Members of Congress have been intensifying their Iran-war rhetoric in recent days. For example, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ) are planning to introduce a resolution that urges the United States government to support Israel — militarily, economically and diplomatically — should the Jewish state be “compelled to take military action” against Iran.

While it appears that Congress, still struggling to shake the neocons’ influence, tends to favor a more militaristic approach toward the Islamic Republic, the Obama administration has focused on a diplomatic solution to the nuclear crisis, while pledging to take no options off the table and also warning about what war with Iran would look like.

But given now the Graham-Menendez resolution, what do the Israelis think about war with Iran? It’s no secret the current Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu is the most vocal about pushing a military option with Iran, but over the past two years, numerous former and current high-level members of Israel’s security establishment have pushed back. Below is a compilation of those statements:

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Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday said Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s comment that Zionism is “a crime against humanity” is “objectionable,” echoing the White House’s reaction today, saying his remarks are “offensive and wrong.”

Erdogan made the comments on Wednesday, speaking at a United Nations-sponored event meant to try to bridge the gap between Islam and the West. Instead, Erdogan managed to widen the divide:

“We should be striving to better understand the culture and beliefs of others, but instead we see that people act based on prejudice and exclude others and despise them,” Erdogan said, according to a simultaneous translation provided by the UN. “And that is why it is necessary that we must consider — just like Zionism or anti-Semitism or fascism — Islamophobia as a crime against humanity.”

“We not only disagree with it, we found it objectionable,” Kerry said during a press conference in Ankara with Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu. According to Reuters, Kerry said he personally raised the issue with Davutaglu and will do so with Erdogan.

“That said, Turkey and Israel are both vital allies of the United States and we want to see them work together in order to be able to go beyond the rhetoric and begin to take concrete steps to change this relationship,” Kerry added.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s office said it’s “unfortunate that such hurtful and divisive comments were uttered at a meeting being held under the theme of responsible leadership.”

CAP’s Matt Duss and Michael Werz also condemned Erdogan’s comments on Thursday. “While Prime Minister Erdogan’s outrageous comments seem intended to isolate Israel, they also threaten to further isolate Turkey,” they wrote, adding that his comments ” seemed like an attitude from a bygone era. Casting Zionism together with anti-Semitism, fascism, and Islamophobia in this way is not only deeply offensive but also quite historically inaccurate and has the potential to promote or justify violence.”

Two hawkish Senators want to set U.S. policy in favor of prematurely pulling the “military option” trigger against Iran, pledging American backing of absolutely any strike by Israel against Iran and its nuclear program.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ) in the coming days plan to unveil a new joint resolution to “strongly support the full implementation of United States and international sanctions on Iran and to urge the President to continue to strengthen enforcement of sanctions legislation.” Couched in such seemingly benign language, the resolution saves its most worrisome clauses for the end, including an open-ended policy of U.S. support for any Israeli strike against Iran:

Urges that, if the Government of Israel is compelled to take military action in self-defense, the United States Government should stand with Israel and provide diplomatic, military, and economic support to the Government of Israel in its defense of its territory, people, and existence.

Graham first announced his intention to introduce such legislation in 2012, but never followed through. The new bill co-sponsored by Menendez goes beyond previous attempts to show support for Israeli policy towards Iran. The last such attempt was a 2011 proposal from Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Louis Gohmert (R-TX) that would have “approved” any strike Israel performed. Menendez and Graham’s proposal is all the more threatening in that it is backed by credible legislators, though known hawks against Iran, and is ostensibly bipartisan.

The joint resolution is non-binding and would serve as neither a declaration of war nor an Authorization of the Use of Military Force like the near carte-blanche approval granted to President George W Bush at the onset of the Iraq War. It would, though, serve as an official announcement of U.S. policy to support any Israeli strike, whether the Obama administration had been previously consulted or not. This would include strikes against Iran that would be preventative — or seeking to stop any threat before it materializes — instead of a preemptive strike against an imminent threat, which is much more widely accepted as legitimate.

The Senate proposal dovetails with a bill announced on Wednesday from the heads of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to ratchet up sanctions on Iran yet again while shifting policy to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapons capability.

Current and former military officials have warned of the potential consequences of strikes against Iran in several reports. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey last year backed away from American support of an Israeli strike, saying “I don’t want to be complicit if they [Israel] choose to do it.” Dempsey also warned that a strike against Iran could possibly break the international coalition that has been placing pressure on Iran. That coalition recently concluded a positive round of talks in Kazakhstan and are set to meet again in Istanbul in March.

The Obama administration has not ruled out the use of force against Iran if necessary to prevent its acquisition of a nuclear weapon, but only after the exhaustion of all other available tools.

Israeli President Shimon Peres announced on Monday that he will award President Obama with the Presidential Medal of Distinction during his visit to the Jewish State next month.

In a statement, Peres — who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Obama last year — said the current U.S. president “is a true friend of the State of Israel, and has been since the beginning of his public life”:

As president of the United States of America, he has stood with Israel in times of crisis. During his time as president he has made a unique contribution to the security of the State of Israel, both through further strengthening the strategic cooperation between the countries and through the joint development of technology to defend against rockets and terrorism.

[Obama's presidency exemplifies] an unswerving belief and ongoing fight for equality without any regard for religion, race, sexuality or gender and the strengthening of the weakest in society in the United States; and for the fulfillment of the values of democracy, human rights, solidarity and peace across the world. [...] Through his personal story and his agenda as president of the United States of America, Barack Obama is a symbol of democratic values and he exemplifies the spirit of equality of opportunity in American society.

Israeli officials, including Peres, regularly praise Obama’s commitment to Israel. “I should tell you honestly that this administration under President Obama is doing, in regard to our security, more than anything that I can remember in the past,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak said last October.

The neocons here in the States have spent a lot of time and money unsuccessfully trying to convince us that Obama is anti-Israel. Perhaps then their next ad should tell us how anti-Israel Israeli’s leaders are. (HT: The Hill)

It shouldn’t have been this way.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is an undeniably smart man. Cruz is by all accounts a brilliant litigator, one talented enough in the courtroom to clerk for a Supreme Court justice and win a number of difficult cases as Texas’ Solicitor General. It wouldn’t have been crazy to expect that Cruz would bring a degree of argumentative rigor into the Senate after his victory in the 2012 election.

Well, Cruz had two golden opportunities to showcase his keen analytical mind, as he sits on both Senate committees that held high profile hearings last week, one on gun violence prevention, the other on Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE)’s nomination to be Secretary of Defense. And Cruz distinguished himself alright. Just not in the way one might have hoped.

The Senator misrepresented official documents to the point of falsehood, placed the words of an raving call-in viewer on a television show in Hagel’s mouth, and played “six degrees of guilt by association” with Hagel’s record in a manner that would make Sen. Joe McCarthy blush. And yet, Cruz’ behavior, embarrassing as it was, was by no means irrational. Rather, it’s a perfect illustration of how the Republican Party’s internal structure, particularly its allied media and electoral base, incentivizes the replacement of real policy thinking with fact-free paranoic fantasism.

Let’s begin with Cruz’ monologue at the gun hearing. The proposed assault weapons ban bore the brunt of his ire. He leaned heavily what he claimed were two Department of Justice papers — one from what he sneeringly characterized as the “Janet Reno Department of Justice under President Clinton” — that had proven the 1994 ban failed to reduce gun violence. In his words, the Senate was about “to reenact a law that, according to the Department of Justice, did absolutely nothing to reduce gun violence.”

Literally every claim in that sentence is false.

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The Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), today called the premise of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict “deeply disturbing,” showing himself and his allies to be extremely out of the mainstream.

The vast majority of the questions that came up throughout the first round of questioning Chuck Hagel in his bid for Secretary of Defense related to Hagel’s stances on Israel and Iran, and his past statements on those issues. Many of those questions involved deliberate distortions of Hagel’s record. Inhofe started off the second round of questioning during the hearing with more of the same, but with the added twist of spurning the past decade of U.S. policy in solving the conflict.

“You made a statement that I strongly disagree with. You said that President Obama has been ‘the strongest Israel supporter since 1948′,” Inhofe said in the lead-off, continuing to criticize Obama for promoting the two-state solution:

INHOFE: But when you see statements coming out of the administration like “the United States believes that negotiations should result in two states with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt,” and they’ve come out with statements saying they believe that the borders with Israel and Palestine should be based on a 1967 border lines, these are statements that I think are very damaging. I can assure you that the leadership in Israel feels those statements are damaging.

Watch:

As Hagel attempted to tell Inhofe, the statements that the Ranking Member read off weren’t new or unique to the Obama administration, nor were they at all controversial. The U.S.’ adoption of the principle of two neighboring states as the final outcome of the conflict dates back to the first term of President George W. Bush. In a 2002 speech, Bush embraced the concept of an Israel and Palestine living peacefully side by side. The resulting “Road Map to Peace,” and several statements of support by the Quartet — composed of the European Union, Russia, United Nations, and U.S. — have been the basis for negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians since.

The concept of “Land for Peace” goes back even further. As part of the end of the Six-Day War in 1967, in which Israel took control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the United Nations passed Resolution 242 calling for a withdrawal of Israel to its previous borders. In exchange for this, Israel’s neighbors would declare end their hostility towards the state. That arrangement has yet to come into being but remain a crucial part of the negotiations between the parties. Complicating matters have been the increase of Israeli settlements, particularly under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the inability of the competing Palestinian factions to resolve their differences, causing a halt in talks.

All of this highlights just how far outside of the mainstream Hagel’s attackers are when it comes to Israel. Hagel, who has himself proven to be pro-Israel, would carry out the policies of President Obama once confirmed. Those policies have the backing of the international community and have been endorsed by such conservative stalwarts as the Heritage Foundation.

Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel takes to the witness table shortly to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Some of Hagel’s harshest detractors sit on the panel, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and James Inhofe (R-OK), so it’s sure to be filled with several misleading statements that distort Hagel’s record. Here’s a few things to bear in mind while watching the hearings take place:

1. Hagel has been a strong supporter of Israel

One of the most frequent attacks against Hagel is that he is somehow “anti-Semitic” or hostile towards the state of Israel. In fact, Hagel has maintains a strong pro-Israel record. The smears against Hagel by neoconservatives have been heavily challenged and debunked over the past several weeks. Among Hagel’s supporters include a multitude of past military officials and bipartisan, as well as Israeli government officials and think tanks.

2. Hagel’s Iran policy lines up squarely with the President’s

Hagel has also taken heat for criticizing frantic drumbeats for war with Iran by neoconservatives, and his belief that unilateral sanctions against Iran are less effective than multilateral sanctions. Conservatives have also gleefully pointed to Iranian propaganda that welcomed Hagel’s nomination as a sign he should be disqualified. But Hagel has repeatedly stated that “all options remain on the table” when confronting Iran over its nuclear program, the same position as the current administration. In a lengthy set of pre-hearing questions, Hagel made clear his stance on the matter. “If confirmed, I will focus intently on ensuring that U.S. military is in fact prepared for any contingency,” he said his response.

3. Hagel backs recent changes to the make up of the Armed Services

Hagel has come out strongly in favor of the lifting of the ban on the service of gay and lesbian citizens in the military and has pledged to continue to implement the lift of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” While he drew scorn for his deeming a Clinton apointee “openly aggressively gay,” Hagel has since apologized and the apology has been accepted. Hagel also backs the recent shift signed into effect by current Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta that lifts the ban on women serving in combat.

4. Hagel believes in a future nuclear-free world…just not today.

Chuck Hagel has also been attacked for his affiliation with a group known as Global Zero, which seeks a future free of nuclear weapons. Hagel has been attacked recently with claims that he favors fully scrapping the nuclear arsenal of the United States unilaterally. The truth is that Hagel shares the thought of President Obama that the United States can reduce its nuclear stockpile while still providing an effective deterrent, and co-authored legislation with then Sen. Obama to halt nuclear proliferation. Their vision for a world without nuclear weapons was also held by radical peacenik President Ronald Reagan.

5. Hagel would be the first Vietnam veteran to serve as Secretary of Defense

Should he be confirmed, Hagel would be the first veteran of the Vietnam-era to lead the civilian side of the armed forces. His views towards the use of force were molded during that conflict, along with recently confirmed Secretary of State John Kerry. As such, he has proved hesitant to commit United States forces into conflicts where American goals and interests are unclear. This view was a strong part of his vocal criticism of the Iraq War launched under the Bush administration.

Israeli intelligence officials now believe that Iran would be unable to produce a nuclear weapon until 2015 at the earliest, up-ending previous assessments of its nuclear program, according to a report from McClatchy.

The report counters prior claims that Iran is nearing a point in its nuclear program where it would be able to race toward developing nuclear weapons should it choose. It has been previously determined by both U.S. and Israeli officials that Iran has made no decision yet to move towards developing such weapons. A previous assessment that Iran would have the potential capability to develop nuclear arms by late 2012 was first pushed back when the IAEA reported that Iran converted large amounts of its 20 percent enriched uranium into a form difficult to enrich further, thus decreasing its overall stockpile.

According to interviews conducted with Israeli military and intelligence officials, and briefings given over the last two months, that capability is now at least two years away, with some placing their estimates as far back as “winter of 2016″:

“Previous assessments were built on a set of data that has since shifted,” said one Israeli intelligence officer, who spoke to McClatchy only on the condition that he not be identified. He said that in addition to a series of “mishaps” that interrupted work at Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iranian officials appeared to have slowed the program on their own.

“We can’t attribute the delays in Iran’s nuclear program to accidents and sabotage alone,” he said. “There has not been the run towards a nuclear bomb that some people feared. There is a deliberate slowing on their end.”

Israeli officials also noted a widening gap between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statements in public and the intelligence reports that he is receiving. Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted that Iran was nearing the crossing of a “red-line” in its nuclear program, a point at which an Israeli attack to prevent the acquisition of a nuclear breakout capability would be inevitable. Speaking before the United Nations in September, Netanyahu warned the General Assembly that the such a threshold would likely be crossed in Spring or Summer 2013.

Instead, an official in Israel’s Foreign Ministry is quoted insisting that the international sanctions placed upon Iran are, in fact, working. “Iran is progressing carefully, and we think that is because of international pressure led by the U.S.,” the official told McClatchy. That assessment lines up with the opinion of Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N. Ron Prosor, who in 2012 said, “[International sanctions are] much more effective than people think and it might change, hopefully it might change behavior patterns if we continue with it.”

This isn’t the first time the Prime Minister has been at odds with his security apparatus over the level of immediate threat that Iran poses to the country. In 2010, Netanyahu and then Defense Minister Ehud Barak attempted to set the military on high alert to attack Iran “within hours if necessary.” That order was shot down by then-intelligence head Meir Dagan and the Israeli army chief Gabi Ashkenazi. Likewise, there are a multitude of current and former Israeli officials on the record as being opposed to strikes on Iran in the near-term.

Netanyahu is currently forming a government after his party’s lackluster performance in last week’s elections. While domestic issues dominated the run-up to the polls, Netanyahu’s Likud-Beiteinu party was perceived as holding a more militaristic line on Iran.

Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Elliott Abrams in a National Review Online (NRO) post on Saturday backed away from his charge that Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel is anti-Semitic, but in the very same piece, Abrams again suggested that Hagel may be anti-Semitic.

Abrams, a former Reagan and Bush administration official, said he never meant to frame the debate about Hagel in such an incendiary manner in both his Weekly Standard piece and during his interview on NPR last Monday. On NPR, Abrams said Hagel “appears to be” an anti-Semite and that he “seems to have some kind of problem with Jews.”

