Roger Cohen, who has spent the last several months arguing that Iran is moderate because only 75% of its Jews chose to or were able to leave, is at it again ahead of President Obama’s meeting with Prime MInister Netanyahu. In Arabs, Persians Jews he writes:
American interests are, however, another story. They are not served by having no communication with Iran, the rising Mideast power; nor by the uncritical support of Israel that has allowed West Bank settlements to grow and peace to fade; nor by relationships with Arab states that comfort stasis.
With opinion writers of a certain ilk, the growth of “settlements” – not terror – has been the biggest impediment to peace in the Middle East. Shmuel Rosner, though, points out that a settlement freeze isn’t as clearly defined as many seem to think.
The problem is the phrase “settlement freeze.” As a slogan it’s catchy, but in practice the discussion between the U.S. and the Israeli government is much more nuanced. There’s the “freeze” on new settlements (Israel doesn’t build any); there’s Israel’s commitment to remove illegal outposts (and the sub-issue of who determines what’s illegal); there’s the issue of building within existing settlements – those that are part of “settlement blocks” (which will presumably remain in Israeli hands according to the 2004 “Bush letter to Sharon”), and those that aren’t part of the blocks; there’s the issue of building only for “natural growth”; there’s, of course, the question of building in greater Jerusalem.
For the Arab League a settlement freeze would mean Israel even giving up the Ramat Eshkol, Amot and Gilo neighborhoods in Jerusalem. Even under the most conciliatory Israeli government that isn’t going to happen. But when politicians, diplomats, academics and journalists say “settlement freeze” they are effectively supporting the most extreme interpretation of “settlement” and giving further fodder to Israel’s enemies.
And as far as the failure to engage Iran has been a failure, what did those who did engage Iran determine?
Yet as Thérèse Delpech, a leading nonproliferation expert at France’s Atomic Energy Commission, warned last October at a Brookings Institution lecture, “We [the Europeans] have negotiated during five years with the Iranians . . . and we came to the conclusion that they are not interested at all in negotiating, but . . . [only] in buying time for their military program.” In those five years, she also noted, Tehran never implied that if only the Americans were at the table the clerical regime would be amenable to compromise.
I realize that being wrong doesn’t bother Roger Cohen. Read the rest if you want.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
For years I’ve been saying that there is no carrot you can offer the Ayatollahs, no stick short of war you can threaten them with, that will get them to give up their nuke bomb program. It is their ticket to the Big Boys’ Club. It will enable them to realize their fondest ambitions, genocide of the Jews and destroying Israel, destroying the Great Satan America, Iranian Imperial expansion throughout the Middle East, worldwide terrorism because no one will dare cross them if they have nukes (and have used them on Israel), leadership in the Muslim world because they took on The Great Satan and The Little Satan and won. What had the Euros or what has Obama to offer to them attractive enough to offset these glittering prizes? Nada. Zilch. What the little boy shot at, nothing.
Sometimes the “Realists” are unbelievably naive.