[Marxism] A U.S.-Iranian thaw?

[Louis Proyect]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-dreyfuss/that-nie-does-it-signal-_b_76790.html
That NIE: Does it Signal a U.S.-Iranian Thaw?
Posted December 14, 2007 | 08:27 AM (EST)

Like sly foxes watching the trapper step into his own trap, European 
diplomats are saying that the release of the National Intelligence 
Estimate on Iran won't change anything. They will, they said, continue 
to work for stronger sanctions against Iran both at the United Nations 
and unilaterally, to pressure Iran to halt its nuclear research. "The 
NIE has created a lot of noise in Washington. It's created less noise in 
our capitals," said Neil Crompton, a top British diplomat in Washington, 
speaking at a forum organized by the pro-Israeli thinktank, the 
Washington Institute for Near East Policy. But in fact, the NIE changes 
everything, and Israeli officials told the Jerusalem Post as much. It 
takes the war option off the table, and in so doing it leaves 
European-style diplomacy as the only remaining option.

Diplomacy, yes. But don't hold your breath for any sort of strong 
sanctions. It already appears as if the United States has agreed to 
postpone the UN Security Council debate on Iran into sometime in early 
2008, if it occurs at all. One U.S. official, quoted in the Jerusalem 
Post, implied that the Europeans were simply confused by the release of 
the NIE. He said that the European reaction to the NIE is 
"dumfoundedness," adding: "They don't understand how the American 
government could be as incompetent as it seems." But it's not a question 
of incompetence at all. Instead, it's a public sign of the private 
divisions within the Bush administration. My own suspicion is that 
Europeans know exactly what is going on: that the more dovish elements 
in the American national security community brilliantly outflanked the 
hawks, and it's game over. If there is any incompetence at all, it is 
entirely within the White House, which found itself incapable of either 
halting, watering down, or covering up the NIE's conclusions.

So far, criticism of the NIE in the United States has been confined to 
near-apoplectic responses from the usual suspects: neoconservatives, 
right-wingers in Israeli intelligence circles, the Wall Street Journal 
and the Weekly Standard, and others of that ilk, along with Henry 
Kissinger's chin-stroking op-ed in the Washington Post. A few Republican 
members of Congress (read: Senator John Ensign, the Nevada gambling 
king) are calling for a Team B-style commission of inquiry to challenge 
the NIE, but that's not likely - in part because they'd collide with the 
White House itself, which had no choice but to endorse the NIE and then 
try to spin it, once it was out.

An unintentionally humorous response came from Pete Hoekstra, the 
ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee, who disparaged 
the very community he helps oversee. "It has been met with great 
skepticism by people with better intelligence than we have . . . who 
have proven sources," he said. Perhaps Hoekstra ought to chair the 
Knesset's oversight committee, if he feels that strongly about it. In 
fact, the NIE, which ran more than a hundred pages and had more than a 
hundred separate footnotes involving classified sources, seems to have 
had "proven sources" galore. But Hoekstra doesn't think so.

The Republicans running for president, who've largely shut up about Iraq 
(because the war is so unpopular), may now have to shut up about Iran, 
too. Rudy Giuliani, perhaps the most war-mongering of the GOP field 
(thanks in part to Norman Podhoretz, his Iran adviser), is still warning 
that all-options-are-on-the-table, but he stuttered when trying to go 
further. "If it's true, if it's correct, if it's accurate, and they warn 
us it may not be--but if it is, then it shows Iran is susceptible to 
heavy pressure, because in 2003 there was heavy pressure on Iran," said 
Giuliani. What he didn't say, of course, is that between 2001 and 2003 
Iran had cooperated with the United States in Afghanistan, helped the 
CIA battle Al Qaeda, and offered a peace treaty of sorts with Washington 
- only to be rebuffed by the Bush administration, which was busily 
eyeing Iran as its next conquest after Iraq. In any case, we're treated 
to the delicious spectacle of hard-right Republicans disparaging the 
work of the CIA and the other agencies at make up the U.S. intelligence 
community.

The only remaining justification for war with Iran, now, are the charges 
that Iran is behind the killing of American soldiers in Iraq. But that 
rationale, too, is petering out. First of all, American deaths in Iraq 
have plummeted to record-low levels. Second, U.S. military officials in 
Iraq - perhaps, like their NIE-writing counterparts, not wanting a war 
with Iran - have backed off charges that Iran is ferrying weapons across 
the border. Now, they say, Iran is behaving itself. And this week, 
Ambassador Ryan Crocker's embassy team will open direct talks with 
Iran's embassy in Baghdad. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is building bridges 
to Iran, too - first inviting Iranian President Ahmadinejad to attend a 
meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council and then extending an 
unprecedented invitation to Ahmadinejad to make the pilgrimage to Mecca 
this month. For the first time since 2003, it seems that a thaw in 
U.S.-Iranian relations is possible.