02/13/14 – Scott McConnell – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
And hey, check it out.
Lucky, happy, wish, last minute addition to the show.
It's Scott McConnell, founding editor of the American Conservative Magazine.
Welcome back to the show, Scott.
How are you doing?
Thank you.
I'm doing good, Scott.
Good, good.
I'm very happy to talk to you again.
And I was very happy to read this article.
A lot's been written about the Iran.
Isn't that just nice to say?
Just right there.
A lot has been written about the Iran sanctions and the push by the Israel lobby to get them through the Senate, especially there, and the fact that the president won and they had to back down.
And yet your retelling of the saga certainly, I think, is the most thorough.
And then also you have a lot to say about it, you know, analysis and opinion wise.
But if you could just catch people up on, well, first of all, what the hell is AIPAC and what's this big fight that they lost?
The headline at the American Conservative Magazine reads, Victory over AIPAC.
What it means and what it doesn't.
So just catch us up.
Let's start with the election of President Rouhani in Iran, who was clearly more moderate than his predecessor and made clear that he wanted to negotiate an end to Iran's international isolation and economic sanctions.
And Iranian diplomats had been talking more intensely to American diplomats beginning in the summer and the fall, negotiating a preliminary deal, which would involve Iran's more intense inspection of Iran's nuclear program and some limited lifting of international sanctions.
And this deal, the preliminary deal, seemed to promise a more kind of broader detente, you know, something analogous to Nixon in China in the early 70s.
And we're still a long way away from that.
But there are a lot of people who think that Obama wanted that as a goal, that he wanted to end the ramp down, the American hostility to Iran.
And Rouhani's election amplified that opportunity.
And there have been negotiations which, gosh, you know, Germany, France, China, Russia and Great Britain, the P5-plus-1, had been, went on pretty intensely during the fall.
And they were moderately successful.
So finally, around Thanksgiving time, a preliminary deal was signed.
And immediately, Netanyahu denounced it, and so did many ministers in the Israeli government, and so did the American right, particularly the neoconservatives, but, you know, Republicans in general, as if they, you know, did not want any negotiation with Iran.
Netanyahu said it was a very, very bad deal.
He promised to send Israeli ministers over to lobby Congress to essentially block the deal, and to get Congress to put so many conditions on Obama to prevent him from negotiating.
Can you elaborate a little bit there about the people he sent to Capitol Hill, and what it was that they did?
The ones that came from Israel, not just from AIPAC there?
Well, yeah, Naftali Bennett, who is a, actually he's an American-born, but he's now a major Israeli right-wing politician, and he's in the government.
He came over, and he spent, you know, three or four days talking to, you know, AIPAC-friendly congressmen and senators.
And, boy, you're going to get me.
There was another minister-level guy whose name escapes me right now.
But there were two people who were actual ministers in the Israeli government who came over.
And they, you know, they tried to, you know, rile up the troops, saying that this deal is, you know, going to be terrible for Israel, and terrible for the Mideast, and Iran's going to get nuclear weapons, and Iran's going to take over the Middle East, and etc., etc.
And the reason I brought that part up was because one of these congressmen, or one of these senators was saying, yeah, yeah, I talked to John Kerry and all of that, but I talk with the Israelis about the truth about Iran's nuclear program over there, and I think I'll go with the Israelis.
Is it Mark Kirk?
Mark, yeah.
Well, Kirk is, I mean, traditionally the senator from AIPAC, and before he was a senator, he was a congressman from AIPAC.
And he has some very AIPAC-friendly staffers, so even when he's out of commission, because he had a major stroke recently, his office acts as if it's, you know, AIPAC Central.
And he did.
And the specific disagreement was that Israel was saying that Iran was going to get $40 or $50 billion in sanctions relief, and the administration was making a much lower figure.
And I think the administration was right, but you do have senators who are much more willing to accept Israel's word on these things than that of the administration.
All right.
I'm sorry for interrupting there, but I thought that point was worth going into a little bit more depth on there.
Well, so where was I?
So eventually, it wasn't clear whether before the Christmas recess there would be a bill and Harry Reid, who was, you know, using the Senate rules to kind of slow things down, because the administration certainly didn't want any legislation that would limit its ability to negotiate.
