Despite the fact that the administration appears to have the votes to confirm Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense, activist groups like the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) continue to pound away at a brick wall at Hagel's dovishness towards Iran.  In essence, ECI's ads and rhetoric argue forcefully that both Hagel and Obama are not fully committed to defending Israel by revving up for an attack on Iran now. 

Don't take my word for it, though -- here's one of ECI's ads:

Now, as I've blogged before, this kind of interest group campaign is a waste of money if the goal is a partisan effort to weaken Obama and bolster the GOP.  What if the effort is sincere, however?  In other words,  if groups like ECI care only about eliminating the Iranian threat as soon as possible, is this their best expenditure of resources? 

Based on Sheera Frakel's McClatchy story from yesterday, I'd say the answer is no.  Clearly, the greatest threat to a softening Western posture towards Iran comes from... dare I say it... Israel itself!!!

Israeli intelligence officials now estimate that Iran won’t be able to build a nuclear weapon before 2015 or 2016, pushing back by several years previous assessments of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Intelligence briefings given to McClatchy over the last two months have confirmed that various officials across Israel’s military and political echelons now think it’s unrealistic that Iran could develop a nuclear weapons arsenal before 2015. Others pushed the date back even further, to the winter of 2016.

"Previous assessments were built on a set of data that has since shifted," said one Israeli intelligence officer, who spoke to McClatchy only on the condition that he not be identified. He said that in addition to a series of "mishaps" that interrupted work at Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iranian officials appeared to have slowed the program on their own.

Oh.  My.  God.  We already knew that there was a fifth column of Israelis who were pooh-poohing the notion of a pre-emptive strike on Iran.  Now, with this intelligence walkback, the credibility of the Israeli national security establishment has taken a pretty serious hit. 

If ECI and like-minded groups really think that Iran poses an existential threat and that the time to act is now, then I think they're targeting their resources at the wrong country.  Trying to convert Rand Paul to their point of view isn't enough, and opposing Hagel is fruitless at this point.  No, only a full-throated ECI campaign in Israel itself will be sufficient to prevent Jerusalem from falling into the appeasement camp.  And if they fail to redirect their activities, then I have no choice but to conclude that ECI has gone soft on Iran as well. 

Am I missing anything? 

It appears that I owe Mitt Romney a partial apology.  In yesterday's blog post I quoted from a video procured by Mother Jones' David Corn regarding Romney's perspective on the peace process between Israel and Palestine.  The tape suggested that Romney had zero hope for peace.  As Politico's Dylan Byers notes, however, the unedited version of the tape contained the following passage right after Romney had said that an ex-Secretary of State had told him that there was a prospect for a settlement between the Palestinians and the Israelis after the Palestinian elections.  After Romney said he didn't "delve" into it, he then added the following:   

But I always keep open: the idea of pushing on the Israelis to give something up to get the Palestinians to act is the worst idea in the world. We have done that time and time and time again. It does not work. So the only answer is show them strength. American strength, American resolve, and the Palestinians will some day reach the point where they want peace more than we’re trying to force peace on them. Then it’s worth having the discussion. So until then, it’s just wishful thinking (emphasis added).

OK, so it would appear that Romney does proffer a way of getting the two sides to talk.  My deepest apologies to Governor Romney for only printing the part of the statement that Mother Jones initially released. 

And yet... I have anothert question now.  I fear that Romney's "more resolve" strategy -- a theme he's echoed since making these comments in May -- raises more questions than answers. 

For exhibit A, let's go to the Financial Times' Najmeh Bozorgmehr, who interviewed Speaker of the Iranian Parliament (and possible future PM) Ali Larijani.   Here's what he had to say to Bozorgmehr about Mitt Romney: 

Military action against Iran would be “highly costly” for the US and threats issued by Mitt Romney as he tries to become the next American president are campaign rhetoric only and can be largely ignored, Ali Larijani, Speaker of the Iranian parliament, has told the FT.

Mr Romney has sought to portray himself as much tougher on Iran than President Barack Obama and more sympathetic to Israel’s concerns. But Mr Larijani is unimpressed, saying the Republican candidate has the “little bit of wisdom” needed to understand the consequences of waging war on the Islamic Republic.

So it would seem that Mr. Larijani doubts Romney's strength and resolve.  This is a problem. Romney's Theory of Statecraft seems to be that all U.S. problems in the world can be soled with Extra-Strength Resolve and Strength.  Now, even one accepts this premise, the failure of adversaries to believe Romney's promises means he's gonna have to display even more Extra-Strength Resolve and Strength to convince people that he is being strong... and resolute. 

The thing is, though, even Romney's allies doubt his strength and resolve... at least, they doubt his strength and resolve with respect to his China policy: 

Mitt Romney is hoping his tough talk on China policy will win him votes — but few of his big business donors or fellow Republicans support what he’s saying or believe he’d follow through if elected.

And if he did, many analysts say, he’d likely spark a disastrous and counter-productive trade war that would hurt both American consumers and the workers he says he’s trying to protect....

