The Senate voted 99-0 to adopt a resolution that urged President Barack Obama to fully enforce existing economic sanctions against Iran and to “provide diplomatic, military and economic support” to Israel “in its defense of its territory, people and existence”.

Washington, it said, should support Israel “in accordance with United States law and the constitutional responsibility of Congress to authorize the use of military force” if Israel “is compelled to take military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran’s nuclear weapons program.”

The measure also re-affirmed the official policy of the administration of President Barack Obama that it would take whatever action necessary to “prevent” Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

At the same time, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Republican-led House of Representatives unanimously approved new sanctions legislation that, if passed into law, would blacklist foreign countries or companies that fail to reduce their oil imports from Iran to virtually nil within 180 days.

The same bill would expand the current blacklisting of companies that do business with Iran’s financial sector to include those engaged in the country’s automotive and mining sectors, as well.

In perhaps its most controversial section, the bill also eliminates President Obama’s ability to waive most sanctions for national-interest or national-security reasons.

Such waiver authority, which has been routinely included in existing sanctions legislation, has been used by Obama to ensure that countries that have historically enjoyed important trade and financial relations with Tehran continue cooperating with Western-led international efforts to pressure Iran to curb its nuclear programme.

The president’s waiver authority is also considered critical to prospects for a negotiated agreement between Iran and the P5+1 (U.S., Britain, France, China, Russia plus Germany) by which such curbs would be accepted by Tehran in return for easing sanctions.

Both moves come as the Senate Republicans unveiled yet another bill even more far-reaching than that approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee by blacklisting companies that do any trade with Iran and deprive the president of all waiver authority. Under the draft legislation, which so far lacks any Democratic co-sponsors, sanctions could be eased or lifted only by an act of Congress.

Approval of both the Senate resolution and the House bill were hailed by American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the premier group of the Israel lobby here.

“The passage of this resolution is an extremely significant and timely state of solidarity with Israel and a restatement of America’s determination to thwart Iran’s nuclear quest – which endangers America, Israeli, and international security,” it said about the Senate action.

The House bill, it noted with approval, would impose a de facto commercial embargo against Iran and would “maximise the effectiveness of American economic and diplomatic efforts as Iran nears a nuclear weapons capability.”

But other observers said the latest Congressional moves marked a dangerous escalation in tensions at a critical moment.

“Congress should abstain from any more reckless threats or sanctions that push us closer to the brink of war with Iran,” Jamal Abdi of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) said of the Senate action.

“Attacking the president’s waiver authority is a cynical attempt to weaken his hand at the negotiating table and sabotage diplomatic efforts,” he added about the House bill. “If the president can’t lift sanctions in exchange for concessions, the Iranians will have little incentive to cooperate.”

The latest Congressional moves came as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released its latest quarterly report on Iran’s nuclear programme detailing the installation of more advanced centrifuges that are used to enrich uranium, a buildup of stockpiles of 3.5-percent and 20-percent enriched uranium, and advances in the construction of its heavy-water reactor at Arak.

While a number of senators made much of the latest report, suggesting that Tehran was on the verge of building a nuclear weapon, experts here said that the report offered no major surprises and that Iran’s 20-percent enriched stockpile – which could most easily be further enriched to bomb grade – remained substantially below what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last September defined as Israel’s “red line”.

“The report findings underscore the urgent need to intensify negotiations with Tehran to resolve the political questions surrounding Iran’s nuclear program and to resolve the outstanding questions regarding the potential military dimensions of the program,” according to an analysis by the Arms Control Association (ACA) here.

“But, at the same time, the findings reinforce earlier assessments that Iran remains years away from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”

Iran has repeatedly denied that its nuclear programme is designed to develop a weapon, and, since 2007, the U.S. intelligence community has insisted that the country’s leadership has not yet decided to build one. But the progress Iran has made in building and mastering the technology would shorten the time it would need to construct a bomb if such a decision were made, according to nuclear experts.

On the diplomatic front, meanwhile, progress has been more or less frozen since the latest P5+1 meeting with Iran in Almaty, Kazakhstan in early April when Tehran rejected a Western offer to ease sanctions on gold and precious-metal trade and some Iranian exports in exchange for suspending 20-percent enrichment and transferring its existing 20-percent stockpile out of the country.

Most observers believe the new talks are unlikely until after Iran’s elections next month and the inauguration of a new president, despite the fact that decisions on nuclear issues are ultimately made by the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Among the favoured candidates approved this week by the Guardian Council is Iran’s nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, who is considered by veteran Iran watchers a hard-liner who has often frustrated his P5+1 interlocutors.

Some had hoped that former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who entered the race at the last minute and has occasionally urged better relations with the West, would offer a major challenge, but his candidacy was rejected by the Council.

Another approved candidate in the race, Hasan Rowhani, served as former president Mohammed Khatami’s chief nuclear negotiator. In that post, he struck a deal to suspend enrichment with the so-called EU-3 (Britain, France, and Germany). But his lack of prominence makes him an underdog in a race dominated by conservatives closely associated with Khamenei.

Whether the flurry of new threats and sanctions by Congress will affect the election – or the calculations of Khamenei himself – remains to be seen.

Even the strongest supporters of sanctions have conceded that the economic pressure they’ve exerted on the regime to date has not produced the desired result and may even have strengthened regime hardliners who are convinced that Washington’s ultimate aim is “regime change” – a conviction that is likely to be strengthened by a review of Wednesday’s Senate debate.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Entitled “Iran After the Bomb: How Would a Nuclear-Armed Tehran Behave?“, the report asserts that the acquisition by Tehran of nuclear weapons  would above all be intended to deter an attack by hostile powers, presumably including Israel and the United States, rather than for aggressive purposes.

And while its acquisition may indeed lead to greater tension between Iran and its Sunni-led neighbours, the 50-page report concludes that Tehran would be unlikely to use nuclear weapons against other Muslim countries. Nor would it be able to halt its diminishing influence in the region resulting from the Arab Spring and its support for the Syrian government, according to the author, Alireza Nader.

“Iran’s development of nuclear weapons will enhance its ability to deter an external attack, but it will not enable it to change the Middle East’s geopolitical order in its own favour,” Nader, an international policy analyst at RAND, told IPS. “The Islamic Republic’s challenge to the region is constrained by its declining popularity, a weak economy, and a limited conventional military capability. An Iran with nukes will still be a declining power.”

The report reaches several conclusions all of which generally portray Iran as a rational actor in its international relations.

While Nader calls it a “revisionist state” that tries to undermine what it sees as a U.S.-dominated order in the Middle East, his report stresses that “it does not have territorial ambitions and does not seek to invade, conquer, or occupy other nations.”

Further, the report identifies the Islamic Republic’s military doctrine as defensive in nature.  This posture is presumably a result of the volatile and unstable region in which it exists and is exacerbated by its status as a Shi’a and Persian-majority nation in a Sunni and Arab-majority region.

Iran is also scarred by its traumatic eight-year war with Iraq in which as many as one million Iranians lost their lives.

The new report comes amidst a growing controversy here over whether a nuclear-armed Iran could itself be successfully “contained” by the U.S. and its allies and deterred both from pursuing a more aggressive policy in the region and actually using nuclear weapons against its foes.

