Israel Matzav

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Is Israel better off with Romney in the White House?

On Sunday, I blogged a CNN interview with Michael Hayden, a former CIA director in the Bush administration and a key adviser to Mitt Romeny. In the interview, surprisingly (and in a minute I'll explain why it's surprising), Hayden defended President Obama's feckless Iran policy and the discredited 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran, which claimed that Iran had given up developing a nuclear weapon in 2003.

Caroline Glick weighs in on the Hayden interview and asks some questions I've been wondering about myself, particularly regarding Jennifer Rubin's cheerleading for Romney (for an example of her pounding on Rick Santorum, go here).

The fact that this is the view of Romney's adviser has to make you wonder why all the pro-Israel American Jewish policy wonks have been going after every Republican candidate other than Romney with such intensity. It's fine to support Romney or any other Republican over Obama. Certainly, Romney would be better for the US and the US economy than Obama.

But the fact is that while Romney is more pro-American than Obama is and would be friendlier to Israel and the US's other allies than Obama has been, he isn't that great on the issues that these Jewish pundits care about. He certainly isn't as strong as the other candidates including Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich and before them Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry. He's okay. He's better than Obama. But he isn't the best the Republican field has offered. Certainly it makes sense to support him. But it makes no sense to go to to the mattresses for him against every other Republican contender.

But whether the Jennifer Rubins of the American Jewish punditocracy take note of the problem or not is secondary to whether Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu notices it.

The message that Hayden just transmitted to Netanyahu is very clear and it is crucial that Netanyahu hears it.

Hayden's oped is as clear a warning to Israel as Obama's statement to Medvedev about being more anti-American after he gets reelected. What Hayden just told us is that as far as Iran's nuclear weapons program is concerned, it doesn't matter who is in the White House in January 2013.

Caroline has got it right, and yet that this is Hayden's view is also surprising.

On CNN on Sunday, former CIA director Michael Hayden sounded an awful lot like he was advocating the exercise of a military option against Iran's nuclear program.
My personal view is that Iran left to its own devices will get itself to that step right below a nuclear weapon," said Hayden, "and frankly that will be as destabilizing as their actually having a weapon.”

The former CIA director stated that an attack on Iran had not originally been a serious option, but in light of Iran's intensified pursuit of nuclear materials, the military option "may not be the worst of all possible outcomes.”

Has Hayden changed his mind? Is there a fix in? Why are Santorum and Gingrich getting such short shrift from many - if not most - Republican supporters of Israel? And why is Gingrich staying in the race if all he can hope to accomplish is to prevent Santorum from slugging it out with Romney?

Labels: Campaign 2012, Iranian nuclear threat, Michael Hayden, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, RIck Santorum

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Romney adviser defends Obama's Iran policy and 2007 NIE whitewash of Iran

I wonder if this might make John Bolton reconsider his support of Mitt Romney. Michael Hayden, who is a senior foreign policy adviser to Romney, defends President Obama's feckless Iran policy as well as the whitewash of Iran in the 2007 NIE report.

And now with Iran, intelligence judgments remain anchored to a controversial 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that in 2003, Tehran had "halted" its nuclear weapon design and weaponization work. That estimate was based not on the absence of evidence that such work was ongoing but rather on evidence that it was not. And despite some suspicious and troubling Iranian activity since then, the estimate has survived largely intact, under three subsequent heads of national intelligence and of the CIA.

So there we are. The challenge for American intelligence now is to inform the president of an Iranian decision to weaponize its nuclear stockpile with sufficient confidence and in sufficient time for him to decide to launch a pre-emptive war in one of the world's most sensitive and volatile regions.

It's hard to imagine a higher bar, especially since building the "sufficient confidence" will almost certainly eat into the "sufficient time." And especially since, when that last situation room meeting is held, the intelligence will probably not be at that courtroom evidentiary standard of beyond all reasonable doubt.

The president showed that he could act in the face of ambiguity when he launched the Abbottabad raid to kill Osama bin Laden. This one will be even more difficult.

Read the whole thing. If Romney wins, is Bolton Secretary of State? From what I've seen and heard over the last several weeks, it's more likely to be Hayden or someone of his ilk.

What could go wrong?

Labels: Campaign 2012, Iranian nuclear threat, Israeli attack on Iran, John Bolton, Michael Hayden, National Intelligence Estimate