An actual Romney policy, many corporate executives believe, would have the same kind of focus on bringing cases before the World Trade Organization and negotiating behind closed doors — the same approach of Obama and George W. Bush.

“On his first day on the job, Romney is not going to put himself on the immediate defensive with the world’s second largest economy,” said one top financial industry executive who strongly supports Romney....

Romney hopes his tougher words will make Obama look weak. But the question remains whether Romney’s tough talk is just that: talk.

“It’s kind of a head scratcher,” said the senior financial services executive who supports Romney but questions his China policy. “Is this just rhetoric or is this really the view of the candidate?”

Now, to be fair, it's not just Romney supporters who don't believe Romney's resolve on China.  A Bloomberg Global Poll of  847 "decision makers in finance, markets and economics" showed that 82% of respondents were skeptical that Romney would designate China as a currency manipulator, for example. 

So we have a presidential candidate who thinks the way to get things done is to show resolve -- but neither his allies nor his adversaries believe Romney's own resolve.  Which leads to the following question:  is it possible that there is simply no amount of Extra-Strength Resolve and Strength that will allow Romney to bend the rest of the world to his will?  And if that's the case, what's his fallback option? 

Back in the days when the Doha round was being negotiated, and it was dragging along interminably, inevitably some columnist would trot out a cliche like "time is running out" or "we're in the red part of the red zone" or "the edge of the cliff" or some such line of alarmist rhetoric.  It got to the point where the rhetoric itself invited mockery. 

I think the new "Doha" is Iran's nuclear program.  I don't mean to trivialize the concerns about that nuclear program, but it seems that every month like clockwork some Israeli official tells Jeffrey Goldberg writes or says something to the effect of "time is running out" for negotiations with Iran.  Benjamin Netanyahu in particular likes to say this again and again and again and again.  Today Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren joins in the rhetoric. 

Israel does itself no favors with this gambit.  Constantly warning that a window is closing and not having it close degrades the signal-to-noise ratio of the warnings.  This is particularly problematic if the Iranian threat actually is getting worse.  Haaretz's Barak Ravid reports that Western intelligence agencies have grown more concerned in recent months (hat tip Micah Zenko): 

New intelligence information obtained by Israel and four Western countries indicates that Iran has made greater progress on developing components for its nuclear weapons program than the West had previously realized, according to Western diplomats and Israeli officials who are closely involved in efforts to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb.

A Western diplomat who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to discuss intelligence information said the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Israel agree on that assessment.

Not good -- but here the history of Western intelligence agency estimates of Middle East WMD programs also undercuts the signal juuuuust a wee bit.  The Haaretz story also cites as evidence a Daily Telegraph report based on the information of "the Iranian opposition group Mujahideen al-Khalq."  Well, that's one way to describe that group, although the U.S. State Department has a different designation. 

There's something else in the Haaretz story that is worth discussing: 

Netanyahu told U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney that an Israeli or American military attack on Iran's nuclear facilities was likely to help topple the ayatollah regime, just as the 1976 Entebbe raid led to the defeat of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, according to a senior Israeli official.

The comment came when Romney asked Netanyahu during their July 29 meeting in Jerusalem whether he thinks an Israeli attack on the nuclear facilities would unite Iranians, ultimately strengthening the regime, the official said.

In explaining why he thinks that would not happen, Netanyahu recounted what he said was Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's statement to him that the raid ultimately led to Amin's downfall three years later.

"Ugandan President Museveni told me the Entebbe raid was a turning point in the effort to topple Idi Amin," the Israeli official quoted Netanyahu as saying. "He said the operation strengthened Amin's rivals because it revealed how vulnerable his regime was."

Now I've seen bad analogies used on Iran before, but this is definitely a new one. 

Look, let's put it this way -- despite all of the factionalism within the Iranian regime, it's still a hell of a lot stronger and more institutionalized than Idi Amin's government was in Uganda.  Furthermore, the only way military action would cause the Iranian people to rise up against the current regime would be if the regime, after enduring years of crippling sanctions as well military attacks, turned around and acquiesced to the world's demands.  That reversal would likely prompt the Iranian people to say, "That's it?!  Then why the f**k did you put us through years of pain?" 

So, to sum up:  I don't know what to believe anymore when Israelis talk about Iran -- except that Iran is not Uganda. 

Buried within James Risen's interesting New York Times front-pager about the easing of Iran tensions is an even more interesting story about the deep weirdness that is going on within Israel's national security establishment on Iran: 

At the same time in Israel, the conservative government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been rocked by a series of public comments from current and former Israeli military and intelligence officials questioning the wisdom of attacking Iran.

The latest comments came from Yuval Diskin, the former chief of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service, who on Friday said Mr. Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak should not be trusted to determine policy on Iran. He said the judgments of both men have been clouded by “messianic feelings.” Mr. Diskin, who was chief of Shin Bet until last year, said an attack against Iran might cause it to speed up its nuclear program.

