Yesterday the Iranian press reported that the Islamic Republic “successfully test-fired a new generation of long range surface-to-surface missiles with a range of 1,200 miles.”

Some weapons experts have disputed whether this was, in fact, a new missile. Andrew Brookes of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies told The London Times, “I think the Iranians just keeping on rejigging the same missile and putting a new logo on it. It’s basically the Shahab 3 with a different name, and the purpose of the test firing is to tell the world, ‘don’t forget us’, we have missiles that can reach 2,000 kilometers.”

The White House responded with the requisite denunciation, with spokesman Gordon Johndroe saying “Iran’s development of ballistic missiles is contrary to United Nations Security Council resolutions and completely inconsistent with Iran’s obligations to the world.”

Iran’s missile test should be considered in light of the fact that Iran’s economy, which had been kept afloat on high oil revenues, is collapsing. The high price of oil — which was partly a consequence of the Iraq war — had enabled Iran to sidestep economic sanctions, but with the recent drop in oil prices Iran is in serious trouble. They’ve got double-digit unemployment, double-digit inflation, there’s a whole generation of young Iranians whose future prospects are very dim. And they are very, very unhappy with their government right now.

The missile test should be therefore viewed less as an attempt to “test” the new president-elect, more as an attempt by hardliners to rally Iranians round the flag, as they have done consistently over the past few years, by provoking a crisis to draw attention away from their failure to manage the economy. Read more

Our guest blogger is Peter Juul, research associate at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

In a short piece for his website critiquing the two main competing ideas for President-elect Obama’s future Iraq policy –- the Center for a New American Security’s ‘conditional engagement‘ strategy and CAP’s own Strategic Reset strategy -– the normally astute Reidar Visser makes two critical errors. While we largely agree with his critique of the CNAS strategy, Visser subtly misreads CAP’s strategy while proposing a course of his own that does little to remedy the deficiencies of those he critiques.

First, Visser argues that CAP’s recommendation to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq as rapidly as possible is based on a possibly mistaken premise: that the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will only make compromises if it no longer can rely on the United States to shield it from the consequences of its actions. But our proposed strategy is not premised on using withdrawal as “leverage” against Maliki; it is rather premised on withdrawal changing the political incentives for Iraqi political actors. Whether or not Iraqis act on these changed incentives is left up to the Iraqis themselves. Rather than presenting a substantive criticism of the logic of CAP’s strategy, Visser relies on the prediction that Maliki will not change his overall behavior. While this continuation is possible, it is beside the point -– as we point out in our recent report on Iraq’s political transition, the United States needs to recognize its limited leverage and accept suboptimal outcomes. We argue that changing Iraqi political leaders’ incentives through the withdrawal of U.S. troops stands the best chance of the remaining bad policy options of leading to broad political accommodation in Iraq.

Second, Visser argues for “singling out the 2009 parliamentary elections as the key to reform and Iraq’s last chance to repair itself.” This advice ignores the failures of 2005, when the Bush administration based its Iraq policy on the premise that elections would serve as a panacea to the country’s violent power struggle. He further advocates that the United States somehow ensure free and fair elections by maintaining a large troop presence in Iraq. Again, if the United States could not accomplish free and fair elections in 2005 with equal numbers of troops, how will things go any different this time? Additionally, Visser posits that ensuring free and fair elections will somehow make the United States “quite immune against accusations of meddling in Iraqi affairs” when ensuring free and fair elections is precisely meddling in Iraqi affairs!

Moreover, Visser ignores his earlier critique of CAP’s strategy that Maliki has consolidated enough of a power base to resist reform. If Maliki indeed has consolidated such as base, will he not also be in a position to win even “free and fair” elections? In the end, Visser’s own recommendation to stick around Iraq just a bit longer -– echoed by so many in the Washington establishment -– suffers from the same problems he identifies with CAP’s strategy, only it provides no incentives whatsoever for Iraqi politicians to campaign or act on accommodationist platforms. It is no more than another attempt to “find the pony” in Iraq.