Iran itself has vehemently denied it intends to build a weapon, and the U.S. intelligence community has reported consistently over the last six years that Tehran’s leadership has not yet decided to do so, although the increasing sophistication and infrastructure of its nuclear programme will make it possible to build one more quickly if such a decision is made.

Official U.S. policy, as enunciated repeatedly by top officials, including President Barack Obama, is to “prevent” Iran from obtaining a weapon, even by military means if ongoing diplomatic efforts and “crippling” economic sanctions fail to persuade Iran to substantially curb its nuclear programme.

A nuclear-armed Iran, in the administration’s view – which is held even more fervently by the U.S. Congress where the Israel lobby exerts its greatest influence – represents an “existential threat” to the Jewish state.

In addition, according to the administration, Iran’s acquisition of a weapon would likely embolden it and its allies – notably Lebanon’s Hezbollah – to pursue more aggressive actions against their foes and could well set off a regional “cascade effect” in which other powers, particulary Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt, would feel obliged to launch nuclear-weapons programmes of their own.

But a growing number of critics of the prevention strategy – particularly that part of it that would resort to military action against Iran – argue that a nuclear Iran will not be nearly as dangerous as the reigning orthodoxy assumes.

A year ago, for example, Paul Pillar, a veteran CIA analyst who served as National Intelligence Officer for the Middle East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, published a lengthy essay in ‘The Washington Monthly’, “We Can Live With a Nuclear Iran: Fears of a Bomb in Tehran’s Hands Are Overhyped, and a War to Prevent It Would Be a Disaster.”

More recently, Colin Kahl, an analyst at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) who also served as the Pentagon’s top Middle East policy adviser for much of Obama’s first term, published two reports – the first questioning the “cascade effect” in the region, and the second, published earlier this week and entitled “If All Else Fails: The Challenges of Containing a Nuclear-Armed Iran,” outlining a detailed “containment strategy” — including extending Washington’s nuclear umbrella over states that feel threatened by a nuclear Iran — the U.S. could follow to deter Tehran’s use of a nuclear bomb or its transfer to non-state actors, like Hezbollah, and persuade regional states not to develop their own nuclear arms capabilities.

In addition, Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA analyst at the Brookings Institution whose 2002 book, “The Threatening Storm” helped persuade many liberals and Democrats to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq, will publish a new book, “Unthinkable: Iran, the Bomb, and American Strategy”, that is also expected to argue for a containment strategy if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon.

Because both Brookings and CNAS are regarded as close to the administration, some neo-conservative commentators have expressed alarm that these reports are “trial balloons” designed to set the stage for Obama’s abandonment of the prevention strategy in favour of containment, albeit by another name.

It is likely that Nader’s study – coming as it does from RAND, a think tank with historically close ties to the Pentagon – will be seen in a similar light.

His report concedes that Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons would lead to greater tension with the Gulf Arab monarchies and thus to greater instability in the region. Moreover, an inadvertent or accidental nuclear exchange between Israel and Iran would be a “dangerous possibility”, according to Nader who also notes that the “cascade effect”, while outside the scope of his study, warrants “careful consideration”.

Despite Iran’s strong ideological antipathy toward Israel, the report does not argue that Tehran would attack the Jewish state with nuclear weapons, as that would almost certainly lead to the regime’s destruction.

Israel, in Nader’s view, fears that Iran’s nuclear capability could serve as an “umbrella” for Tehran’s allies that could significantly hamper Israel’s military operations in the Palestinian territories, the Levant, and the wider region.

But the report concludes that Tehran is unlikely to extend its nuclear deterrent to its allies, including Hezbollah, noting that the interests of those groups do not always – or even often – co-incide with Iran’s.  Iran would also be highly unlikely to transfer nuclear weapons to them in any event, according to the report.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

The report, “If All Else Fails: The Challenges of Containing a Nuclear-Armed Iran,” outlines a detailed “containment strategy” designed to deter Tehran’s use of a nuclear bomb or its transfer to non-state actors, and persuade other regional states not to develop their own nuclear arms capabilities.

“The United States should do everything in its power to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran, and no option should be left off the table,” said Colin Kahl, the lead author of the 80-page report and the Pentagon’s top Middle East policy official during most of Obama’s first term.

“But we also have to consider the possibility that prevention efforts – including the use of force – could fail,” he added in an email to IPS. “In that case, we’d need a strategy for managing and mitigating the threats a nuclear-armed Iran would pose to vital U.S. interests and allies. That’s what we’re focusing on.”

The administration, according to the report, has so firmly committed itself to a prevention policy – including threatening military action if diplomatic efforts and economic pressure fail – that cannot explicitly endorse a different approach “without damaging the very credibility it needs to effectively address the Iranian nuclear challenge,” according to the report.

At the same time, however, Tehran may be able to achieve “an unstoppable breakout capability” or build a weapon in secret before preventive measures have been exhausted. In addition, a U.S. or Israeli military strike may inflict only minimal damage to Iran’s nuclear programme while strengthening hard-liners in the regime who believe a nuclear deterrent is the only way to ensure its survival.

“Under any of these scenarios, Washington would likely be forced to shift toward containment regardless of current preferences,” the report notes, arguing that Washington needs to think through the requirements for an effective strategy.

The new report adds to a growing literature about U.S. options in dealing with Iran, which has itself repeatedly denied that its nuclear programme is designed to develop nuclear weapons.

The U.S. intelligence community has also reported consistently over the last six years that Iran’s leadership has not yet decided to build a weapon, although the increasing sophistication and infrastructure of its nuclear programme will make it possible to build one more quickly if such a decision is made. U.S. intelligence agencies have expressed confidence that they will be able to detect any effort by Iran to achieve a “break-out” capacity.

Since coming to office in 2009, the Obama administration has described its efforts to dissuade Iran from developing a nuclear weapon as a “dual-track” approach involving both diplomatic outreach through the so-called P5+1 process of negotiations between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany, and economic pressure exerted primarily through the imposition of harsh economic sanctions – some multilateral, most unilateral – designed to “cripple” the Iranian economy.

While the sanctions have clearly damaged Iran’s troubled economy, Tehran has so far rejected far-reaching concessions demanded by the Western members of the P5+1, such as suspending all operations at its underground Fordo enrichment facility and shipping most of its 20-percent enriched-uranium stockpile out of the country.

While there have been some exchanges between the P5+1 and Iran since their last meeting in Almaty, Kazakhstan last month, the diplomatic process appears to have been put on hold pending next month’s presidential elections in the Islamic Republic.

The lack of progress on the diplomatic front combined with technological advances in Iran’s nuclear programme – with estimates that Tehran will have likely enough enriched uranium to build a bomb within a very short period by next spring or summer — has provoked a simmering conflict here.

It revolves around pro-Israel and proliferation hawks pushing for yet more draconian sanctions and “credible threats of force” by the administration on the one hand and more dovish forces who are calling for more emphasis on the diplomatic track.

