Foreign Policy In Focus

The Senate hasn't approved any major multilateral treaties since 1997.

Cross-posted from Other Words.

America is suffering from a failure to commit. Just ask Bob Dole.

While the former GOP presidential candidate and decorated veteran watched from his wheelchair on the Senate floor, all but eight of the Republicans in that chamber shamefully voted down the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

It’s hardly a radical pact. To date, 126 other countries have ratified this treaty. Dole, who served as Senate Majority and Minority Leader for more than a decade, had championed it. So did veterans groups, disability rights organizations, and even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The treaty simply took our own Americans with Disabilities Act, and “expanded that kind of rights to people all over the world who don’t have them today,” explained Senator John McCain of Arizona, another former Republican presidential nominee and veteran with a disability.

But it takes two-thirds of the Senate to ratify a treaty, and even with all 53 senators in the Democratic caucus supporting it, too few Republicans got on board for it to pass.

The treaty’s opponents seem stuck in a partisan twilight zone of UN black helicopters and conspiracy theories that undercuts U.S. influence in global affairs. They’ve perfected a method of defeating virtually every treaty that comes along. Since controversial treaties never pass in the Senate, opponents make any unobjectionable agreement divisive by inventing a big lie.

That global women’s rights treaty? Too pro-abortion. The International Criminal Court? A kangaroo court out to get American service members. The Convention on the Rights of the Child? Kids could sue their parents. The UN Law of the Sea? An excuse to slap unfair global tax on Americans. An arms trade treaty? A ploy to deprive Americans of their right to bear arms.

To sabotage the disabilities treaty, Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, joined forces with former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. Together, they crafted a ludicrous excuse for Republicans to rally around. Lee falsely claimed that the treaty would allow “a foreign body based in Geneva, Switzerland” to decide “what is best for a child at home in Utah.” They used this big lie to mobilize vocal opposition from the home-school movement.

These ploys generate enough angry messages from constituents to block the requisite approval for the United States to become a party to the treaty. In fact, the Senate hasn’t approved any major multilateral treaties at all since it endorsed the Chemical Weapons convention in 1997 — a year after Dole retired from Congress.

The Senate’s habitual failure to commit threatens our nation. It erodes U.S. global leadership. It limits our ability to express our collective values and blocks the development of worldwide agreements to address very real challenges that can decimate our civilization, including climate change and nuclear proliferation.

Fortunately, there’s a simple way to defeat big lies. It’s called the truth.

Barack Obama, like all presidents who serve two terms, has a big incentive to leave a foreign-policy legacy. Here’s my suggestion: He should lead a national dialogue on global agreements, followed by a special Senate session devoted to clearing the backlog of multilateral agreements the United States has failed to approve.

A majority of U.S. voters support adopting each one of the above-mentioned treaties. Business, labor, civil society, and national security leaders are behind them too. The only thing missing is leadership and a serious discussion of the consequences of this national failure.

Ratifying these treaties would do little or nothing to ramp up U.S. spending but it would go a long way toward rebuilding the nation’s global credibility. We’d gain international respect and increase long term security by taking strides towards solving big global challenges like climate change and nuclear proliferation — problems that can’t be resolved by any one nation, no matter how powerful.

Americans understand that international cooperation is essential to build a more secure world. It’s high time that the Senate did something about it.

Don Kraus is the president and CEO of GlobalSolutions.org, a groundbreaking movement of Americans who support a cooperative and responsible U.S. role in the world.

Well, we now have some idea of what it was about Condoleezza Rice’s appearance at the exclusive Romney fundraiser in Utah that got the Presidential candidate’s supporters’ juices going and thus attracted the major media’s attention. Turns out somebody recorded her remarks and judging by the poor audio quality of the version on the Internet it was probably done surreptitiously.

On July 13, Buzzfeed.com posted a 13-minute audio clip of the speech. 

