Obama with a choice of two options, either of which the GOP could successfully exploit to defeat him in the election.

As Landler points out:

In late June, when the campaign is in full swing, Mr. Obama will have to decide whether to take action against countries, including some staunch allies, if they continue to buy Iranian oil through its central bank.

After fierce lobbying by the White House, which opposed this hardening in the sanctions that have been its main tool in pressuring Tehran, Congress agreed to modify the legislation to give Mr. Obama leeway to delay action if he concludes the clampdown would disrupt the oil market. He may also invoke a waiver to exempt any country from sanctions based on national security considerations.

Under normal circumstances, a president's decision to invoke a national security waiver on any foreign policy matter is hard to challenge. In this case, the president's concern that imposing new sanctions would cause oil prices to soar (and disrupt economic recovery) would be good reason to pass on the latest congressional sanctions law.

But the political consequences of waiving could be dire.

Remember, the sanctions law in question is a creation of AIPAC and has been at the top of its agenda during this entire Congress. If Obama waives it, Netanyahu would use the media to make sure that his displeasure was known. The lobby, the Republican presidential candidate and even many of AIPAC's Democratic cutouts on Capitol Hill would all scream bloody murder.

Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL), perhaps the member of Congress closest to AIPAC, told the Times that he would not look kindly on a waiver and neither would the lobby.

"The first waiver would trigger a whole lot of other waiver applications, potentially gutting the policy. ... The pro-Israel community would not want a gutting of the sanctions," he said.

But what if Obama just takes the path of least political resistance and imposes the sanctions as AIPAC wants?

Then, oil prices rise.

According to the Times, "Already, Iran's leaders are maneuvering to drive up oil prices, whether to signal that sanctions could bring repercussions, or to mitigate the effects of reduced sales. Iran's threat to shut off the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's oil passes, sent prices soaring this month."

The article also quoted Stuart Eizenstat, a former top official at the Treasury and State Department who helped devise our Iran policy during the Clinton administration. According to Eizenstat, "sanctions could harm the economy and his [Obama's] re-election chances."

In other words, Obama will likely be harmed politically no matter which way he goes on sanctions.

Of course, the sanctions issue is just a subset of the larger "war or no war" question. The same political forces that support "crippling" sanctions (which may cripple us, our allies and ordinary Iranian citizens more than the Iranian regime) also favor keeping the war option "on the table" in case our efforts to thwart Iran's nuclear program fail.

As is the case with sanctions, there are two options. One is to go to war, a policy that would tear the country (and especially the Democratic Party) apart in an election year. The other is to try to negotiate an end to Iran's nuclear program but, if that fails, simply accept an Iran with a nuclear capability and "contain" it. That is what we have done with North Korea and Pakistan and did for many decades with the Soviet Union. That course would infuriate the lobby.

Another political lose-lose.

Fortunately, there is a third course, which applies to both the sanctions and the war questions: we can negotiate.

Writing in The Atlantic, Robert Wright, a foreign policy expert, suggests a way out of the current deadlock is to establish a nuclear-free Middle East:

The idea is that Israel and Iran would open themselves up to highly intrusive inspections--of their declared nuclear facilities and of any suspicious undeclared sites--and other nations in the region would agree to monitoring as well. As Israel became assured that there were no nuclear weapons programs afoot in the region, it would gradually reduce its nuclear stockpile until, years or even decades from now, it had no nuclear weapons--but could live secure in the knowledge that none of its adversaries had them either. (Israel might preserve "breakout capacity"--the ability to produce a nuke in a matter of months.)

Wright goes on to say that the main objection to this plan is the belief that Israel would never accept it. But according to a poll conducted by Israel's Dahaf Institute (an equivalent of the Gallup organization) and cited in a New York Times piece by Steven Kull and Shibley Telhami, that is simply not true.

[W]hen asked whether it would be better for both Israel and Iran to have the bomb, or for neither to have it, 65 percent of Israeli Jews said neither. And a remarkable 64 percent favored the idea of a nuclear-free zone, even when it was explained that this would mean Israel giving up its nuclear weapons." A clear majority also bought into the idea of opening Israel's and Iran's nuclear facilities to "a system of full international inspections."

