In a bid to lend a patina of “bipartisanship” to its ideas, the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has made former Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) the co-chair of its newest foreign policy initiative. The move has been met with raised eyebrows, as progressives have not considered Joe Lieberman an authentic representative of their foreign policy positions for quite some time, if they ever did in the first place.

Lieberman will co-chair the new “American Internationalism Project” with former Senator John Kyl (R-AZ). As the project is intended to “rebuild and reshape a bipartisan consensus around American global leadership and engagement,” Lieberman’s participation is aimed at blunting the perception that anything coming out of AEI is a dogmatically Republican plan. AEI generally hews to a hardline neoconservative standard on foreign policy; its staff in the area includes former Bush Administration officials John Bolton, Richard Perle, and Marc Thiessen.

Lieberman’s dogged support for George W. Bush’s foreign policy played a critical role in his in 2006 Democratic primary defeat (he subsequently won as an independent). endorsed arch-hawk John McCain over Barack Obama for President in 2008 on grounds that McCain was “the strongest candidate on security of all the candidates running.” Indeed, Lieberman’s views are far closer to AEI’s than they are to the progressive mainstream, as a quick survey of his particular positions will show:

1. Iraq. Lieberman himself credits his vociferous support for the Iraq War for making him “persona non grata with the Democrats.” As recently as 2011, Lieberman defended his vote to invade Iraq, saying “I believe that the evidence is very clear that [Saddam] was developing weapons of mass destruction.” During the height of the war debate in 2007, Lieberman accused war critics of committing “a kind of harassment” and being “invested in a narrative of retreat and defeat.”

2. Torture. Lieberman voted against legislation banning waterboarding in 2008 on grounds that it wasn’t torture. Because the torture technique “has a mostly psychological impact on people,” Lieberman argued, “we ought to be able to use [it],” adding that President Obama’s decision to release the Bush torture memos “help[ed] our enemies.” Though he once signed a letter that included a clause condemning waterboarding, it is unclear how he reconciled that with his long record of support for the practice.

3. Iran. When asked point-blank if he was endorsing an attack on Iran during a 2007 interview, Lieberman said “I am… We’ve got to use our force and to me that would include taking military action.” More recently, he has said a strike on Iran is highly likely, and that, in its aftermath, we should “hope and pray that there will be a regime change.”

4. Israel. Though Israeli leaders have praised Obama’s policy towards their country (even awarding him a prestigious medal), Lieberman has been persistent critic of the President’s policy — from the right. Lieberman denied that settlements were “a major impediment to peace” and suggested that Obama’s foreign policy “has encouraged Israel’s enemies.”

And it’s not just national security policy – Lieberman has tacked to the right on a variety of domestic policy issues as well, ranging from tax cuts to health care to energy.

Today on Fox News Sunday, Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) said they did not think the U.S. Senate should create a special committee to investigate the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11. Chambliss and Lieberman said the Senate currently has the capacity to investigate the matter and that a new committee is not needed.

Republican senators John McCain (AZ), Lindsey Graham (SC) and Kelly Ayotte (NH) this week called for a Watergate-style special “select committee” to investigate the attack, claiming that the Obama administration, particularly U.N. Ambasss misled the public about the attack resulting from protests against an anti-Islam video.

But Chambliss and Lieberman, both close friends of McCain and Graham (Lieberman, Graham and McCain are often referred to as “The Three Amigos“), rejected the proposal. “I respectfully separate from my two amigos on this one,” Lieberman said:

WALLACE: Do you think that we need … do we need a special committee or can your standing committees do it?

CHAMBLISS: Well first of all these two guys are two of my best friends and two of Joe’s best friends. We travel a lot together to some very dangerous places but the committees within the United States Senate are very capable of investigating this in the right way and this is one time I have a slight disagreement with my good friends.

LIEBERMAN: Yeah I respectfully separate from my two amigos on this one and I agree with Saxby. This was a tragedy but it doesn’t rise to the level of 9/11/01. Our committees can handle this and come up with answers.

Earlier in the segment, Lieberman undermined the central case McCain, Graham and Ayotte made in arguing for the special committee, namely the suggestion that Rice willfully inaccurately described the events of the Libya attack. “As I look at what we now know the intelligence community was saying that week and I look at Ambassador Rice’s statements on television on the following Sunday morning, I don’t find anything inconsistent between those two,” he said. Watch the clips:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on Friday rejected McCain’s request for a special committee on Libya in a strongly worded letter. “I refuse to allow the Senate to be used as a venue for baseless partisan attacks,” Reid wrote.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty this week that he thinks the chances are “high” that Iran will face military attack if the regime in Tehran doesn’t change course on its nuclear program. In that event, Lieberman said he’ll “hope and pray” the regime falls:

“I think we have the capability either to eliminate the Iranian nuclear weapons program or to disable it in a way that it will be delayed for enough years that we may hope and pray that there will be a regime change and that there will be a more democratic and friendly regime.”

Watch the clip:

Lieberman pushed a resolution earlier this year ruling out containing a nuclear armed Iran and loosened the threshold for military action to an Iranian nuclear weapons “capability” — a position that some have observed would make a diplomatic solution to the crisis more difficult.

But while Lieberman would hope and pray the Iranian regime falls in the aftermath of a military attack, others, like former Israeli spy chief Meir Dagan, have warned that it would have the opposite effect of rallying Iranians around the regime, as well as sparking a regional war and “accelerat[ing] the procurement of the bomb.”

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.”

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In their latest push for U.S. military involvement in the Syrian conflict, three of the most hawkish Senators today introduced a resolution calling on the U.S. help arm the Syrian rebels through Arab allies. Suggesting support for regional efforts to arm the opposition, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) called for condemnation of the regime of Bashar al-Assad, who for more than a year has cracked down with the full force of his military against anti-government demonstrators and rebels.

