Jennifer Rubin, the latest neocon hack to fail upward into a job at the Washington Post, insists that the WikiLeaks cables offer “confirmation that the Obama ‘linkage’ argument was pure bunk“:

Recall that the Obama team over and over again has made the argument that progress on the Palestinian conflict was essential to obtaining the help of the Arab states in confronting Iran’s nuclear threat. We know that this is simply and completely false.

This is a complete misrepresentation of the linkage argument. I’m continually amused by the consistent inability of linkage deniers to actually confront the argument honestly and without resort to strawmen. As I wrote previously, if you were to judge an argument solely by the wild pitches it prompts from critics, linkage would appear to be an impressively strong one.

The actual linkage argument is much more modest, and was outlined pretty well by Gen. David Petraeus in March, when he said that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “make[s] situations more challenging” in the Middle East:

If you go to moderate leaders in the Arab world, they will tell you that the lack of progress in the Middle East peace process causes them problems, because their concern is that those who promote violence in Gaza and the West Bank will claim that because there’s no progress diplomatically that the only way to get progress is through violence. And that’s their concern. And that was really what we were trying to convey.

That’s why we support Senator Mitchell so much. We have invited Senator Mitchell to every single conference that I have hosted — for ambassadors, for chiefs of defense staff, what have you, which we do about three times a year — because everyone is so keenly riveted on that issue even though, again, it is not in our area. And we keep an eye on it, because we need to know the atmospherics there because they do — there is a certain spillover effect.

Or take Dennis Ross, who said in May that “Pursuing peace is instrumental to shaping a new regional context” in the Middle East:

Pursuing peace is not a substitute for dealing with the other challenges… It is also not a panacea. But especially as it relates to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict, if one could do that, it would deny state and non-state actors a tool they use to exploit anger and grievances.

What do the WikiLeaks cables have to say on this?

A January 2008 cable reports that Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Soliman told a Congressional delegation that, “The Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains the core issue,” and “contended a peaceful resolution would be a ‘big blow’ to terrorist organizations that use the conflict as a pretext.”

Then there’s this from a February 2010 meeting between Sen. John Kerry and the Emir of Qatar:

38. (C) The Amir advised the U.S. to continue trying to open a dialogue with the Iranian leadership. He also told Senator Kerry the U.S. needs to tell the Israelis they are causing the U.S. to lose the hearts and minds of Muslims. There was a time, such as during the Suez Canal crisis, when the Arabs loved the Americans and disliked the British and French, he said.

39. (C) Senator Kerry asked the Amir how the U.S. goes about changing its reputation. The Amir said first and foremost the U.S. must do everything in its power to find a lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the best way to begin is by moving first on the Syrian track.

From a January 2007 meeting between U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns and Dubai’s ruler, Mohamed bin Rashid Al Makhtoum:

9.(C) Israel/Palestinians: U/S Burns stressed that the US believes progress between Israel and the Palestinians toward peace is central to regional stability, and supports the creation of a Palestinian state. This would be “the best thing,” MbR replied; a peace deal would make radical groups like HAMAS “everyone’s enemy”.

From the July 2009 Gulf Security Dialog:

16. (C) When the floor was open to general discussion, two topics dominated: Iran and Yemen. The UAE asked whether the USG had any new information since the December 2007 NIE regarding Iran’s nuclear weaponization program; the U.S. team noted that a new estimate was in progress but it was premature to comment. The DMI representative also noted that Iran exploits crises for its own advantage, making the defusing of crises like Palestine and Lebanon imperative if we are to keep Iran in check. In the case of Palestine, he added optimistically, it is time to “cut to the chase” and deal with final status issues; Lebanon is also ripe for progress, he suggested, without a drawn out process.

From an April 2009 meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Amman:

2. (S) The metaphor most commonly deployed by Jordanian officials when discussing Iran is of an octopus whose tentacles reach out insidiously to manipulate, foment, and undermine the best laid plans of the West and regional moderates. Iran’s tentacles include its allies Qatar and Syria, Hizballah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestinian territories, an Iraqi government sometimes seen as supplicant to Tehran, and Shia communities throughout the region. While Jordanian officials doubt dialogue with the U.S. will convince Iran to withdraw its “tentacles,” they believe they can be severed if Iran is deprived of hot-button issues that make it a hero to many on the Arab street, such as its championing of the Palestinian cause.