Up until now the reports on what Rice said at the confab have come from what are called surrogates. It is quite clear that their testimonies were stage managed and designed to create a media stir. According to Buzzfeed, one person said he “was surprised by the red meat rhetoric employed by Rice, who has largely eschewed the political arena in recent years, devoting her time instead to an academic career at Stanford. “She's either very worried about a socialist threat to America, or she wants to be Vice President," the surrogate said.

Of course, Rice has consistently said she not interested in being a candidate but as soon as a Drudge Report—citing other unnamed surrogates—suggested she was “near the top” on Romney’s list of potential running mates, the speculation took wings. It could have been a real trial balloon. The Republicans have a problem; opinion polls indicate no enthusiasm for any of the other names that have been thrown into the hat. It has been suggested that the whole hullabaloo was concocted to divert public attention from the unfolding story about the former Massachusetts governor’s days as head of Bain Capital. That could be, but the remarks Rice made in Utah are also a window into the foreign policy views that turn rich Republicans on these days.

With Romney standing at her side while she spoke, Rice told the suits that the Obama presidency has been a failure, and in a period of "dangerous, chaotic times,” has led to an international crisis. She accused the current administration of displaying weakness on the world stage, engaging in class warfare, and employing failed economic policies at home.

According to Buzzfeed the comments that got her the first standing ovation were about the domestic situation. "It is a narrative that is being pushed by our current president, that 'I'm doing poorly because you're doing well,'" she said. "That has never been the American narrative. Ours has never been a narrative of aggrievement, and ours has never been a narrative of entitlement." 

Later, Rice declared, "It is time for all of us, in any way we can, to mobilize, get our act together, and storm Washington D.C." That got the audience on their feet again.

The theme of Rice’s remarks on foreign policy centered on attacking the President’s unwillingness to more forcefully assert U.S. power, his refusal to ascribe to “American exceptionalism” the way she says Romney has, and her charge that Obama has allowed U.S. policy to be “governed by the lowest common denominator collective will of the so-called international community of the United Nations." 

"What we're feeling most is not just that tumult, we've been through tumult before," Rice said. "What we're feeling is the absence of American leadership."

"When our friends aren't certain that they can count on us — and they aren't so certain now — and when our foes don't fear us or respect us, this is what you get: tumultuous, dangerous chaotic times," 

Rice was part of the group of foreign policy hawks known of as “The Vulcans” that advised George W. Bush during his campaign and went on to form a core group in his Administration, herself as National Security Adviser, and later Secretary of State.

Condoleezza Rice will not be the next vice-president of the U.S. She won’t be the party’s nominee. (But, she could be positioning herself – or is being positioned – for a place in a possible Romney administration.) While the idea of her on the ticket drew some favorable comment from some members of the Republican establishment, including rightwing hawk William Kristol of the Weekly Standard, the suggestion elicited howls from much of the right. Most of it has centered on her position on reproductive rights and immigration where she and Romney are not on the same page. Some of it relates to her association with the foreign policy of the Bush Administration, something the Romney campaign tries to avoid discussing.

Meanwhile, the idea of Rice on the ticket drew some flak from another quarter – supporters of the policies of the Israeli government. Morton Klein, the national president of the Zionist Organization of America and a frequent critic of the Obama administration, sounded a similar note. He was quoted by the Jewish Telegraph Agency this week as saying. “It understandably would be concerning to us if he’s picking somebody who shows herself to be hostile to Israel and to U.S.-Israel relations.” Klein, who often criticized Rice when she was secretary of state, continued, “She pressed Israel to make one-sided concessions while not making sure the Palestinians fulfilled their obligations.”

"Choosing Condoleezza Rice would inject tremendous excitement into the campaign and remove all suspense from the outcome,” conservative columnist George Will said on ABC's "This Week" last Sunday. “You would have such an uproarious convention in Tampa. You'd have perhaps a third party. You'd have a challenge to her on the floor. You'd have walkouts of delegations, and he'd lose 40 states."