Much of the foreign policy establishment, including former senior military, intelligence, and diplomatic officials, lean to the latter camp; recent reports by blue-ribbon task forces of The Iran Project, the Atlantic Council, the Carnegie Endowment, and the Center for the National Interest have shown a developing elite consensus in favour of greater U.S. flexibility at the negotiating table.

In Congress, where the Israel lobby enjoys its greatest influence, however, the emphasis remains on the pressure track. Measures currently being circulated in both houses of Congress target foreign companies and banks in ways that, if enforced, would impose a virtual trade embargo against Iran.

The new report, the latest in a series by CNAS on Iran policy, does not address either strategy, although Kahl has in the past argued for greater U.S. flexibility in negotiations.  It is likely, however, to fuel the ongoing debates between the hawks and doves on whether Washington can indeed live with a nuclear-armed Iran if its “prevention” strategy fails.

A containment strategy, according Kahl and his two-co-authors, Raj Pattani and Jacob Stokes, would integrate five key components: deterrence, defence, disruption, de-escalation and de-nuclearisation.

Deterrence would involve, among other steps, strengthening Washington’s threat to retaliate in kind if Iran uses nuclear weapons and extending the U.S. nuclear umbrella to other regional states in exchange for their commitment not to pursue independent nuclear capabilities.

Defence would aim to deny Iran any benefit from its nuclear weapons by building up U.S. missile-defence capabilities and naval deployments in the region and increasing security co-operation with Gulf countries and Israel.

Disruption would include “shap(ing) a regional environment resistant to Iranian influence” by, among other steps, building up Egypt and Iraq as strategic counterweights; “promoting evolutionary political reform” in the Gulf; and increasing aid to moderate elements among Syrian rebels and the Lebanese Army as a counter to Hezbollah.

De-escalation would be designed to prevent any Iran-related crisis from spiralling to nuclear war “persuading Israel to eschew preemptive nuclear doctrine and other destabilizing nuclear postures,” creating crisis-communication mechanisms and exploring confidence-building measures with Iran; assuring Tehran that “regime change” is not Washington’s goal, and providing it with “’face-saving’ exit ramps” during crises.

Finally, de-nuclearisation would try to constrain Iran’s nuclear programme and limit broader damage to the non-proliferation regime by maintaining and tightening sanctions against Iran and strengthening interdiction efforts.

The report stressed that such a strategy would entail major costs, including “doubling down on U.S. security commitments to the Middle East,” making the administration’s military “rebalancing” to the Asia/Pacfic more difficult; “greatly complicate efforts to promote reform” allied Arab states; and “increase the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. national security strategy at the very time the Obama administration hopes to move in the opposite direction.”

The CNAS report was immediately assailed by several prominent neo-conservatives who have long been warning that Obama, given his clear reluctance to risk war in another predominantly Muslim country, would himself eschew his prevention strategy in favour of “containment by another name.”

But, as noted by Kahl, the hard-line neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute published a paper 18 months ago that concluded that “containing and deterring” a nuclear-armed Iran could be the “least-bad choice” for U.S. policy if Washington can “demonstrate that it can deter both Iran’s use of nuclear weapons and aggression by Tehran’s network of partners and terrorist proxies.”

Kahl’s position on containment is also expected to be echoed with the anticipated publication by Ken Pollack, a former CIA analyst at the Brookings Institution, of his new book, “Unthinkable: Iran, the Bomb, and American Strategy’. Pollack’s 2002 book, “The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq,” helped persuade many liberals and Democrats to back the invasion.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

The Shuafat refugee camp can be seen across the separation wall from the Israeli settlement Pisgat Ze'ev. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/IPS.

Amidst a new U.S. effort to revive the long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, healthy pluralities of both peoples want U.S. President Barack Obama to play a stronger role in resolving their conflict, according to a major new poll released here Thursday by the Pew Research Center.

The survey, which also covered attitudes towards Israel and Palestine in 11 other countries, found that Israeli confidence in Obama has increased since his visit to the Jewish state in March, while Palestinians retain little confidence in the U.S. president despite their desire for his greater involvement in peace-making efforts.

And while half of Israelis believe a two-state solution can still be achieved peacefully through negotiations, Palestinians by a large margin believe that is a delusion.

Indeed, a plurality (45 percent) of Palestinian respondents said the best way to achieve statehood was through armed struggle, while only 15 percent said negotiations were the best course. Another 15 percent cited non-violent resistance, while 22 percent more said some combination of these tactics offered the greatest chance for success.

The new Pew survey, which interviewed nearly 15,000 people in 12 countries, as well as the Palestinian Territories (PT), also found strongly unfavourable opinions of Israel, particularly among its predominantly Muslim neighbours.

The United States was the only country where a majority (57 percent) expressed positive views of the Jewish state, although a plurality in Russia also registered more favourable (46 percent) opinions than unfavourable (38 percent).

Nearly two-thirds of respondents in France, Germany, and China, however, said they held unfavourable views of Israel, while in the predominantly Muslim countries covered by the poll – Egypt, Tunisia, PT, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon – negative views were overwhelming, ranging from 86 percent in Tunisia to 99 percent in Lebanon.

“This is consistent with other polling,” noted Steven Kull, director of the University of Maryland’s Program of International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), who has designed multinational surveys for BBC and his own worldpublicopinion.org in which Israel has repeatedly placed among the world’s least popular nations, along with North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan.

The new survey as released as Secretary of State John Kerry visited the region, including Israel, this week in hopes of injecting renewed momentum into his efforts to reconvene peace talks between Israel and Palestinians.

In what was widely considered an important step in those efforts, Kerry persuaded Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al-Thani and Arab League officials to amend the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative (API), which offers full recognition of Israel by all League member states in exchange for its withdrawal to the 1967 Green Line, to include the possibility of “comparable and mutually agreed minor swaps of land” that would presumably permit Israel to absorb major Jewish settlement blocs on the West Bank in any final peace agreement.

While the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greeted the statement as an “important concession” – and has quietly frozen, at Washington’s request, the issuance of new building permits for Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem through next month, most analysts believe the chances for serious progress on the peace front – or even the resumption of direct Israeli-Palestinian talks – remain quite low.

They point in particular to the persistent split on the Palestinian side between Fatah, which controls the Palestinian Authority headed by Mahmoud Abbas, and Hamas, which controls Gaza and has reportedly rejected, along with several other Palestinian factions, the Arab League’s amendment to the API.

As for Israel, the same analysts note that Israel’s leadership is unlikely to agree to the kind of far-reaching concessions necessary for a breakthrough, particularly given the continuing political turmoil in its neighbours – including the civil war in Syria, growing political tensions in Jordan, and the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government in Egypt.

And the fact that major figures in the settlement movement now head key ministries in Netanyahu’s new government also dims prospects for significant progress on the peace front, according to this view.

Nonetheless, Kerry, who said Thursday he plans to return to the region in less than two weeks reportedly in hopes of nailing down a June summit with Abbas and Netanyahu in Jordan, appears determined to overcome the reigning scepticism.

The new poll suggests that Israelis may be somewhat more open to his efforts than Palestinians, particularly following Obama’s visit, during which he spent far more time wooing Israeli public opinion, to the region in March.

