The hawkish Senators’ lack of success is noticeable as the three men are seen as as some of the most influential Senators on foreign policy and national security. But their efforts to roll out a piece of bipartisan legislation pressuring the White House’s hand on diplomacy with Iran has found few allies across the aisle. Sens. Bob Casey Jr. (D-PA) reportedly signed onto the legislation and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) is rumored to be on board. But Senate Democrats are concerned that the resolution “would be seen as creeping toward an authorization of military force against Iran,” reports The Hill’s Alexander Bolton.

A Senate aid denied that characterization of the legislation and emphasized that it is not an authorization of military action and leaves the option of further negotiations.

However a statement last month from Graham and Lieberman stated, in no uncertain terms, that they would support a bipartisan resolution explicitly opposing containment. The statement read:

When it comes to addressing the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, all options must be on the table — except for one, and that is containment. [...] Containment is failure, and failure cannot be an option.

Neither U.S. intelligence officials nor the IAEA have concluded that Iran has decided to pursue a nuclear weapon.

Indeed the IAEA has stated concerns about possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program but senior U.S. intelligence officials have expressed support for ongoing sanctions and diplomacy.

Efforts to press Obama to employ the “military option” continue to be discussed in Washington but the partisan divide between those urging action — be it in Congress or outside pressure groups — and those pursuing diplomacy and sanctions is becoming increasingly distinct as Republicans seek to portray the President as weak on national defense and foreign policy.

Rudy Giuliani with MEK leader Maryam Rajavi on January 20, 2012

Former CIA official and visiting Georgetown professor Paul Pillar, citing the U.S. government’s definition of terrorism, observed that “with or without confirmation of details of this story, the assassinations are terrorism.” But numerous right-wing pundits and politicians here in the United States — many of whom regularly decry the use of terrorism as a means to political ends — have celebrated the MEK’s alleged attacks.

Appearing on Fox News on Sunday, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani declared that the MEK should be the Time Magazine “person of the year” if they were behind assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists.

An editorial in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post said on Friday that the MEK deserves a Nobel Peace Prize:

Let’s be frank: Were the MeK to play the critical role in derailing an Iranian bomb, it would be far more deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize than a certain president of the United States we could mention.

And Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin justified the MEK’s action and Israel’s alleged role in financing, arming and training the group:

To those who say it is immoral to use those who have employed terrorism, the only reply can be that it would be far worse for Israel’s government to allow such scruples to prevent them from carrying out actions that might stop the Iranians from going nuclear.

Noticeably, the MEK’s defenders chose not to address the NBC report’s other major disclosure. The MEK reportedly worked with Ramzi Yousef, the terrorist behind the first attack on the World Trade Center, to bomb an Iranian shrine, killing at least 26 people.

The NBC report did not go on to substantiate any direct links between the Israeli government and the assassination campaign, and the MEK denied any involvement in the attacks.

Indeed, the MEK’s American supporters find themselves in the increasingly difficult position of lobbying to remove the organization from the State Department’s terror list while openly celebrating the group’s involvement in terrorist attacks.

-Zachary Bernstein

But today, Santorum attempted to clarify his seemingly sexist statement in an interview with ABC News:

RICK SANTORUM: I was talking about men’s emotional issues, not women. That’s something I’ve talked about repeatedly. [...] Men in our culture are focused on if a woman is in trouble, obviously, to react to try to help to protect and care for that person. That is something that is built in culturally. So my concern is that being in combat in that situation, instead of being focused on the mission, they might be more concerned about protecting a woman in a vulnerable position.

Watch it:

Having put to rest the allegation that he was suggesting women were emotionally unfit to serve in combat — and instead having argued that men are emotionally unfit to serve alongside women — Santorum went on to emphasize that he has no problem putting women’s lives in danger.

Blogger Jennifer Rubin describes her interview with Santorum:

He says, “It’s not a matter of putting women in dangerous roles.” He tell[s] me, for example, that women are fully capable of “flying small planes.”

