The most undercovered story in Washington is how President Obama, under the influence of election-year politics, is letting America drift toward war with Iran. This story is the unseen but ominous backdrop to next week’s Moscow round of negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.
The basic story line, pretty well known inside the beltway, is simple: There are things Obama could do to greatly increase the chances of a negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear problem, but he seems to have decided that doing them would bring political blowback that would reduce his chances of re-election.
The good news is that Obama’s calculation may be wrong. The blowback he fears–largely from Bibi Netanyahu, AIPAC, and other “pro-Israel” voices–is probably less forbidding than he assumes. And the political upside of successful statesmanship may be greater than he realizes.
But suppose Obama’s right about the politics. It’s still a little scandalous that he’s imperiling peace and America’s security in order to increase his chances of re-election by 1.5 percent, or whatever the imagined number is. And it’s even more scandalous how unscandalous this is, how people throughout the Washington establishment–in government, in NGOs, in journalism–are so inured to the corruption of policy by politics that almost nobody bothers to complain about it even when it could lead to war.
The administration’s nervousness about deviating from the perceived wishes of the “pro-Israel” community has been evident throughout these negotiations. Before the most recent round of talks–in Baghdad last month–Vice President Biden and other administration officials met with 70 Jewish leaders assembled by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. According to reporting by Ron Kampeas of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, administration officials “emphasized that they will be steadfast in upholding one key Israeli demand: That sanctions not be sacrificed to the negotiating process.”
Read more at: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/06/obamas-drift-toward-war-with-iran/258433/