But Abrams backed away in his NRO piece, saying that he was referring to the fact that the “press has carried several articles now suggesting some sort of a problem between him and the Jewish community.” Never mind that all of those articles quote Abrams or his neoconservative allies as the ones making the suggestions.

Abrams even makes clear from the onset of his NRO essay that he doesn’t intend to engage with Hagel’s record and in no way wants to imply that Hagel should not be confirmed because of his policy views. Instead, the bulk of the piece is used to further attack Hagel’s past statements on Israel under the guise of further suggesting that Hagel is anti-Semitic. In particular, Abrams takes issue with Hagel once telling an audience member at a talk that he was U.S. senator, not an Israeli senator:

What, then, is the meaning of his reply if not this: that he is loyal to the United States, and his oath is to the Constitution of the United States only, “not to Israel,” unlike some people, who put Israel’s interests first. This remark seems to me more than merely irascible; it suggests that those who challenged his views have different loyalties. Can such a statement really be left unexamined and unchallenged? [...]

Today most pressure from the organized Jewish community over foreign-policy issues is related to the security of Israel and the Iranian nuclear-weapons program. To be treated with indifference by an elected official is bad enough. To be told by a future nominee for very high office that, “I’m a United States senator. I’m not an Israeli senator. I’m a United States senator,” and “my first interest is I take an oath of office to the Constitution of the United States” is insulting and unacceptable. It suggests that Senator Hagel believes such lobbying by American Jews to be illegitimate and offensive, and is indeed evidence of loyalty to another country.

Hagel himself has explained what he meant regarding the “Israeli senator” line. “A couple of these guys said we should just attack Iran,” Hagel said, adding, “And this guy kept pushing and pushing. And he alluded to the fact that maybe I wasn’t supporting Israel enough or something. And I just said let me clear something up here, in case there is any doubt.”

Aaron David Miller, a former adviser to six Secretaries of State who first published the quote that Abrams takes issue with, said, “I think Hagel has a view that is not commonly expressed among senators and representatives, and that is, yes, we have a special relationship with Israel, but that special relationship is not exclusive.”

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The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) distanced itself from a senior fellow’s claim on Monday that former Republican senator Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s choice as the next Defense Secretary, is anti-Semitic and doesn’t like Jews.

Elliott Abrams, a former Bush administration official who was convicted of charges related to the Iran-Contra scandal, said on NPR on Monday that Hagel “seems to have some kind of problem with Jews.”

A CFR official told Al-Monitor’s Laura Rozen that Abrams’ views do not represent the organization. “The Council on Foreign Relations takes no institutional position on matters of policy,” CFR’s vice president for global communications and media relations Lisa Shields said. “The views expressed by our more than seventy experts, who reflect a broad range of backgrounds and perspectives, are theirs only.”

NPR listeners wrote in to complain about Abrams’ comments, some of which were read on the network’s All Things Considered program on Tuesday:

HOST AUDIE CORNISH: John Shrauger of Venice, Florida writes: Mr. Abrams did not convince me that Chuck Hagel is anti-Semitic, but he did convince me that anyone who is not unequivocally supportive of Israel’s policies still risks being labeled as anti-Semitic. What seems to be clear about Mr. Hagel is that he has the courage to stand up to some of the most powerful lobbies in Washington: the defense contracting lobby as well as the right-wing pro-Israel lobby.

HOST MELISSA BLOCK: And many of you thought we should have told you more about Elliot Abrams’ background. Derek Goldman of Missoula, Montana was among those who wrote to say we should have told listeners that Abrams pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress in the Iran-Contra investigation. He writes: This information should have been highly important to the story, given the excessive strength of Mr. Abrams’ criticism of Senator Hagel.

Listen to the clip here:

A former Israeli diplomat said this week that the right-wing claims that Hagel is anti-Semitic and anti-Israel are “total and utter nonsense.” “I think that those going after his record are after President Obama rather than after Senator Hagel. And I think these attacks are vile, vicious, ugly and unfounded,” he said.