Hot Rhetoric, Mixed Signals On Iran

As talk of war with Iran increases, some voices in the administration caution against a military-first tack

Michael Eisenstadt sees the escalating rhetoric against Iran as a dilemma for Jewish leaders.

by James Besser
Washington Correspondent

Is Israel, with the Bush administration’s tacit approval, moving inexorably toward a military strike to knock out Iran’s nuclear weapons program? Or is Washington pressuring Israel against the military route? Do leaks about Israel’s military preparations mean the time for diplomacy is about to expire, or are they intended to give lagging diplomacy a boost?

While war talk is mounting, contradictory signals are coming from Washington and Jerusalem, and experts say much of the talk is posturing intended to send strong messages to other players in the unfolding Iran drama.

But posturing or not, the warnings and threats are already having real consequences; just ask any American consumer with sticker shock at the local gas station. And the white-hot rhetoric could lead to dangerous mistakes

by regional leaders.

“The potential for miscalculation, particularly by the Iranians, is huge because they have no concept of what they’re dealing with,” said Shoshana Bryen, senior director for national security policy for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).

Iranian threats and military chest thumping, possibly meant for domestic and regional political consumption, could “put pressure on Israel’s leaders to actually do something,” she said, just as Saddam Hussein’s bellicosity misled U.S. officials and triggered the invasion of Iraq.

The hot rhetoric, even when meant to help avert war, is like a match in a region already on the verge of explosion.

“A lot of this saber rattling is not helpful,” said Michael Eisenstadt, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of a recent paper on “preventive military action” against Iran. “It is desirable to have a degree of tension to create a sense of urgency on the part of the international community. But you want to calibrate that to keep it within certain parameters. I think a lot of the statements on both sides have exceeded the boundaries of what is prudent.”

But Eisenstadt touched on a dilemma facing even those Jewish leaders who worry that the escalating rhetoric could touch off an accidental war.

“You have the fundamental fact of a nuclear program by a country that has made statements that can be taken as calling for the elimination of Israel,” he said. “That overshadows everything else.”

War fever is also producing worries that Jews and pro-Israel organizations may be blamed if the nation is plunged into yet another conflict or if an Israeli action produces serious repercussions here. And it is roiling Capitol Hill; a congressional resolution that was intended to increase pressure on Iran is being depicted by the resolution’s opponents as a virtual declaration of war.

Signs of rising tension are unmistakable but hardly consistent. They include Israel’s large-scale military exercise over the Mediterranean last month, new threats of retaliation by Tehran and last week’s highly publicized Iranian missile launch – complete with doctored photos to exaggerate the threat.

The signs also include leaks by U.S. and Israeli officials suggesting that the red line for military action is fast approaching – and, alternatively, that the Bush administration is backing away from confrontation and that it is now discouraging Israeli military action.

The Times of London reported that Washington had flashed an “amber light” signaling approval of Israeli war preparations, but Jim Hoagland, a top Washington Post columnist, reported that “At the strong urging of the Bush administration, Israel has pulled back from threatening to bomb Iran’s nuclear enrichment program and has joined the U.S.-led effort to give coercive diplomacy with Tehran a (time-limited) chance.”

Most Jewish leaders say the war talk from Israel is actually meant to forestall the possibility of a military confrontation.

“Nobody wants to go to war unless it’s absolutely necessary,” said Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, founder and president of The Israel Project. “The first order of business is finding out what can be done to avoid a war – and part of that is letting people know that if they do not do enough to stop a war, they may bring one about later. War talk is preferable to war.”

Martin Raffel, associate director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), said that repeated demands to keep military action on the table as an option, leaks about Israeli preparations and the recent IDF exercises are “all geared to raising the pressure, hopefully to prevent war” by convincing the international community to tighten the economic and diplomatic screws on the Tehran regime.

The conflicting messages also reflect a Bush administration that is not of one mind about what to do about the Iranian threat, with Vice President Dick Cheney and other neo-conservatives arguing that military action is inevitable, and the sooner the better, while many Pentagon officials fear yet another regional conflict with consequences that cannot be anticipated.

JINSA’s Shoshana Bryen had another explanation for the mixed signals from Washington.

“They don’t want to be held responsible if something bad happens to Israel,” she said. “At the same time, they don’t want any additional complications in the region, and they don’t want anybody to think they gave Israel permission. So they send out conflicting signals.”

Other analysts say the signals really do point to military action sometime in the near future.

“It’s not brinkmanship; clearly, Israel does intend to strike Iran,” said Robert O. Freedman, a leading Mideast scholar. “It’s only a matter of time.”

Iran’s seeming new interest in negotiations with Europe is being read as a stall for time in Jerusalem, where officials fear delay may be costly because of advancements in Iran’s ability to use Russian anti-aircraft missiles to protect their nuclear installations, Freedman said.

In private, Jewish leaders worry that the growing public perception that another costly war may be imminent, along with reports by major news outlets that Israel may be pressing for U.S. military action to deal with Iran and a surge in gas prices — at least in part related to war fears — could produce a new round of charges that pro-Israel forces are skewing U.S. foreign policy to benefit Israel.

The growing talk has “produced some concerns” among Jewish groups around the country, said Martin Raffel, the JCPA official, who stressed that so far, there is no evidence of a backlash. “We are hearing about the anxiety that engenders, because nobody knows what the fallout is likely to be.”

Iran angst is also spreading across Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are fighting bitterly over the nonbinding resolution that calls on the administration to take tougher action on Iran.

The resolution, introduced by Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) and Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), initially gathered more than 230 cosigners, but several backed away after Americans for Peace Now and other groups argued that the resolution called for a virtual naval blockade of Iran.

Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who initially signed, say they will take their names off the resolution unless it is amended to eliminate any ambiguity about military action. But Ackerman rejected claims his resolution was a veiled call for military action, saying “the only way to find a blockade or a declaration of war in the text... is to insert them by the amending power of imagination alone.”

Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization