WASHINGTON –  The Senate Intelligence Committees release of its long-awaited report on the torture by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of detainees in the so-called “war on terror” does not go far enough, according to major U.S. human rights groups.

While welcoming the report’s release, the subject of months of intensive negotiations and sometimes furious negotiations between the Senate Committee’s majority and both the CIA and the administration of President Barack Obama, the groups said additional steps were needed to ensure that U.S. officials never again engage in the kind of torture detailed in the report.

“This should be the beginning of a process, not the end,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). “The report should shock President Obama and Congress into action, to make sure that torture and cruelty are never used again.”

He called, among other steps, for the appointment of a special prosecutor to hold the “architects and perpetrators” of what the George W. Bush administration called “enhanced interrogation techniques” (EITs) accountable and for Congress to assert its control over the CIA, “which in this report sounds more like a rogue paramilitary group than the intelligence gathering agency that it’s supposed to be.”

He was joined by London-based Amnesty International which noted that the declassified information provided in the report constituted “a reminder to the world of the utter failure of the USA to end the impunity enjoyed by those who authorized and used torture and other ill-treatment.

“This is a wake-up call to the USA; they must disclose the full truth about the human rights violations, hold perpetrators accountable and ensure justice for the victims,” said Amnesty’s Latin American director, Erika Guevara.

The Senate Committee’s report, actually a 524-page, partially-redacted summary of a still-classified 6,300-page report on the treatment of at least 119 terrorist suspects detained in secret locations overseas, accused the CIA not only of engaging in torture that was “brutal and far worse” than has previously been reported, but also of regularly misleading the White House and Congress both about what it was doing and the purported value of the intelligence it derived from those practices.

Water-boarding, for example, was used against detainees more often and in more of the CIA’s “black sites” than previously known; sleep deprivation was used for up to a week at a time against some suspects; others received “rectal feeding” or “hydration’; and still others were forced to stand on broken feet or legs.

In at least one case, a detainee was frozen to death; in the case of Abu Zubayda, an alleged “high-value” Al-Qaeda detainee who was subject to dozens of water-boardings, the treatment was so brutal, several CIA officers asked to be transferred if it did not stop.

While the CIA officers and former Bush administration officials, notably former Vice President Dick Cheney, have long insisted that key information–including intelligence that eventually led to the killing of Osama bin Laden–was obtained from EITs, the report concluded that these techniques were ineffective.

Seven of 39 detainees who were subject to the most aggressive EITs provided no intelligence at all, while information obtained from the others preceded the harsh treatment, according to the report, which relied on the CIA’s own cables and reports.

In some cases, detainees subjected to EITs gave misinformation about “terrorist threats” which did not actually exist, the report found. Of the 119 known detainees subject to EITs, at least 26 should never have been held, it said.

Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, who fought hard for months to release the report over the CIA’s fierce objections, wrote in its Forward that, in the aftermath of the 9/11 Al- Qaeda attacks, “she could understand the CIA’s impulse to consider the use of every possible tool to gather intelligence and remove terrorists from the battlefield, and CIA was encouraged by political leaders and the public to do whatever it could to prevent another attack.”

“Nevertheless, such pressure, fear and expectation of further terrorist plots do not justify, temper or excuse improper actions taken by individuals or organizations in the name of national security,” according to Sen. Feinstein.

For his part, CIA director John Brennan, a career CIA officer appointed by Mr. Obama whose role in the Bush administration’s detention program remains cloudy, “acknowledge(d) that the detention and interrogation program had shortcomings and that the Agency made mistakes.”

“The most serious problems occurred early on and stemmed from the fact that the Agency was unprepared and lacked the core competencies required to carry out an unprecedented, worldwide program of detaining and interrogating suspected al-Qa’ida and affiliated terrorists.”

But he also defended the EITs, insisting that “interrogations of detainees on whom EITs were used did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives.” A fact sheet released by the CIA claimed, as an example, that one detainee, after undergoing EITs, identified Mr. Bin Laden’s courier, which subsequently led the CIA to the Al-Qaeda chief’s location.

With several notable exceptions, Republicans also defended the CIA and the Bush administration’s orders to permit EITs. Indeed, the Intelligence Committee’s Republican members released a minority report that noted that the majority of staff had not interviewed any CIA officers directly involved in the program.

“There is no reason whatsoever for this report to ever be published,” said the committee’s ranking Republican, Sen. Saxby Chambliss. “This is purely a partisan tactic” which he said was designed to attack the Bush administration. Republicans also warned that the report’s release would endanger U.S. service personnel and citizens abroad by fueling anti-American sentiment, especially in the Muslim world.

But Sen. John McCain, who was himself tortured as a prisoner of war in the Vietnam war, defended the report, calling it “a thorough and thoughtful study of practices that I believe not only failed their purpose … but actually damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world.”

Mr. McCain has championed efforts to pass legislation outlawing torture, particularly because Mr. Obama’s 2009 executive orders prohibiting such practices could be reversed by a future president.

Passage of such a law–whose prospects appear virtually nil in light of Republican control of both houses of Congress for the next two years–is one of the demands, along with release of the full report, of most human-rights groups here.

“The Obama administration and Congress should work together to build a durable consensus against torture by pursuing legislation that demonstrates bipartisan unity and fidelity to our ideals,” said Elisa Massimino, director of Human Rights First.

Many groups, however, want Mr. Obama to go further by prosecuting those responsible for the EIT program, a step that his administration made clear from the outset it was loathe to do.

“We renew our demand for accountability for those individuals responsible for the CIA torture program,” said Baher Azmy, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has represented a number of detainees at Guantanamo, including Abu Zubaydah, in U.S. courts. “They should be prosecuted in U.S. courts; and, if our government continues to refuse to hold them accountable, they must be pursued internationally under principles of universal jurisdiction.”

“The report shows the repeated claims that harsh measures were needed to protect Americans are utter fiction,” according to Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth. “Unless this important truth-telling process leads to prosecution of the officials responsible, torture will remain a ‘policy option’ for future presidents.”

Noting that health professionals, including doctors and psychologists also played a role in the EITs, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) also called for legal accountability. “For more than a decade, the U.S. government has been lying about its use of torture,” said Donna McKay, PHR’s executive director.

“The report confirms that health professionals used their skills to break the minds and bodies of detainees. Their actions destroyed trust in clinicians, undermined the integrity of their professions, and damaged the United States’ human rights record, which can only be corrected through accountability,” she said. (IPS)

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WASHINGTON – A federal jury here recently convicted one former Blackwater contractor of murder and three of his colleagues of voluntary manslaughter in the deadly shootings of 14 unarmed civilians killed in Baghdad’s Nisour Square seven years ago.

The judge in the case ordered the men detained pending sentencing.

The massacre, which resulted in a wave of popular anger in Iraq against the United States, and especially the army of private security contractors which it employed there, contributed heavily to the Iraqi government’s later refusal to sign an agreement with Washington to extend the U.S. military presence there.

It also sealed the reputation of Blackwater, a “private military” firm headed by Erik Prince, a right-wing former Navy Seal, as a trigger-happy mercenary outfit whose recklessness and insensitivity to local populations jeopardized Washington’s interests in conflict situations.

After the incident, the Iraqi government banned the company, which had a one-billion-dollar contract at the time to protect U.S. diplomats. Iraq’s parliament subsequently enacted laws making foreign contractors working in the country subject to Iraqi legal jurisdiction for criminal acts they committed.

It was Baghdad’s insistence in 2011 that such a condition also apply to all U.S. military forces that scotched a proposed Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that would have permitted Washington to maintain thousands U.S. troops in Iraq after the Dec. 31, 2011 deadline for their final withdrawal.

