My chief response to the Wikileaks dox is surprise at the transparency of the Israel lobby in action. The most shocking revelation here is that 11 days after the election in 2008, Under Secretary of the Treasury Stuart Levey rushed over to Israel to make promises to Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni that Iran policy under president-elect Obama will not change, even if Levey is leaving his job. The Guardian characterizes his assurance as a “pledge.”
Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Stuart A. Levey, reassured GOI officials that no momentum would be lost in USG efforts to combat terrorist financing or to pressure Iran during the transition to a new US administration in January.
Who is Levey to promise on behalf of Obama? Well: Levey knows. Policy did not change. And Levey doesn’t resign, he is still around in the same job. And soon asst secy of state Andrew Shapiro and Congressman Robert Wexler are headed to Israel to reassure them about Obama hawkishness re Iran.
The revelation here is that The policy is not politicized. You have a generational election campaign allegedly devoted to change on the insurgent Illinoisan’s part, and this issue is not debated between Obama and John “Bomb-bomb-bomb-Iran” McCain.
It is not debated because the issue is dear to neoconservative hawks in McCain’s braintrust and liberal interventionists on Obama’s team, but the public is not allowed to discuss it, and why? Because if the public discussed it, maybe they would come to Sullivan’s conclusion (responding to American neoconservative joy that Arab states also sought action against Iran): it’s not in Americans‘ interest to be attacking Iran.
And even though Obama only defeated Hillary by thoroughly politicizing the Iraq war, by saying, I’m against, she was for it.
Jeff Blankfort (who is concerned as I am with the issue of Jewish responsibility in this mess) has commented here that Levey, Shapiro and Robert Wexler are all regarded by Israel as “warm Jews,” Americans who are hugely supportive of Israel. Certainly Levey has addressed AIPAC as a friend, and he slaloms from a Republican administration to a Democratic administration in a high political position without a hiccup. Just like Dennis Ross, who went from a Republican administration to a Democratic administration to chairing a “Jewish people”‘s policy group based in Jerusalem and then back into the Obama administration to make Iran/Middle East policy without hitting a speedbump. If this is not a pattern, I don’t know what is. John Mearsheimer lately called Ross an agent for the Israeli government, during a telephone call-in.
Mearsheimer was being blunt, but sometimes bluntness is demanded. The Levey promise is disturbing evidence of a shadow faction inside government devoted to an issue with tremendous national security implications. Just imagine the attacks on Americans if we attack Iran! And the voters don’t get to weigh in on it. Modern democracy.
Finally, note that in that cable Levey is also making promises to the Israelis about “the USG’s commitment to continue to work against Hamas and Palestinian terrorists.” This cable is written up in December 2008, weeks before the Gaza onslaught conducted by Tzipi Livni, with whom Levey met. And a few weeks later president-elect Obama says not a word about the Gaza onslaught, not a word. No– he’s been pledged.