On his very rightwing RedState blog Erick Erickson called the notion of Rice on the ticket “silly,” adding, “I don’t know who is hitting the crack rock tonight in the rumor mill, but bull shiitake mushrooms.”

On some of the further out rightwing Internet outlets the language used to reject a Rice candidacy have been – how do you put this? –well, outright racist.

On the other hand, even as it became clear she would not be selected vice-presidential candidate, the Boston Herald endorsed her, reporting that she had been a “superstar” at the Utah moneybags gathering.  Noting Rice’s comment about the alleged absence of U.S world leadership, it said editorially, “That is at the heart of what has gone seriously wrong with American foreign policy and rarely has it been articulated so boldly and succinctly.”

The editors of The Independent in Britain took the Rice rumor seriously, editorializing on the subject July 15, and warning that, “She also has political baggage, both as the adviser who told Bush Sr. not to back Ukrainian independence, and as National Security Adviser in the run-up to the Iraq war. Raising such ghosts may do the Republican cause more harm than good.” The newspaper concludes, “Condi is an interesting suggestion; but she is absolutely the wrong choice. Unless, of course, one is a Democrat.”

Carl Bloice, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, is a columnist for the Black Commentator. He also serves on its editorial board.

Clearly Condoleezza Rice doesn’t waste time. When she appeared at a special behind-closed-doors luncheon at a Park City, Utah retreat for big money Republican Party donors it was for only 15 minutes. But apparently that was enough to bring down the house. One attendee later told the Washington Post she was the “the star of the show,” and another said that, if it was a vice presidential tryout, “she hit it out of the park.” An international banker from Boston was quoted as saying, “she rocked it.” Former ambassador to Iceland Charles Cobb said Rice was “spectacular” and described her as a “very bright, sophisticated, articulate lady.” According to CBS, “her remarks were widely praised by attendees. One called her brief address “electrifying,”

That might be considered an understatement. A couple from Los Angeles, attending the three-day gathering and “who did not want to be identified’ told the New York Times Rice’s message was one of “America needing to take charge.” “We can’t stand by and let things happen,” the wife said. “If we do, someone else will take that leadership role.”

They both described her address as an “impassioned plea” for the country to “stand up and take charge.”

There is something mysterious about all of this. It’s a little hard to imagine what one could say in 15 minutes that would evoke that kind of reaction described. Perhaps we will never know. If there is a transcript it has not been made public

Rice herself said later, "I talked about the need for American leadership, I talked about the importance of the United States to a more peaceful world, a world that has been quite turbulent in recent years, and needs a strong American anchor," she said.

"I also talked about the essence of America, and I think perhaps that is what people resonated with, that this is a country in which people really believe that it doesn't matter where you came from, it matters where you're going and that we really need to concentrate on rebuilding our strengths as a country of immigrants, a country where it doesn't really matter your zip code so that you can get a good education, and the need to really pay attention to those strengths so that we can lead from an internal strength at home," she added.

Two standing ovations for that?

Rice’s “reappearance on the scene, however fleeting, is unhelpful to Mitt Romney,” Carter Eskew wrote in the Washington Post last week. “The Bush administration is a reminder of one of the two main pillars of the Obama campaign: ‘We tried that; it didn’t work.’ Ms. Rice and I do agree on one thing: she said that she is not a very good politician.”

However, she did tout her own ability in the field of policy. But that’s not much of a plus either. She was, after all, an original and leading member of “The Vulcans,” a group that served as a foreign policy advisory team for George W. Bush when he was running for the Presidency. It included Richard Armitage, Robert Blackwill, Stephen Hadley, Richard Perle, Dov S. Zakheim, Robert Zoellick and Paul Wolfowitz, and Scooter Libby, all of whom secured top positions in the new administration, Rice as National Security advisor and later Secretary of State. All of them played key roles in launching the disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

(Zakheim recently wrote a book: A Vulcan’s Tale: How the Bush Administration Mismanaged the Reconstruction of Afghanistan.)