“The verdict is a resounding affirmation of the commitment of the American people to the rule of law, even in times of war,” said Ronald Machen, the U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case, after the verdicts were announced Oct. 23.

“Seven years ago, these Blackwater contractors unleashed powerful sniper fire, machine guns and grenade launchers on innocent men, women and children. Today, they were held accountable for that outrageous attack and its devastating consequences for so many Iraqi families,” he said in a statement.

While praising the verdicts, some observers said that Blackwater itself should have been on trial. “(H)olding individuals responsible is not enough,” noted Baher Azmy, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represented Iraqi victims of the killings in a human-rights case against Blackwater that settled in 2010.

“Private military contractors … have engaged in a variety of war crimes and atrocities during the [2003 Iraq] invasion and occupation while reaping billions of dollars in profits from the war. To this day, the U.S. government continues to award Blackwater and its successor entities millions of dollars each year in contracts, essentially rewarding war crimes,” he said.

The verdicts, which confirmed initial findings by an FBI investigation carried out within two months of the massacre, are likely to be appealed to a higher court by the defendants’ attorneys who contend that the convoy they were leading had come under attack and that their clients were acting in self-defense at the time.

They are also likely to challenge the verdicts on the grounds that key evidence presented to the jury consisted of initial statements of what took place that were effectively “coerced” by interrogators who allegedly assured them that what they said would not be used in court. That issue has been bounced between courts since the Justice Department filed the case in 2010.

Altogether, 17 Iraqi civilians, including two boys aged nine and 11, were killed and 20 more injured when, on Sept. 16, 2007, a State Department convoy entered Baghdad’s busy Nisour Square with the armored Blackwater vehicle in the lead.

While defendants and Blackwater itself insisted that the convoy came under attack, the FBI and prosecution contended there was no evidence to sustain such a conclusion.

According to the latter, the unit’s sniper, Nicholas Slatten, opened fire on a car which, according to the defense, had approached the Blackwater vehicle in a suspicious manner. Mr. Slatten’s shots, which killed the car’s driver, a medical student, triggered chaos throughout the circle.

In addition to Mr. Slatten, who was convicted of first-degree murder, a total of six members of the Blackwater team fired their weapons as they moved through the circle, according to the prosecution.

One team member, Jeremy Ridgeway, pleaded guilty to one count of voluntary manslaughter in 2008 and served as a prosecution witness in the case. Charges against another defendant were dropped shortly afterwards. Several other team members also testified against the defendants.

Aside from Mr. Slatten’s conviction, three other guards were found guilty of voluntary manslaughter, as well as various weapons offences.

The Justice Department had charged that they “unlawfully and intentionally, upon a sudden quarrel and heat of passion, did commit voluntary manslaughter.”

If sustained, Mr. Slatten’s murder conviction requires a sentence of life imprisonment. Each count of voluntary manslaughter–and each of the other three defendants were convicted of multiple counts–can carry a prison sentence of up to 15 years.

The trial itself began earlier this summer and lasted two months. In addition to the Blackwater guards who testified for the prosecution, the Justice Department brought 30 Iraqi witnesses, including surviving family members who witnessed or were injured in the incident, to testify. Despite their dramatic and often wrenching accounts, the trial received relatively little media attention.

The verdicts were hailed by Paul Dickinson, an attorney who represented six of the families–including the nine-year-old victim, Ali Kinani, whose father was the first witness to testify for the prosecution in the current case–whose members were killed or injured in the massacre in a separate civil lawsuit filed against Blackwater in North Carolina in 2009. That case settled with an undisclosed compensation agreement in 2012.

“I am confident that my clients are pleased with today’s verdict, knowing that the men they alleged killed their family members have been brought to justice and held criminally accountable for their actions,” he told IPS in an e-mail. “While a criminal conviction can never fully satisfy a family that lost a loved one, it does provide some closure for my clients.”

The verdict, he said, was “significant because it shows that government contractors who commit crimes abroad can be prosecuted in U.S. courts for their criminal actions.”

Pratap Chatterjee, an investigative reporter who has focused on the operations of U.S. military contractors, including Blackwater, in Iraq and Afghanistan, agreed with that assessment, but, echoing Center for Constitutional Right’s Army, stressed that it was “only one step of many that need to be taken in bringing justice to Iraq.”

“Many similar incidents have neither been investigated nor anyone prosecuted,” Mr. Chatterjee, who currently heads California-based Corpwatch, told IPS. “To this day, the private companies and their executives who turned Baghdad into a free-fire zone have yet to be charged.”

Earlier this summer, the New York Times reported that the State Department had initiated an investigation of Blackwater’s operations in Iraq just before the Nisour incident but had abandoned it after Blackwater’s top manager there issued an apparent death threat. According to a State Department memo of the conversation, the Blackwater official said “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq.” (IPS)

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WASHINGTON (IPS) – U.S. combat troops may be deployed against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) if the strategy announced by President Barack Obama last week fails to make substantial progress against the radical Sunni group, Washington’s top military officer warned.

The statement by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, delivered during testimony before a key Congressional committee, suggested for the first time that the administration may substantially broaden military operations in Iraq beyond air strikes and advising Iraqi and Kurdish forces far from the front lines.

“If we reach the point where I believe our advisers should accompany Iraqi troops on attacks against specific targets, I will recommend that to the president,” Dempsey told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“At this point, his [Obama’s] stated policy is we will not have U.S. ground forces in direct combat,” he said. “But he has told me as well to come back to him on a case-by-case basis.”

Dempsey’s remarks, which came as Congress appeared poised to approve a pending 500-million-dollar request to train and equip Syrian rebels committed to fighting ISIS, as well as the government of President Bashar al-Assad, appeared certain to fuel doubts about Obama’s plans, particularly given his promise last week that U.S. forces “will not have a combat mission.”

“We will not get dragged into another ground war in Iraq,” he declared in last week’s nationally televised speech in which he also pledged to build an international coalition, including NATO and key regional and Sunni-led Arab states, to fight ISIS forces in both Iraq and Syria.

While Secretary of State John Kerry has since gathered public endorsements for the administration’s strategy to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS, notably at a meeting of Arab states in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, last week and from a larger group of nations in Paris Sunday, scepticism over the strength and effectiveness of such a coalition appears to have deepened.

Although Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and France appear committed to provide some air support to anti-ISIS operations, several key allies, including Britain, have remained non-committal about their willingness to help with military operations.

Turkey, whose army is the largest and most potent in the region and whose porous borders with ISIS-controlled regions in eastern Syria have been fully exploited by the group, has been particularly disappointing to officials here.

Despite repeated appeals, for example, Ankara has reportedly refused to permit U.S. military aircraft to use its strategically located Incirlik air base for carrying out anything but humanitarian missions in or over Iraq, insisting that any direct involvement in the campaign against ISIS would jeopardise the lives of dozens of Turkish diplomats seized by the group at Ankara’s consulate in Aleppo earlier this year.

Critics of Washington’s strategy are also concerned that Kerry may have reduced the chances for co-operation with another potentially key anti-ISIS ally — Iran — which he explicitly excluded from participation in any international coalition due to its support for Assad and its alleged status as a “state sponsor of terror”.

While Kerry Monday said Washington remained open to “communicating” with Tehran – which, along among the regional powers, has provided arms and advisers to both Kurdish and Iraqi forces – about its efforts against ISIS, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who earlier this month reportedly authorised limited co-operation over ISIS, ridiculed the notion, insisting that it was Iran who had rebuffed Washington.

But Kerry’s exclusion of Iran from the anti-ISIS coalition, according to experts here, was motivated primarily by threats by Saudi Arabia and the UAE to drop out if Tehran were included — a reflection not only of the ongoing Sunni-Shi’a conflict in the region, especially in the Syrian civil war, but also of the difficulty Washington faces in persuading governments with widely differing interests to unite behind a common cause.