Sixty-one percent of Israeli respondents said they had either “a lot” of “some” confidence in the U.S. president to do the right thing in world affairs; that was up from just 49 percent two years ago. On the other hand, 82 percent of Palestinian respondents in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem said they either had “not too much” or “no confidence at all” in Obama.

Similarly, 47 percent of Israelis said U.S. policies in the Middle East were “fair”, while another 35 percent said they favoured Israel “too much”. Palestinian respondents, on the other hand, were virtually unanimous in asserting that Washington favoured Israel too much.

Nonetheless, pluralities of 49 percent of Israeli respondents (including 54 percent of Arab Israelis) and 41 percent of Palestinians said they favoured a “larger” role for Obama in resolving the conflict, according to the survey, which noted that there was considerably more support for a larger U.S. role among Palestinians in the West Bank (47 percent) than in Gaza (30 percent).

Fifty percent of Israeli respondents said they thought a two-state solution could be achieved, while only 14 percent of Palestinians agreed (although an additional 22 percent said “it depends).”

The more positive Israeli results contrasted with a survey taken last year by Shibley Telhami, an expert on Arab public opinion at the Brookings Institution and author of a forthcoming book, “The World Through Arab Eyes.”

In that poll a majority of Israelis said they believed a two-state solution could not be achieved. “This suggests that Israelis are somewhat more optimistic,” he told IPS. On the other hand, he added, the Palestinian results suggested increased pessimism on their part.

The poll found that respondents in France Germany and Britain were significantly more optimistic about a two-state solution than respondents in other countries and that publics in those countries, especially Britain, had become more sympathetic toward the Palestinians in recent years.

That could prompt European leaders to take a more active role in efforts to bring the two parties together, as recently recommended by the European Eminent Persons Group (EEPG).

In a recent letter to the foreign affairs chief of the European Union, Catherine Ashton, the group — consisting of seven former foreign ministers, four former prime ministers, and one former president, among others – called the current U.S. position “unproductive” even if Washington’s role in a peace process remained “indispensable.” Among other steps, it called for exerting more pressure on Israel, especially with regard to settlements and recognising the 1967 border as the basis for any solution.

In a report released Thursday, the European Council on Foreign Relations amplified that message, calling for the EU to pursue “a more independent policy in the region that would include encouraging reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, acquiescing in – rather than opposing – the PA’s recourse to the International Criminal Court, and ensuring that goods produced by Jewish settlements in the PT are denied trade preferences.

“A harder-nosed and more indpendent policy from Europe will strengthen Washington’s hand in Israel and improve the chances for a decisive U.S. peace initiative before Obama leaves office and before the occupation enters its fiftieth year,” according to the report.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

If nothing else, the agreement apparently persuaded at least one key party, the UN-Arab League envoy for Syria, veteran Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, to put off his previously reported intention to resign in the very near future.

“This is the first hopeful news concerning that unhappy country in a very long time,” he said in a statement issued by his office Wednesday. “The statements made in Moscow constitute a very significant first step forward. It is nevertheless only a first step,” he added.

Analysts here, however, said that even with Tuesday’s accord, getting the two principal parties to the table would be extremely difficult under current circumstances.

“The more you learn about Syria, the more you realise how intractable the conflict is, and thus the more attractive a political solution appears to be,” said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma. “But you also realise the odds of putting one together are very long.”

The joint decision to revive the long-dormant Geneva Communique, which laid out the core elements of a political solution to the conflict war after a meeting of the U.N.-sponsored Action Group for Syria last June, was reached after deliberations between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

The communique called for an immediate cease-fire, the creation of a transitional government mutually agreed by representatives of both the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and his opposition, and the holding of new parliamentary and presidential elections.

But the process never got underway, in part because of the opposition’s demand – tacitly and sometimes explicitly backed by Washington — that Assad step down as a pre-condition for any negotiation and Moscow’s firm rejection of that position.

But the administration of President Barack Obama appears to have narrowed its difference on that score with Moscow.

At the time, many U.S. analysts, particularly those on the hawkish side of the spectrum, believed that the balance of power on the ground was moving in the opposition’s direction, and that it was simply a matter of time – months, if not weeks — until the regime crumbled.

But after months of bloody stalemate, it appears that the government’s forces have recently regained the initiative by systematically retaking control of strategically located towns and cities.

“If that’s true, the administration may have assessments to that effect in hand and feels it’s worth a try to see if the opposition can be compelled to engage while it still holds a reasonably strong hand,” according to Wayne White, a former top Mideast analyst in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

Indeed, Kerry appears to have accepted Moscow’s position that Assad does not have to step down in order for negotiations to get underway.

“(I)t’s impossible for me as an individual to understand how Syria could possibly be governed in the future by the man who has committed the things we know that have taken place,” he said during a press conference with Lavrov after the meeting.

“But…I’m not going to decide that tonight, and I’m not going to decide that in the end, because the Geneva Communique says that the transitional government has to be chosen by mutual consent by the parties …the current regime and the opposition.”

For his part, Lavrov, without mentioning Assad by name, said he was “not interested in the fate of certain persons”.

While Damascus remained silent Wednesday about the prospects for a negotiation, some opposition leaders rejected the initiative, while others expressed deep scepticism.

“Syrians: be careful of squandering your revolution in international conference halls,” warned Moaz al-Khatib, a former leader of the Arab League-recognised National Opposition Coalition (NOC).

At the same time, Col. Qassim Saadeddine, a spokesman for the rebel Supreme Military Council (SMC), the U.S. backed group through which Washington is currently funnelling intelligence and “non-lethal” military aid to fighters in the field, told Reuters that he didn’t believe “there is a political solution left for Syria. …We will not sit with the regime for dialogue.”

Whether that was the opposition’s final word remains to be seen, according to analysts here who noted that Amb. Robert Ford, who accompanied Kerry in Moscow, was on his way to Istanbul to talk with opposition representatives, apparently in hopes of bringing them around to a more positive response.

U.S. officials said they were hoping that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, the rebels’ main regional backers, would also cooperate in helping to persuade opposition figures to come to the table.

Two weeks ago, Obama hosted Qatar’s emir, Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, at the White House, when he reportedly stressed the importance of a political solution in Syria and called on his guest to cease providing military assistance to the more-radical Islamist factions in the opposition. He will also be meeting here with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the most important regional player, later this month to more closely align the two countries’ parties.

All of this comes amidst growing pressure here on Obama to escalate U.S. intervention in the crisis, particularly in the wake of still-unconfirmed reports that Assad’s forces have used chemical weapons against rebel forces and growing fears that the war’s continuation threatens to destabilise neighbouring countries, particularly Lebanon and Iraq, as well as Jordan which is finding it increasingly difficult to cope with the more than 500,000 Syrian refugees who have flooded into the country.

Support is building in Congress for legislation calling on Obama to provide lethal military aid and training to the rebels, an option that the administration has said it is actively considering on its own if the chemical weapons charges are confirmed.

Obama has previously resisted increasing Washington’s military backing for the opposition and has tried to confine U.S. aid to humanitarian assistance, more than 500 million dollars of which has been provided to date.

Re-invigorating a diplomatic process for resolving the conflict thus looks increasingly attractive to the administration, although most analysts believe prospects for any immediate progress are dim.

