I always need to read between the lines of any David Ignatius column to see whose agenda he’s pushing. He usually operates as a tool of our intelligence community, and what he says is less important than the interests he’s advancing. I have to say that I am quite relieved to see that the story line Ignatius is pushing this morning is that the nuclear talks with Iran are well-designed, working well, and likely to succeed in a peaceful and mutually acceptable settlement.
I don’t really care what Ignatius thinks about the talks, but it’s a good sign that his “masters” want to send the message that our government is pleased with the progress so far. It’s not a familiar message. Normally, what we hear is bellicose, alarmist, and apocalyptic.
It hasn’t been quite clear whether our government is pursuing a policy of regime change in Iran or a policy that would prevent a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. If the talks are designed to fail, providing a rationale for more aggressive anti-regime efforts, we’d expect to see Ignatius talking about the bad faith negotiating of the Iranians. But he’s doing the opposite. That gives me more confidence that we’re serious about avoiding war and that we really want the talks to succeed.
FWIW, ET blogger and former Commodities Exchange Director Chris Cook has contacts in Iran and is convinced a deal is in the works – partly because of changes in the political landscape within Iran. He is also convinced that oil prices are about to crash because the market has been hugely over-hyped by bubble creating hedge fund and Goldmann Sachs type “investors” who have inflated the price of oil way beyond what the real economy/worl market can bear.
If he is correct, expect a de-escaltion of tensions around the Straits of Hormuz, an alleviation of sanctions, a rapid decline in Oil prices, and improvement in the general economic outlook, and, if all this happens in time, a significant boost for Obama’s re-election prospects.
Right. We shouldn’t underestimate the political aspect of all of this. Obviously military action by Israel against Iran and the concurrent impact on the price of oil, may be causing Obama to lose sleep lately.
Which is why the most feared October surprise is precisely a pre-emptive Israeli attack on Iran (possibly even using nuclear weapons) to demolish Iran’s underground nuclear facilities.
How many years now has the “October surprise” been speculated?
I think Iran learned rather well after Israel’s AF took out Iraq’a Osirak reactor way back in 1981, I believe.
Correct, most (all?) of Iran’s facilities are in hardened (thick, reinforced concrete) located underground- 100 feet? not sure anyone in the west knows. Google it and you’ll see Israel has bunker busiting bombs, and has been looking at purchasing larger ones from the U.S.
Thus I’m not sure the word “demolish” is accurate; destroying these undergound facilities is not going to be easy- if it were, I think Israel would have already done so.
Regardless, I don’t think anything will happen until after our election in Nov.
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From your article Israel’s attack rather sooner than later and Superpole’s comment …
Netanyahu commented angrily about the delay in talks until May 23, however when all eyes are focused on Iran, the spread of West Bank illegal settlements does continue. I’m not certain he wants to go alone, because Israel doesn’t have the means to deliver the largest bunker-busters (GBU-57A) needed for the buried nuclear facilities.
The US military and intelligence community have done its best to explain the difference between Israael’s fantasy and the hard reality.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."One can only hope that the US has made it clear to Israel that it will be on its own and pay a heavy price for any bombing attack on Iran. That seems like the logical event behind this apparent change in tone.
Pretty much, Frank, and we saw Nick Butler in the FT today – former head of strategy at BP when they and Goldman were cranking up the first oil bubble to 2008 – saying the oil market is in a bubble which is about to deflate.
The US strategy is a pretty smart one on the face of it. They have cut a deal with Iran along the lines given by Ignatius, and we’ll see that roll out judiciously with plenty of face-saving in the next couple of months.
The Saudis and J M Morgan Chase – who have been engaged for the last three years in the greatest market manipulation the world has ever seen (briefly interrupted by Libya) – will attempt to manage the price down as the Iran risk premium disappears.
It’s a Win/Win for Obama: Iran is semi-sorted, and gasoline goes below the $2.50/gallon level which the opposition claimed (barking mad) that they could achieve.
What could go wrong?
Well, the Chinese and Indians might realise that they’ve been legged over without the vaseline for the last three years and stop buying oil at inflated prices for inventory.
We would then see oil prices below $60/bbl – probably $45 – almost overnight, before order is restored by OPEC cuts. Such a fall – which is a non-negligible risk (the tin market collapsed overnight in 1985 from $8000/tonne to $4000/tonne) – would wipe out speculators, and quite probably their brokers and even the clearing houses, which are a lot more exposed to fat-tail risks than people realise.
The US has been pursuing a policy of eliminating Iran as an unpredictable regional threat. If that can occur through diplomacy alone, the US will likely take it (as long as verification is possible and good faith demonstrated). The US is also interested in opening up the political processes of the regime to more popular control and to normalizing relations after 33 years of having no direct diplomatic contact. It is not clear whether normalization of relations is to make diplomacy easier, open trade relationships, permit the stationing of a CIA station, or laying the groundwork for regime change.