3. (C) According to the GOJ analysis, Iran’s influence derives from the perception that Tehran is able to “deliver” while moderates are not. The main failure of moderates as cited by radicals is ongoing Palestinian suffering and dispossession despite an international consensus favoring a viable, independent Palestinian state living peacefully next to Israel. The MFA’s Deputy Director of the Arab and Middle East Affairs Department, Muwaffaq Ajlouni, put it this way: “Iran is not welcomed in the Arab world, but it is taking advantage of helpless people.” From Jordan’s perspective, the U.S. would benefit from pressing Israel to proceed to final status negotiations, which would garner Arab support to deal with shared security concerns about Iran.

From a July 2009 meeting between Gen. Petraeus and Lebanon’s Fuad Siniora:

5. (C) Siniora said that Lebanon was encouraged by and supportive of President Obama’s commitment to achieving a comprehensive Middle East Peace. He said the U.S. administration’s recognition of the centrality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was an opportunity to push the Arab Peace Initiative forward and to finally achieve a resolution.

No doubt Rubin will dismiss these statements, because, you know, Arabs lie. Except when they say they want us to attack Iran.

As Laura Rozen notes, there’s a real concentration of Iran-related materials in the first batch of WikiLeaks. I’m curious what the thinking was behind releasing these specific cables first, or if there was any thinking. I guess we’ll know soon.

In regard to what the leaked cables tell us about the administration’s own policies (as opposed to what they tell us about what other leaders are saying or what our diplomats think about what those leaders are saying), one of the biggest takeaways thus far is, not only is Obama administration’s Iran policy very much the same in private as it is in public, this administration, unlike its predecessor, actually has an Iran policy.

As the New York Times report, the cables “show how President George W. Bush, hamstrung by the complexities of Iraq and suspicions that he might attack Iran, struggled to put together even modest sanctions“:

They also offer new insights into how President Obama, determined to merge his promise of “engagement” with his vow to raise the pressure on the Iranians, assembled a coalition that agreed to impose an array of sanctions considerably harsher than any before attempted.

When Mr. Obama took office, many allies feared that his offers of engagement would make him appear weak to the Iranians. But the cables show how Mr. Obama’s aides quickly countered those worries by rolling out a plan to encircle Iran with economic sanctions and antimissile defenses. In essence, the administration expected its outreach to fail, but believed that it had to make a bona fide attempt in order to build support for tougher measures.

That last point is key, as some have tried to argue that Obama only turned to the pressure track after the engagement track failed. The truth about Obama’s Iran policy, and this is something Obama was quite clear about even during the presidential campaign, is that not only do engagement and pressure work together, engagement itself can be a form of pressure, as it has been with Iran.

In regard to Arab leaders’ demands for action against Iran, which has thus far dominated the coverage of the leaks, certainly it was no secret that Arab regimes are deeply concerned about Iran’s growing influence in the region, fear that it would be greatly enhanced by Iran’s possession of a nuclear weapon, and want the U.S. to take care of the problem for them. But even I’m a bit surprised at the persistence with these leaders have apparently been asking the U.S. to carry out a strike. (And what of the likely regional fallout of such a strike? They’ll want us to take care of that for them too.)

While it’s obviously important to take the concerns of our allies and partners seriously, U.S. officials, analysts, and military leaders have repeatedly made clear that a strike on Iran would be, at best, a short-term solution that would actually make an Iranian nuclear weapon more likely, not less, while carrying a host of other highly negative consequences for U.S. goals and interests. That’s, of course, the key question U.S. foreign policy should be concerned with.

The remarkable aspect of Jon Kyl’s (R-AZ) appearance on Meet the Press was his unwillingness to attack the START treaty. When asked repeatedly by David Gregory if he would drop his opposition to START, Kyl used Senate process as a way of dodging the question. Kyl merely insisted that it would hard to bring up START because of the lack of time in the Senate calendar.

DAVID GREGORY: But Senator, you’re not being responsive…what’s your issue? Well, what’s your issue with the– the treaty?