Just days before, Israel’s army chief of staff suggested in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the the Iranian threat was not quite as imminent as Mr. Netanyahu has portrayed it. In his comments, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz suggested that he agreed with the intelligence assessments of the United States that Iran has not yet decided whether to build a nuclear bomb.

Iran “is going step by step to the place where it will be able to decide whether to manufacture a nuclear bomb. It hasn’t yet decided whether to go the extra mile,” General Gantz told Haaretz. He suggested that the crisis may not come to a head this year. But he said, “Clearly, the more the Iranians progress, the worse the situation is.”

Last month, Meir Dagan, the former chief of the Israeli spy agency Mossad, said he did not advocate a pre-emptive Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear program anytime soon. In an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Mr. Dagan said the Iranian government was “a very rational one,” and that Iranian officials were “considering all the implications of their actions.”

As someone who thought the Iran rhetoric coming from Jerusalem was decidedly overheated, I nevertheless have more mixed feelings about these developments than, say, Peter Beinart.  What's disturbing is that even though Israel's actual opposition party is evincing many of the same sentiments as the former military officers quoted above, they are not the ones moving the policy debate -- it's the ex-military/intel guys. 

That's a problem.  As much as candidates for higher office like to talk about "consulting the commanders on the ground" and the like, big decisions about national security policy should be the province of elected leaders.  Civilians need to be in control of these decisions -- the moment that elected leaders give up this control, then the voters have forfeited the most vital decisions of a republic.  This is why, in the United States, one of the rare sources of continuing bipartisan agreement is that when military commanders voice their policy opinions to the press in a way that contradicts the President, they need to be canned. 

Now, recently retired military and intelligence officials are in a slightly different category, but there's still a danger here.  I respect that these ;people should have a voice, particularly if they feel their country is on the precipice of a policy disaster -- but should their voice be louder than that of the main opposition party?  I don't think so, and it's a sign that there's a problem with Israeli democracy if that's the case.  I don't think this is entirely the fault of ex-IDF and Shin Bet leaders, mind you -- Netanyahu and Barak are part of the problem as well.  Still, at least the latter people won elections and must go back to the voters again. 

Developing... in a  very problematic manner. 

With all the "loose talk" involving Iran and Israel the past week, it seems like an excellent time to discuss the role of nationalist domestic audiences in exacerbating conflict.  Now, there is a large literature on this topic in international relations:  how audience costs can be used to make costly signals in crisis bargaining, how audience costs increase as crises escalate, how a world in which all countries have nationalist audiences creates an environment in which crises can spiral out of control, and how, in the information age, it has become increasingly difficult for foreign policy leaders to placate their domestic audiences without creating problems abroad. 

Sure, I could do all of that in a very long-winded and tedious way.  Or I can just embed Jon Stewart's opening bit from last night's Daily Show: 

Thanks, Jon -- you saved me a good hour or two today. 

This has been an exceedingly weird week with respect to the escalating dispute between Iran and countries not thrilled with Iran's nuclear program.  On the one hand, you have the United States going to great lengths to widen and deepen the sanctions regime against Iran and deter Iran from trying to close the Straits of Hormuz.  On the other hand, you have U.S. officials contradicting themselves and backtracking from statements made to the Washington Post over the precise purpose of the sanctions.  On the third hand, you have signals that Turkey is brokering another round of negotiations between Iran and the P5 + 1. 

And then, in the last hand, you have... Israel.  Some weird s**t has been going down.  Following the apparent assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took great pains to "categorically deny" U.S. involvment.  In a New York Times front-pager, U.S. officials were even more explicit:

The assassination drew an unusually strong condemnation from the White House and the State Department, which disavowed any American complicity. The statements by the United States appeared to reflect serious concern about the growing number of lethal attacks, which some experts believe could backfire by undercutting future negotiations and prompting Iran to redouble what the West suspects is a quest for a nuclear capacity.

“The United States had absolutely nothing to do with this,” said Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the National Security Council. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared to expand the denial beyond Wednesday’s killing, “categorically” denying “any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran.”

“We believe that there has to be an understanding between Iran, its neighbors and the international community that finds a way forward for it to end its provocative behavior, end its search for nuclear weapons and rejoin the international community,” Mrs. Clinton said.

Also this week, FP ran a story by Mark Perry describing Israel's "false flag" operation to recruit Pakistani terrorists.  In the essay, Perry gets the following quotes from retired U.S. intelligence officials: 

There's no question that the U.S. has cooperated with Israel in intelligence-gathering operations against the Iranians, but this was different. No matter what anyone thinks, we're not in the business of assassinating Iranian officials or killing Iranian civilians....

We don't do bang and boom... and we don't do political assassinations.

Contrast this with the Israeli quotes in the NYT story:

The Israeli military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, writing on Facebook about the attack, said, “I don’t know who took revenge on the Iranian scientist, but I am definitely not shedding a tear,” Israeli news media reported....