And so, but probably at the last minute, there was a bill sponsored initially by Menendez and New Jersey and Mark Kirk and Charles Schumer, which said, stipulated that the final result of negotiations must be that Iran would have no nuclear enrichment capacity at all.
And that promise that the United States would support Israel if Israel fell for reasons of its own need for self-defense to attack Iran, it promised American support.
So the bill essentially farmed out a major decision about war and peace to another country.
The bill did say the United States, in accordance with its constitutional obligations, you know, so it wasn't an automatic declaration of war on Israel's behalf, but it did commit the United States to going to war on Israel's behalf if Israel started a war, and some other things.
The thing about AIPAC bills is, for most senators, it's a no-brainer to sign them.
Famously, there was an AIPAC staffer who told Jeffrey Goldberg, by way of illustration about ten years ago, he says, see this napkin?
If you want, I could get 70 senators to sign it within 24 hours, meaning, you know, you could get a veto-proof majority for anything AIPAC wanted.
Just because senators know that, you know, if one of your main concerns, if your senator is to get elected and to get re-elected, to do whatever is most important to you, staying on the good side of AIPAC is what you do.
It's just like normal.
But in this case, and the only time I can previously think that AIPAC ever lost a legislative battle was in the early 80s.
Ronald Reagan wanted to sell some radar planes to Saudi Arabia, and AIPAC opposed it.
And Reagan, you know, kind of, essentially, you know, he had the military-industrial complex.
You know, Lockheed or whoever made the planes on his side, and he was able to prevail.
But other than that, AIPAC always wins, but this time it didn't win.
The number of senators who signed on the bill, first it was 20, then it was 40, and then it seemed to slow down.
And after the Christmas recess, there were some major stories saying that the AIPAC numbers seemed to have stalled.
And then there was, you know, by that time there was a fairly large coalition of political forces, large by, you know, inside-the-beltway standards, that were opposing this.
In the end, it included major newspapers, and, you know, some major TV personalities such as Chris Hayes, and especially Jon Stewart.
And the bill got the support of, it got almost all the Republicans except for Ron Paul and Jeff Flake, but they got, you know, no more than 15 Democrats, and some major kind of veteran senators.
I think Dianne Feinstein in particular, but also Carl Levin, spoke out in really well-informed ways against this bill.
And I mean, for Feinstein, who's like 80 years old, and she gave this, you know, this really wonderful speech in mid-January, and it's, I mean, she has a, she's this pretty charismatic figure.
I think it was a historical event.
And so what happened essentially was that AIPAC was exposed as, you know, in, you know, A, losing a battle with the administration, secondly, not speaking for the mainstream of the American Jewish community, which is, you know, traditionally it had always been the assumption that most Jews support AIPAC and that those who didn't were, you know, very liberal or left-wing.
All right.
I'm sorry.
I'm going to have to stop you here, Scott, and we'll have to save third and fourth lessons learned and the rest until after this break.
We'll be right back, everybody, with Scott McConnell, founding editor of the American Conservative Magazine.
That's theamericanconservative.com.
Victory over AIPAC.
What it means, what it doesn't.
Give me just a sec.
Hey, y'all.
Scott here.
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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
I'm talking with Scott McConnell from the American Conservative Magazine about his new piece Victory Over AIPAC.
What it means and what it doesn't.
And we're talking about, well, I guess right before the break there we were at sort of the coalition of people in and outside of the government and so-called civil society and so forth.
And I guess the shifting in civil society away from AIPAC's position and then what turned out to be their somewhat easy defeat and then what can be learned from that?
Are they just a paper tiger, Scott?
Is that the point?
Well, I don't think they're a paper tiger.
I wouldn't even characterize the defeat as easy because a lot of things had to round up the right way.
And AIPAC is still going to be around and it's still going to be pushing Israel's perspective on the United States, including on these Iran negotiations.
And the second stage of the negotiations haven't even really begun.
So there's plenty of opportunity for AIPAC mischief making.
And also I would say that AIPAC's defeat, which is I think terribly significant, but it doesn't mean that the organization doesn't have a lot of power inside the Beltway.
And it certainly has a lot of power to prevent America from pushing Israel to make peace with the Palestinians in a reasonable way.
That's something I think an American president like Obama can decide that not having a war with Iran is an absolutely vital American interest.
And he's not going to let, he's going to fight AIPAC and Israel's ability to push us around on that.