So it seems that for Santorum, it’s okay for women to fly the puddle jumpers but save the heavy bombers for the men. While Rubin goes on to commend Santorum for his fearlessness in “refusing to censor his views” and possibly “provoking the ire of women,” his views on women in the military may pose a challenge for his campaign which finds itself in the media spotlight after primary victories in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado.

In the past 24 hours, Santorum: accused Obama of helping Iran acquire nuclear weapons; suggested that male soldiers are incapable of controlling their emotions around female comrades in combat; and said women are better suited to “flying small planes.”

Why the discrepancy? An examination of the polling methodology reveals a very different set of questions between the two polls.

The YouGov poll asked respondents [PDF]:

Suppose a number of countries decided to take action against Iran in order to
stop Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon. Would you support or oppose your country’s Government taking part or assisting in each of the following?

Respondents were then asked whether they supported or opposed a number of actions including, but not limited to, air strikes. The question puts forth a situation in which a “number of countries” are acting multilaterally to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. This hinges on the hypothetical situation that Iran has decided to pursue a nuclear weapon — an assertion that neither the IAEA nor U.S. intelligence officials say there is enough evidence to definitely support — and a multilateral coalition coming together to conduct air strikes.

The United Technologies/National Journal poll released last week asked respondents:

As You May Know, Many In Congress And On The WH ’12 Campaign Trail Have Said That Iran Should Not Be Permitted To Produce A Nuclear Weapon. How Far Do You Think The U.S. Should Go To Prevent This?

This question poses no hypothetical scenarios about Iran pursuing a nuclear weapon or a multilateral effort to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The takeaway from the two contrasting poll results is that Americans are not unconditionally in favor of or opposed to military action against Iran. The IAEA and U.S. intelligence officials have expressed concerns about potential military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program but the YouGov polling question presumes a situation in which Iran is verifiably seeking to acquire a nuclear weapon. Details such as whether Iran must be stopped from constructing a nuclear weapon and the presence of a multilateral military campaign, are very important in determining American support for military action.

But the Christian Science Monitor’s headline, “Bomb Iran? Nearly half of Americans say ‘yes’ to halt nuclear program,” completely overlooks the complexity of the polling questions and the YouGov poll’s revealing insights into American thinking on military action against Iran.

According to the former Pennsylvania senator, because the Obama administration rejected the Keystone pipeline, it “knows” America will need oil. And where will the U.S. get that oil? Iran. And how will the U.S. get access to Iranian oil? According to Santorum, Obama will throw “Israel under the bus” and allow Iran to get nuclear weapons:

SANTORUM: They know that oil is drying up. And they know that not building that pipeline we’re not going to have access to oil reserves. And they know they’re going to be more dependent upon OPEC and so what are we doing? We’re throwing Israel under the bus because we know we’re going to be dependent on OPEC. We’re going to say ‘Oh Iran, we don’t want you to get a nuclear weapon, wink, wink, nod, nod, go ahead just give us your oil.

Watch it:

While Santorum’s accusations that the president is allowing Iran to develop a nuclear weapon at Israel’s expense is a serious allegation, Obama’s track record on Iran sanctions and Israel simply don’t match up with the former senator’s harsh rhetoric.

Neither the IAEA nor U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that Iran has decided to pursue a nuclear weapon and last week, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Members of Congress that economic sanctions were the best strategy to weaken the government in Tehran. The IAEA and the Obama administration have expressed concern over possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program.

And on Monday, Obama tightened sanctions, freezing assets of any entities that do business with Iran’s central bank.

Indeed, a nuclear weapons possessing Iran would pose a security threat to Israel but accusing Obama of being a weak ally to Israel has become a right-wing talking point as Republican presidential candidates struggle to attack the administration’s national security track record, which includes killing Osama Bin Laden and participating in NATO operations that brought the end of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s 42 years in power.

While Santorum may claim that Obama “threw Israel under the bus,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference in May that Obama made an “iron clad commitment to Israel’s security. [...] And he has backed those words with deeds.”

This was, of course, just a couple of month after Santorum, who landed at the Ethics and Public Policy Center after he lost his Senate seat, gave a speech where he started spinning a theory about an alliance between “Islamacists,” lefitsts regimes in Latin and South America, and American liberals that makes for better paranoid action movie fodder than foreign policy. He told attendees at the Second National Academic Freedom Conference:

It was in a growing alliance between this radical group of Islamacists, particularly Iran, and people in Central and South America, Venezuela, Nicaragua now, Ecuador, Bolivia, and North Korea and other places—that these alliances were forming. And no one was talking about it. In fact, we were ignoring it. You saw the United Nations, when Hugo Chavez got up and called the President a devil. And the American left and the college campuses—they just loved that…They fight us on college campuses, and they fight us in the streets of Central and South American countries, in North Korea, in other places. You’re seeing an alliance grow. There was just an announcement this past week — there is now nonstop service, airplane service, between Karakus and Tehran. Interesting destination. You’re seeing Venezuela, under Hugo Chavez, sign a defense pact with Iran, start a $2 billion anti-American fund for Central and South America, spend more money on arms than any other country—foreign arms sales—than any other country in the world, create a million-person army, spending $30 billion to build forts, and [has] aligned country with Evo Morales in Bolivia to build forts—where? On the border of Chile, on the border of Peru, on the border of Brazil and Argentina and Colombia; facing toward those countries. And who is going to be in those forts? Yes, there’ll be Bolivian troops. But the officers in charge will be Cuban and Venezuelan.

Santorum’s movie doesn’t ever appear to have gotten off the ground, which is too bad—McEveety’s got a movie about the Virgin of Guadalupe, which seems to have less potential to be ridiculous and awesome, coming out. But clearly, Santorum should release the script or script treatment of the movie. How else will we get the critically important look we need at his evolving thinking on our foreign policy with Iran and how best to prevent young men from turning to terrorism?

Wreckage of an Iranian scientist's car after a deadly bomb blast

The State Department designates the MEK as a “foreign terrorist organization,” though the group’s supporters have mounted an aggressive lobbying effort aimed at getting delisted through claims it laid down arms in the early 2000s.

The NBC story cited two U.S. officials linking the MEK to the recent spate of assassinations, and a third who neither confirmed nor denied the allegation:

Two senior U.S. officials confirmed for NBC News the MEK’s role in the assassinations, with one senior official saying, “All your inclinations are correct.” A third official would not confirm or deny the relationship, saying only, “It hasn’t been clearly confirmed yet.” All the officials denied any U.S. involvement in the assassinations.

The group, through its political wing (which was also added to the State designation), denied any involvement in the latest attacks. A “representative” of the group in Washington also denied involvement.

The NBC report also claimed that Israeli intelligence services “financed, trained and armed” the MEK, though the story did not go on to substantiate any direct links between the Israeli government and the assassination campaign.

The U.S. denial of involvement last month, after the latest killing by a bomb blast in Tehran, was unequivocal: “I want to categorically deny any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran,” said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, condemning the attacks.

Founded in the mid-1960s as an armed revolutionary group, the MEK fought against the Shah and his U.S. backers — allegedly killing Americans — in the 1970s, but then split with Iran’s clerical leadership in the early 1980s. Eventually, the group ended up based in Paris and Iraq, where, from the latter location, it was helped by Saddam Hussein to raise arms against Iran during the war between the two countries. Since 1997, when such designations were introduced, the MEK has been considered a “foreign terrorist organization” by the State Department. As many as 3,400 members of the group, which it claims are former fighters who laid down their arms in the early 2000s, are still based in Iraq.

While neither the IAEA nor U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that Iran has decided to pursue a nuclear weapon, the IAEA has expressed concern about military dimensions of the Iranian nuclear program. But right-wing hawks — from GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney to Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens — are repeating talking points that the Israelis are on the verge of unilaterally attacking in the face of an “existential threat” from Tehran.