A former senior Israeli security official, who would speak of the covert campaign only in general terms and on the condition of anonymity, said the uncertainty about who was responsible was useful. “It’s not enough to guess,” he said. “You can’t prove it, so you can’t retaliate. When it’s very, very clear who’s behind an attack, the world behaves differently.” (emphasis added)

I think the bolded section in the last paragraph suggests some intuition about what is happening.  If it's true that ambiguity about who is responsible for covert action is useful, and the United States is categorically denying its role in the assassination part of the covert action, then the Obama administration is openly and clearly signaling to Israel to cut it out. 

As to why the United States is doing this, I'd posit one or a combination of the following reasons: 

1)  Washington might have moral or legal qualms with the assassination dimension of these covert actions;  

2)  Such assasinations give the Iranian government cover to conduct its own assassinations campaign, which winnows the number of scientists the United States  can recruit for its own intelligence;

3)  The Obama administration thinks it can topple the regime, but these assassinations will be counterproductive;

4)  The Obama administration has been trying to get Iran back to the bargaining table, and this kind of covert action stops that from happening;

5)  The Obama administration is fragmented and therefore not entirely certain what it's aims are in Iran, but the policy principals know that what Israel is doing ain't helping. 

I'm leaning towards (5) at this point, but I'd entertain other explanations in the comments below.

Developing... in some very bizarre ways. 

UPDATE:  The Wall Street Journal has some further reporting that reveals a bit of the current uncertainty and the bureaucratic wrangling that appears to be going on.  Some key parts:

U.S. defense leaders are increasingly concerned that Israel is preparing to take military action against Iran, over U.S. objections, and have stepped up contingency planning to safeguard U.S. facilities in the region in case of a conflict.

President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other top officials have delivered a string of private messages to Israeli leaders warning about the dire consequences of a strike. The U.S. wants Israel to give more time for the effects of sanctions and other measures intended to force Iran to abandon its perceived efforts to build nuclear weapons.

Stepping up the pressure, Mr. Obama spoke by telephone on Thursday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and U.S. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will meet with Israeli military officials in Tel Aviv next week....

Mr. Panetta and other top officials have privately sought assurances from Israeli leaders in recent weeks that they won't take military action against Iran. But the Israeli response has been noncommittal, U.S. officials said.

U.S. officials briefed on the military's planning said concern has mounted over the past two years that Israel may strike Iran. But rising tensions with Iran and recent changes at Iranian nuclear sites have ratcheted up the level of U.S. alarm.

"Our concern is heightened," a senior U.S. military official said of the probability of an Israeli strike over U.S. objections.

Tehran crossed at least one of Israel's "red lines" earlier this month when it announced it had begun enriching uranium at the Fordow underground nuclear facility near the holy city of Qom.

The planned closing of Israel's nuclear plant near Dimona this month, which was reported in Israeli media, sounded alarms in Washington, where officials feared it meant Israel was repositioning its own nuclear assets to safeguard them against a potential Iranian counterstrike.

Despite the close relationship between the U.S. and Israel, U.S. officials have consistently puzzled over Israeli intentions. "It's hard to know what's bluster and what's not with the Israelis," said a former U.S. official.

ANOTHER UPDATE:  Well, this is just peachy:

The IRNA state news agency said Saturday that Iran's Foreign Ministry has sent a diplomatic letter to the U.S. saying that it has "evidence and reliable information" that the CIA provided "guidance, support and planning" to assassins "directly involved" in Roshan's killing.

The U.S. has denied any role in the assassination....

In the clearest sign yet that Iran is preparing to strike back for Roshan's killing, Gen. Masoud Jazayeri, the spokesman for Iran's Joint Armed Forces Staff, was quoted by the semiofficial ISNA news agency Saturday as saying that Tehran was "reviewing the punishment" of "behind-the-scene elements" involved in the assassination.

"Iran's response will be a tormenting one for supporters of state terrorism," he said, without elaborating. "The enemies of the Iranian nation, especially the United States, Britain and the Zionist regime, or Israel, have to be held responsible for their activities."

Ben Smith's story in Politico today focuses on the emergence of a more critical stance on Israel from Media Matters and the Center for American Progress.  Or, as neoconservatve Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin interprets it, Smith  "blows the cover off the anti-Israel left and the Democrats’ favorite think tank, the Center for American Progress, which harbors many of its shrillest voices."

What's interesting about Smith's story is his evidence for this tonal shift at CAP and Media Matters -- namely, tweets and blog posts. 

The daily battle is waged in Media Matters’ emails, on CAP’s blogs, Middle East Progress and ThinkProgress and most of all on Twitter, where a Media Mattters official, MJ Rosenberg, regularly heaps vitriol on those who disagree as “Iraq war neocon liar” (the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg) or having “dual loyalties” to the U.S. and Israel (the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin). And while the Center for American Progress tends to walk a more careful line, warm words for Israel can be hard to find on its blogs....

CAP officials have told angry allies that the bloggers don’t speak for the organization, and senior fellow Brian Katulis – whose work is more standard Clinton-Democrat fare – stressed that in an email.

