Dennis Ross, the special Middle East envoy under President Clinton, was named yesterday as Obama administration’s special advisor on Iran. His official position will be Special Advisor to the Secretary of State on Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia, but his main responsibility would be to help formulate US policies toward Iran and navigate a difficult path to reach out to Tehran on normalizing relations between the two adversaries.
Many Iran analysts have been surprised by the choice, pointing to Ross’s strong pro-Israeli views and his association with pro-Israel think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Others regard Ross as having enough pro-Israel credentials to be able to strike a deal with Iran, without appearing to work against Israeli interests in the region.
Mr. Ross’s first challenge is to find a way to directly negotiate with the principlists in Tehran, and eventually with Ayatollah Khamenei, who holds the key to normalizing relations with the US.
4 comments:
AGREED. Ross is an AIPAC stooge. He has lost this credentials as an honest broker--something seems to kill his pragmatic ability to strike a deal. I really hope that Obama picked him because of his "ability" to come off as being pro-Israel, as to convince any skeptics.
I read a really interesting piece in the NY Times yesterday
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/opinion/23eshraghi.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=iran&st=cse
It basically said that Iran's current president, Ahmadinejad, has showed unprecedented support for 'dialog' and that this opportunity should be wasted--aka: don't wait for Khatami or whoever.
Perhaps the grand strategy of Obama is to work with Ahmadinejad so he can shore up his conservative guardsmen, and then allow Ross to do the same with his Zionist hawks.
Remember a crazy Zionist killed Rabin and a crazy Islamist killed Sadat. Radicals and ultra conservatives matter.
Am I completely out to lunch? Check me.
Abu Guerrilla,
You are not off the mark. Nixon/Kissinger could normalize relations with China easier than any Democrats at the time.
So it looks like Iran and the U.S. are going to have some talking to do.
Do you think that Iranian reform is going to come from a Soviet style (from inside the regime) or China style (long march of Mao, outside the regime)?
I think that the U.S. has tried the outside approach for too long--and it does not work. It might be time for an insider... Jeez, the Americans have tried everything else.
Sure it is clearly in the US interests to have a reproachment with Iran. But it has to be said that there seems to have been a quite sophisticated, and relatively successful campaign by the Iranians to win over the opinion of US/International elites and public opinion.
I never thought I'd see the day when the Israel lobby lost a fight to a country like Iran. Its not just in the military domain that Israel is starting to fall behind.
Zionist extremism has become too much even for many Jews to bear, let alone for the rest of the world that is sick to death of U.S.-Israeli hypocrisy on the Palestinian and other issues.
I have always maintained that the one sensible comment Ahmadinejad ever made was that "the Israeli Apatheid regime will vanish from the pages of time", just as the racist South African regime did. Israel, the writing is on the wall and you have no one to blame but yourself. A pity, though, that it took the Persians to put some backbone into the Arabs and teach them how to beat you militarily.
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