Yesterday, a tribal court in Pakistan handed down a 33-year prison term for treason to the doctor who helped the CIA locate Osama Bin Laden in a Pakistani army garrison town. The verdict drew widespread attention in Washington, but Congress and the State Department are having very different reactions.

After Capitol HIll collectively expressed considerable outrage, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted unanimously to cut $33 million from Pakistan’s foreign aid package — $1 million for each year of the sentence against the doctor, Shakeel Afridi. The reduction comes on top of the more than 50 percent of the aid a Senate panel cut earlier this week.

But the U.S. State Department didn’t ramp up its rhetoric so dramatically, maintaining its position that Afridi is detained without basis. A spokesperson said the U.S. will continue to let the Pakistani government know about that position. The softer line might reflect the possibility that Afridi’s verdict could easily be overturned.

Afridi, who ran a vaccination drive to collect data that the U.S. has credited with helping to find Bin Laden, was tried under a British colonial-era law that does not carry a death penalty, according to the New York Times. (The L.A. Times reported that “Afridi could have been given the death penalty.”) Having never approved of his detention, however, the U.S. still objected to the sentence. Asked about the issue yesterday, spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said:

We will – we continue to see no basis for Dr. Afridi to be held….

I think we’ve said that we don’t see any basis for what’s happened here, and so we will continue to make those representations to the Government of Pakistan.

Watch the video:

In February, Clinton said of Afridi: “His work on behalf of the effort to take down Bin Laden was in Pakistan’s interests as well as in America’s.” On CBS’s 60 Minutes in January, Panetta was more outspoken on the matter, calling actions against Afridi a “real mistake on their part” and crediting his help and making a case similar to Clinton’s:

This was an individual who in fact helped provide intelligence that was very helpful with regards to this operation. He was not in any way treasonous towards Pakistan, he was not in any way doing anything that would have undermined Pakistan. As a matter of fact, Pakistan and the United States have a common cause here against terrorism.

A Pakistani lawyer speaking to CNN said it was likely the case could be overturned — something Nuland subtly alluded to in the briefing when she said the legal process wasn’t necessarily complete. The lawyer, Shahzad Akbar, said that the tribal court is not based in Abbottabad, the site of the bin Laden raid. He told CNN: “If this punishment is challenged by Dr. Afridi’s family in the Superior Court of Pakistan, there is a good possibility that the sentence will be turned around.“

When the State Department granted the head of Cuba’s National Center for Sex Education, Mariela Castro Espín, a visa to chair a panel on LGBT issues at the Latin American Studies Association in San Francisco later this week, the Republican response was as obvious as the Cuban LGBT activist’s relations to the Caribbean island’s Communist dictators. Her father is Cuban President Raúl Castro, her uncle is revolutionary leader and longtime dictator Fidel Castro, and the Republicans were “appalled.”

“The State Department needs to wake up from its delusional love fest with the dictators in Havana,” said right-wing House Foreign Affairs chair Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL). Republican Members of Congress released web videos and organized conference calls denouncing the visa as “outrageous.”

Even presumptive GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney got in on the action, releasing a statement accusing the Obama administration of “a slap in the face to all those brave individuals in Cuba who are enduring relentless persecution.”

Ros-Lehtinen and Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), David Rivera (R-FL) and Albio Sires (R-NJ) wrote a strongly-worded letter to the State Department saying:

The administration’s appalling decision to allow regime agents into the U.S. directly contradicts Congressional intent and longstanding U.S. foreign policy.

If it’s “longstanding U.S. foreign policy” to deny Mariela Castro a visa to enter the U.S., someone forgot to tell President George W. Bush. The Bush administration granted Castro not one but three visas to enter the U.S. in 2001 and 2002. State Department spokesman william Ostick told the Miami Herald:

Mariela Castro visited once in 2001 and twice in 2002. I can’t discuss her visas specifically, but you can assume she needed one to travel.

An Obama surrogate, Freddy Balsera, told the Herald:

In fact, the top State Department Official in charge of Latin America at the time was a Cuban American. Where was their criticism then? Nowhere, because ultimately this is all about politics for them.

A ThinkProgress search of the Lexis Nexis news database for Mariela Castro’s name during 2001 and 2002 returned no results relevant to her trips to the U.S.

Former attendees at the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) said that Cuba has long been a presence at LASA conferences. This year, the State Department accepted 60 visas, denied 11, and is still processing 6. A State spokesman said visas couldn’t be rejected simply because “we don’t like you.”

LASA’s president told the Associated Press that Castro’s appearance at the conference was “an academic issue, not a political issue,” and that she’d answered a call for papers like any other conference speaker.

Senate Republican hawk Lindsey Graham (SC) said on Fox News last night that the U.S. shouldn’t negotiate with Iran over its nuclear program until it accedes to all U.S. demands and gives up its nuclear program entirely. The remark comes after a week where Congress considered a flurry of hawkish legislation and resolutions about Iran ahead of the next round of nuclear talks next week in Baghdad.