“The chance of a diplomatic breakthrough coming out of the projected conference is at best modest,” according to Paul Pillar, a retired CIA veteran who served as National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia.

“But it represents a more realistic hope for bringing a modicum of peace and stability to Syria in the foreseeable future than does stoking the civil war with more outside involvement in the military conflict. The fact that the United States and Russia could agree on any of this is a breakthrough of sorts,” he wrote in an email to IPS.

Landis agreed. “Whether the situation (for a successful negotiation) is ripe today is still debatable, because Assad still thinks he can win, and the opposition, with hundreds of militias, is too fragmented to negotiate,” he told IPS.

“But you have to get the international community open-minded to this kind of dialogue, and down the line, that may happen.”

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Kurdish militias in Syria have controlled the oil rich area of Rumelan since early March. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

Ten years after right-wing and liberal hawks came together to push the U.S. into invading Iraq, key members of the two groups appear to be reuniting behind stronger U.S. military intervention in Syria.

While the liberals appear motivated by a desire to stop the violence and prevent its spread across borders, their right-wing colleagues, particularly neo-conservatives, see U.S. intervention as key to dealing Iran a strategic defeat in the region.

“…[T]he most important strategic goal continues to be to defeat Iran, our main adversary in the region,” according to Tuesday’s lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal.

“The risks of a jihadist victory in Damascus are real, at least in the short-term, but they are containable by Turkey and Israel,” the editorial asserted. “The far greater risk to Middle East stability and U.S. interests is a victorious arc of Iranian terror from the Gulf to the Mediterranean backed by nuclear weapons.”

The immediate impetus for the reunion between the country’s two interventionist forces seems related primarily to charges that Syrian security forces have used chemical weapons in several attacks on insurgents and growing fears that the two-year-old civil war is spilling over into and destabilising neighbouring countries.

Those fears gained greater urgency this week when Israeli warplanes twice attacked targets close to Damascus and reports surfaced that Lebanon’s Hezbollah has sharply escalated its role in actively defending the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Both developments appear to have emboldened hawks here, particularly neo-conservatives who have sought for more than two decades to make the overthrow of the Assad dynasty in Damascus a major priority for U.S. Mideast policy and now see the conflict in Syria as a proxy war between Iran and Israel.

War-weariness and public disillusionment with U.S. interventions they championed in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as President Barack Obama’s oft-expressed reservations about the wisdom of engaging in yet another war in a predominantly Muslim country, had kept the neo-conservatives and other right-wing hawks at bay.

But a combination of an ever-climbing death toll, Hezbollah’s increased involvement, the rise of radical Islamist groups within the insurgency, and the initial –albeit yet to be confirmed — estimates by U.S., Israeli, and Western European intelligence agencies that Assad’s forces have used chemical weapons, as well as Obama’s apparently offhand public warnings during last year’s election campaign that such use would cross a “red line”, have propelled some prominent liberals – most recently, New York Times columnist Bill Keller and former senior Obama policy official Anne Marie Slaughter — into their camp.

Led by the Wall Street Journal and William Kristol’s Weekly Standard, the neo-conservatives remain the most aggressive among the hawks in their advice, just as they were in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Thus, providing weapons to selected rebel groups – an option which the administration is considered most likely to exercise if the evidence of chemical weapons use by government forces is confirmed – is no longer considered sufficient.

“At this stage, (a better outcome of the conflict), this would require more than arming some rebels,” according to the Journal editorial. “It probably means imposing a no-fly zone and air strikes against Assad’s forces.

“We would not rule out the use of American and other ground troops to secure the chemical weapons,” the editorial writer added in a notable deviation from assurances offered by the hawks’ two most prominent Congressional champions – Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsay Graham – who, in deference to public opinion, have said repeatedly that putting U.S. “boots on the ground” should be off the table.

This echoed Kristol’s own editorial in the Standard published on the weekend. Arming the rebels, he wrote, “could well be too little, too late. …It’s hard to see what a serious response would be short of direct American engagement – perhaps a combination of enforcement of a no-fly zone and aerial attacks. And no serious president would rule out a few boots on the ground…”

The Journal’s Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign-policy columnist, Bret Stephens, weighed in with even more specific advice Tuesday.

He called for Obama to “disable the runways of Syrian air bases, including the international airport in Damascus; …[u]se naval assets to impose a no-fly zone over western Syria; …[s]upply the Free Syrian Army with heavy military equipment, including armored personnel carriers and light tanks; [and b]e prepared to seize and remove Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile, even if it means putting boots (temporarily) on the ground.”

Liberal hawks have been less precise about what needs to be done, but their sense of urgency in favour of escalating U.S. military intervention – beginning with supplying the rebels with weapons – appears no less intense.

Slaughter, who served for two years as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s policy planning chief and, as an influential Princeton University international-relations professor, urged U.S. intervention in both Iraq and Libya, published an op-ed in the Washington Post that warned that Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria brought forth the spectre of the Rwandan genocide.

“For all the temptation to hide behind the decision to invade Iraq based on faulty intelligence about weapons of mass destruction, Obama must realize the tremendous damage he will do to the United States and to his legacy if he fails to act,” she wrote, without prescribing precisely what he should do.

Keller, who described himself as a “reluctant hawk” in an influential 1,500-word op-ed on the eve of the 2003 Iraq invasion, provided somewhat more detailed advice in 1,300-word, very prominently placed op-ed entitled “Syria is Not Iraq” Wednesday in which he quoted Slaughter, among other liberal hawks.

“The United States moves to assert control of the arming and training of rebels – funnelling weapons through the rebel Supreme Military Council, cultivating insurgents who commit to negotiation an orderly transition to a non-sectarian Syria,” he wrote.

“We make clear to President Assad that if he does not cease his campaign of terror and enter negotiations on a new order, he will pay a heavy price. When he refuses, we send missiles against his military installations until he, or more likely those around him, calculate that they should sue for peace.”

Keller, who several years after the Iraq invasion offered a somewhat muted apology for supporting that war, stressed that he did not “mean to make this sound easy,” but stressed that a disastrous outcome “is virtually inevitable if we stay out [of the conflict]. …Why wait for the next atrocity?” he asked.

“Iraq should not keep us from doing the right thing in Syria…,’’ according to the op-ed’s subhead.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Boys in Al Raqqa, Syria, Apr. 11, 2013. Credit: Beshroffline/cc by 2.0

Despite renewed pressure by hawks in Congress and the media, U.S. President Barack Obama appears determined to avoid sharply escalating U.S. involvement in the ongoing civil war in Syria.

While administration officials insist that all options for responding to the recent alleged use by the Syrian military of chemical weapons against anti-government strongholds remain on the table, insiders suggest that the likeliest choice will be, at most, to begin supplying selected groups of rebels with “lethal” defensive weapons, albeit nothing like the surface-to-air missiles and anti-tank rockets they have been calling for.

“They’re worried about more-sophisticated weaponry falling into the wrong hands,” said one well-connected Congressional staffer here this week, noting that reports that Islamist groups – at least one of which, the Al-Nusra Front, has declared fidelity to Al-Qaeda – now dominate the overwhelmingly Sunni insurgency.

