Our guest blogger is Peter Juul, national security policy analyst at the Center for American Progress.

The National Defense Authorization Act recently passed by the Senate contains several major provisions relating to U.S. policy on Iran, including controversial new sanctions involving Iran’s Central Bank. It authorizes President Obama to impose sanctions directly on the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), but does not require him to do so. However, it does require the president to impose sanctions — not on Iran, but on other foreign banks that do business with the CBI or other Iranian financial institutions designated by the Treasury Department for sanctions or other penalties. In other words, foreign banks that do business with the Central Bank of Iran would be barred from doing business in the United States.

The measures in the defense bill do give President Obama some wiggle room — for instance, allowing him to issue waivers every 120 days — but do not give him the necessary flexibility to conduct the delicate diplomacy required to isolate Iran. As Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wrote to Congress, “Rather than motivating [our closest allies and largest trading partners] to join us in increasing pressure on Iran, they are more likely to resent our actions and resist following our lead – a consequence that would serve the Iranians more than it harms them.”

While the desire of Congress to further pressure Iran as it continues to refuse to come clean on its nuclear activities is understandable, the smarter policy approach is to give President Obama the tools necessary to maintain the international coalition to hold Iran accountable for its actions and omissions. By threatening to crack this coalition with unilateral actions that could harm even our closest allies with these sanctions, Congress is undermining President Obama’s Iran policy when it should be trying to strengthen it. The sanctions provisions of the defense bill threaten to seriously undercut the painstaking diplomatic action that has left Iran more isolated than ever.

The U.S. officially marked the end of its war in Iraq today, but the move leaves a bad taste in the mouths of many on the U.S. right. Among the most common of their talking points: The outsized role played in Iraq by Iran, and the threats that influence poses to U.S. interests and allies. This fall, AEI scholar Fred Kagan, who’s been echoed by others, wrote that because the total U.S. withdrawal, Iran “defeated the United States in Iraq.” But, as CAP’s Matt Duss has noted, increased Iranian influence in Iraq results not from the end of the U.S. war there, but from launching a war against anti-Iranian former dictator Saddam Hussein and creating a democracy in a country where Shiites — Iran’s co-sectarians — dominate the polity.

Iranian influence, and even meddling through Iranian-backed militias, are indeed the reality in Iraq, inevitable with the fall of Hussein and advent of democracy. Two of Iraq’s powerful Shia political parties — including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s — were sheltered in Iran under Hussein. But a recent incident between the neighbors’ governments and religious institutions indicates that the scope of that influence may not be quite as severe as opponents of ending the war make it out to be. As the Washington Post reports, “although Iraqi Shiites broadly welcome the departure of the Americans, they seem in no mood to substitute one form of foreign domination for another — and least of all, they say, from Iran.” Indeed, tensions between clerics representing Iran’s theocratic structure and Iraq’s own Shia establishment show that the Iraqi side is pushing back against Iran.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, based in the Shia holy city of Najaf, Iraq, and one of the sect’s most revered clerics, was “reported to be furious” when the announcement came last month that Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, a close ally of Iran’s theocratic Supreme Leader, intended to open an office in Najaf. The Post outlined the differences of view that caused the tension:

Najaf’s religious authorities, or marjaya, have become a beacon of moderation for the newly established Shiite order. The authorities have moved firmly to assert their quietist school of Shiite religious thought, under which the clerics are expected to merely advise rather than participate in politics, as they do in Iran.

The move by Shahroudi represents a threat to both this “quiet” modus operandi of clerical political involvement in Iraq, and to the supremacy of Sistani as the undisputed religious authority — Shahroudi would represent a rival school of thought on religious grounds alone. (There are other political issues as well.) For Iraqis, this appears to already be fostering resentment and opening up ethnic tensions. The Post reports:

“Do you know who in Iraq hates Iran more than anyone? It is Najaf,” said Neama al-Ebadi, director of the Najaf-based Iraq Center for Research and Studies, echoing a view widely expressed on the streets of the city.

“The Shiites of Iran are Iranian first. They think they’re superior to Arabs. But Najafis believe they are the original Shiites and the Iranians are just copies.”

The flare up, which follows on other tensions, fits a context described by none other than former Bush administration Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who recently said, “I think it’s easy to overstate the degree to which the Iraqis have any attraction to Iran — that’s a pretty lousy relationship, really.”

Our guest blogger is Colin Cookman, research associate for national security at the Center for American Progress.

Last night’s passage of the Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (NDAA) in the House will bring with it new conditions on how the U.S. provides assistance to Pakistan through the two primary Pakistan-specific military aid accounts. With U.S.-Pakistan relations still in crisis from a November 26 cross-border raid which killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, these changes have drawn fresh critiques from the Pakistani foreign office. But while congressional patience with Pakistan is clearly wearing thin and mutual distrust between the two countries is rising, the conditions in the Defense Authorization bill are actually rather muted.