“Leaving Iran out of the collective effort to contain and eventually destroy ISIS, especially after what happened in Amerli [a town whose siege by ISIS was eventually broken by a combination of U.S. airpower and Iranian-backed militias and Iraqi troops], defies logic and sanity and cannot be explained away by anyone in Iran,” noted Farideh Farhi, an Iran specialist at the University of Hawaii.

“It suggests to many [in Iran] that the fear of legitimising Iran’s role in regional security continues to be a driving force in U.S. foreign policy,” she told IPS in an email exchange.

Indeed, the success of Obama’s strategy may well depend less on U.S. military power than on his ability to reconcile and reassure key regional actors, including Iran.

“To have any hope of success, America’s do-it-yourself approach needs to be replaced with an effort to facilitate co-operation between the region’s great Muslim powers,” according to Amb. Chas Freeman (ret.), who served as Washington’s chief envoy to Riyadh during the first Gulf War.

“… As long as Saudi Arabia and Iran do not make common cause, any coalition to combat Islamist fanatics will be half-hearted at best and unrooted in the region at worst,” he told IPS.

Despite these difficult diplomatic challenges faced by Obama, most of the scepticism here revolves around his military strategy, particularly its reliance on air power and the absence of effective ground forces that can take and hold territory, especially in predominantly Sunni areas of both western and north-central Iraq and eastern Syria.

While U.S. officials believe that Kurdish peshmerga forces and the Iraqi army — with Iranian-backed Shi’a militias — can, with U.S. and allied air support, roll back most of ISIS’s more-recent gains in Iraq, it will take far more time to wrest control of areas, including cities like Fallujah and Ramadi, which the group has effectively governed for months.

Obama announced last week that he was sending nearly 500 more military personnel to Iraq, bringing the total U.S. presence there to around 1,600 troops, most of whom are to serve as trainers and advisers both for the peshmerga and the Iraqi army.

According to Dempsey, however, these troops have not yet been authorised to accompany local forces into combat or even to act as spotters for U.S. aircraft.

As for Syria, Washington plans to train and equip some 5,000 members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), a fractious coalition of “moderate” fighters who have been increasingly squeezed and marginalised by both pro-government forces and ISIS and who have often allied themselves with other Islamist groups, including Jabhat al-Nusra, an Al Qaeda affiliate.

It will take at least eight months, however, before that force can take the field, according to Dempsey and Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel. Even then, they said, such a force will be unable “to turn the tide” of battle. Dempsey’s said he hoped that Sunni-led Arab countries would provide special operations forces to support the FSA, although none has yet indicated a willingness to do so.

Hawks, such as Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, have argued that these plans are insufficient to destroy ISIS in either country.

Some neo-conservative defence analysts, such as Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations and Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, have called for as many as 25,000 U.S. ground troops, including thousands of Special Forces units to work with “moderate” Sunni forces, to be deployed to both countries in order to prevail. They have also warned against any co-operation with either Iran or Assad in the fight against ISIS.

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com. He can be contacted at ipsnoram@ips.org

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WASHINGTON (IPS)–The June stunning campaign by Sunni insurgents led by the radical Islamic State of Syria and the Levant (ISIL) against the mainly Shi’a government of Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki is stoking a growing debate here about the hierarchy of threats facing the United States in the Middle East and beyond.

On one side, many foreign policy “realists” have argued that the greatest threat is precisely the kind of violent Sunni jihadism associated with Al-Qaeda, whose prominence, however, now appears to have been eclipsed by the even more violent ISIL.

Mr. Obama, who has vowed to keep the U.S. out of a regional Sunni-Shi’a civil war, is eager to reassure allies that he has no intention of partnering with Iran to save Mr. Maliki.

In their view, Washington should be ready, if not eager, to cooperate with Iran, which, like the U.S., has rushed military advisers, weapons, and even drone aircraft to Baghdad, in order to protect the Iraqi government and help organize a counter-offensive to regain lost territory.

Some voices in this camp even favor working with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, whose air force reportedly bombed ISIL positions inside Iraq, to help repel the threat.

“There’s only one strategy with a decent chance of winning: forge a military and political coalition with the power to stifle the jihadis in both Iraq and Syria,” according to the former president of the influential Council on Foreign Relations, Leslie Gelb.

“This means partnering with Iran, Russia, and President Assad of Syria. This would be a very tricky arrangement among unfriendly and non-trusting partners, but the overriding point is that they all have common interests,” he wrote in The Daily Beast.

On the other side, pro-Israel neo-conservatives and aggressive nationalists, who maintain their hold–if increasingly shakily–on the Republican Party, vehemently oppose any such cooperation, insisting that Tehran poses Washington’s greatest strategic threat, especially if it succeeds in what they depict as its determination to obtain nuclear weapons.

For them, talk of any cooperation with either Syria or Iran, which they accuse of having supported Al-Qaeda and other Sunni jihadist groups in the past, is anathema.

“(W)e should not aid our stronger adversary power against our weaker adversary power in the struggle underway in Iraq,” according to George W. Bush’s ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, now with the American Enterprise Institute.

“U.S. strategy must rather be to prevent Tehran from re-establishing its scimitar of power stretching from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon,” he wrote for FoxNews in an op-ed that called for renewed U.S. efforts to overthrow “the ayatollahs.”

The hawks have instead urged, among other things, Washington to deploy special operations forces and airpower to attack ISIL in both Iraq and Syria while substantially boosting military aid to “moderate” rebel factions fighting to oust Mr. Assad.

Yet a third camp argues that the current fixation on ISIL–not to say, the 13-year-old pre-occupation with the Middle East more generally–is overdrawn and misplaced and that Washington needs to engage a serious threat re-assessment and prioritize accordingly.

Noting disappointingly that Mr. Obama himself had identified “terrorism” as the greatest threat to the U.S. in a major foreign policy speech in May, political theorist Francis Fukuyama cited Russia’s recent annexation of Crimea and increased tensions over maritime claims between China and its U.S.-allied neighbors as greater causes for concern.

“He said virtually nothing about long-term responses to the two other big challenges to world order: Russia and China,” Mr. Fukuyama wrote in a Financial Times column entitled “ISIS risks distracting us from more menacing foes.”

In the face of ISIL’s advance, the administration appears to lean toward the “realist” camp, but, for a variety of reasons feels constrained in moving more decisively in its direction.

Indeed, at the outset of the crisis, both Mr. Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry, made clear that they were open to at least consulting, if not cooperating with Tehran in dealing with the ISIL threat.

But the sudden emergence of a possible de facto U.S.-Iranian partnership propelled its many foes into action.

These included not only neo-conservatives and other anti-Iran hawks, including the powerful Israel lobby here, but also Washington’s traditional regional allies, including Israel itself, as well as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

They have long feared a return to the pre-1979 era when Washington recognized Tehran as the Gulf’s pre-eminent power and, in any case, have repeatedly ignored U.S. appeals in the past to reconcile themselves to a new Iraq in which the majority Shi’a community will no longer accept Sunni predominance.

“Some [U.S. allies] worry that the U.S. is seeking a new alliance with Iran to supplant its old alliance system in the region,” wrote Michael Singh, a former Bush Middle East aide now with the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near Policy, on the same day of the Vienna meeting.

“As misplaced as these worries may be, an American embrace of an Iranian security role in Iraq–or even bilateral talks with Iran on regional security that exclude other stakeholders–will only exacerbate them,” he warned in the neo-conservative editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal which has published a flood of op-eds and editorials over in recent weeks opposing any cooperation with Iran on Iraq.