So far, Washington has provided rebels with only “non-lethal” assistance, including communications gear and food rations. Just before the chemical-weapons charges surfaced, the administration  had decided to add body armour and night-vision goggles.

Throughout the conflict, it has turned a blind eye to supplies of “lethal” equipment from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, even as it became increasingly concerned that the recipients of that aid are almost uniformly Sunni Islamists.

While the public might rally behind stronger action – for example, creating a “no-fly zone” over all or parts of the country, as hawks like Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsay Graham have repeatedly urged — the administration would have to mount a major “information” campaign to get that support, recent polls suggest.

Asked last week whether they would support the U.S. and its allies using force against Syrian forces if their use of chemical weapons is confirmed, a plurality of 45 percent of respondents in a Pew Research Center survey said they would, while 31 percent said they would oppose military action.

In a New York Times/CBS poll taken at the same time, however, 62 percent of respondents said they did not feel the U.S. “has a responsibility to do something about the fighting in Syria…,” while only 24 percent disagreed.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon also appears highly reluctant to take military action.

“Whether the military effect would produce the kind of outcome I think that not only members of Congress, but all of us would desire – which is an end to the violence, some kind of political reconciliation among the parties and a stable Syria …It’s not clear to me that it would produce that outcome,” Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters earlier this week.

While he assured his audience that the Pentagon was constantly updating its contingency plans and could prevail – albeit not nearly as easily as in Libya – over Damascus’s Russian-built air-defence system to set up a no-fly zone, he also raised serious questions about the wisdom of such a strategy. Dempsey pointed out that Assad’s air force was responsible for only about 10 percent of rebel and civilian casualties.

“The other 90 percent are through direct fire or artillery. So the question then becomes: If you eliminate one capability of a potential adversary, will you be inclined to find yourself in a position to be asked to do more against the rest?” he asked.

Meanwhile, Pentagon sources, with the evident approval of their superiors, briefed the Wall Street Journal on just how formidable Syria’s air defences were, noting that Dempsey himself had told Obama it would be very difficult for U.S. aircraft to take out mobile and other systems that were installed after the Israeli attack on a suspected secret nuclear reactor in 2007.

Even many of McCain’s and Graham’s Republican colleagues have failed to rally behind their calls for direct military action, opting instead for arming “moderate”, secular rebel groups, which, according to a major New York Times account last month, scarcely exist in what has become a sectarian conflict similar in many respects to that which nearly tore Iraq apart in 2006-07.

Indeed, neo-conservatives and other Republican hawks have been so disappointed by the tepidness or indifference of their colleagues’ response to Syria’s alleged use of chemical weapons that they have added it to a growing list of charges of creeping “isolationism” in the party.

Of course, most of their fire has been directed at Obama, not only for failing to intervene in the conflict earlier, when “moderate” groups may have been more of a force within the insurgency, but also and, more importantly, for damaging U.S. “credibility” by, first, warning Assad that his use of chemical weapons would be a “game-changer” and cross a “red line” that would provoke “enormous consequences” from Washington, and then by arguing, as he did last week, that he needs more evidence and a broader international consensus that the government did indeed deploy such weapons before taking any action.

Even some more-dovish voices who have long been sceptical about any escalation in U.S. involvement in Syria have argued that Obama has put U.S. credibility on the line and must follow through on his threat, lest Iran and North Korea, for example, draw the wrong conclusions.

“If you draw a line in the sand, especially in the turbulent and passionate Arab world, and dare someone not to cross it, you had better back up the threat when he does,” wrote former Under Secretary of State for Policy Nicholas Burns on GlobalPost this week, although he also defended Obama’s desire to gain confirmation of the chemical-weapons reports.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, a liberal interventionist who served in a top policy post in Obama’s State Department, evoked the memory of Rwanda in appealing in a Washington Post op-ed for Obama to take action. “…(T)he White House must recognize that the game has already changed,” she wrote. “U.S. credibility is on the line.”

Still, other interventionists who had supported more-aggressive action by the U.S. early in the conflict now said they were now much more ambivalent, particularly in light of the reported dominance of more-radical Islamists among the rebel ranks.

“I lean now much more to caution,” said former Amb. Morton Abramowitz, who played a key role in persuading the Clinton White House to intervene in the Balkans in the 1990s and initially favoured a no-fly zone in Syria to protect the peaceful opposition.

That preference for caution – combined with the universal rejection of putting U.S. “boots on the ground” for anything but the most dire humanitarian emergencies (such as the indiscriminate use of chemical weapons against a civilian population or large stocks of chemical weapons falling into the hands of Hezbollah or Al-Qaeda-affiliated rebel groups) – will make it much easier for Obama to finesse his “red line” warning and avoid direct military intervention.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Dragging Guantanamo captive. Shane T. McCoy was a Navy photographer, the only official photographer present on Jan. 11, 2002, the day the camp was opened. Credit: Shane T. McCoy/public domain

With at least 100 detainees now participating in a three-month-old hunger strike, U.S. President Barack Obama Tuesday reiterated his earlier denunciations of the Guantanamo detention facility and blamed Congress for preventing its closure.

Speaking at a White House news conference, he said he has asked his staff “to review everything that’s currently being done in Guantanamo, everything that we can do administratively” and promised to “re-engage with Congress to make the case that this is not something that’s in the best interest of the American people. And it’s not sustainable.”

“I think it is critical for us to understand that Guantanamo is not necessary to keep America safe,” he said. “It is expensive. It is inefficient. It hurts us in terms of our international standing. It lessens co-operation with our allies on counter-terrorism efforts. It is a recruitment tool for extremists. It needs to be closed.”

His remarks followed the announcement that the Navy has sent some 40 additional medical personnel to Guantanamo to deal with the spreading strike.

At least 21 of the strikers, five of whom have been hospitalised, are reportedly being force-fed in a procedure which the American Medical Association (AMA) has denounced as a violation of the profession’s “core ethical values”.

Obama, however, indicated Tuesday that he supported these measures. “I don’t want these individuals to die,” he said.

While welcoming Obama’s renewed commitment to close the prison, attorneys for detainees and human rights groups stressed that Obama could take a series of steps without Congress to improve the situation, notably by repatriating more than half of the remaining 166 detainees.

“Congress is certainly responsible for imposing unprecedented restrictions on detainee transfers, but President Obama still has the power to transfer men right now,” according to the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a leader in the legal battle over Guantanamo since terrorist suspects were first sent there from Afghanistan and Pakistan in early 2002.

“He should use the certification/waiver process created by Congress to transfer detainees, starting with the 86 men who have been cleared for release,” the New York-based group said.

Under a 2012 law, the secretary of defence may order detainees returned to their homelands or to third countries if he certifies on a case-by-case basis that they will pose no future threat to U.S. national security.

Eighty-six prisoners, including 56 Yemenis, have been cleared for release by Pentagon review boards to date, but the administration has not yet certified them, apparently due to fears that that if any of them are subsequently implicated in anti-U.S. terrorist activity, the political backlash could be too costly.

According to a recent U.S. intelligence study, between 16 and 27 percent of previously released detainees have participated in terrorism since they left Guantanamo.