The authorization won’t actually release the money for the fiscal year, which technically started in October — that comes through appropriations, which have yet to pass as the House and Senate engage in a fight over an omnibus spending package. That bill is likely to introduce new certification requirements as well, but without the final conference text it is unclear at this point how Congress will come down in terms of exact restrictions. For now, the new Defense Authorization bill would make the following changes to the two main Pakistan-specific aid accounts controlled by the Department of Defense — the Coalition Support Fund (CSF) and the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Fund (PCF):

• Coalition Support Funds — The bill renews the CSF program for another year and increases its annual budget slightly to $1.69 billion; the administration had requested $1.75 billion. As a reimbursement program, CSF depends on Pakistani claims to determine how much is actually paid out. In recent years the U.S. has been more stringent in how it scrutinizes those claims. There are no conditions on CSF spending, but the bill does require a report from the Pentagon to Congress on how CSF money is being used and an assessment of its effectiveness.

• Pakistan Counterinsurgency Fund — The bill renews the PCF but for the first time places limits on its disbursement. Sixty percent of the funds appropriated (which would be approximately $660 million if the administration’s $1.1 billion request for PCF is met by Congressional appropriators, not $700 million as some accounts have reported) are frozen until the Defense Department submits a report to Congress outlining what Pakistan’s counterinsurgency capability needs actually are and how the fund will be used, among other issues. The report must also include “a discussion” of Pakistani cooperation in counter-IED efforts; fertilizer from Pakistan is reportedly a component in many Afghan bombs. The remaining 40 percent of PCF money (approximately $400 million) is free to be spent in the meantime. Beyond the submission of the report there are no further restrictions on its use.

When this money is appropriated, it’s an open question how much the U.S. will actually be able to spend, even discounting these constraints. The freezing of $800 million in combined CSF and PCF funds earlier this summer was forced to a considerable degree by the Pakistani ejection of almost all U.S. trainers from the country in the wake of the Raymond Davis episode at the beginning of the year. It will be a challenge to actually spend even $400 million over the year without any actual trainers in Pakistan to spend it on, so the practical effect of the new Congressional restrictions (should the administration choose to trigger them by withholding reports or certification) may be limited.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney told a Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) audience last week that “nothing focuses [Iranian] minds more than suffering from sanctions and seeing a military option.” But yesterday, in a Fox News interview, Romney made clear that if president, he would have employed that military option when the U.S. spy drone crashed in Iran and even suggested he’d order Americans into Iran to retrieve it:

ROMNEY: Absolutely take it out. He was extraordinarily weak and timid in a critical moment. This will have severe implications for us, long term. And it was a terrible mistake on his part. I find it incomprehensible that he didn’t destroy it or go get it. I think destroying it would have been a good deal easier. Destroy it immediately or go get it. But the idea of letting it fall into the hands of people who will use it against us, use the intelligence capacity against us is an enormous mistake on the part of the president.

Watch it:

Romney isn’t alone in his calls for an airstrike to destroy the drone. Earlier this week, former Vice President Dick Cheney said the “right response” would have been to order a “quick airstrike” to destroy the drone.

But Romney is the first GOP voice to actually endorse an incursion into Iran to retrieve the drone. Romney glosses over the potential repercussions of a U.S. airstrike or raid on Iranian territory. Furthermore, the George W. Bush administration, with Cheney as Vice President, faced an even more confrontational situation when, on April 1, 2001, a mid-air collision between a Chinese fighter jet and a U.S. Navy intelligence aircraft forced the U.S. plane to make an emergency landing on China’s Hainan Island. The Bush administration resolved the crisis by issuing an apology.

Both Romney and Cheney are eager to criticize the White House for any perceived concessions to Iran but neither have criticized the Bush administration for its handling of a similar incident or acknowledged that a “quick airstrike” or committing military force to “go get it” could be seen as dangerously provocative policy decisions.

GOP presidential frontrunner Newt Gingrich moved from outlandish to downright offensive last week when he declared the Palestinians are an “invented people” only capable of terrorism. “Somebody ought to have the courage to tell the truth. These people are terrorists,” he said. “It’s fundamentally time for somebody to have the guts to stand up and say, enough lying about the Middle East.”

Today on Fox and Friends, New York City’s former Mayor Rudy Giuliani exulted in Gingrich’s inflammatory remarks. “I jumped up out of my chair and cheered for Newt when he said what he said about Palestine,” Giuliani exclaimed. “Finally. Thank God. Someone is saying the right things about Palestine.” Taking Gingrich’s extremism a step further, Giuliani proclaimed that the creation of a Palestinian state would just create a “terrorist state” that “will be training people to come over here and blow us up”:

GIULIANI: I jumped up out of my chair and cheered for Newt when he said what he said about Palestine. Finally. Thank God. Someone is saying the right things about Palestine. Somebody has to question why are we creating a Palestinian state that’s going to be another terrorist state. Put Israel aside for a minute. Is it in the interest of the United States of America to create another state where they’re going to be training people to come over here and blow us up? Of course it isn’t. And somebody’s got to have the guts to stand and say that like Ronald Reagan said, “the Evil Empire.” Like Ronald Reagan said, “Tear down the wall.” We need somebody like that.