The same poll finds that only 43 percent of Jewish Israelis support a military strike on Iran, although 90 percent assume Iran will eventually develop the bomb.

The nuclear-free option is worth pursuing, as is every possible alternative to war. President Obama should start the process by reaching out to Iran quietly, with the single goal of avoiding war, reducing tensions, and ending the threats and counter-threats. It is possible he is already doing that, although the White House (with an eye or two on AIPAC) is denying it.

One last point: Why is it relatively uncontroversial to negotiate with the Taliban — who harbored the terrorists who killed 3000 Americans on September 11, 2001, and who have terrorized millions of Afghans for decades — but the idea of talking to Iran is considered beyond the pale?

The answer should be obvious. AIPAC and its congressional cutouts go wild at the thought of negotiating with Iran (or Hamas, for that matter) but are relatively indifferent to the Taliban who, of course, is far from Israel.

So we can talk to the thugs of the Taliban to bring about some sort of settlement. But we can't even consider talking to the government of Iran.

What a shameful way to conduct foreign policy.

A man wrote me the other day to complain about something I had written regarding my belief that Israel has every right to exist in peace and security. He responded that Israel should not exist, asserting that Israel is simply a Western colony implanted in the Middle East that is as "authentic as white Rhodesia" was.

He argued that every Israeli is from somewhere else and that what we call an "Israeli culture" is really just European culture with influences from Sephardic Israelis, "who are really Arabs," as well as from the indigenous Palestinians.

As anti-Israel polemicists often do, he invoked the crusader colony that occupied Palestine for 200 years and then vanished. One way or another, he said, Israel too will disappear, rejected by the region the way a human body rejects an incompatible implant.

To me, the whole argument (and the impulse behind it) is laughable and could only be made by someone who has very little knowledge about Israel.

Like it or not, Israel is no more a European colony than the United States. While once the various people that compose Israel were simply settlers, being Israeli today is as distinct a nationality as any in the world.

Although Jews visiting Israel from the United States or Europe often say, "I feel so at home here," that is only an illusion. Without speaking the Hebrew language and knowing the unique local culture, no one can be at home there.

Visitors to Israel often say that it is impossible to tell Israelis from Palestinians. And, with the exception of the ultra-traditional among both peoples, that is true. But no one ever says that about the American, French or Russian Jews until they have been there 20 years or more.

An Israeli is an Israeli. It is amazing, but a distinct new nationality was created over the past century. Seven million people speak Hebrew as their day-to-day language; before 1887 not a single person did.

The creation of this nation and nationality is a remarkable achievement. Despite all Israel's faults, it is hard to imagine a Jew from previous eras who would not be struck with pride and wonder by the accomplishment. It does seem like a miracle, although it really is the result of hard work by remarkable men and women and a series of historical accidents, some horrendous beyond belief.

But now, Israel's current leadership is jeopardizing the whole enterprise.

In short, they are behaving in as suicidal a manner as Binyamin Netanyahu claims the Iranian regime behaves.

How else to characterize a series of attacks in Iran, coupled with the "crippling sanctions" inflicted on the people of Iran by the United States, under intense and single-minded pressure of AIPAC, the Netanyahu government's lobby? How else to characterize the absolute refusal by the United States, under pressure from the lobby, to engage Iran diplomatically with the goal not merely of preventing an Iranian bomb but of fully normalizing relations (as Iran proposed in 2003)?

Any doubt that Netanyahu and the lobby want war can be eliminated not just by this week's assassination of an Iranian scientist in the streets of Tehran, the fifth such killing, but also by an AIPAC-drafted resolution that tells the president that the only way he can deal with a nuclear Iran is through war, not diplomacy.