“(The law) as written allows the president to transfer individuals if it’s in the national security interest of the United States,” noted Carlos Warner, who represents 11 detainees. “The president’s statement made clear that Guantanamo negatively impacts our national security, (so) the question is not whether the administration has the authority to transfer innocent men, but whether it has the political courage to do so.”

Whether Obama’s strong remarks Tuesday signal a new determination on his part and that of his new Pentagon chief, Chuck Hagel, to take advantage of the certification authority under the 2012 law remains unclear, although his vow to consult with Congress suggested to some observers that he would be seeking more political cover before taking such a step.

“(U)ltimately, we’re going to need some help from Congress, and I’m going to ask some folks over there who care about fighting terrorism but also care about who we are as a people to step up and help me on it,” he said.

The administration of President George W. Bush detained a total of 779 suspected terrorists at Guantanamo but had repatriated some two-thirds of them to their homelands or third countries by the time Obama promised on his first day in office in January 2009 to close the facility within one year.

His efforts to do so, however, were blocked by Congress which enacted legislation preventing the transfer of detainees to U.S. soil and greatly restricting the administration’s power to repatriate them, particularly to countries, such as Yemen, suffering significant internal instability.

The Obama administration itself imposed a freeze on all transfers to Yemen after the attempted bombing of a U.S.-bound airliner in December 2009 by a Nigerian national who had allegedly been trained in Yemen.

While the administration had succeeded in repatriating or resettling about 80 detainees in its first two years in office, progress ground to a halt by 2011.

Earlier this year, the State Department shut down the office of the special envoy in charge of repatriating cleared prisoners, one of a series of steps – including Obama’s failure to mention Guantanamo in his most recent inaugural and State of the Union addresses and the failure to initiate promised annual reviews of detainees who had not been cleared for repatriation — that contributed to the deepening despair and desperation of the remaining detainees, according to both their lawyers and Pentagon officials.

The detainees “had great optimism that Guantanamo would be closed. They were devastated …when the president backed off,” Gen. John Kelley, the head of the U.S. Southern Command (SouthCom), which has jurisdiction over the facility, told Congress
last week, before the spreading hunger strike drew national attention.

In addition to the 86 detainees who have been cleared for release, nine, including the operational “mastermind” of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, have either been convicted or are being tried before military commissions that have been attacked by civil and human rights groups as lacking due process.

Another 46 detainees have been deemed too dangerous to release but cannot be tried either because the evidence against them would be inadmissible in court (due to its acquisition by torture or other illegal methods) or whose alleged acts did not amount to a crime under U.S. law. They were designated for indefinite detention during Obama’s first term.

In his remarks Tuesday, Obama appeared to distance himself from indefinite detention, which has been denounced by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights as a violation of international human rights law.

“The notion that we’re going to continue to keep over a hundred individuals in a no-man’s land in perpetuity, even at a time when we’ve wound down the war in Iraq, we’re winding down the war in Afghanistan, we’re having success defeating Al-Qaeda core … — the idea that we would still maintain forever a group of individuals who have not been tried, that is contrary to who we are, it is contrary to our interests, and it needs to stop,” he said.

“President Obama’s call to end indefinite detention at Guantanamo is encouraging after his long silence on the issue,” said Laura Pitter, counter-terrorism adviser at Human Rights Watch (HRW), although she also noted that he was unclear whether his critique extended to detainees deemed to dangerous to release.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Endorsed by nearly three dozen former top U.S. diplomatic, military, and intelligence officials, the report calls for Washington to “rebalance” its dual-track policy toward Tehran by strengthening the diplomatic track to take advantage of the pressure it has exerted on Tehran through ever-stricter sanctions and threats of military action.

“Much has been accomplished through pressure, but the results have fallen short of expectations in several ways, and unintended consequences pose risks,” according to the report, the latest in a series by The Iran Project and the first to make specific policy reccomendations designed to both defuse persistent tensions over Tehran’s nuclear programme and lay the groundwork for a broader dialogue between the two countries.

Previous reports have focused instead on the costs and benefits of sanctions and military action against Iran.

The pressure track, the new, 84-page report argues, may have weakened Iran’s economy and slowed the expansion of its nuclear programme, but it has not produced any breakthrough nor markedly reduced Tehran’s regional influence.

Moreover, the pressure track may also have hardened Tehran’s resistance to pressure, contributed to a rise in repression in Iran, and compounded sectarian tensions across the volatile Middle East, according to the report.

It was signed by, among other prominent foreign-policy figures, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski; the former Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Richard Lugar; and one of the most highly decorated diplomats of his generation, former Amb. Thomas Pickering, a core member of The Iran Project.

“A strengthened diplomatic track that includes the promise of sanctions relief in exchange for verifiable (Iranian) cooperation could help to end the standoff and produce a nuclear deal,” the report asserts.

The report comes amidst uncertainty about the future of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme between Tehran and the “P5+1”, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany. In the latest round of talks in Almaty, Kazakhstan, earlier this month, it appears that neither side moved off its previous position, and no date for new high-level talks has been set.

Nonetheless, all parties said the discussions were more detailed and substantive than in past meetings and stressed that there had been no breakdown in the process. Most analysts believe that little or no progress can be expected until after the presidential elections in Iran Jun. 14.

The lack of apparent progress – coupled with the installation of more and more sophisticated centrifuges by Iran at uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordo – has encouraged the Israel lobby on Capitol Hill, notably the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies (FDD), to press Congress for new sanctions against Iran and foreign companies that do business with it that, if approved and fully enforced, would amount to a de facto trade embargo against the Islamic Republic.

A key Senate committee Tuesday approved a resolution calling on Obama to more strictly enforce existing sanctions and to provide military and other support to Israel if the Jewish state “is compelled to take military action in self-defense”.

The new report, “Strategic Options for Iran: Balancing Pressure With Diplomacy,” also comes amidst a spate of other studies by influential mainstream think tanks that have argued for greater flexibility by the administration in its dealings with Iran.

Just last week, an Atlantic Council task force, which Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel co-chaired until he was nominated to his new post, released a report that called for Washington to “make a more concerted effort to keep Iran from getting to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, while lessening the chances for war through reinvigorated diplomacy that offers Iran a realistic and face-saving way out of the nuclear standoff.”

While it concluded that Washington should retain the option to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities to prevent it from acquiring a weapon, it also warned that ramifications of a “premature military strike …could also be dire.”

Similarly, a new book co-authored by a former top Gulf expert in the Reagan administration, Geoffrey Kemp of the Center for the National Interest, and based on months of consultations with elite national-security experts recommended a “more aggressive U.S. strategy. …(A)llowing very limited and closely monitored (uranium) enrichment within Iran is far preferable to war, and is less risky,” according to the book.

Meanwhile, another recent report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace warned that, “Economic pressure or military force cannot ‘end’ Iran’s nuclear program. …The only sustainable solution for assuring that Iran’s nuclear program remains purely peaceful is a mutually agreeable diplomatic solution.”

This emerging elite – if not Congressional – consensus will be bolstered by The Iran Project’s report which insists that “no change in U.S. policy will be possible unless President Obama makes the negotiation of a nuclear deal with Iran one of his top priorities.”