Watch it:

Giuliani may want to take another look at his hero. As Politico’s Ben Smith noted yesterday, Reagan was nowhere near the “no-daylight-with-Israel policy that leading Republicans advocate” today. in 1982, he called for a settlement freeze, stating that it “could create the confidence needed for wider participation in these talks.” He even complained about Israel’s participation in the war in Lebanon, saying “the relationship between our two countries is at stake.” In 1987, he called on Israelis to “step back from confrontation” regarding the violence in the West Bank, adding that their occupation “also damages the self-respect and world opinion of the Israeli people.”

As Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz noted, “If Obama treated Israel like Reagan did, he’d be impeached.” And yet, Republicans like Gingrich and Giuliani continue to insist that their regressive, prejudicial, and ignorance of the Palestinian people is a position Reagan — or anyone who believes in the peace process — would support.

When President Obama earlier this year announced his plan to withdraw the “surge” troops from Afghanistan by the end of next summer, conservatives — seeming to not fully comprehend the idea of chain-of-command — were incredulous that the President did not do exactly what the commanders on the ground advised him to do. But with months to let American laws of civilian control of the military sink in, the idea still doesn’t seem to have caught on. “The commanders on the ground feel that we should bring down our surge troops by December of 2012,” Mitt Romney said in last month’s GOP presidential foreign policy debate criticizing the president’s decision. Romney added, “I stand with the commanders in this regard.”

Newt Gingrich has also attacked Obama for not doing whatever the generals tell him to do. Here’s what the former House speaker said shortly after Obama’s decision was made:

GINGRICH: I think we are drifting to a very, very dangerous situation. None of the generals recommended the speed of the drawdown the president wants. [...]

And if you watch what is happening there’s a steady drift from the United States at a time when the president is signaling his desire to get out as fast as he can and potentially faster than the generals think is safe. … You should go to the White House and ask the president why did he overrule all his generals?

Yet there was at least one point in Gingrich’s career in which he understood the chain-of-command, and actively promoted it. In 2006, a number of retired generals called on then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to step down because of poor leadership in the Iraq war. Gingrich defended Rumsfeld in an April, 2006 interview on Fox News, saying, “We have civilian control. … The generals don’t control”:

WALLACE: Do you agree with any of the criticism from those six retired generals that Secretary Rumsfeld went in with too few troops, went in without a plan, hasn’t been listening to the generals?

GINGRICH: Look. First of all, Don Rumsfeld listens to generals. He doesn’t obey them. We have civilian control. The president is in charge as commander in chief. The secretary of defense works for the president. The generals advise. The generals don’t control.

Watch the two clips:

So what does Gingrich really believe? Does the president control the military or do the generals control the president? For Newt, it probably depends on which political party the current White House occupant belongs to.

Last night, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 1905, The Iran Threat Reductions Act (PDF), by a 410 to 11 margin. The bill strengthens and requires the president to impose existing sanctions against Iran, but also contains a provision which constrains the administration should it seek to diplomatically engage the Islamic Republic.

The provision in Section 601(c), proposed by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and added to the bill in her House Foreign Affairs Committee, says:

No person employed with the United States Government may contact in an official or unofficial capacity any person that…is an agent, instrumentality, or official of, is affiliated with, or is serving as a representative of the Government of Iran, and… presents a threat to the United States or is affiliated with terrorist organizations.

Yesterday, the White House also dropped a veto threat on a defense bill that includes sanctions aimed at Iran’s central bank. Taken together, said the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a group that advocates diplomacy, the moves “represent a major step in the wrong direction for the United States’ Iran policy.” Policy director Jamal Abdi said, “By working to take diplomatic options off the table, the House is putting restrictions on the only tool available to prevent a nuclear Iran and prevent a disastrous military confrontation.”

Despite a waiver in the Threat Reduction Act that allows the president to suspend the ban when U.S. national security is at stake, the provision faced criticisms from advocates of engagement. Last week, 26 liberals groups sent a letter to Congress opposing the measure.

In November, former U.S ambassadors Thomas Pickering and William Luers wrote that this “preposterous law” barring contacts defies Sun Tzu’s famous maxim by “mak[ing] it illegal for the U.S. to know its enemy.” Noting that there have been virtually no contacts with Iran since the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, the two elder statesmen observed:

That ignorance of this powerful adversary dangerously weakens our ability to know how to achieve U.S. objectives and protect U.S. interests.

The most successful practitioners of Sun Tzu’s counsel have found that the more one knows about the adversary, the more likely it is that war can be won or, better yet, avoided altogether.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), though, noted in a “dear colleague” letter that the bill only bars contacts with those who are a “threat” to the U.S. or “affiliated with terrorist organizations.” She continued: “None of the persons with whom the United States would negotiate over the nuclear program fit into this category.”

A Senate version of the legislation remains stalled. Faced with signing the bill in the future, the administration would likely issue a signing statement exempting itself from Sec. 601(c) because, as Pickering and Luers point out, it “rais[es] serious constitutional issues over the separation of powers” by curbing the president’s authority to conduct foreign policy.