Faced with these pressures, Mr. Obama, who has vowed to keep the U.S. out of a regional Sunni-Shi’a civil war, is eager to reassure those allies that he has no intention of partnering with Iran to save Mr. Maliki himself (to whom the Iranians appear to remain committed, at least for now).

U.S. officials have made no secret of their preference for a less-sectarian leader who is capable of reaching out to the Sunni community in Iraq in ways that could pry it loose from ISIL’s grip or influence.

That no doubt was a major part of the message conveyed by Mr. Kerry–along with the dangers posed by ISIL, even to Saudi Arabia itself–in his recent meeting in Jeddah with King Abdullah, who until now has clearly viewed Tehran as the greater threat.

Similarly, the White House announcement that it will ask Congress to approve a whopping $500 million in military and other assistance to “moderate” rebel groups in Syria to fight both Assad and ISIL also appeared designed to reassure the Saudis and its Gulf allies that Washington remains responsive to their interests, even if the aid is unlikely to materialize before some time next year.

While that announcement may please U.S. hawks and Washington’s traditional allies in the region, it is unlikely to strengthen those in Tehran who favor cooperating with the U.S. on regional security issues. Indeed, it risks bolstering hard-liners who see the conflict in both Iraq and Syria in sectarian terms and accuse Washington of siding with their Sunni rivals in the Gulf.

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WASHINGTON – Two years after the last U.S. combat soldiers left Iraq, the recent takeover of the Western city of Fallujah by the Al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has refocused Washington’s attention on a country that it had hoped to put permanently in its rear-view mirror.

The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, which has ruled out any direct military intervention, has rushed Hellfire missiles and other military equipment to the Iraqi army, which has reportedly surrounded the city, the second-largest in the Sunni-dominated western Al-Anbar province and the center of the Sunni insurgency against the eight-year U.S. occupation.

It is also pressing at least one key lawmaker, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Robert Menendez, to release his hold on the delivery of a fleet of Apache attack helicopters sought by Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki. The Iraqi leader, who heads a Shia coalition, has been pressing for the helicopters, as well as F-16 warplanes, since before the U.S. withdrawal in 2011, most recently during a visit to Washington in November.

But some critics of both Mr. Maliki and the Obama administration are urging Washington to condition additional assistance on the Iraqi leader’s firm commitment to show greater flexibility toward demands by the country’s Sunni minority.

“It is important to kill and capture Al-Qaeda militants, to be sure, but absent political reconciliation with the Sunni population, AQI (Al Qaeda in Iraq) will have no trouble regenerating its losses,” wrote Max Boot, a military analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations who strongly opposed Mr. Obama’s decision to withdraw troops from Iraq after its parliament declined to offer U.S. soldiers legal immunity for their actions there.

“Indeed the indiscriminate application of firepower by Maliki, while it may play well among the prime minister’s Shiite constituents … is likely to simply arouse more Sunni opposition,” he wrote on the neo-conservative “Commentary” blog Jan. 8.

But others analysts here disagree, insisting that ISIS must be defeated, hopefully with the help of local militias aligned with the Iraqi army, and that blaming Mr. Maliki for the current situation “confuses cause and effect.”

“The fundamental problem is that significant numbers of Anbaris have not yet reconciled themselves to the loss of power–and the privileges that came with it–after the fall of Saddam Hussein,” according to Douglas Ollivant of the New America Foundation and a key adviser of Gen. David Petraeus during the 2007-08 U.S. “surge” of troops into Al-Anbar and Baghdad that reduced the sectarian killing that brought Iraq to the brink of all-out civil war by 2006.

“This has spawned two results: demonstrations to express demands that are politically impossible outside an authoritarian system and a return to the violence that Al Qaeda has been trying for years to precipitate,” Mr. Ollivant wrote on the foreignpolicy.com website.

There were some reports late Jan. 8 that ISIS was withdrawing its forces from Fallujah under pressure from local leaders who fear precisely the kind of destruction that befell the city during a bloody siege by U.S. forces in 2004. However, the fact that the group was able to gain control over it–as well as parts of the province’s capital, Ramadi, for a brief period late last week — has underscored the threat of civil war similar to that which has wracked Syria over the past nearly three years.

Indeed, ISIS, which, until it came under attack by other rebel factions, had emerged as the dominant insurgent force in neighboring Syria, has declared its intention to establish a trans-national emirate as part of a larger goal of expelling the influence of Shia-led Iran of which Mr. Maliki–as well as Syrian President Bashar Assad and Lebanon’s Hezbollah–is seen as a mere puppet.

Mr. Obama himself has made clear that, in his words, he wants to avoid “taking sides in a religious war between Shia and Sunni,” whether in Syria or elsewhere in the region.

That was echoed with regard to Iraq by Secretary of State John Kerry a trip to Jerusalem. “This is a fight that belongs to the Iraqis,” he stressed repeatedly during a news conference, although he also noted that Washington would do “everything possible” to help Baghdad defeat ISIS which he called “the most dangerous players” in the region.

“We are not, obviously, contemplating returning [to Iraq]. We are not contemplating putting boots on the ground. This is their fight, but we’re going to help them in their fight,” he said.

In addition to Hellfire missiles, which are currently attached by Iraq’s small air force to light fixed-wing aircraft, Washington has promised to speed the delivery of surveillance drones which may require U.S. training of Iraqi personnel, either in the U.S. or in Iraq.

Some officials have reportedly urged the administration to offer armed drones on the condition that they are operated by the Central Intelligence Agency, as they have been in Pakistan and Yemen. But Mr. Maliki is considered unlikely to agree to such a condition.

Most analysts agree that the Apache helicopters, dozens of which Baghdad has placed on order, would be particularly effective against suspected ISIS units in the open desert in Al-Anbar.

Delivery, however, has been held up by some lawmakers who have expressed concern that they could be used against the legitimate political opposition. Iraqi forces have used lethal force several times against initially peaceful protests, and U.S.-trained counter-terrorist units have also been accused by human rights monitors of serious abuses, including arbitrary arrests and even assassinations, against prominent Sunni leaders and activists over the past year.

The administration has also deplored what is seen as Maliki’s increasingly sectarian agenda and pressed the Iraqi leader to take a more conciliatory stand toward the Sunni community, especially in Al-Anbar where the U.S.-backed “Awakening,” or “Sahwa” militia movement played a decisive role in defeating AQI during the surge in 2007-08. Washington has complained that Mr. Maliki largely failed to follow through on commitments to integrate movement members into the Army and security forces.

In an effort to overcome these concerns, Vice President Joe Biden has been in virtually daily consultation with Mr. Maliki and key Sunni leaders.

In a phone call between the two men Jan. 8, Mr. Biden “encouraged the prime minister to continue the Iraqi government’s outreach to local, tribal, and national leaders and welcomed the Council of Ministers’ decision to extend state benefits to tribal forces killed or injured in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS),” according to a statement released by the White House.

Mr. Maliki also sent a letter to Mr. Menendez, reportedly the remaining holdout against the helicopter sale, outlining steps he intends to take both to engage the Sunni community and ensure that U.S. weapons will be used only for counter-terrorism, according to the Daily Beast.

Meanwhile, the United Nations, the Red Cross, and Human Rights Watch expressed growing concern about the humanitarian situation inside Fallujah amidst reports that food and water were running short. More than 10,000 residents have reportedly left the city since fighting began Jan 1.

Human Rights Watch charged that government forces have used indiscriminate mortar fire in civilian neighborhoods, while ISIS fighters and allied militias have deployed in and carried out attacks from populated areas.   (IPS)

The post Fall of Fallujah refocuses U.S. on Iraq appeared first on Final Call News.

WASHINGTON – For the first time since the end of the Vietnam War, both the U.S. public and the foreign policy elite see Washington as playing a less important and powerful role in the world than it did a decade before, according to the latest quadrennial survey released here by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pew Research Center.