Today, former Israeli intelligence chief Meir Dagan slammed Netanyahu’s government for representing fringe political positions, adding that Israel does not face an existential threat. The AP reports:

Meir Dagan, the former head of the Mossad spy agency said he does not believe Israel faces an existential threat from Iran, a view that contrasts with Israel’s prime minister and other leaders. [...]

At the launch of an electoral reform movement he chairs, he observed, “I don’t think there is an existential threat.” He did not specifically mention Iran, but the use of the phrase “existential threat” in Israel generally refers to Iran.

Dagan is joined by the current Israeli intelligence chief Tamir Pardo who reportedly told a gathering of Israeli ambassadors in December that Iran doesn’t pose an “existential threat” and “the term existential threat is used too freely.”

Last week, retired Israeli Lt. Gen. Amnon Lipkin-Shahak told The Independent that the Israeli military’s leadership does not support a strike on Iran and the Associated Press reported that Israel’s new air force chief, Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel, is “less enthusiastic about a possible attack on Iran” than his predecessor.

There is no doubt that Iran’s nuclear program, if weaponized, is incredibly worrying and constitutes a threat to nuclear non-proliferation efforts as well as Israel’s security. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said recently that Iran can be dissuaded from nuclear weapons through diplomacy and economic sanctions.

Iranian opposition leaders Karroubi (L) and Moussavi (R)

Moussavi and Karroubi were both presidential candidates in the June 2009 election — where critics allege the government committed widespread fraud to keep incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power — and subsequently became public faces of the Green opposition movement that faced a brutal regime crackdown.

In addition to an interactive timeline of the house arrests and a letter-writing campaign aimed at freeing the opposition leaders, ICHRI released this short video about the affair:

In the ICHRI release, the group’s spokesman Hadi Ghaemi said:

Khamenei bears the ultimate responsibility for these house arrests, which indeed are nothing short of a kidnapping. Khamenei is operating above the law of the land, and the intelligence and judicial apparatus are tools of repression in his hands, operating with impunity and without any regard for the law or the constitution.

According the ICHRI, the “house arrests are illegal under both Iranian and international law,” and no Iranian agency or official has taken responsibility.

This week, Iran escalated the war of words into action, with authorities allegedly harassing BBC Persian employees’ family members in Iran and arresting Iranians it accuses of working directly for the channel. A BBC spokesman released a statement last week accusing Iran of arresting the sister of a BBC Persian employee, amid other intimidation. Then news broke from a state-run agency that Iran detained alleged employees of the network inside Iran. The BBC said in a statement that this couldn’t be true because the “Persian language service does not have a presence in Iran. There are no BBC Persian staff members or stringers working inside Iran.” (In its 2010 annual report, the BBC indicated that much of its content from inside Iran comes from “citizen journalism.”)

Rights groups and journalism advocacy outfits chimed in to join the BBC in condemning the Iranian actions. Citing the recent reports as well as the arrests of other journalists and filmmakers, Middle East director of New York-based Human Rights Watch Sarah Leah Whitson said:

The recent wave of arrests, especially against relatives of journalists working abroad, is a reprehensible escalation in the current campaign to stifle freedom of information in Iran. It is a sober reminder of the lengths Iranian authorities will go to control the airwaves, newspapers, and the internet – even if it means ruining the lives of Iranians at home and abroad.

The Committee to Protect Journalists’ Abdel Dayem added:

Iran’s government must immediately stop its harassment of the friends and family members of journalists. These attacks on journalists beyond Iran’s own borders show the lengths to which Tehran will go to intimidate the media into silence and deprive its constituents of information.

The latest accusations traded between the Iranian government and the BBC follow a recently-heightened pattern of the Iranian regime cracking down on journalists and bloggers. The continuing blocking of websites and satellite jamming of outside news channels — including the U.S.-government sponsored VOA Persian Service — led to a protest last month in Geneva outside of a meeting of the U.N. telecommunications agency calling on the group to work to end censorship and jamming in Iran.