It looks like Bill Kristol may be making good on his threat to revive the Project for the New American Century. Since May, visitors to PNAC’s website were informed that “this account has been suspended,” but now the website is back up, though it does not seem to have been updated with any new material.

PNAC’s militaristic ultra-nationalism is implicated in some of the worst mischief of the Bush years, from the “global war on terror” to the invasion of Iraq to President Bush’s support for Israel’s refusal to negotiate with the Palestinians. Many of its members served as advisers to John McCain’s presidential campaign. Bill Kristol is still listed as PNAC’s chairman, and is known to be “exceptionally close” to the senator. McCain’s top foreign policy aide, Randy Scheunemann, serves as PNAC’s project director. McCain spokesperson Michael Goldfarb is also listed as a PNAC research associate.

We should consider what PNAC’s possible revival means for the future of Sarah Palin. Palin was first “identified as a potential future leader of the neoconservative cause” in June 2007 when the Weekly Standard’s annual summer cruise docked in Juneau. Several editors — including Bill Kristol — had dinner with Palin. Scott Horton reported that in the following months, the Standard published a number of laudatory items about Palin — “starting with a paean entitled ‘The Most Popular Governor‘ that ran right after” the dinner.

Among those associated with the McCain campaign, Kristol, Scheunemann, and Goldfarb are known to have been three of the biggest Sarah Palin boosters. It was reported that Scheunemann had even been fired by the campaign after it was discovered that he was leaking information favorable to Palin to the press. Goldfarb later denied that Scheunemann had been fired, but “told reporters that Scheunemann’s Blackberry had been confiscated in the days before the election,” and that his email had been cut off.

After lobbying McCain to pick Palin as his VP, Kristol then used his prominent position as a New York Times columnist to promote Palin and criticize the McCain team’s handling of her. Given that Kristol’s faction began to close ranks around Palin in the waning days of the campaign, and given how deeply leveraged Kristol’s reputation is in her future success, it will be interesting to see what role the revived PNAC plays in continuing political adventures of Governor Sarah Palin.

Digg It!

To add to Yglesias’, and Justin Logan’s posts dismantling Michael Rubin’s latest argument for bombing Iran, a bit about Rubin’s invocation of taqiya as a clever way credit Iranian statements that bolster his thesis and discredit those that don’t.

This isn’t the first time Rubin has misrepresented this Islamic concept. Back in September 2006, Rubin referred to taqiya as “religiously-sanctioned lying.”

Many Islamists feel justified saying one thing to a Western audience, and quite another to fellow Islamists. Muhammad Khatami, soon to receive an honorary degree at St. Andrew’s University in celebration of his “practical work to improve relations between Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities,” is one example. No need for Khatami to explain statements justifying murder and terror. The case of Tariq Ramadan, the Islamist scholar whom Notre Dame University tried to hire, has become a cause célèbre. Many progressives are in an uproar that the State Department this week again denied Ramadan a visa. After all, doesn’t he say the right things in academic salons? Perhaps, but beyond the window dressing and the material support for terrorists, what does Ramadan stand for?

Taqiya is commonly understood as dissimulation in order to protect one’s life, family, or the faith. It developed in Shi’i jurisprudence as a defense against persecution by Sunnis or non-Muslims. It is not simply a license to lie, nor is it simply a technique to “lull an enemy,” as Rubin claims here.

The concept of taqiya has generally been looked upon with skepticism and suspicion by the vast majority of Muslims who are Sunni. Tariq Ramadan, who is Sunni, has never, as far as I know, indicated that he believes the concept is a legitimate Islamic practice, Rubin’s careless assertions notwithstanding. Ironically, sinister claims about taqiya have historically been deployed by Sunnis to stir up fear of Shias, just as Rubin deploys them here to stir up fear of Iran.

