The announcement that 90 U.S. senators signed a letter to President Obama urging him to sanction Iran’s central bank has been described by some American officials, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Jay Solomon, as the “nuclear option” or, in the eyes of some Iranian officials, an act of war. But that hasn’t stopped some of Washington’s most outspoken Iran hawks from applauding potential legislation aimed at freezing Iran out of the global financial system.

The letter, cosponsored by Sens. Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Charles Schumer (D-NY), calls for blacklisting Bank Markazi, Iran’s central bank, and observes that, “If our allies are willing to join, we believe this step can be even more effective.”

But even advocates of ever tighter sanctions, like the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies‘ Mark Dubowitz, admit that getting U.S. allies to join in this extreme move will be difficult. Rubin quips: “The hang-up — no surprise — is that there is no — you got it! — international consensus.”

Rubin goes on to consult with Dubowitz who tells her:

When it comes to implementing tough measures to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program, there is no longer a “third rail” that should prevent us from trying any measure to squeeze the regime. The Obama administration must target Iran’s crude oil sales, designate the Central Bank of Iran, and sanction the Chinese, Indian and other companies that continue to do business in Iran’s energy sector. We don’t have time for half measures and slow, incremental changes.

Rubin and Dubowitz now warn that Iraq-like sanctions — those that caused infant mortality to increase more than three-fold in seven years — are the only way to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and avoiding a military confrontation, but just last week they were declaring the sanctions strategy dead. Dubowitz, quoted by Rubin, said on Thursday:

[The Iranians] are driving ruthlessly forward on their nuclear weapon program while we delude ourselves into thinking that sanctions are a silver bullet that will stop them. Sanctions are an important part of a comprehensive Iran policy that needs to include the real threat of force. Sanctions are an important part of a comprehensive Iran policy that needs to include the real threat of force.

The push for a risky, de facto oil embargo has been floated for the past few months but back in April, Dubowitz admitted that such extreme sanctions could have disastrous effects. Speaking on a Heritage Foundation panel, he said:

We’re playing very delicately with a very sensitive oil market and we have to be very careful not to shoot ourselves in the face by going after Iranian crude through an embargo or through the Iran crude oil sanctions act which sends a message to the markets that we’re going to take a million barrels of crude off line next week.

In June, the Atlantic Council’s Barbara Slavin told Think Progress that legislators pushing for ever tighter sanctions should be careful not to make the same mistakes the U.S. made with Iraq, an ineffective sanctions scheme which exacted a massive humanitarian toll. She said:

What they want is a stealth embargo. And they want it to be slow and quiet so it doesn’t cause shocks to the market, but that’s what they want.

If it starts to look like a total embargo, they will lose support. It starts to look like Iraq.

It’s worth remembering that while these calls for extreme sanctions against Iran are posited as a way to avoid military confrontation, the same coterie of neoconservative hawks never let up calling for military action against Iraq despite the draconian sanctions put in place.

Former Bush administration ambassador the U.N. John Bolton is still mulling a campaign to pursue the Republican presidential nomination. He’s already said he’ll make a decision by Labor Day, but as a notorious press hound, he just can’t stop floating the possibility. His latest reminder comes in the form of a cover story for the right-wing publication Human Events. Bolton begins the hyperbolic screed by citing the 18th century Scottish enlightenment philosopher and father of modern economic theory, Adam Smith. Bolton writes:

Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations that “the first duty of the sovereign, that of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies, can be performed only by means of a military force.” Today, failing to protect our national security inevitably endangers our economic prosperity by making us vulnerable to global adversaries.

It is clear that President Obama does not agree with Smith’s wisdom. Obama’s policies are jeopardizing not only our national security and economy, but our constitutional sovereignty too.

That is why I have been considering running for President.

It’s the second recent occasion that Bolton has relied on Smith to knock Obama. And both times he has picked out this same line on “protecting the society,” particularly to argue against cutting military spending at the expense of reducing entitlements. That’s because it’s an incredibly narrow selective quote from The Wealth of Nations. Other government duties, as outlined by Smith, don’t really line up with Bolton’s far-right ideology.

Other than providing for defense and a robust justice system, Smith wrote that the duties of the sovereign also include setting up “public institutions and public works” for:

facilitating the commerce of the society, and those for promoting the instruction of the people. The institutions for instruction are of two kinds: those for the education of youth, and those for the instruction of people of all ages.

Smith clearly indicates that other duties of the sovereign include educating the populace — possibly up through the university level — and paying for infrastructure projects that keep commerce strong, “such as good roads, bridges, navigable canals, harbours, etc.”

In short, Smith believed not only that governments should shoulder responsibility for the first duty of defense, but for other public projects as well. And how should governments pay for all of this, according to Smith? Well, with a progressive tax:

It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expence, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.

John Bolton may only care for Smith’s first duty because, as Salon writer Alex Pareene put it, defense budget cuts could “imperil [his] forever war.” But if Bolton insists that Adam Smith is inspiring his presidential run, he’d better clear up his positions on Smith’s other duties before his potential Republican primary opponents start denouncing him as class-warrior tax-and-spend socialist.

Syria’s state-run news SANA reports today that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad replaced defense minister Gen. Ali Habib and appointed army chief of staff Gen. Dawoud Rajha to the position. SANA said Habib stepped down because of health reasons.