Introduced by Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the resolution states that should Iran develop nuclear weapons, the U.S. response must be a military attack, even nuclear war. Read how Sen. Graham explains it:

Some have suggested that — should economic and diplomatic pressure fail to force Iran to abandon its pursuit of acquiring nuclear weapons — the next best option is for the United States to accept and then contain a nuclear-armed Iran. That would be a catastrophic mistake.

The resolution we intend to introduce will put the Senate on record as opposing containment in the strongest and clearest terms, detailing why the consequences of a nuclear-armed Iran cannot be 'contained' like the threat of the Soviet Union.

When it comes to addressing the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, all options must be on the table — except for one, and that is containment. ... Containment is failure, and failure cannot be an option.

Imagine. The option the lobby-initiated Senate resolution rejects is the very policy that prevented the world from being destroyed during the Cold War. It is also the option the United States applies in the case of every other nation with nuclear weapons, including North Korea.

Of course, if the Lieberman-Graham recommendation had the force of law, it would be unconstitutional. Congress cannot prevent the president from engaging in diplomacy. It certainly cannot force the commander in chief to engage in a war that would likely be nuclear.

Imagine if Congress could have forced President Kennedy to go to war with the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis rather than resolve the crisis through diplomacy. If it had, it is quite possible that none of us would be here.

Nonetheless, this is what the so-called "pro-Israel" lobby is promoting: ruling out diplomacy in favor of war.

It is insane.

Surely the Israeli government (if not the lobby) understands that a military attack on Iran would lead to strikes on Israel engineered by Iran, its allies, and its regional proxies.

Hezbollah alone has thousands of missiles on Israel's northern border that can reach every inch of Israel. Egypt's peace treaty with Israel, which is hanging by a thread anyway, would be unlikely to withstand popular support for some kind of military response. Hamas, on Israel's southern border, would attack. As for Syria, Bashir Assad might attack Israel just to divert attention from the revolution that seems on the verge of sweeping away his regime.

Additionally, the nearly dead peace process would be buried. Israel might survive the war and its aftermath, but it would never achieve peace or security with a Muslim world that would never forgive a "preemptive" attack on a fellow Muslim state.

In short, those who are advocating an attack on Iran by either Israel or the United States are cavalierly trifling with the survival of Israel, a nation that was built by dreamers and pioneers who wanted nothing more than a secure spot on earth where Jews would control their own destiny.

That vision was achieved, but now it is being jeopardized by those who have a different dream: not the security of a Jewish state but its right to regional hegemony.

As Gen. Ephraim Sneh, one of Israel's leading Iran hawks, admits, the rush to war is not about Israel's survival but about its ability to do whatever it wants to do whenever it wants to do it. In Sneh's words, "We cannot afford a nuclear bomb in the hands of our enemies, period. They don't have to use it; the fact that they have it is enough."

Enough to risk the annihilation of Israel?

Fortunately, America's leaders don't think that way. We have lived under a nuclear threat since Stalin's Soviet Union developed atomic weapons in the late 1940s. In 1965, we had to accept the idea that our worst and most irrational enemy, the nation we then called Red China, had the bomb. And now there are North Korea, the craziest nation on earth, and Pakistan, which openly and defiantly colludes with the world's most anti-American terrorists.

We live with that.

We choose containment over national suicide. I have no doubt that virtually all Israelis (and Iranians, too) share our penchant for survival. Something is wrong with the Netanyahu government and its cutouts here. They have forgotten the number one injunction of the Torah: "Therefore, choose life."

In other words, choose diplomacy, not war.

What explains Iran's defiance over the nuclear issue? According to Lee Smith, a neoconservative writer associated with the Weekly Standard and the Hudson Institute, the fact that the fertility rate in Iran has fallen drastically over the past several decades suggests that Iranians hate their lives and have no interest in producing another miserable generation. 