But on another issue, like does Israel keep the West Bank or does it withdraw?
I don't think, I don't see Obama or other mainstream Democrats willing to extend as much political capital on that.
I mean, this was a question of potentially of war and peace.
And I don't see, I don't think Americans see Israel like that.
So I think AIPAC will still be a big factor on American Mideast policy, sad to say from my perspective, but I think that's where we are.
Well, Scott, I wouldn't want to give Obama too much credit as a diplomatic this or that, but this did occur to me back at the time when Obama, I forget the footnote now, but I think it was pretty credibly reported that the White House specifically asked AIPAC to help them convince Congress on the Syria issue.
And then, but at the same time, it seemed obvious to me that Obama didn't really want to do the war anyway and took every out that he could to get out a launch in the war.
And I wonder if, I don't know, for some reason I want to like a president, it's weird, but I sort of think, I wonder whether he did that to them, just ha ha suckers, just to draw them out and, and have them suffer another defeat after Hagel, which was a pretty big defeat a year ago on Syria.
So as to weaken their position going into these Iran negotiations, what do you think of that?
Well, I guess it's possible that that's, I've, I've heard that before and it's really Machiavellian i.e.
I want you to be my ally for a fight that I know you can't win.
And then, you know, it, it gets sort of tricky because what would have happened if, uh, if Russia hadn't sort of said, well, you know, we'll take, we'll help you get rid of the chemical weapons.
And that seemed, I, you know, I don't really, it all seemed kind of random, but maybe, but Obama- It's just speculation anyway.
I'm sorry to even ask you to speculate, that ain't right.
But, um, I think Obama has, you know, has felt that he could challenge AIPAC and should challenge AIPAC.
I mean, first on, on the Hagel nomination where AIPAC lobbied, but didn't go all out.
And then on Syria where, whether they would get to a congressional vote was kind of, uh, you know, it never got to term.
I mean, and then this, where AIPAC clearly lost, this is, uh, three defeats for AIPAC.
And it's, you know, I'm not a huge, huge fan of J Street, but I certainly respect the, the organization and they've, I mean, their existence, their presence on the Hill saying, you know, AIPAC doesn't speak for us.
We're Zionists.
We love Israel, but we don't like Netanyahu and we don't want war with Iran and their readiness to back up the administration, you know, counts for a lot.
And so I, I, I really have to give them credit.
Now what do you think are the chances for a final deal?
Because I guess, well, I, I hate something about Eli Lake, but I think it was a Lake that said that, well, they're still just gearing up for the final negotiation.
And I think this was the, and other things that you mentioned earlier was the demand that Iran's nuclear program ceased to exist, at least, uh, certainly no enrichment anywhere on Iranian soil.
That's been the security council position and certainly the Israeli position up until now.
So do you think Obama's really going to fight it out and kick their ass on this and get it done?
I think he is.
And I think that, that the security, it's not really the security council, uh, uh, position.
I mean, the security council position was that Iran would halt, uh, enrichment or suspended, but the people, the countries who have signed onto the interim deal, which implicitly, not explicitly, but implicitly acknowledges Iranian enrichment and which, you know, our security council members.
So you can just as well say that that's the P five plus one position is the security council position.
I think, uh, or you could, I mean, the, that, that could be argued, I think reasonably.
Yeah.
And I think Kerry has, you know, has certainly, I mean, he has said there's no right to, uh, for Iran to enrich, but also there it's, I mean, he, I think everybody who's negotiating knows that, you know, no Iranian government could survive that completely gave up.
I mean, they, Iran has put so much money and effort and suffered so much on behalf of trying to, you know, enrich, uh, uranium that they're not going to just give it up.
Uh, so, uh, and I actually, and there's more and more people, uh, in the Israeli national security apparatus who sort of give hints that, you know, yes, Israel could, you know, choke down an arrangement, which, uh, in which Iran still enriches uranium.
I, it's still, it's going to be a tough negotiation because there are, I mean, obviously, uh, there's very, uh, hard line factions in Iran too, as in the United States.
I mean, my fantasy is you could take, you know, all the revolutionary guards and then the Mark Kirk and AIPAC and put them all in a desert island and they could fight it out.
But no, no, there are, there are, there are significant political factors in Iran, including from what I can see, like half the Iranian parliament who doesn't want any negotiation with the great Satan.
