“This Was No Accident”

Israel Trying to Kill Iran Deal

Secretary of State Tony Blinken says that the Biden administration “wants to extend and strengthen” the Iran Deal. The New York Times says Biden is trying to “salvage” the deal that Trump “repudiated.”

This technically isn’t true. “Repudiated” means that you refuse to accept something. Iran had an agreement with the United States and the United States violated that agreement, thus killing the deal. Biden’s not trying to salvage the agreement, he’s trying to reboot it. Despite this fact, the U.S. has consistently acted as if Iran are the ones who need to be making concessions.

Last week negotiations began again and an enrichment site in Iran was promptly attacked. A planned explosion caused a blackout. The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization said the country had been the victim of “nuclear terrorism.” Anyone with a cursory understanding of world affairs knew who was responsible as soon as they heard the news.

Here’s the Jerusalem Post’s Yonah Jeremy Bob on the BBC’s Newshour shortly after the attack. “Officially nothing has been said by the Israeli government,” he explained. “But I can tell you…this was no accident, this was intentional, this was not some light temporary electricity going off. This was grave damage to the Iranians and the Iranian program and while I was not allowed to report anything about the Mossad this morning because we are under Israeli censor, Western intelligence and foreign reports have been naming the Mossad over last couple hours and let’s just say I wouldn’t disagree with that…”

It’s widely believed that these leaks came directly from members of the Mossad. This has caused some concern in Israel. “I am not talking about a specific operation, but I do want to talk about the chatter issue,” said Defense Minister Benny Gantz. “It is a serious issue and I turned to the Shin Bet and the IDF’s Information Security Department to open an investigation into it. We can’t operate when everyone is babbling. We can’t accept these winkings and these ‘Western sources’ stories.”

The terrorism itself isn’t a problem, but the winkings? We can’t accept them.

Israel might have attacked Iran, but the real target was the Biden administration. Netanyahu visited congress while Obama negotiated the first deal in an effort to torpedo it and now they’re fighting any effort to resurrect it. They should be held accountable for this, but of course Biden won’t condemn their actions or even acknowledge that they’re responsible. Shortly after the attack U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was in Tel Aviv meeting with Gantz and declaring that “our commitment to Israel is enduring and ironclad.”

In response to Israel’s attack, Iran announced that it was enriching uranium at a level higher than ever before–60%. That was probably predictable. The attack was an embarrassment that made them look vulnerable and they need some leverage back during these negotiations. Some context here: Iran had not been enriching its uranium beyond 20% up until this point. Under the Iran deal, it had agreed to enrich it at just 3.67%.

“The decision to hike the level of enrichment will be seen as a further reduction in compliance by Iran,” read the Reuters report on this news. Again, compliance with what? The United States violated the deal. It’s dead.

While Israel’s actual attack can’t be mentioned in public, Iran’s decision to increase its enrichment was swiftly condemned. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that the country’s “provocative announcement” called into question how serious Iran was about working out a new agreement.

When asked whether Biden would ask Israel to refrain from any further attacks while he tries to broker a deal, she wouldn’t say. “I would just reiterate that we don’t have any additional speculation to add to the cause or the origin of the attacks over the weekend,” said Psaki. “What our focus is on is on the diplomatic path forward and the diplomatic conversations.”

The Longest War in U.S. History

As anticipated, the Biden administration has moved beyond the May 1st deadline for removing troops from Afghanistan. The president now says that they will leave before September 11, which will mark the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attack on NYC. On cue the New York Times immediately had a piece relying entirely on the perspective of intelligence officials warning of looming chaos. “Will Afghanistan Become a Terrorism Safe Haven Once Again?,” asks the headline.

“While it is understandable to want all our forces to come home, it should not be at the expense of losing what we have gained to do so,” former CIA officer Michael P. Mulroy told the paper. “Repositioning our counterterrorism capabilities outside of the country will significantly reduce our intelligence collection operations and our ability to conduct unilateral operations against direct threats to the homeland.”

You’d think these people would make some modifications to the script after 20 years.

Noted imperial cheerleader Max Boot spent the last four years rebranding as a “Never Trump Republican” in a dumb hat, but he’s returned to his roots to decry this announcement. Boot’s been wrong about every foreign policy issue he’s ever written about, so he has an opinion column at the Washington Post. This week he used that space to warn about a potential Taliban takeover if U.S. troops end up leaving.

“The US is abandoning all the girls going to school, all the women in the workforce, all the brave soldiers fighting the Taliban, all the young entrepreneurs starting businesses, all the government officials trying to build a fragile democracy,” he declared on Twitter.

These defenses of perpetual occupation always imply that the last two decades have been pretty good for Afghanistan. There’s never any mention of, say, the current ICC investigation into alleged U.S. war crimes. Back in 2010, Time Magazine put a picture of Aesha Mohammadzai on their cover. Mohammadzai’s nose had been cut off by her Taliban husband. There was a provocative declaration under the image of her mutilated face: What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan. Of course Mohammadzai was attacked after “we” had already been there for almost a decade, but pro-war voices rarely bother to wrestle with such obvious contradictions.

Back to Boot. Shortly after 9/11 he wrote this:

Once Afghanistan has been dealt with, America should turn its attention to Iraq. It will probably not be possible to remove Saddam quickly without a U.S. invasion and occupation–though it will hardly require half a million men, since Saddam’s army is much diminished since the Gulf War, and we will probably have plenty of help from Iraqis, once they trust that we intend to finish the job this time. Once we have deposed Saddam, we can impose an American-led, international regency in Baghdad, to go along with the one in Kabul. With American seriousness and credibility thus restored, we will enjoy fruitful cooperation from the region’s many opportunists, who will show a newfound eagerness to be helpful in our larger task of rolling up the international terror network that threatens us. 