Graham offered his curious take on what it means to negotiate — demanding that Iran accept all U.S. demands prior to negotiation — in a conversation with Fox News host Greta Van Susteren, who indicated that his negotiating tactic was probably a non starter. Graham first emphasized his hawkish bent by noting that the “only way” for an agreement to be reached between the sides was for the U.S. to threaten “a strike by the United States.” He went on:

GRAHAM: Here’s what we should do. We should tell the Iranians, no negotiations, stop enriching, open up the site on the bottom of the mountain, a secret site. Then we will talk about lifting sanctions. You are not going to get to enrich uranium any more, period.

VAN SUSTEREN: I think they will probably stay “go fish” on that one.

Watch the video:

Leave aside that the Fordow site is not “secret” (it’s under U.N. inspections and monitored by camera) and that reports on U.S. and Israeli estimates state that these intelligence agencies don’t believe Iran has made a decision to build nuclear weapons (Graham doubts the intelligence), Graham’s position prompts one to ask: What’s the alternative to negotiations, since Graham is proposing pre-conditions that Iran would never meet? The Senator from South Carolina’s been busy on that front, too — and falsely citing the Obama administration to back himself up. The House yesterday passed a resolution that seeks to shift U.S. “red line” for an attack to an Iranian “nuclear capability” — something Graham mentioned on Fox News — from an Iranian push for nuclear weapons.

While the CIA has laid out a specific definition, the “nuclear capability” language is a complex issue. The word “capability” has a special meaning in the non-proliferation context, but it’s not always clear exactly what. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), one of the Sentae’s most vociferous Iran hawks, said this year, “I guess everybody will determine for themselves what that means.”

Read more

A former Israeli prime minister joined the growing chorus of top former officials to criticize the Netanyahu government’s hawkish approach to Iran, urging that time remained to broker a diplomatic deal and that heated rhetoric and historical comparisons could paint Israel into a corner.

Ehud Olmert, who left office in 2009 under a corruption scandal, told a conference in New York on Sunday:

There is enough time to try different avenues of pressure to change the balance of power with Iran without the need for a direct military confrontation with Iran.

He went even further in interviews with news media, warning off an Israeli attack. Olmert told Israel’s Channel 10:

There is no reason at this time not to talk about a military effort, but definitely not to initiate an Israeli military strike.

In an interview with the New York Times, he echoed concerns of Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, retired Israeli brigadier general Shlomo Brom, and his successor atop the Kadima opposition party Tzipi Livni that the Israeli government’s rhetoric on Iran was getting too heated. Olmert, who eschewed comparisons between Iran and Nazi Germany, said:

They talk too much, they talk too loud. They are creating an atmosphere and a momentum that may go out of their control.

At the conference in New York, the former top military officer in Israel, Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, said the Israelis “still have time” before they need to launch an attack and called for “crippling sanctions and much more severe sanctions.” His successor at the top military post Gen. Benny Gantz last week echoed reported Israeli and American intelligence estimates and said Iran “hasn’t yet decided whether to go the extra mile” and build a bomb.

While a potential Iranian nuclear weapon is widely considered a threat threat to both the security of the U.S. and its allies in the region, as well as the nuclear non-proliferation regime, those estimates give the West time to pursue a dual-track approach of pressure and diplomacy to resolve the crisis. Like their Israeli counterparts, American officials including President Obama vow to keep “all options on the table” to deal with the Iranian nuclear program, but questions about the efficacy and consequences of a strike have led U.S. officials to declare that diplomacy is the “best and most permanent way” to end the West’s crisis with Iran.

More than seventy retired military officers wrote a letter to Congress urging that the body not cut the budget for non-military means of executing U.S. foreign policy. The letter, written under the auspices of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition’s (USGLC) national security advisory group, spoke out against “disproportionate cuts” that would cut civilian programs while boosting military spending, calling on Congress to ensure that “civilian programs have the resources needed to maintain the hard-fought gains of our military.”

The letter (PDF) defending the so-called international affairs budget that covers non-military spending went on:

Development and diplomacy keep us safer by addressing threats in the most dangerous corners of the world and by preventing conflicts before they occur. The State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and other civilian-led programs are especially critical at a time when we are asking them to take on greater responsibilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. Addressing today’s challenges with civilian tools costs far less than it does to send in the military in dollars and, more importantly, in terms of the risks to the lives of our men and women in uniform. At just over one percent of federal spending, the International Affairs Budget is a strong return on our investment.

The letter comes just a week after Republican Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) released a budget that called for the international affairs spending to be slashed by 11 percent, or $6 billion, while boosting military spending by at least $8 billion. Ryan’s budget document took shots at the administration, noting in one section that Obama “has chosen to subordinate national security strategy to his other spending priorities.” Speaking to U.S. News and World Report, Russell Rumbaugh, a former senior Senate Budget Committee aide now with the Stimson Center, said:

This reflects more an ideological statement than any real discussion about what the international budget levels should be.

An Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran summed up the Republican plan: “They cut every tool in the president’s toolbox that isn’t a gun,” said Michael Breen, who works with the Truman National Security Project, recounting how it was a foreign language-enabled diplomat — not their own weapons — that once helped him and fellow soliders get out a jam.