A majority of 53 percent of adult respondents in the latest edition of America’s Place in the World said the U.S. was less important and powerful in global affairs than in 2004, which was shortly after Washington invaded Iraq. That event had much of the content here comparing the country’s dominance to the Roman and British empires.

Sixty-two percent of a representative sample of CFR’s membership agreed that Washington is less powerful today than in 2004. CFR’s members, who consist mainly of current and former policy-makers, academics, business executives, journalists, columnists, and other elite professionals who are invited to join, is generally seen as the U.S. foreign policy “establishment.”

The new survey, released Dec. 3, found a strong public ambivalence about Washington’s global role today.

On the one hand, 52 percent of the public agreed with the notion that “the U.S. should mind its own business internationally and let other nations get along the best they can on their own.” That was the highest percentage since the question was first asked by pollsters nearly a half century ago and nine percent higher than in the waning days of the Vietnam War.

Similarly, a record 80 percent agreed that Washington should “concentrate more on our national problems” than on its international activities, and 11 percent higher than in 2004.

On the other hand, two-thirds of the 2,003 respondents in the public survey, which was carried out between Oct. 30 and Nov. 6, said greater U.S. involvement in the global economy was a good thing, and 56 percent rejected the notion that the U.S. “should go our own way in international matters” (although that was the highest percentage who took that position since 1964).

“Americans are conflicted about the U.S. role in the world,” noted James Lindsay, CFR’s senior vice president, commenting on the survey. “(A)s frustrated as the public is with foreign policy, it isn’t ready to abandon internationalism or to embrace unilateralism.”

The latest survey, which asked respondents scores of detailed questions, showed, as it has in other years, significant gaps between the public and elite on a number of key foreign policy issues.

On Washington’s role in the world, 12 percent of both groups agreed that the U.S. should be “the single world leader,” while 72 percent of the public and 86 percent of CFR members, respectively, disagreed, insisting instead that it “should play a shared leadership role.”

But of those large majorities who opted for “shared leadership,” 55 percent of elite respondents said the U.S. should be “the most assertive” of the world powers, while only 20 percent of the public agreed. A 51-percent majority of the public said Washington should be “no more or less assertive” than other powers.

The same majority said the U.S. was doing “too much” in addressing global problems, as opposed to “too little” or “the right amount.” By contrast, only 21 percent of the elite said “too much.”

Asked to identify to top foreign policy priorities, the two groups both rated “protecting the U.S. from terrorist attacks” and “preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction” at or near the top.

But there were major differences on other issues; for example, 81 percent of the public respondents identified “protecting jobs of American workers” as a top priority, but only 29 percent of CFR members did so. Similarly, 57 percent of the public named combating international drug trafficking, while only 17 percent of elite respondents agreed.

The public also gave reducing illegal immigration (48-11 percent) and “strengthening the United Nations (37-17 percent) a much higher priority, while the elite rated “dealing with global climate change” as its third highest priority (57 percent), compared to only 37 percent of the public who agreed.

On more specific issues, CFR members (69 percent) and the public respondents (56 percent) believed that Washington made the right decision in using military force in Afghanistan (although 87 percent of the elite respondents took that position in 2009).

On the other hand, only 14 percent of elite respondents said they believed the 2003 invasion of Iraq was the right decision, while a 49-percent plurality of the public said it was correct.

Asked which was more important to the U.S. in Middle Eastern politics–democracy or stability–the two groups were generally agreed. Just under a third of respondents in both polls opted for “democratic governments,” even if that results in less stability. Almost two-thirds opted for “stable government” at the expense of democracy.

Although CFR members were often quite critical of President Barack Obama’s performance on specific foreign policy issues, they were markedly more approving of his general performance than the public–by a margin of 60 percent to 41 percent.

On specific foreign policy issues, majorities of elite respondents also gave him much higher marks than the general public–by 20 percent or more on his handling of Afghanistan (56-34 percent); Iran (72-37 percent, although more recently conducted polls have shown majority public approval for his Iran policy); China (69-30 percent); terrorism (73-51 percent), immigration (67-32 percent); and international trade issues (66-38 percent).

On these and other issues, the survey found major partisan differences, with Democrats naturally tending to be considerably more supportive of Mr. Obama’s policies than Republicans.

Nonetheless, a 52-percent majority of elite respondents said Mr. Obama has “not (been) assertive enough” in his approach to foreign policy. Fifty-one percent of the public agreed. At the same time, a majority of elite respondents, in contrast to the public, said they favored reductions in the defense budget.

For elite respondents, President Obama’s handling of Syria–notably his failure to follow through on his threats of military action in retaliation for Damascus’s use of chemical weapons–was particularly disappointing and contributed importantly to the impression that U.S. power is declining. Nearly three out of four CFR respondents said the episode had left the U.S. weaker, and 59 percent of them disapproved of his actions.

More than four in 10 elite respondents attributed the public’s growing disenchantment with an active U.S. role in the world–as shown by their answers to with “war fatigue;” 28 percent cited the costs to the U.S. economy; and another 19 percent to the impression that recent U.S. initiatives have been ineffective.

Despite the perception that U.S. power and influence has declined, more than two-thirds of the public believe that Washington remains the world’s leading military power. However, consistent with the polling since the 2008 financial crisis, a strong plurality of public respondents believe that China has become the world’s leading economic power. (IPS)

WASHINGTON–For the first time since the end of the Vietnam War, both the U.S. public and the foreign policy elite see Washington as playing a less important and powerful role in the world than it did a decade before, according to the latest quadrennial survey released here by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pew Research Center.

A majority of 53 percent of adult respondents in the latest edition of America’s Place in the World said the U.S. was less important and powerful in global affairs than in 2004, which was shortly after Washington invaded Iraq. That event had much of the content here comparing the country’s dominance to the Roman and British empires.

Sixty-two percent of a representative sample of CFR’s membership agreed that Washington is less powerful today than in 2004. CFR’s members, who consist mainly of current and former policy-makers, academics, business executives, journalists, columnists, and other elite professionals who are invited to join, is generally seen as the U.S. foreign policy “establishment.”

The new survey, released Dec. 3, found a strong public ambivalence about Washington’s global role today.

On the one hand, 52 percent of the public agreed with the notion that “the U.S. should mind its own business internationally and let other nations get along the best they can on their own.” That was the highest percentage since the question was first asked by pollsters nearly a half century ago and nine percent higher than in the waning days of the Vietnam War.

Similarly, a record 80 percent agreed that Washington should “concentrate more on our national problems” than on its international activities, and 11 percent higher than in 2004.

On the other hand, two-thirds of the 2,003 respondents in the public survey, which was carried out between Oct. 30 and Nov. 6, said greater U.S. involvement in the global economy was a good thing, and 56 percent rejected the notion that the U.S. “should go our own way in international matters” (although that was the highest percentage who took that position since 1964).

“Americans are conflicted about the U.S. role in the world,” noted James Lindsay, CFR’s senior vice president, commenting on the survey. “(A)s frustrated as the public is with foreign policy, it isn’t ready to abandon internationalism or to embrace unilateralism.”

The latest survey, which asked respondents scores of detailed questions, showed, as it has in other years, significant gaps between the public and elite on a number of key foreign policy issues.

On Washington’s role in the world, 12 percent of both groups agreed that the U.S. should be “the single world leader,” while 72 percent of the public and 86 percent of CFR members, respectively, disagreed, insisting instead that it “should play a shared leadership role.”

But of those large majorities who opted for “shared leadership,” 55 percent of elite respondents said the U.S. should be “the most assertive” of the world powers, while only 20 percent of the public agreed. A 51-percent majority of the public said Washington should be “no more or less assertive” than other powers.