And they actually, you know, maybe economically benefit in some way from the sanctions regime and would feel that they would be politically lose from a liberalization, which bought Iran back into the world economy.
And uh, and so they are attacking Rouhani and his foreign ministers are either sellouts like all the time.
So that's such a great point.
I mean, that is such a, an important reason why not to do the sanctions in the first place.
As in, you just turn the whole oil black market over to the revolutionary guards and you just entrench day by day, month by month, you just entrench their interest in keeping things this way.
Madness.
These are the diplomats.
These are the experts.
They know just what to do.
But, uh, you know, so I think the negotiation will be difficult, but I would say, you know, I would, if I would bet, I would bet like 70% that a, a deal which, you know, in which the Iranian nuclear program is slowed down and subject to inspection.
So we know that they're not going to, you know, run and build a bomb next month or something like that.
And which provides a, a long breathing period in which the Iranians can decide and we can decide whether we can be, uh, you know, have a more cooperative and normal relationship.
I would say it's a 70% chance that that'll happen.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
I know you wouldn't agree, but I think you might agree that Israel's pal, uh, Palestinian occupation there ranks right up there somewhere near the Iran issue as far as America's national security interests over there.
Uh, you know, after all the nine 11 attackers cited American support for Israel's occupation as one of their primary motivations for crashing into our towers in the first place.
So, um, and it seems like if a president is willing to defy Netanyahu's Likud government and, and, uh, defy AIPAC over this Iran thing, if he's got the power, why not go ahead and get them to end the occupation of the West Bank?
After all, as everyone knows, the status quo, uh, since time keeps moving forward, ends really badly for Israel.
So you know, Netanyahu's a kook.
Obama knows better than Netanyahu what's best for Israel anyway.
Why doesn't he just go ahead and make them do the right thing and end the occupation?
Well, it's a question of how much political capital he would have to spend to do that and whether it gets in the way of goals which are more important to him.
Uh, if, I mean, Obama may think, look, if Israel wants to become unambiguously before the world, you know, present itself as an apartheid state, which is what will happen and what will be clear, I mean, what will be clear to everybody if it doesn't withdraw from the West Bank.
You know, if he, he may just think, well, if they want to do that to themselves, you know, I can't stop them, you know, it's just like they made it too hard.
Obama made a pretty significant effort to stop Israeli settlement building and, you know, get Israel to pull back early in his term.
And he just, you know, Netanyahu came and basically took his head off and the American, you know, and Netanyahu was more popular in the American Senate than Obama was in 2009 and 2010.
And I think Obama could see that his whole presidency threatened by a war with Netanyahu that, you know, he, he didn't really need.
Um, that's my, my, so my, my sense is that Obama's, Obama's view is it would be nice if Israel wants to make peace, he will help them and he will push them to negotiation.
But if Israel wants to keep being an occupying power and eventually face a, a much broader and probably European centered, uh, boycott and sanctions movement, you know, that's their problem.
You know, he's done what he can.
I mean, I, I, Obama might not say that himself, but that's my interpretation of where he's at.
Yeah.
Well, and you know what, this is all a predictable result back in 2009 when he was talking so big and yet wasn't willing to back it up with any threat of withholding aid whatsoever.
And without that, you know, all it is is talk in the face of an Israeli government that just will not budge no matter what you call them, no matter what you say about them.
So it is what it is, I guess.
All right.
Well, thank you very much for your time.
It's great to talk to you again, Scott.
Thank you, Scott.
I enjoyed it.
All right, everybody.
That is Scott McConnell.
He's the founding editor at the American conservative magazine.
That's the American conservative.com.
And this piece is really good.
That's the spotlight today on antiwar.com.
Victory over AIPAC.
What it means, what it doesn't.
The American conservative.com.
What was the only interest group in D.C. pushing war with Syria last summer?
AIPAC and the Israel lobby.
What's the only interest group in D.C. pushing to sabotage the nuclear deal with Iran right now?
AIPAC and the Israel lobby.
Why doesn't the president force an end to the occupation of Palestine, a leading cause of terrorist attacks against the United States?
AIPAC and the Israel lobby.
The Council for the National Interest is pushing back, putting America first and educating the people about what's really at stake in the Middle East.
Help support their important work at councilforthenationalinterest.org.
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