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI)

Rogers, commenting on Washington Post columnist David Ignatius’ report that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta believes “there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June,” told Crowley:

MIKE ROGERS: [...] My argument is this is too important for us not to get this right. If Israel does a unilateral strike this could be a real problem for the national security interests of the United States.

CANDY CROWLEY: Well it lights the Middle East on fire basically.

ROGERS: Absolutely.

Rogers defended diplomatic and economic efforts to persuade Iran to cooperate fully with U.N. nuclear inspectors:

ROGERS: [The sanctions] seem to be working. The financial pressure right now on Iran is devastating. [...] It’s effecting every sector of their economy. [...] Our argument is can we work with the Israelis on this and other programs to try to delay or stop this program by bringing Iran to the table. That to me is a better outcome than inflaming the Middle East.

Watch it:

Rogers is not alone in voicing misgivings about an Israeli unilateral attack. In January, George W. Bush’s CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden disclosed that the Bush administration concluded that attacking Iran “would guarantee that which we are trying to prevent — an Iran that will spare nothing to build a nuclear weapon.” Speaking last June, retired Israeli spy chief Meir Dagan warned that an Israeli attack on Iran was “the stupidest thing I have ever heard” and the fallout from such an attack would pose an “unbearable” security challenge. A recent Council on Foreign Relations report highlighted one of the immediate consequences of a military escalation with Iran: a sudden oil price shock (about $23 per barrel in the first days) following an Israeli strike.

Last week, retired Israeli Lt. Gen. Amnon Lipkin-Shahak told The Independent that the IDF leadership doesn’t support military action at this point and Panetta told reporters, “Israel has indicated they are considering this, and we have indicated our concerns.”

Rogers’ worries about blowback from an Israeli strike may also be shared by Israel’s new air force chief, Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel. The Associated Press reports that Eshel is “less enthusiastic about a possible attack on Iran” than outgoing air force chief Maj. Gen. Ido Nehushtan.

Former Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon, speaking at the Herzliya conference on Thursday, boasted that all of Iran’s nuclear facilities “can be hit, and I speak from experience as the IDF chief of staff,” and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, speaking at Herzliya later in the day, warned that there is a consensus among many nations that “a nuclear Iran will be more complicated to deal with, more dangerous and more costly in blood than if it were stopped today.”

While Panetta’s reported views, along with those of senior Israeli officials speaking at Herzliya, were interpreted by many as evidence of an emerging consensus that Israel will attack Iranian nuclear facilities before June — when Iran enters what Israelis describe to Ignatius as a “‘zone of immunity’ to commence building a nuclear bomb” — U.S. and Israeli officials are not in agreement on the inevitability of an Israeli attack.

Panetta, speaking in Brussels yesterday, refused to comment on Ignatius’s column but told reporters that “Israel has indicated they are considering this, and we have indicated our concerns.” The Associated Press reported Panetta’s comments in an article emphasizing that “Israel’s major allies in the West are working hard to talk it out of a unilateral military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, arguing forcefully that an attack ultimately would strengthen, not weaken, the regime in Tehran.” And in a seeming effort to deter an attack, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey reportedly warned Israeli leaders last month that the U.S. would not participate in a war against Iran initiated by Israel.

U.S. defense officials are not alone in expressing serious misgivings about an Israeli attack. While Ya’alon, Barak and Panetta’s comments dominated news coverage yesterday, The Independent reported that almost the entire hierarchy of Israel’s military and security establishment is concerned about the consequences from a premature Israeli attack on Iran, according to Lt. Gen. Amnon Lipkin-Shahak. Lipkin-Shahak, in comments starkly contrasting with Ya’alon and Barak’s hawkish warnings at Herzliya, warned that there had been little analysis of what happens the “day after” Israel strikes Iran and “It is quite clear that much if not all of the IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] leadership do not support military action at this point.”