The report stresses that any direct talks – which the administration in recent months appears to have endorsed – should complement the efforts of the P5+1 and that emphasising the diplomatic track would not mean abandoning the pressure track, “including maintaining the option of using military force should the Iranians move quickly to build a bomb.”

“Yet the more the President threatens the use of force, the more difficult it will be for Iran’s defiant leadership to consider any offer, and the more the President will be under pressure to use military force,” it warned.

The report defines a minimum nuclear deal as including Iran’s agreement to produce only low-enriched uranium (3.5-5 percent); cease its production of 20-percent enriched uranium; reduce its existing stockpiles of enriched uranium; and forswear production of plutonium – all under a strict monitoring regime by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

In return, Washington and its P5+1 partners would offer some sanctions relief (although the report notes that Obama’s flexibility to roll back U.S. sanctions is limited by Congress); a commitment not to impose new sanctions for a period of time; and formal recognition of Iran’s limited enrichment programme.

If such a minimum agreement can be reached, according to the report, Washington should broaden talks with Tehran to explore opportunities for cooperation, notably on Afghanistan and Iraq, drug trafficking, and even Syria, although that would be substantially more ambitious.

While the administration has called for direct talks with Tehran’s to clarify its position on the nuclear programme, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has expressed strong scepticism about their usefulness so long as Washington is “holding a gun against Iran”.

At the same time, he has not ruled out such talks – previously a taboo subject in Tehran that has now become a major subject of public debate.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Togolese Soldiers line up on the tarmac after arriving at Bamako Senou International Airport in Mali in early February, 2013. The soldiers are a small part of the African-led International Support Mission to Mali. Credit: Thomas Martinez/IPS

With France withdrawing troops after chasing Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) from towns in northern Mali, the central government in Bamako should urgently launch a serious process of national reconciliation, particularly with the Tuareg and Arab minorities, according to a new report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) released Thursday.

Among other steps, the authorities should prevent the persecution by the security forces of the civilian population, especially in communities allegedly associated with rebel or armed Islamist groups that controlled the north for the 10 months preceding the French intervention in January.

Bamako’s leaders also should not impose pre-conditions, such as immediate disarmament, that make dialogue with the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), the Tuareg independence group, more difficult, according to the ICG.

They should also ensure that the country’s radio and television stations do not incite or aggravate existing ethnic divisions in the country, especially in the run-up to national elections that are supposed to take place in July, according to the 47-page report.

“Elections must be held soon but not at any cost,” according to Gilles Yabi, ICG’s West Africa Project director.

“The radicalisation of public opinion is a major risk, and Mali’s leaders and institutions must take firm action to prevent people, especially those in the south, (from) lumping together rebels, terrorists and drug traffickers with all Tuaregs and Arabs,” he said.

As if to underline the urgency of the challenge, the ICG report, ‘Mali: Security, Dialogue and Meaningful Reform’, was released just as Human Rights Watch (HRW) announced that two Tuareg men who had been detained by Malian soldiers in a small town near Timbuktu had died while in detention at Bamako’s Central Prison.

The two were part of a group of seven men, aged between 21 and 66, who were arrested in mid-February on suspicion of supporting Islamist groups, including AQIM. The men were subsequently transported to the Bamako prison, according to HRW which interviewed the men there Mar. 20.

HRW said the two men probably died of excessive heat, given the lack of ventilation in the room in which they were held, possibly combined with the injuries they received from the earlier abuse, which included repeated beatings and burning. The surviving five were reportedly moved to a different room after the two deaths, HRW reported.

The deaths came amidst continuing reports of abuses against Tuaregs, Arabs, and Fulanis by Malian soldiers who returned to the north alongside French forces in their drive to oust AQIM and its allies. Since then, HRW’s Sahel expert Corinne Dufka told IPS, at least 13 members of the three minority communities have been summarily executed by Malian security forces and at least another 15 have “disappeared”.

“These abuses by the army in reconquering the north are exacerbating already existing ethnic tensions,” she said.

The chaos into which Mali descended began at the beginning of 2012 when MNLA, whose forces were fortified by returning and well-armed veterans of Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi’s security forces, chased the Malian army out of the north, precipitating a military coup that ousted the democratically elected government in Bamako.

AQIM, initially a mainly Algerian movement that had dug deep roots into northern Mali after its defeat in Algeria’s civil war, was able to wrest control of most of the region from the MNLA by last June.

As its control spread over the succeeding months, Mali’s neighbours and Western countries, including the U.S., which had provided hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and training to Mali’s military as part of its Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Partnership Initiative during the previous decade, became increasingly alarmed.

By December, the U.N. Security Council approved a plan for the eventual deployment of a West African force to take back the region. In January, however, one of AQIM’s affiliates launched an offensive southwards, triggering the France’s intervention.

French troops quickly took the region’s three most important towns – Gao, Timbuktu, and Kidal – paving the way for both the return of the Chadian army and contingents of the West African peacekeeping force (AFISMA).

French and Chadian forces, backed by U.S. intelligence assets, notably reconnaissance drones newly based in neighbouring Niger, then entered the northern-most part of Mali to pursue AQIM militants into their sanctuaries as part of the ongoing “war against terrorism”.

Militants have since staged a number of suicide attacks against
targets in the cities. According to the ICG report, the ability of AFISMA, which is likely to absorb the remaining French troops as part of a rehatted U.N. stabilisation mission, to maintain security for the civilian population is “unclear”, while a senior Pentagon officials testified here earlier this week that it was a “completely incapable force”.

Paris announced this week that about 100 of its 4,000-troop intervention force have pulled out – the start of a phased withdrawal that will leave about 1,000 French soldiers as part of the proposed stabilisation mission by the end of the year.

At the same time, a 550-man European Union (EU) mission began training Malian soldiers last week in hopes that they will eventually play a major role in defending the country against the AQIM threat. The mission is also aimed at reforming the military institution, including fighting endemic corruption and subordinating itself to civilian control.

Meanwhile, some Republican lawmakers here, notably Sen. John McCain, who just returned from a trip to Mali, are pressing the administration of President Barack Obama to restore and expand military aid to the Malian army. Direct U.S. military assistance to the army was cut off after the coup, and the administration appears more inclined to defer to the EU at this point.

The ICG report stressed that political initiatives are at least as important as military measures.

“Focusing on terrorism alone risks distracting from the main problems,” according to Comfort Ero, ICG’s Africa director. “Corruption and poor governance are more important causes of the crisis than the terrorist threat, the Tuareg issue, or even the north-south divide.”

“The challenges for the region and the U.N. are to align their positions on the political process and to insist that Malians, especially their elites assume responsibility for reversing bad governance and preventing another crisis,” she said.

HRW’s Dufka agreed, noting that Mali’s collapse last year showed that “its so-called democracy was built on very, very weak foundations …but should also illuminate the challenges it faces – addressing endemic corruption, strengthening rule-of-law institutions, and ending chronic human-rights abuse.

“Addressing the Tuareg problem is key to the future of stability in Mali,” she noted, adding that top priority should be given to returning the tens of thousands of Malians now living in refugee camps to their homes.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.