The Obama administration had imposed sanctions on Habib — who is reportedly part of Assad’s inner circle — but opposition activists said including him on the list was unhelpful because it would discourage military defections. One London-based Syrian opposition spokesperson said the pro-democracy movement needed an army ally to help form an alternative to Assad’s government and that activists were looking to Habib:

Habib was a respected career military man with no known connections to Syria’s security forces and was believed to have an internationalist outlook. In 1991, General Habib led the Syrian troops who were sent to Kuwait to assist the United States in pushing out the Iraqi forces of Saddam Hussein, and he is thought to have good relationships with American and Arab leaders.

But most important, Mr. Ziadeh said, members of the National Initiative for Change have had secret discussions with members of General Habib’s family, and they have been told that General Habib is sympathetic to the protesters’ demands.

“We’re calling on Ali Habib to play a central and vital role in the transition of the country alongside members of the political opposition and the revolutionary movement,” Mr. Monajed said. “We are in discussions to name a proper shadow government and at the right time we will name this shadow government. In the meantime, we are calling for an interim government and a new election law.”

However, Micheal Weiss reported at Slate that Syrian activists believed that the White House sanctions made Habib’s viability as a transition figure very difficult.

Israel should drop its requirements for Palestinian negotiators to recognize Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, says former Israeli ambassador to the U.N. Gabriela Shalev. Speaking before Congress last May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “It’s time for President Abbas to stand before his people and to say ‘I will accept a Jewish state,” adding, “Those six words will convince Israel that they have a true partner for peace.”

Shalev, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, offered harsh advice to Netanyahu, challenging his claims that he has no “preconditions” for talks with the Palestinians, saying:

Israel could show by gestures that when Netanyahu talks about negotiations without preconditions, there really are no preconditions; that we are not only willing to speak about painful concessions, but show that we are willing to do it by not going on with building settlements; and by not putting new things on the table, like the requirement that Palestinians recognize Israel as the homeland of Jewish people, which to my mind is superfluous. Brazil didn’t recognize us as that. Egypt didn’t.

Her criticism of Netanyahu’s negotiating position comes as Israeli diplomats prepare for an anticipated September push by Palestinians to gain U.N. recognition of Palestinian statehood. Shalev warns that a Palestinian bid for statehood will occur as popular support for Israel reaches new lows, adding:

It’s low and will move even lower after September. I can’t measure it, but I feel it was never as bad. I remember when we were the underdogs and the world embraced us. Even during the [2005 Gaza Strip] disengagement, the world loved us. Now I have the feeling that we are seen more like South Africa once was.

As American Task Force on Palestine senior research fellow Hussein Ibish noted, the demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state “was never raised” in previous peace talks and agreements and only “following his re-election in 2009, Netanyahu has increasingly made this demand a mainstay.” Ibish adds that the demand is “highly unusual”:

The idea that a state — or in this case a potential state — should participate in defining the national character of another is highly unusual, if not unique, in international relations. The Palestinian position, stated many times by President Mahmoud Abbas, is that the PLO recognizes Israel, and that Israel is free to define itself however it chooses.

While Shalev expresses her desire for Israel to take a more balanced negotiating position before September, she admits that a breakthrough in negotiations is unlikely. After the U.N. showdown in September, she predicts “we will see more hostility and much less open dialogue.”

Yesterday on Meet the Press, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) again attacked President Obama’s strategy to withdraw the so-called “surge” forces from Afghanistan by next summer, complaining that it had “no military recommendation.” McCain said U.S. forces cannot withdraw so quickly because Pakistan is giving insurgents sanctuary.

“But the reality is,” Gregory said, “we have been at it over a decade now. The sanctuary problem has been with us the entire time.” Gregory told McCain that “there are going to be people who are watching who’ll say why are we still there?” But the Arizona Republican dismissed this, saying the war there is only just getting started:

MCCAIN: First of all, on the ten-year thing, the fact is we have only had a surge for a couple of years now since the President announced it, as you know, at West Point. So we have had a very short time. There’s no doubt that we have had significant success particularly in the southern part of Afghanistan. The reason why I worry a lot is I’m not sure we have a sufficient number of troops for another fighting season so we can gain control in the eastern side of the country.

Watch it:

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So according to McCain — despite nearly 1,000 American deaths and tens of billions spent through 2009 — the war in Afghanistan is basically now just beginning, or began in 2009 when President Obama decided to send tens of thousands more troops there. But maybe McCain didn’t realize there has been a war going on there since 2001 seeing that he tended to skip his Senate committee hearings on the war, or that as early as 2004, thought the U.S. had already won and continued to call it a “success” for years after. But also, just like President Bush, the Iraq war distracted McCain from Afghanistan.

Throughout the last ten years, McCain has been regularly and consistently wrong about Afghanistan. As New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote, “As a presidential candidate in the summer of 2008, McCain cared so little about Afghanistan it didn’t even merit a mention among the national security planks on his campaign Web site.”

But of course, if he were president, McCain would buck the chain of command and defer to whatever the military says the U.S. should do in Afghanistan. After all, shortly before Obama made his decision to send more troops there, McCain said he shouldn’t worry about an exit strategy.