Earlier this week, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper advocated that economic pressure could dissuade Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon and CIA Director David Petraeus urged policymakers to examine the current and upcoming IAEA reports to determine Iran’s nuclear intentions. The IAEA has said it has concerns about military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program and inspectors returned from a monitoring trip to Iran this week. But with reports of inspectors not receiving full access to sites mentioned in the IAEA’s November report, Tehran will be under heightened pressure to cooperate with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency during its next trip to Iran later this month.

The talks — still far from a breakthrough — coincided with a spate of articles from U.S. experts urging caution about a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. So far, many Washington pundits who supported the Iraq war ten years ago have come out against an attack on Iran. As a useful guide by the National Security Network’s Heather Hurlbert shows, a trio of elite opinion-makers buttressed that view with pieces on Monday.

On the website the Daily Beast, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Leslie Gelb writes:

As Western leaders back Iran into a corner and as they are locking themselves into a war policy they haven’t seriously contemplated and don’t really want, now is the time to offer a deal. …With so much pressure now being applied on Iran, it might work.

With good reason (since it’s happened before), Gelb thinks that the Iranians may not take a deal, but “if we don’t at least try the negotiating track, a war of untold uncertainties and dangers can come upon us.”

Gelb’s article found common cause with a piece in CFR’s journal, Foreign Affairs, outlining one of the possible consequences of bombing Iran. RAND Corporation political scientist Seth Jones writes that the U.S. ought to make more noise about Iran’s links to Al Qaeda, several of whose operatives live (mostly under house arrest) on Iranian soil these days. But that noise, in Jones’s reading, should be directed at minimizing the Al Qaeda threat, since Iran is a theater unlike Pakistan, for example, where the U.S. has more reach. He concludes:

Finally, the United States should think twice about actions that would push Iran and al Qaeda closer together — especially a preemptive attack on the country’s nuclear program. Thus far, Iran and al Qaeda have mutually limited their relationship. It would be a travesty to push the two closer together at the very moment that central al Qaeda in Pakistan has been severely weakened.

Lastly, the New Yorker has a lead-off column this week by Steve Coll. “An attack now by either Israel or the United States would shatter diplomacy’s achievements,” writes Coll, adding that though Iran’s nuclear work has been troubling, no public evidence supports the charge that Iran is hellbent on acquiring weapons. “The burden of proof rests, in any event, with those who would urge war,” Coll writes. He goes on to mention President Obama’s 2009 speech against nuclear proliferation in Prague, noting:

Obama warned against “fatalism” about the nuclear danger, and he prescribed a strategy to defeat it: “Patience and persistence.” That strategy shouldn’t be taken off the table.

So unlike the run-up to the Iraq war, many well-regarded pundits are going public with their opposition to an attack on Iran, at least as things stand now. But, as Gelb mentions, without some kind of diplomatic deal to resolve the nuclear crisis with Iran, the U.S. may still be continuing down a path toward confrontation with the Islamic Republic.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Intelligence Committee today that Iran has not decided on whether it will go forward with building nuclear weapons, and CIA Director David Petraeus concurred with that assertion. When Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) said during the hearing that the IAEA “must make transparent and public what they find” in Iran, Petraeus pointed to nuclear watchdog’s November report, calling it “the authoritative document” on Iran’s nuclear program:

PETRAEUS: The IAEA inspectors are in Iran right now. I believe their past report was a very accurate reflection of reality, of the situation on the ground. I think that is the authoritative document when it comes to informing the public of all the countries of the world of the situation there. Iran is supposedly, reportedly trying to be more open this particular time perhaps trying to reassure countries as it feels the increased bite of the new sanctions, of the Central Bank of Iran sanctions and the reduction in the purchase of oil from some of its key customers and so I look forward, as do others, to seeing what that public report will provide this time believing again that it will be again the authoritative open source document on the program that Iran is pursuing in the nuclear field.

Watch the clip:

IAEA inspectors were just in Iran getting clarification about concerns it has regarding nuclear weapons related activities and will report their findings to the director general.