KYL: As I told you, my issue is that you can’t do everything. I was stating it as a matter of reality, not a matter of policy. How can Harry Reid do all of the things we’ve talked about, deal with the expiring tax provisions, and in addition to that deal with the START Treaty, which by itself could probably take at least two weeks?

Watch it:

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After being pressed again about his substantive qualms, Kyl then went on to insist that there was no rush and alluded to some mythical “issues” around missile defense. But the significant element here is that Kyl essentially refused to directly attack the treaty. Kyl is in effect both giving himself space to eventually support the treaty and space to obstruct it. By saying there are “issues,” gives Kyl room to delay or obstruct a vote by putting forth a series of endless amendments that would run out the clock on the Senate calendar. Kyl was overt about the obstruction threat when he stated:

We have three weeks to go before the Christmas recess. And there are, in my opinion, a lot of amendments that have to be raised on this treaty. And as a result, colleagues are going to offer those amendments. Is Harry Reid just gonna shut it off and say, “We only have three days?

By threatening to propose endless amendments to a treaty, Kyl is demonstrating that Senate Republicans aren’t serious about governing the country or about national security.

First of all, treaties, for all intents and purposes, cannot be amended. If the Senate actually amends a treaty, that change would have to be agreed to by the other countries party to the treaty – in this case Russia. This means reopening the treaty negotiations, which is just not going to happen. Therefore any amendment that alters the treaty will have to be voted down on the floor for the treaty to remain viable. In essence, Kyl’s threat to raise “a lot of amendments” is a threat to make the process take a very long time.

Secondly, there is no reason why the New START treaty should take longer than three days. As David Gregory noted, the SORT treaty under the George W. Bush administration took just two days. The original START treaty took just five days – and that was the first treaty of its kind. The New START treaty merely updates the original treaty, meaning that three days should be plenty of time to debate and vote on New START.

All this shows is that Kyl is cynically using the START treaty as a hostage, demanding in exchange for its passage that Reid push aside other priorities. But as Dick Durbin noted on Meet the Press:

Well, I can just tell you that– if you– people across America who subscribe for cable ask for refunds when they turn on C-SPAN and see the Senate there day after day doing nothing. Lurching from filibuster to filibuster. Come on, let’s be reasonable. Let’s be constructive. Let’s be bipartisan. We can get these things done.

Earlier this month, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) indicated that a vote on the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act would likely take place after Thanksgiving. Before the holiday weekend was even over, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) didn’t hesitate to declare the DREAM Act dead on arrival. On Fox News Sunday, Graham stuck to the GOP’s enforcement-only party line:

From this discussion, the one thing I can tell you is not going to happen is the DREAM Act. She’s [Sen. Claire McCaskill] talking about voting against comprehensive immigration reform — I support it done right. Why would you give legal citizenship to 2 million people without securing the border first?

Watch it:

Graham voted against the DREAM Act in 2007, so it’s not a huge surprise that he’s against it now. However, that doesn’t excuse his distorted justification.

To begin with, the DREAM Act wouldn’t grant anyone citizenship. Instead, it would allow some young undocumented immigrants who fulfill the necessary education or military requirements and undergo a background check to obtain legal residency. To become a citizen, they would have to go through the naturalization process that all immigrants who seek citizenship must complete.

Furthermore, a study by the Migration Policy Institute revealed that although slightly more than 2.1 million undocumented immigrant youth could be eligible to apply for legal status under the DREAM Act, only 38% — or 825,000 — of them would likely gain permanent legal status.

Finally, though Graham has supported immigration reform in the past, he and his party are largely responsible for blocking it in 2010. Apparently Graham’s idea of immigration reform “done right” amounts to holding it hostage to health care reform, pitting it against climate change legislation, and then turning his back on it altogether and declaring his support for changing the 14th amendment to deny the U.S.-born children of immigrants citizenship.

With that said, Graham’s exchange with Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) — who is neither a champion of immigration reform nor the DREAM Act — highlighted the fact that Democrats are not unanimously in favor of pro-immigrant policies. Though the majority of the Democratic Party supports immigration reform proposals, as long as lawmakers like McCaskill are opposed, so-called “moderate” Republicans like Graham are needed to get those pieces of legislation over the finish line.