In a ridiculous piece arguing for war with Iran, Smith posits that the same dynamic — what he characterizes as a desire for suicide — that has reduced the Iranian birthrate also makes it likely that Iran will commit national suicide by deploying a nuclear weapon against its adversaries. The reduced fertility rate is evidence of a nation, that he explains, "no longer wishes to live":

It's pretty easy to make a strong case that the Iranian regime really is suicidal. This is the same ruling clique, after all, that pioneered the use of the suicide car-bombing during the course of the Lebanese civil wars from 1975 to 1990. The Iranians tapped their local allies, namely Hezbollah, for martyrdom operations against Israel, the United States, and other Western powers. The Iranians spent their own blood even more recklessly in the war with Iraq when they dispatched wave after human wave of teenage boys to march through minefields, clearing a path with their bodies. Perhaps most tellingly, the plummeting Iranian birthrate-from 6.5 children per woman a generation ago to 1.7 today-suggests that it is not just the regime, but an entire nation, that no longer wishes to live.

While it's true that fertility rates have declined drastically in Iran, the change has absolutely nothing to do with Iranians hating their lives, as Smith believes. Instead, Iranian women have fewer children due to a successful state-backed family planning initiative that includes, among other things, free contraceptives.

Here's Earth Policy Institute's explanation:

Religious leaders have become involved with the crusade for smaller families, citing them as a social responsibility in their weekly sermons. They also have issued fatwas, religious edicts with the strength of court orders, that permit and encourage the use of all types of contraception, including permanent male and female sterilization-a first among Muslim countries. Birth control, including the provision of condoms, pills, and sterilization, is free.

There is an abundance of literature about family planning in Iran. All Smith had to do was look for it. In fact, the available evidence, such as this report by the Population Reference Bureau, suggests that when it comes to family planning, Iran's policies are far more progressive than assumptions about the region would suggest.

The larger point of Smith's piece is to argue that Iran's nuclear program should be taken out militarily because the "Iranian regime really is suicidal." For years, this has been the most common reason given by hawks as to why we must go to war with Iran. If we don't, they warn, Israel and/or Saudi Arabia will be in danger of a nuclear attack. Smith believes low fertility rates are an indication of Iran's irrationality.

Oddly, after trying to make the case that "the Iranian regime really is suicidal," based partly on fertility rates, Smith undercuts his own argument by explaining that the real danger is not that Iran will use the bomb to destroy Tel Aviv or Riyadh. "That's not the main problem," he explains. "The issue is that Tehran will act in precisely the same fashion as it has since 1979—hostile to the United States and its allies—only now on a much more ambitious scale. And the range of responses available to the United States and its allies will be seriously limited."

In other words, his crazy idea that falling Iranian fertility rates are an indication that Iran will use nuclear weapons as a means of committing suicide is just something off the top of his head. His primary concern is that a nuclear Iran would challenge the prevailing geopolitical balance in the Middle East. Because the "range of responses" to that challenge will be limited if Iran does develop nuclear weapons, we need to act now.

And by act now, he means going to war.

I rarely learn anything meaningful from reading The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg. In my opinion, his tight relationship with the Israeli government and its lobby here greatly influences his take on both foreign and domestic events. Although he occasionally deviates from the Israeli line, he not only appears very uncomfortable doing so, he tends to correct course fairly rapidly.

Nonetheless, in a Goldberg column about Iran this week, there was one paragraph that was dead-on and which he will have a hard time taking back (should he be so inclined).

Writing about a piece in the current edition of Foreign Affairs that endorses bombing Iran as a neat and cost-free way to address its nuclear program, Goldberg explains why he thinks the author, Council on Foreign Relations fellow Matthew Kroenig, is wrong. Goldberg says he now believes:

...that advocates of an attack on Iran today would be exchanging a theoretical nightmare — an Iran with nukes — for an actual nightmare, a potentially out-of-control conventional war raging across the Middle East that could cost the lives of thousands Iranians, Israelis, Gulf Arabs and even American servicemen.

Think about that for a minute. Uber-hawk Jeffrey Goldberg is saying that the threat posed by Iran is a "theoretical nightmare" while a war ostensibly to neutralize that threat would present an "actual nightmare."

No critic of U.S. policy toward Iran could say it better or would say it differently. And why would we?

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran has not yet made the decision to go nuclear. Speaking to CBS' Face the Nation last Sunday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta made the same point. Iran is not working on the bomb.

