A Little Friday Optimism

Iran Bomb Not Imminent

In his book on President Obama's first year in office, Jonathan Alter wrote that the President felt that he was "jammed by the Pentagon" to deepen the US involvement in Afghanistan.  In other words, the military used leaks to sympathetic media, ostensibly predicting what the President intended to do and why, to limit his options.

It worked.  Obama said, "I can neither confirm nor deny that I was jammed by the Pentagon," which, of course, means he was.  And he didn't like it.

The last few weeks have seen an intense push by the Israeli right and their neocon enablers here to essentially "jam" President Obama into either attacking Iran or letting Israel do it. 

The best example of this came from Jeffrey Goldberg who, in an Atlantic cover story earlier this month, predicted that an Iranian nuclear bomb was probably imminent, and so was an Israeli attack (within the next twelve months) to prevent it.

The Goldberg piece — which openly relied on Binyamin Netanyahu as a source — was viewed in Washington as an effort to foreclose the President's options.  If sanctions failed (and the assumption in the piece was that they would), and if Iran was on the brink of a bomb, and if the United States did not itself attack Iran, Israel would have to do the job.  And Obama would have to like it.

That's the old Jerusalem Jam and Obama yesterday gave his response: "Hell no," although not in those exact words.

The White House issued a statement saying that Iran's nuclear program has slowed down due to unforeseen problems and that it would take at least a year for Iran to be in a position to "break out" and develop a bomb. 

According to the New York Times, the administration believes their new assessment "has dimmed the prospect that Israel would preemptively strike against the country's nuclear facilities within the next year, as Israeli officials have suggested in thinly veiled threats."

In other words, Israel should chill out.

Meanwhile, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday that Iran is ready for immediate talks over his nation's nuclear program, and specifically over a nuclear swap deal under which Iran gives up its nuclear enrichment capacity in exchange for a steady supply of nuclear fuel (fuel incapable of being used for a weapon) for its research reactor.

"We promise to stop enriching uranium to 20 percent if fuel supply is ensured," Ahmadinejad said. "We have the right to enrich uranium.  Iran has never provoked a war nor craved for nuclear bombs."

Is he telling the truth? Who knows? But the United States should find out.  If we can negotiate an end to the Iran nuclear issue, we have to.  The "bomb Iran" option has to be taken off the table.

Direct Negotiations in September!

Israelis and Palestinians will return to direct negotiations in September after 20 months.  The Obama administration deserves all the credit for this.  The Israelis and the Palestinians have one thing in common: neither moves toward any form of reconciliation except under US pressure.  Obama clearly applied it.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has said all along that he wants direct negotiations yet he always continues to expand settlements.  Obviously, that's a nonstarter (how can Palestinians negotiate while their land is being gobbled up?) so the administration must have achieved some kind of commitment on settlements.

Or maybe not.  And, if not, the negotiations won't amount to anything.

I prefer to be optimistic.  I have to believe that the President got some solid commitments from both sides or else he would not be taking the risk of convening negotiations, in Washington no less.

If he digs in, and actually plays the role of honest broker (and not "Israel's lawyer," in former US negotiator Aaron Miller's words) this President can achieve a solution to a conflict that fuels terrorism, endangers all US interests in the Middle East, produces untold suffering in the occupied areas, and puts the survival of the State of Israel at risk.  The stakes could not be higher.

Mosque Madness

The Washington Post reports today that a mosque has been operating in the Pentagon since November 2002, and no one has batted an eye.

Petula Dvorak writes that the Pentagon mosque "is truly on sacred ground," not "two blocks away" and "out of sight of the original crash site" like the one in New York:

This prayer room is a mere 30 steps from the place where terrorists crashed the nose cone of American Airlines Flight 77 through the wall and killed Pentagon secretaries and military officers, soccer moms and Little League dads in a screaming 'I-have-control-of-this-plane-and-I'm-going-to-die-in-the-name-of-Allah' instant.

In this Pentagon chapel, Muslims can unroll their prayer mats once a day and give praise to Allah. On Fridays, they bring in an imam to conduct a service.

Cue the outrage:

"How dare they?"

"This is an insult to patriotic Americans everywhere, and especially to the families of those who died that day and the good men and women who are risking their lives for their country in the fight against terrorism!"

"Let's stop this now!"

Oh wait, there was no outrage. No hyperventilating by cable news anchors. No outpouring of hateful rhetoric on blogs and Web sites.

"Nope, never heard a word about it," folks in the Pentagon chaplain's office told me Thursday after we visited the crash site memorial and the chapel next to it. "No one has had a problem with it."....

The families, friends and colleagues of those who died or were injured in the 2001 terrorist attack have never complained to the Pentagon about the inclusion of Muslim services, officials said....

In the Pentagon on Thursday, we walked past a CVS, a florist, a jeweler and a handbag store on our way to the chapel. It's a little city in there, and as Pentagon citizens do their errands, about 300 to 400 of them duck into that chapel each week for whatever worship suits them.

As we were talking about the 3,500 Muslim service members, one of the chaplains told me that there are plenty of U.S. military facilities across the globe that have spaces dedicated to Muslim services, not just interfaith chapels. "On bases in Iraq and so forth, we have mosques," he said. "No one has ever raised any concern about that."

And here's my question: Why should they?

One more note on the utterly phony, and utterly un-American, mosque brouhaha.  Here is a piece I published on Huffington Post yesterday.  I'm proud that it was featured on page one.