A US diplomatic win for Hillary Clinton before Obama’s re-election would to have talked Iran into transparency about its civilian nuclear energy program and normalize diplomatic relations—something that was almost accomplished before the Bush administration and Bush’s Axis of Evil speech scuttled it.
And then there’s the issue of transparency for Israel’s nuclear program and Israel’s signature on the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
You’d sooner see America return the southwest to Mexico…
Whatever one thinks about Obama, he is rational and pragmatic, and surrounded by his kind. That’s a good thing in this case, because he has to know that “regime change” as applied to Iran is all risk and almost no gain. An attack will obviously strengthen the theocracy, and even if the leadership is taken down, will not by any reasonable scenario replace Islamist power with democratic or even pro-Western forces. This is the situation where Obama’s distance protects us from ideological hubris of the kind favored by too many on the right and the left.
O/T
Good to see Vikram Pandit get slapped down.
very VERY good to see that!
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His take on the Iramian issue a few weeks ago …
Personally I prefer to read and analyze the Israeli papers Jerusalem Post and Haaretz on the status of the relationship between Israel and the US, or on personal terms between Netanyahu and Obama. Reading between the lines, Barack Obama is holding a sledge hammer above Bibi’s head not to go alone to attack Iran. I’ve been writing about it since Obama’s about face in his UN speech last September.
Obama/Biden getting tough on Netanyahu after 2010 …
Biden himself was infuriated and had an angry exchange with Netanyahu, according to the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth. “This is starting to get dangerous for us,” Biden told Netanyahu. “What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace,” he said, linking negative sentiments in the region against the U.S. to Israeli policies.
This enraged the Israelis, who categorically rejected any suggestion that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict fueled anti-American terrorism. Netanyahu’s brother-in-law Hagai Ben-Artzi even went so far as to accuse Obama on Israeli radio of being an anti-Semite. “When there is an anti-Semitic president in the United States, it is a test for us and we have to say: we will not concede,” he said. “We are a nation dating back 4,000 years, and you in a year or two will be long forgotten. Who will remember you? But Jerusalem will dwell on forever.”
In the meantime, you can say Obama and Netanyahu needed to “understand” one another. The military cooperation has never been better and Congress recently agreed to more funding of the Iron Dome. On the Syrian issue, the Obama administration followed a policy with un unattainable goal of regime change. This has been a major distraction.
Just recently: Bullish Quotes From Israel on Iran Nuclear Talks.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I prefer to wait for final language to be signed, rather than wading through the tea leaves, personally.
I was told that the Leap Day “agreement” was the biggest fucking deal in the history of ever and weren’t the US negotiators so very clever and amazing for creating such a bold new direction in our relations with North Korea?
Cut to six weeks later: the Koreans dumped another one of their shitty, no-count rockets into the drink and now might as well conduct another fission test to save face. American officials leaking word to American news outlets have a completely understandable tendency to underestimate the size of their “ask” and the willingness of foreign opponents to accept it.
All Ignatius can really tell you is that there will be no war with Iran as long as Obama is president. I feel like that was a fairly known quantity without his column(s).
there will be no war with Iran as long as Obama is president. I feel like that was a fairly known quantity without his column(s).
I’ve considered that obvious, too, but there are a whole lot of people – and least by internet standards – writing quite confidently about the nuclear-proliferation issue being a cover story for the administration’s efforts to start a regime change war.
We’re always a Friedman Unit away from bombing Iran, until we don’t, and then we’re just another Friedman Unit away, in the minds of some.
A Friedman Unit. Nice. I feel like I should have come across this term before, but I haven’t. I am completely amused.
As something of an aside, not only are you right but this is precisely the guiding principle of Cold War “Kremlinology” types. The only problem with “Kremlinology” is that its practitioners didn’t realize it applied equally to the United States. It’s very simply how one must read the news if one wishes to understand it.
Exactly. I feel a similar way about Sy Hersh.
But we are at war with Iran, right?
Oh, not right.
And Sy Hersh was predicting it would happen when? One or two years ago?
I’m not knocking him, his sources probably did tell him that. But it’s people telling him stuff that they want out there.
He’s been predicting war with Iran within a year for the last seven years, at least.
I share his sympathies generally but he blew a lot of credibility with me.
Ignatius IS CIA.
I disagree.
When the Bush administration was going way beyond what the CIA was saying about Iraqi WMDs, and misrepresenting what the CIA had reported, Ignatius was right there with the Bushies.
Ignatius is a pay phone, and there are a lot of different “intelligence community” types who have the quarters.
(You can use the Google to find out what a pay phone is, if you’re one of those kids with the e-phones and the goddamn hair.)
Keep in my the latest is that Israel is going for it this summer in June just as the presidential season is about to really begin.