[Peace-discuss] Fw: JFP 1/4: Obama can't stop Israeli attack? Markets rattled by Iran tensions

Fri Jan 6 10:19:22 CST 2012

Another great JFP, couldn't resist forwarding it on... --Jenifer.

--- On Wed, 1/4/12, Just Foreign Policy <naiman at justforeignpolicy.org> wrote:

        Just Foreign Policy News, January 4, 2012

Obama can't stop Israeli attack? Markets rattled by Iran tensions

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I) Actions and Featured Articles

In Iowa, Peace Voters Turned Out for Ron Paul in Higher Numbers Than Anticipated

Ron Paul didn't win the Iowa caucus, but it wasn't because peace voters didn't show up. Indeed, peace voters did show up, in higher numbers than anticipated; and they voted for Ron Paul, in higher numbers than anticipated. Going forward, this means that there is a substantial group of voters who is willing to vote for a peace candidate in a Republican primary or caucus -- if they have a peace candidate to vote for. And this result will be seen not just in future Presidential primaries and caucuses, but in Congressional races -- if there is a peace candidate to vote for. If you're a person that cares about working with Congress to end wars, prevent new ones, and stop the Pentagon from hogging so much of our national resources, this is a very big deal.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/in-iowa-peace-voters-turn_b_1184012.html

Institute for Public Accuracy: JFP responds to press coverage of Santorum threat to bomb Iran

"Rick Santorum told NBC's David Gregory on 'Meet the Press' that, unlike President Obama, he would 'be saying to the Iranians, you either open up those [nuclear] facilities, you begin to dismantle them and, and make them available to inspectors, or we will degrade those facilities through airstrikes and make it very public that we are doing that.' Mr. Gregory did not challenge this statement. Surely Mr. Gregory knows that Iran's nuclear facilities are already under the inspection of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Politicians will say whatever they can get away with but journalists have an obligation to correct serious misstatements of fact."

http://www.accuracy.org/release/26333/

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II) Summary:

U.S./Top News

1) President Obama appears to be hoping that he can avoid being caught up in a regional war started by Israel if he distances the US from any Israeli attack on Iran, writes Gareth Porter for Inter Press Service. US military leaders expressed disappointment that President Obama had not been firm enough in opposing an Israeli attack, according to veteran intelligence reporter Richard Sale. Obama responded that he "had no say over Israel" because "it is a sovereign country." 

Trita Parsi says knowledgeable sources tell him Obama believes he can credibly distance himself from an Israeli attack. But Parsi believes Obama's calculation that he can convince Iran that the US has no leverage on Israel without being much tougher with Israel is not realistic. [It is shocking that anyone would think this is realistic, given that President Bush and Admiral Mullen successfully sat on Israeli threats to attack unilaterally in the past, as was widely reported at the time - JFP.] 

2) Iran escalated its war of words with the US on Tuesday with a warning to Navy ships to stay out of the Strait of Hormuz, remarks that rattled commodities markets and helped send oil prices soaring, the Washington Post reports. The increasingly bellicose tone - coupled with new economic sanctions on Iran expected to take effect in the coming weeks - helped cause the price of oil to jump more than 4 percent.

3) US leaders may be indifferent to the civilian casualties caused by America's wars, but the civilian casualties are key to understanding why US war efforts end badly, writes John Tirman in the New York Times. We need to adopt reliable ways to measure the destruction our wars cause, Tirman argues.

Iran

4) The US has no interest in trying to run Persian Gulf countries, argues Stephen Walt at Foreign Policy The US has only three overriding strategic interests in the Gulf region: 1) make sure that Gulf oil and gas keeps flowing to world markets (even though the U.S. gets very little of its own energy from this region, a reduction in the global supply would send energy prices soaring), 2) discourage the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and 3) reduce the danger from anti-American terrorism. The best way to pursue these objectives is to minimize our military footprint in the region while striving to make sure that no single power dominates it and reducing incentives for anti-American terrorism or WMD proliferation. It follows that the US should be seeking to have good relations with as many states as possible -- so as to maximize its diplomatic options and resulting leverage -- and to do what it can to dampen regional tensions. If the US wants to
 preserve its influence in the region, it is going to have to devise a strategy for the area that is more congenial to Arab publics. 

5) The march towards war with Iran reflects the demands of U.S. elites, not U.S. public opinion, argues Mark Weisbrot in Folha de São Paulo. Diplomatic efforts by countries like Brazil to help avoid war would be supported by the majority of Americans, even if they would be disliked by US elites.

Israel/Palestine

6) Khaled Meshal, the exiled leader of Hamas, has expressed a willingness to work with Mahmoud Abbas in a far more accommodating way than in the past, especially in the area of using nonviolence to oppose Israel, the New York Times reports. "There is a historic development by Hamas in the last two months," asserted Mahdi Abdul Hadi, the director of a Palestinian research group in Jerusalem. "It is going through the same process as the Muslim Brotherhood elsewhere. The new political Islam is practical and realistic."

Egypt

7) With the Muslim Brotherhood within reach of a majority in Egypt's Parliament, the Obama administration seeks to forge closer ties with an organization once viewed as irreconcilably opposed to US interests, the New York Times reports. It would be "totally impractical" not to engage with the Brotherhood "because of U.S. security and regional interests in Egypt," a senior administration official said. On Tuesday, the administration intensified its criticism of Egypt's military rulers over raids that last week shut down 10 civil society groups, including at least 3 American-financed democracy-building groups, as part of an investigation of illicit foreign financing that has been laden with conspiratorial and anti-American rhetoric. 

Libya

8) Libya's transitional government has expressed growing concern that the country could descend into civil war if its militias are not brought under control, the New York Times reports. Since Qaddafi's fall, gun battles have periodically erupted in Tripoli between rival groups from other areas of the country who poured into the city as it fell and proceeded to stake out territory last summer.

- 

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