“I think there are different voices on the Think Progress blog and some individual analysts - and some of that work, especially the blog, is I think aimed at reporting on and reflecting one aspect of the diversity of the views among the broad progressive community,” he said. “But what one blogger or analyst may write isn’t necessarily indicative of what our policy recommendations are for the administration or Congress when I’m doing meetings with our friends in government.”

The director of CAP’s national security program, Ken Gude, also drew a distinction between the blog, which is CAP’s loudest megaphone, and its less confrontational policy work.

“There’s a distinction here that we have between the policy work that we do and the blogging work that we do,” he said. Middle East Progress “is clearly a progressive blog and it does respond to arguments that are made most forcefully by conservatives and it responds in that way.”....

But the fact remains that the Center’s most audible voices on the Middle East aren’t the former Clinton staffers who populate much of the organization, and they come from different foreign policy traditions. Duss, a confrontational presence on Twitter but typically a more careful blogger, places himself in what’s sometimes called the “realist” stream of American foreign policy (emphasis added). 

So, to sum up Smith's observations, what's driving this story is that when it comes to Israel, some of CAP and Media Matters analysts are really harsh on Twitter and pretty harsh on the blogs -- but the more substantive, traditional  policy work doesn't look like that at all, so it's being overblown. 

Rubin is having none of that: 

[T]he scandal here is that CAP houses and provides a blog for such sentiments....

CAP is promoting this and is responsible for the venomous output on its blogs.

The excuse that these voices don’t represent CAP’s views and aren’t attributable to CAP is ludicrous....

Imagine if the bloggers were writing about the inferiority of a racial group. They’d be gone in a nanosecond. In fact, those who fancy themselves as respectable think tankers and loyal Democrats are enablers of the scourge of anti-Semitic filth that flows through the hard left. CAP has a choice: Clean out the sewer or be prepared to take the approbation that goes with the association with Israel haters and those who peddle in anti-Semitic tripe.

I don't agree with Rubin's characterizations of the content -- the material in question is not anti-Semitic (though it's problematic and borderline offensive) and CAP ain't "hard left."  That said, she raises an interesting and valid point about what, exactly, is the output of a think tank.  Is it the more traditional policy analysis?  The blogs?  The individual Twitter feeds of its denizens?  In a Web 2.0 world, I have to wonder if the latter matters at least as much as the former (of course, the significance of tweets, etc., would have to apply to Rubin as well.  Her own ombudsman, for example, blasted her for re-tweeing a link to "reprehensible" blog post containing "incendiary rhetoric"). 

There's a lot to consider here -- how a think tank brands itself, whether policy analysts can freely express themselves without being associated with their day job, and exactly how policy analysis is crafted.  If, for example, someone develops a policy position in a path-dependent manner from instant tweet to somewhat-less-instant blog post to a memo/testimony that reifies those original statements, then Web 2.0 really matters.  If, however, time leads one to modify or recalibrate the initial response -- as the statement of Duss suggests -- then Web 2.0 still matters, but in a different way.  It matters only insomuch as the foreign policy community thinks that tweets and blog posts capture more attention and bandwidth than more conventional forms of policy analysis.

What do you think? 

The Weekly Standard's Daniel Halper reads through the fine print of a G-20 pool report: 

President Obama] entered the room at 1:15 and took to his left, heading to Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy. They chatted for a few seconds before British Prime minister David Cameron joined them. Hard to understand what they were saying amid the cameras noise. POTUS then took a stroll to Australian Premier Julia Gillard who got a hug as European president Herman van Rompuy, European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso and Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan were watching. Eventually the Europeans got a handshake but Erdogan got the hug treatment....

Isn't this whole scene pretty standard for President Obama? The Europeans get a handshake and the Islamist Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan gets a hug (emphasis by Halper).

Michael Goldfarb -- Halper's colleague at the Weekly Standard -- goes further, tweeting this anecdote as an example of Obama "hugging enemies, abandoning allies." 

Yeah, I can't believe that Obama is hugging the personification of an America enemy like, like... a NATO treaty ally's head of government.  The same country that helped to bankroll the Libya anti-Gadhafi movement and is now creating an enclave for the Free Syrian Army. 

Yes, Erdogan has clearly made life difficult for another ally -- Israel. On the other hand, lots of America's allies make life difficult for other American allies (see: Gibraltar). That doesn't mean Turkey automatically gets its ally label revoked. If you look at the larger balance sheet of American interests, Turkey under Erdogan has been neither an enemy like Iran nor a frenemy like Pakistan.  It's been occasonally aggravating, but really, when it comes to the global political economy, western European leaders like Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy have been way more aggravatiing. 

So, yes, Michael Goldfarb has clearly gone Vizzini on the word "enemy." 