The same majority said the U.S. was doing “too much” in addressing global problems, as opposed to “too little” or “the right amount.” By contrast, only 21 percent of the elite said “too much.”

Asked to identify to top foreign policy priorities, the two groups both rated “protecting the U.S. from terrorist attacks” and “preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction” at or near the top.

But there were major differences on other issues; for example, 81 percent of the public respondents identified “protecting jobs of American workers” as a top priority, but only 29 percent of CFR members did so. Similarly, 57 percent of the public named combating international drug trafficking, while only 17 percent of elite respondents agreed.

The public also gave reducing illegal immigration (48-11 percent) and “strengthening the United Nations (37-17 percent) a much higher priority, while the elite rated “dealing with global climate change” as its third highest priority (57 percent), compared to only 37 percent of the public who agreed.

On more specific issues, CFR members (69 percent) and the public respondents (56 percent) believed that Washington made the right decision in using military force in Afghanistan (although 87 percent of the elite respondents took that position in 2009).

On the other hand, only 14 percent of elite respondents said they believed the 2003 invasion of Iraq was the right decision, while a 49-percent plurality of the public said it was correct.

Asked which was more important to the U.S. in Middle Eastern politics–democracy or stability–the two groups were generally agreed. Just under a third of respondents in both polls opted for “democratic governments,” even if that results in less stability. Almost two-thirds opted for “stable government” at the expense of democracy.

Although CFR members were often quite critical of President Barack Obama’s performance on specific foreign policy issues, they were markedly more approving of his general performance than the public–by a margin of 60 percent to 41 percent.

On specific foreign policy issues, majorities of elite respondents also gave him much higher marks than the general public–by 20 percent or more on his handling of Afghanistan (56-34 percent); Iran (72-37 percent, although more recently conducted polls have shown majority public approval for his Iran policy); China (69-30 percent); terrorism (73-51 percent), immigration (67-32 percent); and international trade issues (66-38 percent).

On these and other issues, the survey found major partisan differences, with Democrats naturally tending to be considerably more supportive of Mr. Obama’s policies than Republicans.

Nonetheless, a 52-percent majority of elite respondents said Mr. Obama has “not (been) assertive enough” in his approach to foreign policy. Fifty-one percent of the public agreed. At the same time, a majority of elite respondents, in contrast to the public, said they favored reductions in the defense budget.

For elite respondents, President Obama’s handling of Syria–notably his failure to follow through on his threats of military action in retaliation for Damascus’s use of chemical weapons–was particularly disappointing and contributed importantly to the impression that U.S. power is declining. Nearly three out of four CFR respondents said the episode had left the U.S. weaker, and 59 percent of them disapproved of his actions.

More than four in 10 elite respondents attributed the public’s growing disenchantment with an active U.S. role in the world–as shown by their answers to with “war fatigue;” 28 percent cited the costs to the U.S. economy; and another 19 percent to the impression that recent U.S. initiatives have been ineffective.

Despite the perception that U.S. power and influence has declined, more than two-thirds of the public believe that Washington remains the world’s leading military power. However, consistent with the polling since the 2008 financial crisis, a strong plurality of public respondents believe that China has become the world’s leading economic power. (IPS)

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WASHINGTON РAs hopeful, albeit vague, statements about talks in Geneva between Iran and the great powers continued to issue from the Swiss city Oct. 15, foes of d̩tente between Washington and Tehran maintained their own high tempo of work.

The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and its supporters in the powerful Israel lobby, which exerts its greatest influence through Congress, appear to be working overtime to persuade the administration of President Barack Obama not to ease economic sanctions on Iran until their maximalist demands are met.

On the eve of the two-day talks between the Islamic Republic and the P5+1 (United States, Britain, France, Russia and China plus Germany), a bipartisan group of 10 key U.S. senators published a letter they sent to President Barack Obama urging Washington’s delegation to stake out positions in Geneva–specifically, that Iran end all uranium enrichment on its own soil–which most Iran specialists believe are certain to kill prospects for a deal.

While insisting that they “support your efforts to explore a diplomatic opening,” the senators wrote President Obama that they were “prepared to move forward with new sanctions to increase pressure” on Tehran unless it takes “concrete … actions” to dismantle its nuclear program, beginning with the suspension of all enrichment.

If Iran complies, they said, they would suspend action on pending sanctions legislation that otherwise could be taken up soon.

The letter reflected the position of Mr. Netanyahu, who has been campaigning tirelessly for several weeks, particularly since Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, made a highly successful September visit to New York for the UN General Assembly, against any agreement between the P5+1 and Tehran that would not require Iran to totally abandon its nuclear program, including enrichment capabilities.

On Oct. 15, Mr. Netanyahu publicly released what veteran Israel-watchers called an unprecedented “Security Cabinet Statement” detailing alleged violations by Iran of UN Security Council resolutions and warning the P5+1 against any “premature” easing of economic sanctions, which last year halved the value of Iran’s currency.

“It would be an historic mistake not to take full advantage of the sanctions, by making concessions before ensuring the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear weapons program,” the statement asserted.

It then laid out conditions, including the cessation of all nuclear enrichment and the removal from Iran’s territory of all stockpiles of enriched uranium, that would result in Israel’s “embrace [of] a genuine diplomatic solution.”

A possible deal

The wave of attacks came amidst growing speculation that the talks, which ended Oct. 16, may provide an unprecedented opening for a deal.

For the first time, Washington appears willing to seriously address a proposed end-state that will meet a long-standing Iranian demand to maintain an enrichment program in exchange for accepting tight constraints and a strict inspection regime to ensure against any “break-out capacity” that would enable Tehran to produce a nuclear weapon on short notice.

Until recently, U.S. policy had essentially adopted Israel’s position that Iran could not be trusted with an enrichment program on its own soil. Lately, however, the administration has hinted that while it will not formally recognize Iran’s “right to enrich” under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, it could live with such a limited program as part of a comprehensive deal.

The deal includes Tehran’s disposing of its existing stockpiles of enriched uranium, dismantling its capacity to enrich at higher levels, and addressing concerns about its heavy-water facility at Arak, which could begin producing plutonium when it opens sometime next year.

As Iran verifiably implements such a deal, according to U.S. officials, the administration and its P5+1 partners would lift sanctions.

While no one expected a comprehensive agreement to be concluded during the talks, the apparently positive reception by U.S. and Western delegations of a presentation by Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif of what Tehran is willing to do under such an accord suggests that confidence-building measures and proportionate sanctions relief may quickly follow.

That prospect worries Israel and the Gulf states–particularly Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain–who not only oppose Iran’s retaining any enrichment capabilities but also fear that a nuclear deal between Iran and the West that results in lifting sanctions will inevitably alter the strategic balance throughout the region, facilitating Iran’s re-emergence as a major power at their expense.

“They’re doing everything they can to make sure it doesn’t happen because they fear that any outcome based on these negotiations is going to be a net negative for them compared to the status quo,” according to Trita Parsi, NIAC’s president.

But such a view is short-sighted, he told IPS, “because it doesn’t take into account how this game-changer can also open up new opportunities” by creating a new security structure that can help reduce sectarian conflicts and restore some stability to a region in turmoil.

Ire from Saudi Arabia

Even Saudi Arabia, while less vocal and powerful than Israel in U.S. domestic politics, took its own shots at the negotiations and possible rapprochement between Washington and Tehran.

In a remarkable appearance at the annual leadership convention of the National Iranian American Council Oct. 15, Riyadh’s former ambassador to London and Washington, Prince Turki bin Faisal al Saud, warned, “Rouhani will have to deliver before others take him seriously,” and bemoaned the fact that the Gulf Co-operation Council, of which it is the leading member, had been excluded from the P5+1 talks.