The implications of Rubin’s treatment of the concept are obvious. After all, if Muslims are encouraged to lie as a matter of religious duty, then why should we believe anything they say, ever? The right-wing blogosphere is rife with this sort of ignorant nonsense, but it’s pretty disgraceful that Rubin would use his scholarly credibility, such as it is, to feed it. Given his own past work in Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans, it’s also pretty ridiculous that Rubin tries to pitch taqiya as some sort of devious occult practice, as if non-Muslim leaders never dissimulate, lie, spin, or misrepresent facts and intentions in order to achieve their political goals.

The New York Times’ Alyssa Rubin declares that the election of Barack Obama “is already beginning to shift the political ground in Iraq and the region.”

Iraqi Shiite politicians are indicating that they will move faster toward a new security agreement about American troops, and a Bush administration official said he believed that Iraqis could ratify the agreement as early as the middle of this month.

“Before, the Iraqis were thinking that if they sign the pact, there will be no respect for the schedule of troop withdrawal by Dec. 31, 2011,” said Hadi al-Ameri, a powerful member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a major Shiite party. “If Republicans were still there, there would be no respect for this timetable. This is a positive step to have the same theory about the timetable as Mr. Obama.”

Buried in the middle of the article is what I think is a more accurate rendering of the scene:

Mr. Obama’s election also coincided with the American negotiators’ acceptance of many of the changes Iraqis demanded in the agreement, which created an overall picture that was easier both for the Iraqis and their neighbors — Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia — to accept.

The American negotiators sent a new version of the agreement to Iraqi leaders on Thursday that included many of the changes Iraqis had demanded. In public, Iraqis said merely that they were studying the document.

By contrast, the Washington Post reports that Iraq’s chief spokesman said with unusual forcefulness Thursday that his government will continue to insist on a firm withdrawal date for U.S. troops, despite American demands that any pullout be subject to prevailing security conditions.”

“Iraqis would like to know and see a fixed date,” spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in an interview in which he also reiterated Iraq’s position that American forces be subject to Iraqi legal jurisdiction in some instances.

Iraqi officials, who see President-elect Obama’s views on the timing of a U.S. withdrawal as consonant with their own, appear to be leveraging his election to pressure the Bush administration to make last-minute concessions.

While I think there’s little doubt that Obama’s election has had an effect on the calculations of Iraq’s political leaders, and strengthened their position against the Bush administration, there’s a danger in overstating the amount of influence that U.S. leaders themselves have in Iraqi politics, a consistent problem with Bush’s approach.

The SOFA in its previous form was effectively scuttled by prominent Shia clerics with influence on Iraq’s leading Shia parties, and it remains to be seen whether the changes accepted by U.S. negotiators will be enough to satisfy the ayatollahs. Unsurprisingly, several Sadrist leaders have already indicated that they are not.

The Bush administration has wasted a huge amount of time and political capital basically bargaining with Iraqi government to stay in Iraq. Rather than accept the inevitability of a U.S. exit, and then leverage that withdrawal to pressure Iraqi leaders to confront the difficult political issues which still persist, President Bush instead clung to a fantasy of a long-term military presence in Iraq, and now finds the impending arrival of a new administration being used as leverage against him.

Surveying the challenges that await the new administration, Brian Katulis and Steve Bowden write that “a broader shift of US troops and resources from Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan seems likely,” noting that General David Petraeus, the former top US commander in Iraq, “chose Pakistan as his first overseas visit in his new position as the head of the US Central Command covering the Middle East.”

During that visit, Pakistani leaders complained of continued U.S. airstrikes in Pakistan:

After the meeting with General Petraeus, President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan said in a statement: “Continuing drone attacks on our territory, which result in loss of precious lives and property, are counterproductive and difficult to explain by a democratically elected government. It is creating a credibility gap.” [...]

The American missile attacks in the tribal areas were generating “anti-American sentiments” and creating “outrage and uproar among the people,” [Pakistani defense minister Ahmad] Mukhtar said in a statement.

A senior Pakistani military official said the army wanted to “bring home the point that the missile strikes are counterproductive, and that this is driving a wedge between the government and the tribal people.”

