Thursday, February 28, 2008

MEPGS: "...With expectations low for a third UNSC resolution on Iran,.. Administration Officials are calling for 'more concessions'..."

Excerpts from MEPGS:
"....This process, say veteran US officials will hopefully prepare them(Clinton/Obama) for the inevitable array of unappetizing options available come January 2009. Explains one Administration insider,"The force commander (unlikely to be General David Petreus by then) will present his needs. The area commander (Admiral William Fallon) will put it into a regional context. Then the Joint Chiefs of Staff ("JCS") will explain their overall needs, not just putting into a world wide context but also the
ability to recruit, train and maintain US force structure." When the process works well, says this official, there is a strong Secretary of Defense who can help channel all this information to a ready President
....
"... He (McCain) is a legitimate father of the surge," says one veteran US official. "But I don't think he realizes how upset the JCS are with the effect Iraq is having on the military." Regardless of who is
elected President, veteran US officials are counting on two early decisions that will set the US on a navigable course. First, for the Democrats, will be the realization that there can be, in the words of one senior official, "no precipitate withdrawal" from Iraq. Second, in order to gain public backing for this course, a wide range of officials fervently hope the new President will downplay to purely Iraqi aspects of the US involvement and instead focus on the regional and homeland security implications of the war and our attempts to extricate ourselves from it......
".... the Administration is deepening rather seeking to lessen our involvement in Iraq. Beginning in
the next couple of weeks US and (yet to be named) Iraqi officials will attempt to negotiate a status of forces agreement ("SOFA"), which will institutionalize the US presence in Iraq. ......retaining the right to conduct combat missions, maintain detention centers and have special, if not sole jurisdiction over the action of US forces in Iraq. "Doesn't look much like the arrangements the US has with Japan or Germany," notes one European diplomat....
".... Iran has had a pretty wide open field (and that time is really on its side) since the US invasion turned sour four years ago. Now, with outgoing Under Secretary of State Burns publicly admitting what others have said privately for months, time has run out for this Administration to get a handle on Iranian behavior, not only in Iraq but also on the urgent, if somewhat more long term problem of its nuclear program. With expectations low for a third UN Security Council Resolution calling on Iran to obey demands on limiting its program, some in the Administration are urging more US concessions.
Among them would be an offer to open a US consular office in Iran. Another is to attempt to expand periodic US- Iranian talks, now limited to Iraqi issues, to a wider range of bi-lateral concerns.....
"... Even the Israelis, the most outspoken critics of Iran have been forced to go back to rethinking their former relative optimism about the ability of the outside world to influence Iranian behavior. Burned as badly as the Administration by the National Intelligence Estimate ...... they, too, know time is running out, with less than a year left for the Bush Administration to check Iranian ambitions and at least six months before any successor team "gets up to speed" on the subject. And it has been clear for a while that even hard liners in Israel are uncomfortable, as one key Israeli official said recently "...being out there alone...."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Another example of the disarray in Bush's foreign policy. He, and his Administration are out of options. He will indeed take great satisfaction in leaving to his successor a legacy of woes, pain, and humiliation. This will be his revenge from a country that has failed to toe his line.
On the other hand, the only people who seem to 'believe' in him are the cohort of Arab monarchs, dictators, and other despots. These are the ' allies' of America. The Bush Adm has managed to get an almost unanimous unity among Arabs (population) in opposing US policy whereas its only support is the association of thugs, mass murderers, despots, embezzlers, gamblers, drug addicts, and state terrorists (Bandar and his surrogates of Fath el Islam and Al Qaeda) and other 'apprentis sorciers' (their allies in Lebanon and in 'moderate' countries).
The question is: will the next administration have enough sense to reestablish some form of balance and equity in its dealings with the region? Will the double standards (raised to unprecedented levels of hypocrisy and lies) be curbed in order to reestablish US credibility in the region? Will the advisors of the new administration will have something as an agenda representing the true interests in the region and not the expansionists desires of Israel.
Already Barak Obama has set the tone by saying that the support of Israel does not mean the support of the Likud, even if the latter manages to snatch victory in the next elections.
Many questions remain up in the air but it will be nice to see a movement in the US asking for a judicial accountability of the Bush adm. and the crimes it committed in the name of the American people.