While he insisted that the Riyadh “favors engagement with Iran,” he also accused Tehran of seeking regional “hegemony” and intervening in Arab countries. Its alleged direct military involvement in the “killing” in Syria, he stressed, should disqualify it from participating in talks in Geneva to end that country’s civil war.

Mr. Rouhani, he said, “has to shed Khomeini’s interventionist legacy and, like his own discourse, adopt sensible policies.” (IPS)

Related news:

Netanyahu’s relentless pursuit of Iran (FCN, 10-11-2013)

No handshake–but can Iran-U.S. relations shift? (FCN, 10-01-2013)

A dialogue with Iran’s new president (FCN, 10-02-2013)

Iran President Rouhani’s 2013 UN Address – Full Video, Text

The post Israel and the Gulf increasingly nervous over Iran-U.S. detente appeared first on Final Call News.

Like the proverbial skunk at the garden party, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used his turn at the podium at the U.N. General Assembly Tuesday to pour scorn on Iran’s new president, 96 hours after a smiling Hassan Rouhani departed New York after a momentous four-day stay that raised unprecedented hopes for détente with the United States and the West.

Echoing his early assessment of the Iranian leader, Netanyahu described Rouhani as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing, a wolf who thinks he can pull the eyes — the wool over the eyes of the international community”. He demanded that Iran completely abandon its nuclear programme as the price for lifting existing sanctions against Tehran.

“The international community has Iran on the ropes,” Netanyahu said in reference to U.S.-led economic sanctions. “If you want to knock out Iran’s nuclear weapons programme peacefully, don’t let up the pressure. Keep it up.

“If Iran advances its nuclear weapons program during negotiations, strengthen the sanctions,” he added.

In a speech that dwelt almost exclusively on Iran, the Israeli leader also suggested, as he has oftentimes in the past, that he was prepared to order unilateral military action against Tehran’s nuclear facilities.

“If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone,” he declared. “And in standing alone, Israel will know that we are defending many, many others.”

Netanyahu’s speech, which came just four days after a telephone conversation between Rouhani and Barack Obama — the first between the leaders of the U.S. and Iran since 1979, followed a more restrained performance by the Israeli leader here Monday during his White House meeting with the U.S. president.

At that meeting, he contented himself with advising that Iran’s “conciliatory words must be met with real actions” — a point which Obama himself has stressed since last week’s momentous events — although Netanyahu also emphasised that “the ultimate test of a future agreement with Iran is whether or not Iran dismantles its military nuclear programme.”

Netanyahu’s appearance here and at the U.N. this week in some ways could not come at a worse time for the Israeli leader for a variety of reasons, not least of which was the extremely positive impression left behind by Rouhani and his foreign minister and former U.N. ambassador, Javad Zarif.

Zarif remains in New York both to continue consultations with key U.S. opinion-shapers and prepare for the Oct. 15-16 negotiations between Iran and the so-called P5+1 (U.S., Britain, France, China, Russia plus Germany) in Geneva on Iran’s nuclear programme.

The message conveyed repeatedly by both Iranians in an intense, seemingly non-stop stream of meetings with influential media figures, Iranian Americans, think-tank scholars, and former senior U.S. diplomats and other officials — not to mention Thursday’s 30-minute one-on-one exchange between Zarif and Secretary of State John Kerry on the sidelines of a ministerial meeting of the P5+1 attended by Zarif — was that Tehran was prepared to negotiate verifiable limits to its nuclear programme so long as its right to enrich uranium under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was recognised and sanctions were lifted.

After those meetings were capped by Obama’s 15-minute phone call to Rouhani as the latter was being driven to JFK airport for his return flight to Iran, the atmosphere surrounding the visit turned almost euphoric, comparable in some ways to Washington’s rapprochement with China in the early 1970s.

Media commentators on weekend talk shows and columnists in U.S. newspapers called the visit “historic” and a potential “turning point” in U.S. relations with a country which it has treated as an enemy for some 34 years.

“The Israeli government has clearly been rattled by the Iranian charm offensive,” noted the New York Times in what has to be considered an understatement given what it called the “dizzying diplomatic developments” set off by Rouhani’s visit.

But aside from being thrown off-balance by Rouhani’s success, Netanyahu also faced an unusual public-relations problem this week: Tuesday’s partial shutdown of the U.S. government resulting from the budgetary impasse between the White House and the Republican-led House of Representatives dominated the news agenda, effectively diminishing Netanyahu’s customary command of the media spotlight and hence, his message.

But even his message — particularly, his demands that Iran completely dismantle its nuclear programme and abandon its right to enrich under the NPT — has come to be viewed by a large consensus of Iran and foreign-policy specialists here as a non-starter for negotiations and clearly identifies Israel as a spoiler.

“We all know that the chance of a [negotiated] settlement is reduced to near zero when we start with pre-conditions that Iran must totally dismantle its entire scientific infrastructure,” said Gary Sick, an Iran specialist at Columbia University who served on the National Security Council under Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan.

“Limits yes, but the days of zero or near-zero centrifuges are long past,” he told IPS.

Indeed, key figures in the Israel lobby, including Dennis Ross, counselor of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a spin-off of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has argued for more than a year that Washington should test Iran on whether it will accept strict limits on its enrichment programme and, if so, accept it in exchange for eliminating sanctions.

Indeed, as early as 2011, when Ross was still serving as Obama’s chief Iran aide, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton strongly hinted that Washington could eventually accept a peaceful nuclear programme that included some enrichment capabilities.

Even as Rouhani’s U.N. sojourn was unfolding last week, David Harris, the head of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), another major Israel lobby group, warned Netanyahu that his dismissive attitude — as evidenced then by Israel’s boycott of Rouhani’s speech to the General Assembly – toward the Iranian leader risked isolating Israel.

“Did [the boycott] help or hurt Israel to make its case?” he asked in Israel’s ‘Haaretz’ newspaper. “Some would argue it helped by stressing the danger and willingness to act, even if alone. Others, however, would say that Israel only demonstrated its unwillingness to hear the message, even if Rouhani turns out to be, say, the next Mikhail Gorbachev.”

Indeed, Sick said Netanyahu sounded “defensive and shrill” in his U.N. speech Tuesday. “Clearly, Rouhani had scored some points in his latest visit. This was Netanyahu’s way of trying to even the score.”

Related news:

Iran President Rouhani’s 2013 UN Address – Full Video, Text

The post Netanyahu’s relentless pursuit of Iran appeared first on Final Call News.

WASHINGTON (IPS) – The United States needs to phase down its drug war and tighten the reins on its cooperation with local militaries and police in Latin America, according to a new report released here by three influential think tanks.

Of particular interest is the increase in training deployments to Latin America and the Caribbean by the Special Operations Forces (SOF)–elite units like the Army’s Green Berets and Navy SEALS–due in part to the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and drawdown from Afghanistan.

Over the past decade, SOF ranks have more than doubled to about 65,000, and their commander, Adm. William McRaven, has been particularly aggressive in seeking new missions for his troops in new theatres, including Latin America and the Caribbean where they are training thousands of local counterparts.

“You can train a lot of people for the cost of one helicopter,” Adam Isacson, an analyst with the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), told IPS.

He noted that the increased investment in SOF was part of a much larger Pentagon strategy of maintaining a “light (military) footprint” in countries around the globe while bolstering its influence with local military institutions.

The Pentagon, however, is much less transparent than the State Department, and its programs are often not subject to the same human rights conditions and do not get the same degree of congressional oversight.

