In an interesting parallel with politicians’ insistence that military options be kept “on the table” in dealing with Iran, the more hawkish Iran-policy hands (represented at today’s events by people from WINEP) appear to be taking a rhetoric approach that involves loudly agreeing with mainstream analysts that diplomacy is the way to go and then later slipping all kinds of war-oriented assertions into the mix. Michael Eisenstadt was really good at this, offering a presentation that emphasized diplomacy but, in fact, involved diplomacy aimed at conditions Iran will never accept. He praised David Ochmanek‘s restrained-but-convincing account of what would be problematic about coping with a nuclear Iran, but also added “tens or even hundreds of millions could die if Iran gets nuclear weapons and decides to use them.”

Similarly, US airstrikes would probably prompt a rally-round-the-flag effect in Teheran but, hey, “the Bolshevik revolution was brought on in part by the pressures of world war one.” The most notable thing, however, was the nature of Eisenstadt’s bottom-line objection to military options. Attacking Iran would, he said, greatly expand the scope of the war on terror. This, in turn, he said would be a bad idea primarily because there’s no political support for it in the United States, which would make it impossible to pull off effectively. That, clearly, is true, but it’s about the shallowest possible source of opposition to a proposed war.

This is a little deep in the weeds for me, but former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami argues that the correct response to renewed interested in negotiating in some sense on the basis of the 2002 Saudi peace initiative is for the Israelis to go back to the 2000-vintage Clinton plan that Arafat rejected as their negotiating posture. Ben-Ami notes that this whole range of then-Likud politicians who denounced Ehud Barack for even considering such a thing then are now willing to contemplate discussing the Saudi initiative which is less favorable to Israel along several dimensions. As I say, this gets deeper into the weeds than I care to go (there’s no reason the USA should care if the parties agree to “a division of the Old City” or else decide for “a special arrangement for that complex area, without a division of sovereignty” as long as they’re prepared to agree) but it’s interesting reading.

I’ll be gone most of the day at this Rand Corporation public policy forum on “Coping With Iran: Confrontation, Containment or Engagement?” My hope would be that these aren’t strictly incompatible choices, as in the contain and engage plan. And, clearly, preparing to contain is confrontation except insofar as we just understand “confrontation” to be code talk for “starting a war.” Seems like a good roster of people, folks from across the spectrum but weighted toward the sensible side of things.