While we don’t know exactly what Rice said in the two private sessions that appeared to light the lights of the Republican honchos, what reports we have from the fleeting public appearances are consistent with the unilateralism and belittling of world public opinion that marked the Vulcans’ rise and characterized Rice’s stay at the White House and later at the State Department.

"The United States has to have a view, it has to gather people around that view, and frankly, I think we need to do more of that, and the last several years I think we've been lacking on that front," Rice told CBS.  She said the U.S. should "make alliance" with those who want to see the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad, evoking memory of the “coalition of the willing” she helped lead into Iraq.

“President Bush was willing, against a lot of criticism, to assert American leadership,” she said, adding: “I’m pretty certain I don't see that same level of willingness to assert this: That the United States is indeed exceptional, the United States isn’t just the lowest common denominator of what the [United Nations] Security Council can deliver.”

“The international system is a system,” she explained. “It has certain rules, power relationships, and people respond to those,” Rice told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren. “If the United States is not setting that agenda, then someone else will, and that might be a country that doesn’t believe in free markets and free peoples.”

A few days after reportedly bringing down the house in Park City, wrote Chris Moody of Yahoo News, Rice flew to Washington to headline a fundraiser at the Capitol Hill Club, “a private hangout for Republicans” for ShePAC, a new super PAC that supports conservative female candidates. The appearance included “a private foreign policy briefing with sitting female lawmakers and Republican House and Senate candidates from across the country.” “While Rice spoke to the candidates on the third floor of the club, about 150 ShePAC supporters waited in a reception room downstairs, noshing on a spread of roast beef, glazed ham, sweet potato puffs and watermelon soup while bartenders poured glasses of whiskey, vodka and wine in the back," wrote Moody.

The backdrop and the drama must have been slightly surreal. Moody wrote: “Introduced as the 'smartest woman in the world,' Rice emerged from a side kitchen to address the group.”

We have no idea what she said in the upstairs meeting while the activist downstairs steeled themselves for her appearance which when it occurred lasted only 10 minutes. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Rice encouraged the mostly female crowd to keep fighting for America.” “It just has to be that the freest and most compassionate and most generous country on the face of the earth has to continue to be the most powerful,” she said.

“When she finished, Rice promptly exited through a side door without talking to reporters waiting nearby,” Moody reported. “As she walked toward a vehicle waiting in an alley, an aide said she would not be answering questions because she had a scheduled appearance on Fox News later that night and wanted any new comments to be exclusive to the network.”

On June 26, Rice went on "CBS This Morning” where she called for the U.S. to arm opposition fighters in Syria. There she took on the Obama over Syria, arguing that “regional players are already arming the Assad regime and the opposition in pursuit of their own agenda in the Middle Eastern nation.” She cited Iran and Russia as examples of countries arming the Assad regime but she might just as well been talking about Saudi Arabia and Turkey. She later said mysteriously the latter was beginning “to suffer from the instability.”

Rice has had fulsome praise for candidate Romney whom she says will bring “first and foremost an understanding” of “the role the U.S. in the world,” that he understands the “essence” of America, which she called “free markets and free people,” and would be a solid leader on the international stage.

"America has a way of making the impossible seem inevitable in retrospect, and we're going to do it again," she said. "We're going to strengthen ourselves, our democracy at home, we're going to strengthen our economy, we're going to do it with great leadership like the people in this room and like Governor Mitt Romney, who will be a terrific president."

On CBS, Rice contrasted the Obama Administration’s foreign policy with Romney’s “understanding of the role the United States has to play in the world.”

“We need a greater, more assertive America in the world,” Rice said. “The United States can’t lead from behind. The United States has to have a view, it has to gather people around that view, and frankly… the last several years I think we've been lacking on that front.”

"We really do need to have a view," said Rice. "It cannot be the lowest common denominator view of the international community through the Security Council of the U.N., and secondly this really counts on rebuilding our strengths at home, and so the state of our economy, continuing to borrow money that we cannot afford, entitlements, if we don't get a handle on who we are at home and fix our multiple problems at home then we will not lead."

"This is a truly consequential election. This is perhaps a turning point for the country. I'm very often asked to speak about the foreign policy aspects and there are some key important foreign policy issues before us," Rice said at one point. "There are many foreign policy issues on the agenda, but we are not going to address any of those international challenges unless we get it right at home. And it's not right at home right now, and the American people know it."

At each appearance Rice said emphatically that she is not a candidate for Romney’s running mate. “Not going to happen,” said, “I love policy, I don’t really love politics."

“But there are many ways to put together an administration so that you represent all of the challenges that the President of the United States will face and it doesn’t all have to be in the presidency and in the vice presidency.” Rice told Fox News Host Greta Van Susteren. “I am quite certain because I know him and I admire him and I trust his judgment. Governor Romney is going to find the right person for the number two place on the ticket. The most important thing is going to be that it’s somebody who is ready to serve should something, God forbid, happen to the president. That’s the most important characteristic of the vice president and I know he’s going to make a good choice but I know it won’t be me.”

Sounds to me like she’s running for something – secretary of state? -- or maybe national security advisor. In any case, it would be nice to know what she said in Utah to the GOP’s big money people that got them so excited.

Carl Bloice, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, is a columnist for the Black Commentator. He also serves on its editorial board.

At the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit on Monday (March 26), the Washington Post reported that camera crews caught President Obama and outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, apparently unaware of the presence of the all-seeing media eye, speaking with each other.

"On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved, but it's important for him to give me space," Obama can be heard telling Medvedev, apparently referring to incoming Russian president — and outgoing prime minister — Vladi­mir Putin.

First impression: That was the only chance they had to meet one on one at the summit? Whatever the case, conservative Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post said:

This is a stunning gift to Romney from the Obama camp. The legitimate concern that Obama will take his re-election as a mandate to head left is likely to become an all-purpose weapon.

Mitt Romney's foreign-policy advisors expressed their appreciation by writing an open letter to President Obama for the National Review. In part, it reads:

Too often, the United States under your leadership has been neither strong nor constant. Your inadvertently recorded remarks to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in South Korea raise questions about whether a new period of even greater weakness and inconstancy would lie ahead if you are reelected.

Then the advisors raised the "p" word (emphasis added).

Should the American people expect more efforts to placate Russia by weakening the missile defense systems that protect us and our allies?

But at least they didn't hurl conservatives favorite foreign-policy epithet at the president -- the "a" word. Ms. Rubin, however, had no such constraints (again, emphasis added).

It’s remarkable, actually, that Obama could be any more flexible with Russia than he’s already been under his “reset” — which is indistinguishable from appeasement. His administration praised rigged Russian elections, helped get Russia into the World Trade Organization, has tried to slow down human rights legislation aimed at Russian perpetrators, and yanked missile defense sites out of Eastern Europe.

Though some think Neville Chamberlain was correct to sign the Munich Agreement in 1938, which ceded the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Germany, he'll never be allowed to rest in peace. In fact, many progressives agree that President Obama placates and appeases -- conservatives, of course.

The latest development, reports Elaine Grossman at Global Security Newswire:

All but four of the U.S. Senate’s 47 Republicans have called on President Obama to explain remarks on missile defense made on Monday in an informal discussion with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. 

They were led, of course, by Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), chair of the Senate Contrariness Committee.

Meanwhile, at Democracy Arsenal, Heather Hurlburt wrote about the letter.

I was mesmerized thinking about the idea that two-thirds of the signatories served in the second-term Reagan, Clinton and Bush Administrations -- administrations that saw major positive steps in arms control, relations with enemies, and attempts to broker ends to decades-long wars (and that’s just Reagan and Bush) -- would sign such a letter. 