The ostensible aspirations of the Ryan plan, meanwhile, are shared by the USGLC letter signatories, who wrote that they “recognize that we must reduce our nation’s debt.” Yet, with non-military spending such a relatively small piece of the pie and capable of a “strong return” on the investment, the ex-military leaders urged Congress to “support a strong and effective International Affairs Budget and oppose disproportionate cuts to this vital account.”

A new poll released yesterday showed Americans exhibiting strong support for the U.S. and its partners “continuing to pursue negotiations with Iran” over the country’s disputed nuclear program. Released by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) and the University of Maryland, the poll (PDF) found that nearly seven in ten Americans favored continuing diplomacy, with just a quarter opting for an Israeli military attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

To the right is a chart of two of the report’s key findings, American support for diplomacy and working Iran issues through international fora at the United Nations.

As part of the Obama administration’s dual-track policy toward Iran — crippling pressure and negotiations aimed at attaining the “best and most permanent way” to end the standoff with a diplomatic deal — the U.S. garnered support at the U.N. Security council for sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program and at the U.N. Human Rights Council for a Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran that has condemned Iranian abuses.

While poll respondents took a pessimistic view of Iran’s nuclear program and Western efforts to block it — a vast majority thought Iran will eventually develop a nuclear weapon — their views on the matter, at times, diverged from conclusions drawn from publicly available evidence and statements by top American security officials. For instance, 58 percent of respondents thought Iran has decided on producing a weapon and is actually working toward that aim. But, despite “serious concerns,” the International Atomic Energy Agency’s most recent report contains no such assertions.

Furthermore, reports about American intelligence estimates — as well as statements by top U.S. military and intelligence officials — indicate that they don’t think Iran has chosen to produce a bomb.

However, majorities of Americans think the U.S. should discourage allies from militarily attacking Iran. This may be due to perceived negative consequences of an attack on Iran’s nuclear program. More than half of poll respondents thought bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities would either strengthen the position of the Iranian regime among the country’s population, or have no effect at all on its popularity. Responding to a question about the effects of a strike on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, 42 percent of those surveyed said Iran’s program would be delayed for less than five years. Only 18 percent thought Iran’s program would be delayed longer than that, and 22 percent thought Iran’s nuclear program would be accelerated as a result of an attack.

However, Obama administration’s policy still deems Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon unacceptable — an Iranian bomb would pose a threat to the U.S. and its allies and interests — and keeps all options on the table to avert it. But as Obama has said, “a peaceful resolution of this issue is still possible, and far better.”

The U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice appeared on MSNBC this morning defending the Obama administration’s Iran policy even as she tempered her optimism for a breakthrough in upcoming talks. “The window is finite,” she said, urging Iran to “come serious, ready to deal.” Rice remarked that going to war with Iran over its nuclear program “premature,” and added that “a strike is not going to end the program in perpetuity. It may set it back a year or two.”

Along with allies such as France, Rice was skeptical talks can work:

RICE: You don’t trust them [Iran]. But we test the proposition, which is very much in our interest, that with this mounting and crippling economic pressure, the extraordinary sanctions that we have put in place internationally and on a national basis, that Iran is really starting to feel the heat. …

Let me be very be clear and repeat what the president said this week: We have a clear cut policy of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, not containing a nuclear Iran. We think the best and most permanent way of accomplishing that is through a combined policy of intensified sanctions and pressure, which we are mounting, with the opportunity for Iran to resolve these issues diplomatically. If they take that opportunity and give up their program through a negotiated solution, that’s the best case scenario. …

if they don’t accomplish that through a negotiating process in short order, then of course as the president said, all options remain on the table.

Watch Rice concisely lay out the Obama administration’s policy:

The repudiation of “containing a nuclear Iran” tracks with Obama’s speech to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee this weekend, where he said a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a threat to the U.S. and its allies, and the international non-proliferation regime:

A nuclear-armed Iran would thoroughly undermine the nonproliferation regime that we’ve done so much to build. There are risks that an Iranian nuclear weapon could fall into the hands of a terrorist organization. It is almost certain that others in the region would feel compelled to get their own nuclear weapon, triggering an arms race in one of the world’s most volatile regions.

Rice added that the Iranian regime has engaged in “crazy behavior” like calling for Israel’s destruction, but echoed Obama and the top U.S. military officer by noting that “we have seen Iran make decisions based on their calculation of their interest.” Faced with pressure, she said, the regime has “changed course,” raising hopes of a “real possibility that with mounting and crippling economic pressure, that Iran may change course and come to the table seriously.”

The IAEA and U.S. intelligence officials have said that Iran is on a path toward a nuclear weapons program. Indeed, the AP reported yesterday that the U.N. nuclear agency is concerned that Iran may have tried to cleanse traces of nuclear material from a site suspected of focusing on alleged weaponization aspects of its nuclear program. But the IAEA and U.S. intelligence have also said that so far, Iran has not yet decided on whether to build nuclear weapons.