This was comically stupid at the time, but 20 years later it reads like straight parody. Boot’s modified his position a little, now claiming victory doesn’t really matter. The important thing is staying in countries forever. Here he is in 2019:

We need to think of these deployments in much the same way we thought of our Indian Wars, which lasted roughly 300 years (ca. 1600-1890), or as the British thought about their deployment on the North West Frontier (today’s Pakistan-Afghanistan border), which lasted 100 years (1840s-1940s). U.S. troops are not undertaking a conventional combat assignment. They are policing the frontiers of the Pax Americana.

Ah, the Indian Wars! A great and normal thing to model your foreign policy around.

Media critic Adam Johnson succinctly tackled Boot’s latest on Twitter: “From ‘they’re our Indian wars’ to ‘we need to fight for feminism and democracy’ just like that. Almost as if all the high minded human rights claptrap is bullshit and he was being honest the first time.”

Saying you’re going to get troops out of Afghanistan has become a rite of passage for modern presidents, so I don’t think anyone is holding their breath this time around. At any rate here’s Biden on the withdrawal:

The reason I’ve been in and out of Afghanistan and Iraq 20 times — I’ve been up in the Kunar — I’ve been throughout that whole country, mostly in a helicopter and sometimes in a vehicle. The fact is we went there for one reason: to get those people who killed Americans, al-Qaida. We’ve decimated al-Qaida central. We have eliminated Osama bin Laden. That was our purpose. And in fact, in the meantime, what we said we would do, we would help train the Afghan military. It’s their responsibility to take over their own security. That’s why, with 49 of our allies in Afghanistan, we’ve agreed on a gradual drawdown so we’re out of there by the year 2014.

Oops! That’s from a 2012 Vice Presidential debate. He continued:

But we are leaving. We are leaving in 2014, period, and in the process, we’re going to be saving over the next 10 years another $800 billion. We’ve been in this war for over a decade. The primary objective is almost completed. 

Almost.

A New McCollum Bill

Minnesota Rep. Betty McCollum has introduced the Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act. This historic piece of legislation expands on H.R. 2407, which McCollum introduced in 2019. In addition to blocking U.S. funding for Israel’s detention of Palestinian children, the new bill would also prohibit U.S. funds from being used for the annexation of Palestinian land.

“There is nothing out of the ordinary about conditioning aid. … All taxpayer funds provided by Congress to foreign governments in the form of aid are subject to conditions in a myriad of generally applicable laws, yet the $3.8 billion provided to Israel by the State Department has no country-specific conditions despite Israel’s systemic violations of Palestinian human rights,” McCollum told The Intercept’s Alex Kane. “I don’t want $1 of U.S. aid to Israel paying for the military detention and abuse of Palestinian children, the demolition of Palestinian homes, or the annexation of Palestinian land.”

As soon as the legislation was announced, it was condemned by AIPAC. “We oppose Betty McCollum’s latest anti-Israel bill, which would condition aid to Israel, undermine U.S. interests and make peace less likely,” tweeted the pro-Israel lobbying group. “We agree with President Joe Biden. Cuts or conditions on aid to Israel would be ‘irresponsible,’ ‘outrageous’ and a ‘gigantic mistake.’”

McCollum shot back on Twitter: “AIPAC *wants* U.S. taxpayer dollars to Israel to be spent on abusing Palestinian human rights? Imprisoning children? Demolishing homes? Annexing Palestinian land? Apparently they do.”

The bill is endorsed by over 75 organizations and currently has 13 House cosponsors:  Bobby L. Rush (IL-01), Danny K. Davis (IL-07), Andre Carson (IN-07), Marie Newman (IL-03), Ilhan Omar (MN-05), Mark Pocan (WI-02), Raúl Grijalva (AZ-03), Rashida Tlaib (MI-13), Ayanna Pressley (MA-07), Cori Bush (MO-01), Jamaal Bowman (NY-16), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14), Jesús “Chuy” García (IL-04)

Josh Ruebner broke down the bill in more detail on our site. We will definitely continue to cover this development in the coming weeks.

Odds & Ends

🇨🇦 Canada’s New Democratic Party passed a motion for sanctions on Israel.

🇦🇪 The Biden administration paused Trump’s $23 billion weapons agreement with the United Arab Emirates in January. They’ve now letting it proceed as planned.

🇵🇸 Palestine Legal has filed a civil rights complaint against Florida State University (FSU) for allegedly tolerating and and amplifying anti-Palestinian environment. It’s believed to be the first ever anti-Palestinian discrimination complaint against a school. It concerns the treatment of Ahmad Daraldik, who we’ve covered at the site.

🇺🇸 The City University of New York’s (CUNY) University Student Senate voted down a resolution endorsing the IHRA working definition of antisemitism.

🇺🇸 The Biden administration is requesting $715 billion for its first Pentagon budget. That’s 1.6% higher than its budget last year. “We cannot best build back better if the Pentagon’s budget is larger than it was under Donald Trump,” said Wisconsin Rep. Mark Pocan in a statement. “We recognize that non-defense spending has a proposed 16% increase, versus the 1.7% increase in defense spending. But increased spending on the Pentagon on fraud, waste, and zero accountability is still just that, and takes away from funding that could be spent on other people-centric policies like health care, education and housing.”

🇺🇸 A new report from the International Rescue Committee shows that Biden is set to accept the fewest refugees of any modern president. Yes, that includes Trump.

🇮🇱 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi released a statement celebrating Israeli Independence Day. “Seventy-three years ago, the United States extended its hand to the newly established Israeli state merely minutes after its founding – becoming the fledgling nation’s first friend and oldest ally,” it reads.

Stay safe out there,

Michael

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