This MSNBC report on Pakistani reaction to Obama’s victory also has several respondents condemning U.S. airstrikes:

Akram Zaki, 75, a former diplomat, [said] “It’s time for Pakistan to wake up and shape up and demand the U.S. respect the resolutions of our own democratic Parliament and stop these drone attacks inside our borders.” [...]

A majority of Pakistanis still view the war on terror as America’s war and the missile attacks by unmanned U.S. predator drones on al-Qaida and Taliban targets inside the tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghan border as a violation of their sovereignty.

“Despite billions of dollars that the Bush administration has poured into Pakistan, the U.S. government has not been successful in changing the perceptions of the Pakistanis towards the U.S,” said Imran Javaid, a property developer in Islamabad. “The constant U.S. drone attacks on us have made a considerable dent in our once good bi-lateral relations.”

In terms of containing the spread of Islamic extremism, the Pakistan relationship is arguably the most important one the United States has. The new administration has a tough job ahead between promoting Pakistani stability, encouraging and empowering the Pakistani government to deal with threats emanating from their territory, and doing what has to be done when they can’t or won’t.

As I’ve written before, I think a necessary first step in doing this is dumping the war on terror. Positing U.S anti-terrorism policy as an existential struggle in which there are two sides — A) “with us” or B) “against us” — needlessly puts a potentially unpopular and politically costly choice before those regimes whose cooperation we’re trying to secure. The government of Pakistan has an interest in stopping the spread of Salafist extremism, but it has no interest in signing on to a global war which looks to its own citizens too much like neo-imperialism.

John Podhoretz responds with alarm to this account of how Barack Obama “bridled at the sometimes mindless rituals and one-upmanship of a national political campaign” and “resented the pressure he felt to declare, as he put it to Newsweek, that you ‘want to bomb the hell out of someone’ to show toughness on terrorism.”

Podhoretz:

I pray this sentence is a misrepresentation of what Obama meant, because if it is accurate, we have just elected a president who resents and resists the idea that a terrorist attack on the United States or its interests in the wake of 9/11 requires a military response if one is possible.

Of course, this was not a considered remark, not policy. But it may be an extraordinarily revealing glimpse into Obama’s gut feelings about these matters — that justifiable retaliation is nothing more than a psychologically satisfying act, a fulfillment of a primal revenge hunger, “wanting to bomb the hell out of someone.”

It seems to me that Podhoretz is bending over backward to miss the point here. Assuming that the sentence is accurate, it’s pretty obvious that what Obama “resents and resists” is not the idea of a military response to terrorism, it’s the idea that dumb, macho grandstanding is a good response to terrorism. It is unfortunately the case that campaigning in the 24-hour news cycle tends to favor just that sort of grandstanding, often at the expense of more responsible and nuanced discussions of national security policy. This is true of discussions of a lot of policy issues during campaigns, of course, but it’s really only the national security issue that lends itself to promises to bomb the hell out of people.

What’s actually revealing, I think, is how sensitive Podhoretz is on this score. After all, psychologically satisfying martial ejaculations of this sort have long been neoconservatism’s stock in trade. They are also the closest that Podhoretz and his ilk will ever get to engaging in actual combat, and so he resents the implication — correct, as it happens — that hyper-nationalistic exhortations to violence do not represent “toughness,” let alone represent effective anti-terrorism policy.

Barack Obama’s election as America’s 44th president has “unleashed a renewed love for the United States after years of dwindling goodwill.” Reaction from around the world has been overwhelmingly positive, with many expressing “amazement and satisfaction that the United States could overcome centuries of racial strife and elect an African-American as president.” Indeed, one British newspaper echoed a famous phase from the 1960s, describing Obama’s election as “one giant leap for mankind.”

