Here's further evidence that Obama will be hawkish on Iran (and pushy about Israeli intransigence on the two-state solution). A piece in the Nation by Robert Dreyfuss on Dennis Ross's power over Iran policy at the State Department. (This really gives the lie to Wayne Madsen's/Philip Giraldi's wishful reports that Ross's former chairmanship of the Israel-based Jewish People Policy Planning Institute would cause him to be sidelined as having a conflict of interest). Dreyfuss:
Like virtually all of his neoconservative confreres, Ross does not argue
that negotiations with Iran should not proceed. Surrendering to the
inevitability of a US-Iran dialogue, they insist instead that any such
talks proceed according to a strict time limit, measured in weeks or, at
most, a few months. In November, Iran specialist Patrick Clawson, Ross's
colleague at WINEP, described any US-Iran dialogue that might emerge as
mere theater…
Putting US-Iran
diplomacy on a short fuse, as Ross and his colleagues want to do,
guarantees its failure, setting the stage for harsher sanctions,
embargoes and the "kinetic action" that Ross has suggested might follow.