Moreover, Adm. McRaven has sought the authority to deploy SOF teams to countries without consulting either U.S. ambassadors there or even the U.S. Southern Command, making it even more difficult for civil society activists to track what they’re doing and whether they’re working with local units with poor human rights records that would normally be denied U.S. aid and training under the so-called Leahy Law.

Last summer, according to Mr. Isacson, Adm. McRaven’s command even tried to work out an agreement with Colombia to set up a regional special operations coordination center there without consulting SOUTHCOM or the embassy.

“What these developments mean is that the military role in foreign policy-making is becoming ever greater, and military-to-military relations come to matter more than diplomatic relations,” he said. “What does that mean for civil-military relations not only in the region, but also here at home?”

The 32-page report, entitled “Time to Listen,” describes U.S. policy as “on auto-pilot,” largely due to the powerful bureaucratic interests in the Pentagon and the Drug Enforcement Administration and their regional counterparts that have built up over decades.

“The counter-drug bureaucracies in the United States are remarkably resistant to change, unwilling to rethink and reassess strategies and goals,” said Lisa Haugaard, director of the Latin America Working Group Education Fund which released the report along with WOLA and the Center for International Policy.

The report also noted that new security technologies, including drones, whose use by the U.S. and other countries is growing quickly throughout the region, and cyber-spying of the kind that prompted abrupt cancellation by Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff of her state visit here, poses major challenges to the security environment and civil liberties in the region.

Military and security assistance reached its height in 2010, at $1.6 billion, but has since declined to around $900 million, largely as a result of the phase-out of Plan Colombia and the Merida Initiative. Central America is the only sub-region in which aid, including non-security assistance, is increasing significantly.

But Mr. Isacson said dollar amounts can be deceptive, and while “big ticket” aid packages are down, “other, less transparent forms of military-to-military co-operation are on the rise,” in part due to the migration of many programs’ management from the State Department, which has more stringent reporting and human rights conditions, to the Pentagon.

A troubling trend, according to the report, is that some countries, especially Colombia, have begun training military and police forces in their neighbors, often with U.S. funding and encouragement.

In that respect, these third-country trainers act as private contractors who are not subject to U.S. human-rights laws and whose cost is a fraction of that of their U.S. counterparts.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. (IPS) – In an echo of the tactics they used to promote U.S. intervention in the Balkans, Iraq and Libya, a familiar clutch of neoconservatives published a letter urging President Barack Obama to go far beyond limited military strikes against Syria in retaliation for its government’s alleged use of chemical weapons that reportedly killed hundreds of people.

Signed by 66 former government officials and “foreign policy experts”–almost all of them strongly pro-Israel neoconservatives–the letter, which was released by the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), called for Washington “and other willing nations [to] consider direct military strikes against the pillars of the Assad regime” as part of more ambitious strategy to support “moderate” Syrian rebels and dissuade Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Any military action should aim to ensure that the government of President Bashar al-Assad will be unable to use chemical weapons and should deter or destroy its “airpower and other conventional military means of committing atrocities against civilian non-combatants,” according to the letter.

The letter’s most prominent signatories included several senior officials of the George W. Bush administration, such as his top Middle East aide, Elliott Abrams, former Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman and former Vice President Dick Cheney’s national security adviser, John Hannah, and was given a bipartisan gloss with the inclusion of former Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman and several liberal interventionist commentators identified with the Democratic party who signed previous statements by the FPI and its predecessor, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC).

The letter also called on Obama to “accelerate efforts to vet, train, and arm moderate elements of Syria’s armed opposition” to help them prevail against both Assad and growing Al-Qaeda-affiliated or extremist factions. It was released amidst growing indications that the Obama administration, which, Aug. 26 called the alleged attack a “moral obscenity”, is determined to take limited military action–most likely through cruise-missile strikes launched from naval vessels based in the eastern Mediterranean–against selected targets in Syria for up to three days, possibly as early as this weekend.

It is expected that Britain and France and possibly Turkey will also take part in operations under a NATO mandate and with the support of the Arab League which, meeting in Cairo, blamed Syria for the attack and called for its perpetrators to be brought to justice.

Despite the fact that U.N. inspectors, who visited the site of the alleged attack outside Damascus and took blood and tissue samples from some victims, have not yet submitted their findings, administration officials said they had concluded that the attack did take place and that government forces were responsible.

At the White House, spokesman Jay Carney said the administration will release a report detailing the basis for its conclusions later this week and that Obama was currently considering various options prepared by the Pentagon, although he also insisted that any action taken by the United States will not be intended to achieve “regime change” in Damascus.

That assurance will no doubt frustrate neoconservatives, many of whom have long held the Assad dynasty in their sights and who   had hoped that the 2003 invasion of Iraq–which they promoted through organizations like PNAC, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and the Foundation for Defense of Democracy (FDD)–would lay the foundations for Assad’s ouster, too.

Indeed, a number of neoconservatives, including signatories of the FPI letter, are insisting that U.S. action aim to end Assad’s regime.

One, Eliot Cohen, argued in a Washington Post op-ed that “a bout of therapeutic bombing is an even more feckless course of action than a principled refusal to act altogether,” a point echoed on the Wall Street Journal‘s editorial page–a favorite neo-conservative forum–August 27.

Another signatory, Reuel Marc Gerecht, who promoted the Iraq war at AEI and is now based at FDD, called for a “devastating” attack targeting “elite military units, aircraft, armour and artillery; all weapons-depots; the myriad organizations of the secret police; the ruling elite’s residences; and other critical Alawite infrastructure” in a New York Times op-ed August 27.

Founded by two prominent neoconservatives in 1997, Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, PNAC published a series of letters and manifestos that helped shape the foreign policy trajectory, especially regarding the Middle East, of Bush’s first term. Among its charter members are eight men who held key posts under Bush, including Cheney; his chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby; Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz; Abrams and the Pentagon’s foreign policy chief, Peter Rodman.

In 1998, PNAC published letters favoring legislation adopting “regime change” as official U.S. policy toward Iraq that was eventually signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton. Nine days after 9/11, it published another letter to Bush signed by 41 policy analysts–virtually all neoconservatives–that laid out an ambitious agenda for his “global war on terror.”

It insisted that failure to remove Iraq’s Saddam Hussein from power “will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism.” It also urged that Bush “should consider appropriate measures of retaliation” against Iran and Syria if they refused to comply with demands that they cease support for Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

PNAC faded into oblivion by the beginning of Bush’s second term as the situation in Iraq deteriorated and neoconservatives lost influence. In early 2009, however, Kagan and Kristol founded FPI and were joined as directors there by Edelman and Dan Senor, a former spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq.

In January 2011, FPI published a letter signed by 40 policy analysts, including more than a dozen former Bush administration officials, calling on Obama to press NATO to establish a no-fly zone over Libya and the country’s naval vessels.

By the following summer, it joined with FDD in calling for tough economic sanctions against Syria and the creation of no-fly or no-go zones in Syrian territory to protect civilians, and in December 2011, it released a letter signed by 58 individuals–most of whom also signed the letter–calling for military aid to opposition forces “whose political goals accord with U.S. national security interests.”

Among the more notable signatories of the most recent letter are French writer Bernard-Henri Levy, who played a key role in mobilizing international support for the NATO intervention in Libya; Christian Right activist Gary Bauer, who, with Kristol, was a founding board member of the Emergency Committee for Israel; Bush political adviser Karl Rove; the former head of the Committee to Liberate Iraq, Randy Scheunemann; and former CPA chief, L. Paul Bremer, as well as Kagan and Kristol. Surprisingly absent from the list were some of the most visible and controversial architects and supporters of the Iraq war and those who had previously associated themselves with PNAC or FPI, such as Cheney, Wolfowitz, Libby, former CIA director James Woolsey, and AEI’s Richard Perle, who chaired the Defense Policy Board under Rumsfeld.

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