Just over a month ago, President Barack Obama broke a 30-year embargo on US relations with Iran: He offered goodwill not only to “Iranians” but to the country’s government. Less than two weeks after the Nowruz address, Gen. David Petraeus, the head of the US military command overseeing Iran and the Gulf, offered a far different portrayal of Iran to a Senate committee:
Iranian activities and policies constitute the major state-based threat to regional stability. ... Iran is assessed by many to be continuing its pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability, which would destabilize the region and likely spur a regional arms race.
The next day Petraeus’ boss, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, visited the offices of the Wall Street Journal, which has taken a consistent editorial line against dialogue with the Iranian government. Far from supporting his president, Mullen told the newspaper: “I think we’ve got a problem now. ... I think the Iranians are on a path to building nuclear weapons.” Not even past enemies were as menacing: “Even in the darkest days of the Cold War we talked to the Soviets. ... (But now) we don’t have a lot of time.”
What’s going on here? There are clear political goals behind Obama’s approach of dialogue rather than confrontation. The hope is that Iran will not challenge the US approach to Middle Easten issues, in particular Israel-Palestine and Israel-Syria talks, through its connections with Hamas and Hezbollah. An easing of political tensions in turn may remove the motive for Tehran to reverse its suspension of research and development for a nuclear weapons — as opposed to civilian nuclear energy — program. Still, in their public opposition to Obama’s Iran policy, the military commanders are playing one card before all others: Israel.
Petraeus’ threat to the congressmen was far from subtle: “The Israeli government may ultimately see itself so threatened by the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon that it would take pre-emptive military action to derail or delay it.” Mullen told the Wall Street Journal: “There is a leadership in Israel that is not going to tolerate” a nuclear Iran. This was a “life or death” matter in which “the operative word is ‘existential’”.
Are they bluffing? If so, it’s a bluff that has been coordinated with Tel Aviv. Last summer, Israel asked for but did not get George Bush’s support for an airstrike on Iran. It took only six weeks for the Israelis to revive the topic with the new Obama administration: The commander of the Israeli armed forces, Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, visited Washington with the message “that an Israeli military strike was a ‘serious’ option”.
While Ashkenazi was told by Obama’s political advisers to put his fighter planes away, the story of Israeli military plans continues to be circulated. Only last weekend, Sheera Frenkel was fed the story: “The Israeli military is preparing itself to launch a massive aerial assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities within days of being given the go-ahead by its new government.”
High-level Obama officials are fighting back. Aware that a frontal assault on the popular Petraeus would be politically dangerous, they have tried to curb the “Israel will strike” campaign. Vice President Joe Biden told CNN that new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “would be ill-advised to do that”. Perhaps more importantly, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said last week that an Israeli attack would have “dangerous consequences”. Reading that signal, Israeli President Shimon Peres backed away from earlier tough talk and assured: “All the talk about a possible attack by Israel on Iran is not true. The solution in Iran is not military.”
So, for this moment, Petraeus and Mullen appear to have been checked. However, they and their military allies, such as Gen. Raymond Odierno in Iraq, have been persistent in challenging Obama over strategy from Kabul to Baghdad to Jerusalem. It is their manoeuvring, rather than Tehran’s jailing of an Iranian-American journalist like Roxana Saberi or even Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speeches at UN conferences, that is Obama’s greatest foe.