But she also seems to view the letter as a message to Romney from his own advisors.

Clearly, Romney’s team is right to worry that a President Romney might follow the lead of their former bosses, not to mention Presidents Clinton, Nixon and Eisenhower, and grow more confident and more concerned with pragmatic solutions to the world’s most pressing national security problems in a second term.

Romney himself also responded to the open-mic moment and then President Medvedev, in turn

… rebuked US presidential hopeful Mitt Romney for saying Russia is the "number one geopolitical foe" of the US. … Mr Medvedev said Mr Romney's comments "smelled of Hollywood" and advised him to "use his head".

Whatever President Obama's faults, one can't imagine Medvedev or Putin saying that about him.

1. Republicans having troubles 'finding their voice'

Although there is time for some kind of a comeback, at present, the Republican Party campaign to win back the U.S. presidency continues to implode almost daily. The three most likely candidates at this point – Romney, Santorum and Gingrich – continue to duke it out nationwide. Each of the three contenders has struck stunning blows to their opponents, the result being all three have lost the temporary momentum each once enjoyed. Now, some nine months before the election, it’s difficult to see how the Republicans can turn the situation around.

The Republicans have had difficulty 'finding the issue' that might ride both them individually and the Republican campaign to victory. There is already talk of a possible stealth candidate emerging at the Republican convention, but even then, it will probably be too late to affect the outcome without some 'dramatic' event. 

Early in the campaign, when the contenders were vying for the Christian fundamentalist vote, the target of their outrage was none other than Charles Darwin and his evolutionary theory of natural selection. It didn’t work very well. Besides revealing a stunning level of ignorance concerning both the man and his theory, the issue garnered them little traction outside of their narrow base, and it was, both for the Republican Party and the country as a whole, something of an embarrassment.

The target then shifted to Barack Obama’s obligatory national health insurance plan, admittedly more relevant and open to criticism than Darwin’s finches or his musings on British domesticated pigeons. But the issue isn’t producing the kind of results which have given the Republicans momentum either. While only tangentially related, the uproar against the Komen 'Race for the Cure' decision to cut off funding for breast cancer screenings to Planned Parenthood suggests an American population quite edgy about any possible cuts in healthcare services.

2. Rallying round war with Iran to save the Republican campaign?

So the candidates are now – minus Ron Paul – looking for a miracle issue to save the campaign and seem to be rallying around going to war with Iran.

The blast of media propaganda concerning the 'Iranian threat' has been intense and disingenuous. All serious studies suggest that, like the so-called Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program, the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapons program is fabricated. The goal is 'regime change' – a term itself that hides the essence of U.S. (and Israeli) foreign policy: overthrowing a government that for whatever reason represents a regional challenge.

So much of the energy to push the Obama Administration into an armed conflict with Iran is coming from the neo-conservatives and AIPAC, Christians United For Israeli, etc. (the pro-Israeli lobby) here in the United States and from Israel itself. The Israeli lobby has also worked long and intimately with the representatives of the Iranian dissident group Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK), so much so that the two speak with one voice and are active together lobbying Congress to push it to adopt a pro-war position with Iran.

The MEK is designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. Congress, accused of carrying out terrorist attacks in the past, including against U.S. citizens. There is evidence that with the help of Israel the MEK has carried out five assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists since 2007. In Iraq, for some time, Israel has been very active in Kurdistan working with the MEK and other groups to destabilize the Iranian regime. This past week it was leaked by unnamed top U.S. officials – as if it were something new – that Israel has financed, trained and armed an array of dissident Iranian groups to carry out terrorist attacks on Iranian soil.

The Republican candidates have embraced this approach to a degree almost comical, each one tripping over the others’ feet to prove who is more hawkish, more pro-Israeli. They reason that if the war becomes a mess, it could hurt Obama the way the failed hostage rescue mission destroyed Jimmy Carter’s bid for a second term in 1980. A very dangerous course.