Leaders around the world have also expressed optimism about future relations with President Obama and the United States. European Union officials hailed Obama’s victory “as an opportunity to renew a tenuous trans-Atlantic relationship and join forces in ‘a new deal for a new world’” while Asian leaders “vowed to work with the new Democratic White House after eight years of Republican rule under George W. Bush.” Many of the world’s Presidents and Prime Ministers offered praise for Obama and the future:

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown: “I know that the values we share in common and the policies we work on together will enable us, these two countries, to come through these difficult economic times and build a safer and more secure society for the future.”

Spanish PM José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero: Obama’s victory opens “a new era of hope” for America. “This is a triumph which brings hope and confidence for a world which is experiencing moments of difficulty and uncertainty.”

Australian PM Kevin Rudd: “Today what America has done is turn [Martin Luther King's] dream into a reality.”

French President Nicolas Sarkozy: “At a time when all of us must face huge challenges together, [Obama's] election raises great hope in France, in Europe and elsewhere in the world.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel: Obama’s election is “historic.” The German government “is fully aware of the importance and of the worth of our transatlantic partnership.”

Former South African President Nelson Mandela: “Your victory has demonstrated that no person anywhere in the world should not dare to dream of wanting to change the world for a better place.”

While Israeli and Palestinian leaders voiced hopes that Obama would speed up the slow moving Middle East peace process, the Russians offered a unique reaction to the U.S. presidential election:

President Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday that Russia will deploy missiles in territory near NATO member Poland in response to U.S. missile defense plans. He did not say whether the short-range Iskander missiles would be fitted with nuclear warheads. [...]

He said he hoped Barack Obama would act to improve relations with Russia but he did not offer congratulations to the president-elect.

Indeed, former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin noted that Obama’s biggest challenge would be managing a punishing agenda of various crises in the U.S. and around the world. “He will need to fight on every front,” he said.

Fred Hiatt certainly isn’t the only person in Washington looking to rehabilitate his reputation by rehabilitating the Iraq war’s. But he is the only such person who is also the editorial page editor of the Washington Post, which is how we end up with editorials that seem to have been transmitted from a mirror universe:

Simply put, the situation in Iraq has been transformed in the past two years, and voters recognize it. While 63 percent said in a November 2006 poll reported in Newsweek that the United States was “losing ground” in Iraq, 53 percent said in a New York Times-CBS poll last week that the war was going “somewhat well” or “very well.”

The irony is that the reversal of fortunes came about after President Bush ignored the message from 2006 voters and the Democratic congressional majority they elected. Instead of withdrawing U.S. troops, Mr. Bush launched the “surge” for which Republican John McCain had been pressing. Yet the biggest beneficiary of its success is not Mr. Bush, whose popularity is as low as ever, or Mr. McCain, but Democrat Barack Obama. Mr. Obama gained traction early in the Democratic primary campaign by stressing his opposition to the war and support for a 16-month withdrawal timetable. By the time his general election competition with Mr. McCain began, Iraq had faded as an issue. Mr. Obama’s withdrawal proposal, which would have triggered a catastrophe in 2007 and still looked irresponsible a few months ago, now does not sound that different from what the Iraqi government and the Bush administration have lately been negotiating.[...]

But today is not the day for detailed policy advice. Suffice it instead today to be grateful that the president-elect will inherit a war that has gone from the brink of disaster to a path toward success.

By any definition, what happened in Iraq in 2007 was a catastrophe. The Iraq war has been a catastrophe. I don’t think it’s unfair to argue that the surge helped avert an even worse catastrophe. I’m not entirely convinced of this, but it’s not an unfair argument. It is, however, an argument that dwells now and forever in the realm of conjecture, whereas the actual catastrophe that did occur in Iraq between 2003 and 2007 dwells in the realm of fact.

It seems odd, to say the least, that Hiatt can praise voters with recognizing that the situation in Iraq has gotten better, but then scold them for not properly crediting this to supporters of the surge. Most Americans recognize that the war has been a huge, costly and counterproductive disaster, and I think it’s probably the case that they recognize that many of those supporting the surge were also those most responsible for selling them the war, and thus aren’t willing to forgive and forget the way that Hiatt seems to feel that they should.