To take a step back here, however, Goldfarb's language raises an some interesting observations.  first, there's an awful lot of "friend/enemy" distinctions being made among GOP foreign policy commentators.  That's the one takeaway from Herman Cain's foreign policy statements to date.  The distinction sometimes useful -- from an American perspective, India is a friend but not an ally, while Pakistan is the reverse.  Still, by and large, friends and allies do overlap a lot.  Does this kind if language indicate a new GOP embrace of Carl Schmitt's worldview? 

Second, to be blunt about it, is Israel now America's ally uber alles?  If other countries disagree with Israel, does that mean, in Goldfarb's eyes, that they no longer qualify as either friend or ally?  Are there any other of America's friends that fall into this super-special status?  I really want to know. 

The Days of Rage seem to be persisting in Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak is gunning for 2011's Marie Antoinette Award for Most Clueless Political Response By a Leader, and Egyptian protestors have completely and repeatedly ignored the 4 PM curfew announced on Friday.  The police have withdrawn, the armed forces are out but not exactly stopping the protestors, and anyone vaguely related to Hosni Mubarak appears to have decided this was a swell time to shop at Harrod's.  The official U.S. take on the situation is to tap-dance as fast as humanly possible not say all that much. 

So.... what now?  What's going to happen?   Like I said last week -- and like Paul Krugman -- I don't know.  But having spent the morning watching the Sunday talk shows and the afternoon feverishly updating my Twitter feed, let me take this opportunity to ask as many provocative questions as I can: 

1)  Why is Mubarak toast?  Everyone assumes that the Egyptian leader is a dead man walking, and given his speech on Friday, I can understand that sentiment.  There are, however, remaining options for Mubarak to pursue, ranging from a full-blown 1989 Tiananmen square crackdown to a slow-motion 2009 Tehran-style crackdown. 

Obviously, these aren't remotely good options for anyone involved.  The first rule in political science, however, is that leaders want to stay in power, and Mubarak has given no indication that he wants to leave.  He could be packing up as I type this -- but 80-year old strongmen don't tend to faint at the first spot of trouble. 

The Days of Rage have clearly altered the future of Egypt -- Gamel Mubarak is not going to succeed his father.  How much additional change will take place is unclear. 

2)  Could the army crack down if it wanted to?  Contradicting my first question, the one thing I wonder is whether the Egyptian state has the capacity to crack down any more.  Egypt's internal security forces have failed miserably.  This leaves the army, an institution that has, to date, commanded respect across all walks of life in Egypt and refrained from direct internal coercion activities . 

The fact that jets buzzed Tahrir Dquare suggests two things.  First, the military is trying to signal to protestors to, you know, go home.  Second, the military might not have the available tools to make this point more effectively, and might not be able to efficiently dispatch protestors if so desired.  If this cable is accurate, the Egyptian military has long-focused on developing its conventional warfare capabilities, which is great for an armored attack in the desert and lousy for subduing a restive civilian population. 

I'm sure the military could restore order if necessary, but it would be a hugely inefficient enterprise.  The hit to their reputation would be massive. 

3)  Has U.S. influence over the situation increased and not decreased?  Again, lots of talk today about how U.S. can't really shape the outcome.  OK, except that I don't think the following statements add up:

a)  The Egyptian armed forces are now the central pillar propping up the Egyptian state;

b)  The Egyptian and American defense establishments have strong ties;

c)  U.S. aide to Egypt is roughly $3 billion a year;

d)  U.S. influence over the situation has waned.

As the Obama administration's rhetoric shifts -- going from calling on Mubarak to take action to talk about "transition" -- I wonder whether the U.S. is simply following the situation on the ground, or whether the situation on the ground has allowed the administration to start exerting more leverage. 

4)  After Egypt, which country in the region is the most nervous?  This ain't Tunisia, it's the heart of the Arab Middle East.  Regime chage in Egypt will send shockwaves across Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, Libya and Syria. 

That said, I suspect the most nervous country in the region will be Israel.  When I was there this summer listening to their top security experts, Egypt was barely mentioned.  The cornerstone of Israel's security was the notion that Egypt was a partner and not a threat.  A region in which Iran, Turkey and Egypt all adopt hostile attitudes towards the State of Israel is, let's say, not an ideal situation.  If both Turkey and Egypt look like democracies a year from now, that makes things even worse. 

5)  Is the Muslim Brotherhood really all that and a bag of chips?  The MB wasn't behind the latest protests, and it's not entirely clear how much support they actually command in Egypt. This hasn't stopped speculation about what an MB-led Egypt would look like.  While everyone is evoking what happened in Iran in 1979, I keep thinking that the Egyptian military is a lot more robust now than the Iranian military was back then.  Stratfor speculates otherwise, but they don't have much data to back up their claim.  I find it interesting that the MB threat has not deterred neoconservatives from supporting, at a minimum, regime change in Egypt. 

[So do you have any answers?--ed.  The U.S. should be pursuing a broad-spectrum policy of engaging any and every actor in Egypt right now, but the key is the military.  All available pressure -- including an aid cutoff -- should be put on that institution to not intervene and not attack civilians.  If that happens, I think that all the other dominoes fall.] 