We do know, as Goldberg says, that a "potentially out-of-control conventional war raging across the Middle East" could "cost the lives of thousands of Iranians, Israelis, Gulf Arabs and even American servicemen."

And that makes the decision against war a no-brainer. As Goldberg puts it:

Now that sanctions seem to be biting — in other words, now that Iran's leaders understand the President's seriousness on the issue — the Iranians just might be willing to pay more attention to proposals about an alternative course.

That alternative course would be an attempt "to try one more time to reach out to the Iranian leadership in order to avoid a military confrontation over Tehran's nuclear program."

In short, dialogue.

The United States, to this day, has never attempted a true dialogue with the Tehran. Even under President Obama, all we have done is issue demands about its nuclear program and offer to meet to discuss precisely how they comply with those demands.

That is not dialogue and it's not negotiation; it's an ultimatum.

The one attempt at dialogue (i.e., a discussion that involves give and take by both sides) was initiated by the Iranian government in 2003. That was when it proposed, according to the Washington Post, "a broad dialogue with the United States," in which "everything was on the table — including full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups." In exchange, Iran wanted normalization of relations with the United States.

As is well known, the United States did not respond. In fact, we chastised the Swiss intermediary who delivered the offer for having the temerity to do so.

It was us, not Iran, that spurned a process that would have led to improved relations.

Rather than diplomacy, we've pursued a policy of sanctions, which we escalate every time the war lobby demands them.

But sanctions will not prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons capabilities, nor will "regime change," considering that Iranians across the political spectrum support the Iranian nuclear program. Sanctions' only effect is to please AIPAC, which has made confronting Iran central to its mission. AIPAC writes the sanctions bills, Congress passes them, the president signs them, and the Iranian people (not the regime) bear the brunt of the effects. (The politicians who endorse such measures, however, quite often are well rewarded.)

Goldberg deserves some credit for calling for dialogue. But his seriousness is undermined when he explains that the U.S. offer must be our final one. Although real dialogue is a process, Goldberg's suggestion is to try to talk just "one more time." And then: war.

Nonetheless, Goldberg does not seem to be on the same page as the Israeli government or its neoconservative backers here, who reject any dialogue at all.

Any doubt on that score came today when an Iranian civilian nuclear scientist was assassinated in his car on a Tehran street. This was the fifth Iranian scientist killed in such an attack in the last two years.

The attack today certainly looks like an Israeli hit, especially when top Israelis themselves have warned that "unnatural" events were about to befall Iran. At this point, circumstantial evidence is all we can go on.

That, and the answer to the ancient Latin question: Cui bono? Who benefits? (Check out Commentary, the neocon website that is celebrating the murder.)

In theory, at least, the Netanyahu government benefits. A 32-year-old Iranian nuclear scientist is dead. The opportunities for dialogue or successful multilateral negotiations diminishes. And, if Iran responds in any way, U.S. neocons (including Congress, which will recite its AIPAC talking points) will intensify calls for war.

On the other hand, actions like these against civilians in one country endanger civilians in others. Imagine how the United States or Israel would react if Iran or even Canada started bumping off nuclear scientists (or anyone else) in Washington.

Innocents in Israel, the U.S., Europe or elsewhere will pay a price for this criminal act of colossal stupidity. And from a security standpoint, such clear acts of aggression can only convince the mullahs that they need to develop a nuclear deterrent.

Here is Jeff Goldberg again in a column subsequent to the one I already cited:

If I were a member of the Iranian regime (and I'm not), I would take this assassination program to mean that the West is entirely uninterested in any form of negotiation (not that I, the regime official, has ever been much interested in dialogue with the West) and that I should double-down and cross the nuclear threshold as fast as humanly possible. Once I do that, I'm North Korea, or Pakistan: An untouchable country.

In short, for those hell-bent on getting the United States engaged in a war that even Jeff Goldberg views as a "nightmare" for both the United States and Israel, this is a very good day indeed.

Congratulations. Or something like that.