[Marxism] Fight over destroying Iran in top circles is not over

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/dreyfuss/426374/print?rel=nofollow
Is Iran "Demonic"? Ask Dennis Ross 
posted by Robert Dreyfuss on 04/12/2009 @ 11:26pm 

Does Dennis Ross believe that Iran is a "demonic" nation? Apparently so, at
least according to the latest report from the Jewish People Policy Planning
Institute. 

Readers of The Nation may already have seen my thumbnail profile of Dennis
Ross, Hillary Clinton's special envoy for "the Gulf and Southwest Asia,"
i.e., Iran. A smooth talking but hawkish diplomat who spent most of the past
decade at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel
thinktank in Washington, Ross is at best a controversial choice for an
administration dedicated to opening a dialogue with Iran. Among other
things, during his trenure at WINEP, Ross expressed skepticism about the
value of talks with Iran. 

Here's an addendum to that profile: until his recent appointment, Ross
served as chairman of the board for the Jewish People Policy Planning
Institute (JPPPI), an Israel-based organization that, according to its web
site, "makes an annual presentation to the Israeli Cabinet as a whole on
main developments in the Jewish world, offering its assessments and policy
recommendations." 

The organization adds: 


JPPPI's work serves as the basis for assessments, alerts and strategic
policy designs provided to Jewish decision makers, and to opinion leaders
and publics at large.

In the latest of those annual presentations, the JPPPI refers to "the
international threat posed by nuclear weapons capacity in Iran (and other
demonic societies)." Yes, you read that right: demonic. 

The JPPPI report adds that Israel has been abandoned to face the threat from
Iran alone: 


The past year has aggravated the Israeli dilemma of how to act vis-à-vis
Tehran, and there is a mounting sense that the international community would
rather leave Israel to deal with the problem on its own.

The report goes on to express a concern that an effort by the Obama
administation to reach what the JPPPI calls a "regional deal" with Iran
might be part and parcel of a "relatively aggressive effort to resolve the
Israeli-Arab conflict, and perhaps even to bring about the nuclear
disarmament of the Middle East." 

As Patrick Lang, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official, reports on
his blog, the JPPPI was founded by the Jewish Agency in 2002. The Jewish
Agency, formerly known as the Jewish Agency for Palestine, was the
provisional government of Israel at its inception, and it receives official
support from the government of Israel today. According to its official
website, the Jewish Agency was the "de facto government of the
state-on-its-way" in the period before Israel's founding in 1948, and in
2008 it had a budget of $314 million.




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