My latest bloggingheads diavlog is with National Security Network's Heather Hurlburt.  We talk about the Park51 controversy and its effect on national security, the prospect for direct talks between Israel and Palestine, Iran's nuclear program, and what the hell is going on at the Cato Institute: 

Watch the whole thing, but my favorite clip comes at the end, in which Heather and I envisage how VH1 would make a Behind the Think Tanks program sound compelling:  "Against all odds, Heather Hurlburt had achieved influence and gravitas at NSN.  Unfortunately, her addiction to cable TV appearances would also cause her tragic downfall....."

 In a desperate, last-ditch effort to keep up with the President's pace of summer vacations, your humble blogger will be at an undisclosed locale and blogging at a more leisurely pace than normal (though I do hope to get to the Goldberg essay on Israel/US/Iran soon). 

I confess to being not much of a fiction reader in general, and I've already read my novel for the summer.  But I am looking forward to my non-fiction reading on this trip - it‘s a balanced mix of something old, something new, and a few things to think about in the wake of my Israel trip: 

1)  Harold James, The End of Globalization:  Lessons From the Great Depression.  As the economy starts heading into its second dip since the fall of 2008, it's worth contemplating whether the globalized economy we've taken for granted the past thirty years could really disintegrate.  It's certainly true that, to date, the Great Recession has not really upended the open rules of the global game.  A few more dips, however, and anything is possible.  James wrote this short book about a decade ago, using prior historical eras in which globalization has collapsed to ask whether it could happen again.  This, plus another look at Barry Eichengreen's Golden Fetters when I get back, should serve me well for the next month or so. 

2)  Jerry Z. Muller, Capitalism and the Jews.  To put it bluntly, why are the Jews so damn good at commerce?  How have philosophers explained this stereotype-that-contains-some-element-of-truth?  Why have some Jews rebelled against the market?  This interconnected collection of essays proffers some tentative answers to these questions.   

3)  Albert Hirschman, The Rhetoric of Reaction:  Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy.  If this summer's political to-dos have been about anything, they've been about how conservatives reactionaries have skillfully and not-so-skillfully used their rhetoric to push the public discourse in a direction that favors their arguments.  In this kind of environment, Hirschman's book seems especially trenchant.  Besides, in my humble opinion, every social scientist should read or re-read one of Albert Hirschman's books every year.  Hmmm.... question to readers:  which author do you think social scientists should read at least once a year?

4)  Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-up Nation:  The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle.  While I was in Israel, everyone and their Jewish mother kept telling me to read this book, which proffers to explain why Israel has transformed itself from socialist basketcase to entrepreneurial exemplar.  So, I'll take a look.  I've heard Singer's spiel on this, which among other things argues that Israeli entrepreneurs have a comparative advantage because of their esprit de corps that builds from their army experience.  This echoes some of Avner Greif's work about the Maghrebi traders.  That said, Greif's hypothesis is now open to question, and I'm not completely convinced about Senor and Singer's argument. 

5)  Peter Andreas and Kelly Greenhill, eds., Sex, Drugs and Body Counts:  The Politics of Numbers in Global Crime and Conflict.  Having  worked a bit on money laundering, I'm keenly aware of the ways in which bulls**t statistics become accepted as fact.  If some authoritative figure pulls a number out of thin air, the media will often repeat it to the point where it becomes gospel.  Andreas and Greenhill's edited volume takes a hard look at how some of these figures affect public policy debates.  Slate's Jack Shafer has already penned a paean to the book that I could never match, so just check out his praiseworthy review. 

Readers are encouraged to proffer their own nonfiction book recommendations in the comments.

Tel Aviv is a charming, modern, cosmopolitan city with a thriving high-tech sector, powder-sand beaches and the most temperate of seas.  Apparently, it is also the most insidious threat to the state of Israel.

You might think that Hamas or Hezbollah want to take out Tel Aviv.  Well, maybe, but right now it's the Israelis who have a beef with the lovely city on the Mediterranean Sea.  Simply put, the problem with Tel Aviv is that it's sucking up all of the young, secular Israelis from across the country.  As well it should - it offers good jobs and an easygoing lifestyle, like the Bay Area in the U.S. 

This migration within Israel creates a number of long-term policy headaches.  First, residents of Tel Aviv simply don't care that much about making peace with the Palestinian Authority, Syria, or the rest of the Arab world.  Tel Aviv is almost exclusively Jewish, it's too far south for Hezbollah to hit and too far north for Hamas to hit.  You can live in Tel Aviv and not think about long-term security concerns - which is exactly what most Israelis do.  This is the majority of the population, and they're politically apathetic. 

This leaves other parts of the country - most obviously Jerusalem and the West Bank settlements - to the rapidly growing ultra-Orthodox and those Israeli nationalists who believe in Greater Israel.  These are the people driving the Israeli government to expand settlement construction in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem.  The short-term political logic is to appease the settler and ultra-Orthodox movements.  Both IDF officials and Israeli politicians know that at some point Israel will have to let go of most of this territory.  The demographics are already getting ugly.  One negotiator quoted Thomas Jefferson on this:  "We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other."