3. Obama tries to cool down the tensions he had previously exacerbated

Unfortunately, Obama has acceded to these pressures by yet again intensifying the sanctions against Iran, this time placing more restrictions on Iran’s central bank that handles oil revenues. Combine that with continued allegations from the Iranians of U.S. (and Israeli) special forces missions (of course denied) and drone over-flights and, and so as not to appear 'soft on Iran', it would seem that Obama, too, is pushing the envelope with Teheran to keep the Republicans at bay.

But as the rhetoric ratchets up on both sides it is reaching a dangerous boiling point and Obama is backing off. He seems now to want to dampen some of the hysterical rhetoric pushing the United States (and/or Israel) into an outright military confrontation with Iran. He is motivated not so much for reasons of principle, but to avoid any international incident out of his control that might affect his re-election possibilities.

While the sanctions are ratcheted up, U.S. Special Forces already on Iranian soil are doing untold – and unreported – damage; Iranian nuclear scientists are being assassinated, Obama does not want the situation to evolve into a full blown military confrontation…yet preferring to maintain the conflict on the level of a 'cold' rather than a 'hot' war. News of attacks on Israeli embassy targets in India, Georgia and Thailand only underline how tense and dangerous the Middle East region is becoming. The cold war, indeed, is not very cold, and getting rapidly warmer.

Recent clear statements by both Obama and U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta emphasizing that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program (rather startling admissions given the sanctions and general vilification of Iran) and that Obama still hopes for a negotiated settlement are meant to dampen the ardor of the likes of John Bolton and Binyamin Netanyahu. The fact that Obama has been a relatively weak president when facing down the neo-conservative agenda for the region and Netanyahu’s intransigence mean his calls for calm may not be heeded.

Likewise, the leak from the Obama Administration accusing Israel of involvement with the MEK in the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists is meant to put both the neo-conservatives here and the Israelis on notice to rein in some of their anti-Iranian rhetoric…at least until after November 2012. Given Syria’s strategic relationship with Iran, as long as Syria is in turmoil, Obama has yet another reason to delay attacking Iran. Why not break Iran 'one leg at a time'? First the Syrian leg before the Iran backbone? No need to attack Iran if the weakening of the regime can come through a collapse of Assad’s regime. But then Iraq is not Libya and it does not appear that the Assad Regime – as undemocratic as any in the region – is about collapse.

All this suggests Obama will try to avoid an “October Surprise” that entails unleashing an open and unrestrained military conflict with Iran, but that the Republicans, who have their own independent ties with both the U.S. military and the Israelis, could very well try to foment something. The chances of a Republican candidate winning in November look dimmer and dimmer as Romney, Santorum and Gingrich essentially self-destruct. Each day it continues, and as the economy slightly improves, Obama’s ratings inch back up in the polls. With Republican chances looking less likely, they will have to come up with something quite special from their bag of tricks.

The problem with all this is the rhetoric has reached such a heated level it is possible that war will be provoked anyway, despite Obama’s late but welcomed attempts to cool things down. There are still a number of wild cards out there that could come into play. It is not only the U.S. and Israel that can engage in pre-emptive strikes. Iran can, too. Perhaps this is what the policy is about anyway: push Iran to the brink so that it sees no option for itself other than military defense. Israel may think even if the U.S. opposes military action on its part, that if Israel strikes, regardless, the U.S. will come to its aid.

Nasty stuff.

The consequences of a war with Iran have been spelled out repeatedly by others – a spike in the price of oil, probable end to the weak global recovery, a conflagration that could draw in the region and beyond, pleasing no one other than those two wacko spiritual cousins – John Hagee and John Bolton. 'Rational' explanations of why the United States (and/or Israel) will not attack Iran in the foreseeable future make the most sense…but who knows?

Rob Prince is a Lecturer of International Studies at the University of Denver's Korbel School of International Studies and publisher of the Colorado Progressive Jewish News.