Ex-AIPACer Weissman comes out hard against military action in Iran

By Daniel Luban

In March, former AIPAC chief lobbyist Douglas Bloomfield wrote a very interesting piece for the New Jersey Jewish News. In it, he revealed that although AIPAC publicly professed support for the Oslo peace process in the 1990s, it was secretly coordinating with then-opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu and working behind the scenes to sabotage the process. By illustrating AIPAC’s willingness to work against the policies of both U.S. and Israeli governments when they proved insufficiently hawkish, Bloomfield noted, this information could “not only validate AIPAC’s critics, who accuse it of being a branch of the Likud, but also lead to an investigation of violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.”

Bloomfield had another interesting piece in Tuesday’s Jerusalem Post, in which he interviewed AIPAC’s former top Iran analyst Keith Weissman. Weissman, of course, is best known for his role in the recently-dropped “AIPAC Two” espionage case, which revolved around accusations that he and AIPAC political director Steve Rosen received classified information from Pentagon analyst Lawrence Franklin and passed it to reporters and Israeli embassy officials. Franklin pled guilty in 2006 and was sentenced to over 12 year in prison, but this month government prosecutors decided to drop charges against Rosen and Weissman after concluding that they would be unlikely to win convictions.

Now that he is out from under the espionage charges, Weissman is free to speak his mind, and in his interview with Bloomfield he attacks the Iran hawks (including, implicitly, his former bosses at AIPAC) in startlingly blunt terms. The whole thing is worth reading, but I’ve included a few excerpts below the fold.

First, Weissman attacks the hawks’ premise that military action would be effective:

There’s no assurance an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities – even if all of them could be located – would be anything more than a temporary setback, Weissman told me. Instead, a military strike would unify Iranians behind an unpopular regime, ignite a wave of retaliation that would leave thousands dead from Teheran to Tel Aviv, block oil exports from the Persian Gulf and probably necessitate a ground war, he said.

He also attacks the idea, propagated by Netanyahu among others, that Iran’s rulers are a “messianic apocalyptic cult” and therefore undeterrable:

Weissman said Israel’s worries about Iran getting a nuclear weapon are understandable, but despite some of the rhetoric coming out of Teheran, the Iranian leaders “are not fanatics and they’re not suicidal. They know that Israel could make Iran glow for many years.”

He endorses the Obama administration’s argument that progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front is necessary for progress on the Iranian front, and attacks Netanyahu’s claim that the Iranian threat is sufficient to unite Israel with the so-called “moderate Arab states”:

Trying to separate the issues, even refusing to endorse the two-state approach, “is part of the sophistry of people like [Binyamin] Netanyahu who want to avoid confronting the peace process,” he said. “Iran’s ability to screw around in the Israel-Arab arena would be severely impaired by pressing ahead on the Palestinian and Syrian tracks instead of looking for excuses not to.”

Finally, he argues that the U.S. and Israel will “have to end up accepting some kind of peaceful Iranian nuclear energy program – and they actually need it; it’s already too late to stop it entirely.”

Weissman’s apostasy on the Iran issue puts him much closer to the likes of Roger Cohen than to his former compatriots at AIPAC. It will be interesting to see whether the neoconservatives who rallied to his defense during the AIPAC Two affair will now try to bury him the same way they have tried to bury Cohen.

Daniel Luban

Daniel Luban is a postdoctoral associate at Yale University. He holds a PhD in politics from the University of Chicago and was formerly a correspondent in the Washington bureau of Inter Press Service.

SHOW 8 COMMENTS

8 Comments

  1. To Jim and Daniel, Thanks very much for another insightful column. Your work on this blog is much appreciated.

  2. Israel is become a malignancy in the middle east. Its notions of exceptionalism and racial supremacy have made it s scourge among nations. War makes Israel. Israel cannot exist without it. Hence, the malignancy.

  3. The US cannot tell Israel not to attack Iran?
    The US bankrolls Israel to a minimum of $15 million per day.
    Even pays for the aviation fuel for those expensive F-15
    US TAXPAYER paid for jets.Precision Munitions?Covered,as in Lebanon 2006 Invasion.Pentagon ships ,US taxpayer foots bill.The US provides unconditional diplomatic cover for Israel when it goes on a rampage.
    Under Sinia II agreements of late seventies,The US guarantees
    oil supplies to Israel if there’s a shortage on world market.
    Question is has the Israel first Lobby bought the US Congress or are they just renting?

  4. This is highly interesting, Daniel, I picked it up via Phil Weiss. Basically this supports his theory, maybe there is really an atmospheric change ahead. I occasionally loose faith.

    Really amazing.

  5. So… what? AIPAC is trying to cool down its chroncially raging constituency, muffle demands for blasting Iran from here to Trinity? Has word finally come down: The U.S. won’t support such a catastrophic, jackass move?

    Maybe that’s it. Despite all the smack-talk from Netanyahu, Israel would never suggest such an attack without fully expecting the U.S. to be sucked into the resultant conflagration – and, once hijacked, help mop up a militantly enraged Iran. Maybe an American President finally did the unthinkable – maybe Obama told Israel “no”. And now the chest-beaters and backseat warriors here and in Israel get doused with that reality. That must hurt: No war this time. Wow! What a blow!

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