Finally, because of the rush to Tel Aviv, Israel isn't populating more strategic parts of its country, like the Negev or the Galilee.  Instead, they're expanding into the West Bank, which is pretty stupid because most (though not all) of that territory will be ceded to Palestine at some point.  Officials kept talking about creating a high-speed rail network to encourage more population spread away from Tel Aviv, but that's a ways off.  As the Palestinian population outpaces the growth of the Jewish population, there's going to be incentives to move to those areas.  One demographer worries about an expanding, J-shaped mass of Palestinians that shrinks Israel down to Tel Aviv and its environs.  That fear might be exaggerated, but it's similar to the Russian fear of Chinese expansion into Siberia.   

The longer this trend continues, the more the cosmopolitans of Tel Aviv will cede power to the ultra-orthodox and the ultra-nationalists.  That augurs badly for Israel's strategic situation. 

So what do the Palestinians think about all of this?  That will be the subject of my next post.

Earlier today, we were given a tour of the Green Line and the physical barrier that separates Isreal proper from the West Bank (note -- the Green Line and the location of the barrier are not the same thing, which is a source of furious and intractable debate some mild contestation among the interested parties.)

We were driven to an overlook that contrasted a small Israeli settlement with the Palestinian city of Qalqilya. The settlement looks like a leafy exurb in the middle of a lot of brown, dilapidated neighborhoods. In case you were wondering, the material incentive for settlement housing is that it's 40 percent cheaper than living in Tel Aviv, the climate is more temperate, and it's still close to the city.

Our tour guide was a former IDF brigadier general, and without getting into specifics let's just say that he knew an awful lot about the West Bank. He gave us a brief lecture explaining the humanitarian issues that arose with the creation of the barrier, the security gains that came from it, the economic disparity between the Palestinian cities and the settlements, and so forth.

As he was talking, a second tour group showed up and the other tour guide started talking, also in English. I sidled up to the edge of that group to listen. The second guide's spiel was rather different. He talked about the dangers of disengaging from the West Bank, because of the possibility of a takeover by either Hamas of Hezbollah. Instability in Iraq and Jordan were also mentioned as possibilities.

Now this was a curious statement, given that Hezbollah is Shiite and based in Lebanon -- they have a tacit alliance with Hamas, but would be unlikely to find hospitable ground in the West Bank under any contingency.

It turns out that this tour was run by -- wait for it -- AIPAC. The guide was shepherding a group of Hispanic politicians around the country.

Take from this what you will.

Israel is a special country, and getting there is part of its special nature.  If you choose to come, here are some useful travel tips that might make your voyage a more pleasant one: 

Get to your gate on the early side.  All trips to Israel involve a second - and to my eyes, at least - completely superfluous security check at the gate.  I say superfluous because it seemed to be an exact duplicate of the security screening required to get to the gate in the first place.  So, just to be clear, this is bad redundancy, not good redundancy.

Once on the plane, immediately be prepared for a high-stress effort to get the plane out of the gate.  The reason is that most planes flying to Tel Aviv have a fair number of Orthodox Jewish families on board.  Given that the average size of such a family is about five kids, there are a lot of child seats that need to be installed, seat-swapping that needs to be done, and so forth.  On my flight, as well as Goldie's, Marty's,  and B-Woww's, the flight attendants went to 11 on the panic meter because the plane couldn't leave the gate unless everyone was sitting down, and inevitably someone wasn't sitting down.  Frantic warnings about missing slot times for takeoff will ensure.  In all likelihood, the plane will settle down just at the last moment possible.

Go to the bathroom about 45 minutes before landing - because you're not allowed to get out of your seat for the last thirty minutes on a flight to Israel. 

Israel is a member of the OECD, which means it has OECD levels of traffic.  It will take some time to get from the airport to your hotel.  The traffic signs are in Hebrew, Arabic and English, with many in Russian as well.  Some of the English translations can be very direct.  Next to one power line, it simply said, "Danger of Death." 

As for Tel Aviv itself, my only useful geopolitical observation is that I've discovered the real reason that the U.S. embassy will never relocate from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  Presidents repeatedly pledge to make this move, but it never happens. 

Hard-bitten realpolitik types will explain that this is because of the ill will that such a move would engender within the Arab world.  Ha!!  The real reason is that the current U.S. embassy is located on some prime beachfront property next to the big hotels.  If I was a Foreign Service Officer assigned to Tel Aviv, I'd do everything in my power to prevent moving the embassy away from a beach with powdery sand, warm Mediterranean waters, and bikinis and Speedos as far as the eye can see.  It doesn't even matter if there's ever an Israeli-Palestinian peace - bureaucratic politics will keep that embassy right where it is. 

Fortunately for embassy officials, and unfortunately for almost everyone else, there won't be a peace anytime soon.  More on that in my next update.