J'accuse: Hillary Clinton

By Steve Hynd

I think the international community are making a mistake if they believe Hillary Clinton is trying to solve the Iran nuclear problem. She has been consistently hawkish, truculent and obstructive to diplomacy with Tehran.  "Madame AIPAC" has been an all-round disaster as a SecState so far, with gaffes and diplomatic suicide bombs from Russia to the Falkland Islands, but nowhere more so than on this issue.

Gary Sick, writing two days ago, noted:

I wondered if we were smart enough to declare victory and take yes as an answer from Tehran. Today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, announced that a new package of sanctions against Iran had been approved by the major powers and would be sent to the UN Security Council later in the day.

In case anyone overlooked the significance of this action, which followed by one day the announcement by Brazil and Turkey of the successful conclusion of their negotiations with Iran, she added: �I think this announcement is as convincing an answer to the efforts undertaken in Tehran over the last few days as any we could provide.�

Take that, Tehran! But it turns out that this lifted middle finger was not limited to Iran. Only hours before Clinton�s announcement, the foreign minister of Turkey held his own press conference. Obviously unaware of what was about to happen, he described in some detail not only the tortuous negotiation process with Iran, but his perception that he was acting directly on behalf of the United States.

...The gratuitous insult aside, which approach do you believe would most likely result in real progress in slowing or halting Iran�s nuclear program? We have been imposing ever-greater sanctions on Iran for more than fifteen years. When we started they had zero centrifuges; today they have in excess of 9,000. To those who believe that one more package of sanctions will do what no other sanctions have done so far, I can only say I admire your unquenchable optimism.

More likely the Turkish ambassador to the UN had it about right when he said quite plainly about sanctions, �They don�t work.�

Would a negotiating track do better, perhaps mediated by two middle-level powers who have built up some credibility with Iran, like Algeria when it finally engineered the end to the US-Iran hostage crisis in 1980-81?  We�ll never know. Tonight the hardliners in Iran (and their American counterparts) are celebrating.

Gareth Porter was prescient on this issue. As he wrote in Dec 08: 

[Ali Akbar Rezaei, the director-general of the Iranian Department of North and Central American Affairs] said he believes it would be premature to make a final judgment on Obama, in line with the "wait and see" orientation of the more hopeful interpretation. He made it clear, however, that Obama's national security team - and especially the choice of Clinton - has "disappointed" those who have held out hope for change in U.S. policies.

Rezaei portrayed the optimists as beginning to tilt toward the more pessimistic view of Obama. The Clinton nomination suggests that the "lobbies are proving to be more powerful than Obama had imagined". That in turn means that Obama "would not have freedom of action," he said.

"One point of hope is that Obama will be the key person in foreign policy, and that [Clinton] will implement it," said Rezaei. But he added that this scenario was "very unlikely", in light of the appointments.

 Iran's bi-partisan lack of trust in her honesty has proven well placed. Clinton has been the frontrunner in the administration for announcing, without even the backing of the IAEA or her own intel community, that Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon.  Actually, what they've said they are seeking (Larajani to the Japanese Diet, no less) is the Japan Option. That's perfectly consistent with IAEA and US intel assessments too. If Japan isn't in contravention of the NPT by having the Japan Option, neither is Iran. QED. There's a reason that the IAEA, unlike the U.S. government, doesn't talk about Iran "violating" the NPT.

Clinton has also clearly said that she didn't expect negotiations to work anyway, as long ago as March last year, something fully in keeping with her recent statements that the whole point is to enact "crippling sanctions" and that moving sanctions forward is a full answer to Iran's proposed deal. In fact, she was saying "sanctions" not "negotiations" on the primary campaign trail and in her confirmation hearing.

And all that's in keeping with her backing for what I've called a policy of strategic ambiguity on Iran (will we/won't we "keep all options on the table" i.e. bomb Iran), the end result of that policy being predicted by Jim Lobe back when her close associate Dennis Ross helped co-author the 2008 report "Meeting the Challenge: U.S. Policy Toward Iranian Nuclear Development" 

The lead drafter of the report was AEI�s Michael Rubin, an outspoken proponent of U.S. military intervention in the Middle East. Other participants included Sokolski; Michael Makovsky, a former aide to Douglas Feith in the Donald Rumsfeld Pentagon; Stephen Rademaker, the husband of AEI�s Danielle Pletka who worked under John Bolton in the State Department; and Kenneth Weinstein, CEO of the Hudson Institute.

...The report advises that ...if the new administration agrees to hold direct talks with Tehran without insisting that the country first cease enrichment activities, it should set a pre-determined compliance deadline and be prepared to apply increasingly harsh repercussions if the deadlines are not met, leading ultimately to U.S. military strikes that would �have to target not only Iran�s nuclear infrastructure, but also its conventional military infrastructure in order to suppress an Iranian response.� Calling the report a �roadmap to war,� Jim Lobe of the Inter Press Service wrote, �In other words, if Tehran is not eventually prepared to permanently abandon its enrichment of uranium on its own soil�a position that is certain to be rejected by Iran ab initio�war becomes inevitable, and all intermediate steps, even including direct talks if the new president chooses to pursue them, will amount to going through the motions (presumably to gather international support for when push comes to shove).�

Lobe describes exactly what Clinton has helped, more than any other Obama official, to push.

Discussing this, a friend asked me "this notion that somehow Hillary is sabotaging nuclear talks because she doesn't want a resolution - what is the possible rationale for her to do that?"

I find it hard to believe anyone can be that naive. Her ties to AIPAC and the hardline Israel lobby are well documented, as are her associations with and patronage for Israel-backing hawks like Dennis Ross. I accuse her, in simple terms, of letting the Israeli tail wag the US dog. I'm not the first to do so. You can try to dismiss this if you like, but it'll still be there and bare incredulity isn't a counterargument.