START negotiations are soon to reconvene in Geneva, and while the two sides seem very close to finalizing an agreement, there have been a lot of questions concerning why a deal on a new START treaty has not yet happened. Now more than a month since December 5th – the date that START expired – we have a bit more of an idea what one of the major obstacles is: telemetry. Josh Rogin in Foreign Policy reports:

Were you wondering what the last remaining sticking point was inside the U.S.-Russian negotiations over a START follow-on treaty? Well, as it turns out, the issue is … rocket science, and, more specifically, telemetry data.

Telemetry is the information that a missile sends back after it is tested and in the previous START treaty this information had to be shared between the US and Russia. However in the negotiations over a new treaty this has been a major sticking point. The Russians want to get rid of it, as they see it as unfair to keep it in a new treaty, because the US isn’t testing any new missiles. As former Ambassador Linton Brooks noted, “It’s an interesting argument but it’s the argument they make.”

In other words, if telemetry is included, the Russians want to get something for it – and that something appears to be access to data on US missile defense tests. While US negotiators have been insistent that telemetry be included in a final agreement, they have also made clear that linking the START treaty to missile defense in any way is out of bounds for this treaty. Hence, the impasse.

But what is frustrating about this deadlock is that telemetry really doesn’t matter all that much to the US in a practical sense. Current technology allows the US to gain access to missile test information, whether the data is formally shared or not. Rogin notes:

Many insiders see the telemetry issue as somewhat of a red herring. New verification and tracking technologies, most of them classified, can provide the same capability without the Russians directly providing the data.

Rogin’s source adds:

Everybody knows that telemetry is bullshit [substantively], but it’s become an issue nonetheless.

So why are US negotiators fighting furiously over something pointless? Well, because conservative members of the Senate, especially Jon Kyl are looking for any little thing to blow up and use to oppose the treaty. Therefore to appease Jon Kyl, US negotiators have to go to the mat on something pointless. Travis Sharp of CNAS, explains:

For the United States, the politics matter because certain senators will go nuts without access to the data.

By constraining the hand of US negotiators, Kyl and other conservatives are, as a result, giving the Russians more leverage in these negotiations.

Last night on Fox, neoconservative saint Charles Krauthammer made clear again that he doesn’t actually understand how the Obama administration’s Iran policy is intended to work. Responding to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s statement of the administration’s goal of using sanctions to target Iran’s regime, not its people, Krauthammer derided the administration’s approach as a “farce”:

KRAUTHAMMER: Well, the farce continues. And to hear Hillary speak again about smarter sanctions and smarter ways, smart diplomacy, this is sort of comic arrogance on the part of the administration which has had a disastrous year in terms of Iran and still speaks of how smart it is.

Its idea is that we are going to try to target the leaders instead of the people. The Bush administration attempted that, but it’s almost impossible. And it doesn’t succeed anyway. [...]

If you are going to impose unilateral sanctions, others will take our place. I’ll give you one example. We prevailed in 2007 on the UAE to stop acting as the middle country in transactions with Iran. And it did. Immediately Hong Kong and Malaysia picked up.

So unless you have universal sanctions, extremely strong, cutting off gasoline, really targeting everything important, nothing is going to happen.

The administration knows all of this, and the lassitude which it’s acting — the pressure track is on, the engagement is on, which means nothing. Nothing is going to happen. This administration has accepted the fact of an Iranian bomb and it is prepared to do practically nothing except kabuki.

Watch it:

As boldly as Krauthammer asserts the effectiveness of “universal sanctions,” you’d think there might be a few Iran experts who actually agree. There aren’t. In fact, as Brookings Institution Iran analyst Suzanne Maloney noted last December in testimony (pdf) to the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, past history indicates that sanctions targeting Iran’s population are more likely to have a unifying effect. “The Islamic Republic has experienced a number of episodes of severe economic pressure,” Maloney said, “but none have generated the kind of foreign policy moderation that the sponsors of ILSA, IRPSA or any of the other manifold punitive measures against Tehran sanguinely forecast.”

MALONEY: Rather, past periods of external pressure on Iran have facilitated the coalescence of the regime and the consolidation of its public support, and economic constraint has generated enhanced cooperation among Iran’s bickering factions. Tight purse strings have forced moderation of Iran’s economic policies but only rarely of its political dynamics.

Measures of the sort that Krauthammer recommends would offer Iran’s hardliners a powerful propaganda lifeline, potentially facilitating greater regime consolidation right at the moment that the conservative consensus around Ahmadinejad is showing evidence of cracking up. This is probably one reason why Green movement leaders and other Iranian dissidents continue to oppose them, while supporting the targeted sanctions that Krauthammer dismisses.

While it’s quite right that multilateral sanctions offer the only possible hope for changing Iran’s strategic calculations, it’s important to remember that President Bush’s failure to cultivate the necessary international unity to enact such sanctions was in no small part the result of international anger generated by his pursuing an arrogant and destructive set of policies — policies full-throatedly advocated by Charles Krauthammer, among others. The only reason we’re talking realistically about such a coalition now is because the Presidnet Obama has renounced them, and sought to re-engage the international community more as a constructive partner and less as a preening hegemon. The real farce is that a consistently wrong blowhard like Krauthammer continues to be treated as a serious voice on foreign policy.

Since the election of President Obama, Haitians in the U.S. have been anxiously awaiting a change in immigration policy which would grant undocumented Haitian immigrants temporary protected status (TPS). TPS is a temporary immigration status that is available to individuals from a small number of federally-designated countries suffering armed conflicts, natural disasters, or other extraordinary circumstances. Haitian immigrants in the U.S. probably should’ve been granted TPS long before yesterday’s earthquake. Yet now, as Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) points out, it would be “not only immoral, but irresponsible” not to.

Haiti’s recent woes come after enduring four consecutive tropical cyclones in 2008 that left 800 people dead and from which the country has yet to recover. The Miami Herald has reported that the Haitian city of Gonaives, is still “uninhabitable.” That same year, Port-Au-Prince was “shattered” as even 9,000 United Nation peacekeepers were unable to halt the looting and violence that ravaged Haiti’s capital. In March, USAID estimated that 2.3 million Haitians were facing “food insecurity” as a result of high food prices. Political instability continues to devastate the country.

Haitian immigrants had high hopes with the election of President Obama. Yet, many have since become frustrated with the administration’s “failure to deliver one of their top goals.” In March 2009, the Obama administration indicated that it would continue deporting undocumented Haitians, “despite appeals by the Haitian government, which says deportations could destabilize a country where food, water and housing have been in extremely short supply since major storms last summer.” One month later, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton indicated that the Obama administration hadn’t granted Haitians TPS because “we don’t want to encourage other Haitians to make the dangerous journey across the water.” In July, five U.S. senators, including the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), personally wrote to President Obama, urging him to grant Haitian immigrants TPS. The senators countered criticisms that such a move would spark an unmanageable influx of Haitian immigrants by pointing out that TPS is only available to those already living in the U.S.

This morning, Obama affirmed that Haiti “will have a friend and partner in the people of the United States today, and going forward.” Continuing to deport thousands of Haitian immigrants back to their ravaged home country rather than letting them stay in the U.S. to help their families in Haiti get back on their feet is inconsistent with the promises the Obama administration has already made to the people of Haiti. The U.S. generously granted and extended TPS for 82,000 Hondurans and 5,000 Nicaraguans after Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and to 260,000 Salvadorans after an earthquake in 2001. There’s no reason why Haitians should be treated any different.