ABC News described the Senators’ bill:

The resolution supports calls by Arab leaders to provide the Syrian people with weapons and other material support and calls on President Obama to work closely with regional partners to “implement these efforts effectively.”

At a press conference, Lieberman said:

We in the United States have both a moral and strategic reason to support their efforts by at least giving them the means with which to defend themselves.

The Hill reports that the McCain-Graham-Lieberman resolution is likely to be merged with another by Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) calling for a U.S. government report examining the rebels and gleaning information about its different factions. Other aspects of the resolutions also overlap. The Hill went on to expand on the call to support the Syrian opposition’s self-defense:

That support would likely come in the form of weapons and ammunition for anti-Assad forces. McCain declined to comment on what specific weapons could shipped to rebel troops in the country.

But the Arizona Republicans said those arms could be funneled through the same lines that the “non-lethal” supplies being sent to Syria by the U.S. and Turkey.

The Hill also noted that McCain, Lieberman and Graham did not call in their resolution for airstrikes against Syria. Earlier this month, McCain voiced support for U.S. air strikes against Assad’s regime aimed at helping the rebels topple it. Lieberman and Graham almost immediately followed McCain’s lead.

But those sorts of actions are deeply unpopular among Americans. A Fox News poll released on March 15 said 68 percent of those surveyed opposed air strikes aimed at overthrowing the country, and only 19 percent supported such a strategy. A slim majority opposed and 37 supported air strikes narrowly limited to protecting anti-government rebels. Even the U.S. arming the rebels was unpopular: 64 percent of respondents opposed it, with a quarter of them supporting it.

According to the Hill, “Lieberman said it was decided to exclude the airstrikes demand from the resolution, fearing it would sap bipartisan support for the legislation among rank-and-file senators.”

Today on Capitol Hill, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta pushed back against two GOP hawks who are pushing for U.S. military intervention in Syria, laying out the considerations that have informed U.S. caution in getting militarily involved.

Faced with aggressive questioning, Panetta warned Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and John McCain (R-AZ) — both of whom called this week for bombing Syria — that such options need to be weighed carefully and that grueling diplomatic work needs to be put in to actualize such policies. That work is being done, he said, by the U.S., even as it exhibits caution regarding military options to help resolve the nearly year-old Syrian uprising that has claimed more than 7,000 lives.

Lieberman suggested at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing today that the U.S. needs to “get the international community together in a coalition of the willing soon.” Panetta responded sternly, seeming to lecture Lieberman and McCain that deciding on military action is no easy choice:

PANETTA: If the agreement here is that we ought not to just go in unilaterally, then we have to build a multilateral coalition. We’ve got to be able to work at that. It’s not that easy to deal with some of the concerns that are out there. But nevertheless we are working at it. Secretary Clinton is working at it everyday. There are diplomats that are engaged on this issue.…

Can it happen today? Can it happen now? No. It’s gonna take some work; it’s going to take some time. But when we do it, we’ll do it right. We will not do it in a way that will make the situation worse. That’s what we have to be careful of.

Watch a video of the exchange:

Earlier in the hearing, McCain baited Panetta by repeatedly asking him questions along the lines of: “How many more have to die, 10,000 more, 20,000 more? How many more?” Panetta responded:

PANETTA: As secretary of Defense, before I recommend that we put our sons and daughters in uniform in harms way, I’ve got to make very sure that we know what the mission is. I’ve got to — I’ve got to make very sure that we know whether we can achieve that mission? At what price? And whether or not it will make matters better, or worse?

Those are the considerations that I have to engage in.

Like with Iran — as President Obama noted yesterday — those arguing for military force in Syria rarely seem to engage in these considerations at all.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey urged against an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program, telling CNN’s Fareed Zakaria this morning that “It’s not prudent at this point to decide to attack Iran,” and such a strike would be “destabilizing and wouldn’t achieve [Israel's] long-term objectives.”

Dempsey, the highest ranking military officer in the U.S., went on to emphasize that while all options remain on the table, U.S. intelligence indicates that Iran has not yet decided to pursue a nuclear weapon:

MARTIN DEMPSEY: We also know, or believe we know, that the Iranian regime has not decided that they will embark on the [...] effort to weaponize their nuclear capability.

FAREED ZAKARIA: You think that is still unclear? [...]

DEMPSEY: It is. I believe it is unclear and on that basis I think it would be premature to exclusively decide that the time for a military option was upon us.

Watch the interview:

Dempsey’s conclusion that Iran has not yet decided to pursue a nuclear weapon reflects the consensus view of the U.S. intelligence community and the IAEA. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Armed Service Committee on Thursday that Iran’s leadership had not yet decided to develop a nuclear weapon but were “keeping themselves in a position to make that decision.”

The November IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program found that while there were possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program, the nuclear watchdog agency couldn’t confirm that Tehran was pursuing a nuclear weapon. The IAEA’s findings were upheld by CIA Director David Petraeus last month. Petraeus told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the IAEA report is “the authoritative document” on Iran’s nuclear program.

Indeed, a nuclear weapons possessing Iran would be destabilizing but while hawks on Capitol Hill are eager to portray Iran as a “martyr state” hellbent on acquiring nuclear weapons, senior intelligence and military officials take a very different view. “We are of the opinion that the Iranian regime is a rational actor,” said Dempsey. “And it’s for that reason that we think the current path we’re on is the most prudent path at this point.”

Despite efforts from congressional hawks like Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and John McCain (R-AZ), Senate Democrats are resisting efforts to limit President Obama’s policy options on Iran.

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.