As for being “grateful” that we are on “a path toward success,” I’ll just tell Hiatt what I told Peter Wehner.

Considering the implications of U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, Robert Kaplan floats the novel argument that, for a progressive national security policy to succeed, it must be more conservative:

The problem is that both Iran and Al Qaeda… are invested in not just an American withdrawal, but a humiliating one at that.

I fear a measurable uptick in violence in Iraq if Obama wins on Tuesday. The uptick will be significant enough to muddy the results of the surge, and the president-elect, rather than respond vigorously, will be tempted to say “I told you so” and thus win the Iraq debate with his Republican critics. The upturn in violence, he will be tempted to argue, only means we need to get out of Iraq even faster.

But that would be a mistake. It would quietly telegraph weakness to our adversaries around the world…The last thing the incoming administration should want is to be seen as retreating in the face of adversity. That would embolden adversaries. [...]

Getting out of Iraq is an art, not a science, and it would require Obama to move halfway to the McCain position the moment he is elected.

Interesting that Kaplan admits only that an uptick in violence would “muddy the results of the surge,” rather than admit the more obvious conclusion, which would be that the surge hasn’t worked.

To a significant extent, the whole debate about “the surge” is a function of American domestic politics. This isn’t to say that security hasn’t improved, or that life isn’t better now in Iraq than it was at the height of the sectarian civil war that the U.S. invasion helped facilitate, or that our troops haven’t performed admirably. It is to say that the idea that “the surge” represents anything more than a tourniquet on President Bush’s failed Iraq policy — let alone that it somehow vindicates or rehabilitates that policy — doesn’t have much resonance in places in the world that aren’t the U.S., much less in Iraq, where the war has transformed the country into something that many Iraqis no longer recognize.

As for this idea of not “telegraphing” weakness, I think having the U.S. military tied down in two wars with our soldiers stop-lossed into multiple tours of duty doesn’t “telegraph weakness to our adversaries around the world” as much as it describes those weaknesses in a handwritten letter delivered to their doors. If we’re supposed to wait to withdraw until such time as our enemies won’t point to that withdrawal as an American defeat, then we’ll be waiting a very, very long time. Read more

In a new interview with Foreign Policy magazine, Syrian ambassador Imad Moustapha said that Syria is “doing everything possible within our means” to stop insurgents from crossing into Iraq, and decried the recent U.S. strike into Syria as a “terrorist, criminal act.” Most interestingly, Moustapha said that Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) personally assured him that a McCain presidency would open up a dialogue with Syria:

FP: U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama says that he would be willing to sit down with states that are now considered enemies of the United States. Is that encouraging to you?

IM: I have reason to believe that even if [Senator John] McCain becomes president of the United States, he will also be inclined to sit and talk with Syria. I can tell you this on the record: Senator Joe Lieberman, who is supposed to be very close to McCain, has said this explicitly and very clearly to me personally.

This is a startling revelation, considering McCain and Lieberman have attacked politicians who have sought to engage Syria diplomatically:

— McCain adviser Max Boot denounced the Israeli government for engaging Syria, casting it as a betrayal of Lebanon. “John McCain is not going to betray the lawfully elected government of Lebanon,” Boot said.

— The McCain campaign attacked Daniel Kurtzer, an Obama adviser, for attending a legal summit in Damascus. McCain aide Randy Scheunemann accused Obama of favoring “unconditional summit meetings with state sponsors of terrorism.”

— Lieberman joined the conservative attack machine in slamming Speaker Nancy Pelosi for visiting Syria in 2007. “I believe her visit to Syria was a mistake, that it was bad for the United States of America,” Lieberman said. “And I say this because we’re in a war. We’re in a war against the Islamic terrorists who attacked us on 9-11-01. Syria is a state sponsor of terrorism.”

Just last week, ABC News reported that McCain’s hero Gen. David Petraeus sought to visit Syria diplomatically, but “the idea was swiftly rejected by Bush administration officials at the White House, State Department and the Pentagon.” (HT: Cernig)