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America’s War with the Islamic State, the Iran Nuclear Talks and U.S.-Israeli Relations, and U.S.-Russian Proxy War in Ukraine – Hillary Mann Leverett

Thursday, February 12, 2015 19:37

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(Before It's News)

TND Guest Contributors: Hillary Mann Leverett and Flynt Leverett |

Video interview segments available by clicking here.

Hillary went on MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Parry yesterday to discuss the Obama administration’s ongoing war against the Islamic State (IS), see here and here, the public split between the administration and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu over Iran policy, see here, and the continuing crisis in and over Ukraine, see here. On IS, Hillary takes on the all-too-frequent claim that the movement reflects pathological aspects of Islam and/or Middle Eastern culture, noting:

“There was no Islamic State before [the United States] invaded Iraq, before we destroyed the political order there and upturned the political order in the Middle East. The precursor to the Islamic State was Al-Qa’ida in Iraq, which—in contrast to Vice President Cheney’s claims—did not exist in Iraq and which was created as a response to the U.S. invasion. What we minimize in looking at the Islamic State, because we hate their tactics, is that it has emerged as the strongest, most formidable Sunni organization to protect Sunnis and resist the West and other governments that align with the West.”

Underscoring how much Western discourse on IS’ “brutality” (exemplified in the recent execution of a captured Jordanian pilot) and “fanaticism” misses the movement’s highly strategic approach, Hillary points out:

“The strategy of IS has been very clear, instrumental, and extraordinarily effective. Keep in mind—when IS first took Mosul, back in June, they had about 6,000 foot soldiers; today, they have over 50,000.

Although Jordanians want revenge for now, support for IS within Jordan is still deep. It’s not every Jordanian, but it’s deep. There are over 2,000 Jordanians fighting with IS.

So, IS’ strategy is twofold: One is for IS to show would-be attackers as weak, because their response is going to be meaningless in the in the face of IS hostage-killing. The other is to get attackers to overreach: for the United States to be seen as the cruel, inhumane bomber-murderer, and for Jordan, too, to get it to overreach and for this King to been seen as just an American lackey taking orders from the United States…The concern in Jordan for American foreign policy—what it does in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine—is a tool IS uses to surge recruitment very effectively.”

Regarding the controversy over Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s scheduled address to a joint session of Congress about Iran on March 3, Hillary explains:

“It shows how close we are to peace with Iran, which would be as revolutionary and beneficial to the United States as when we recognized and normalized relations with China in the 1970s. Because Obama has taken a page from our book, Going to Tehran, has shown the courage, gone forward, and actually gotten us close to a deal, that has gotten key people in Congress to come out.

The Congressional Black Caucus started it. They had the courage to come out first, when nobody else would come out and back the President, they came out and backed the President. And they said, what’s going on here is the President is doing something right, and we need to defend him against a clear, blatant, partisan attack. And the Israelis fed right into it. They thought they could manipulate Congress, and they went right to the Republicans and tried to make it a partisan game. And I think they’re really going to suffer when this goes down.

We’re looking at fundamental change in the Middle East. U.S. policy cannot sustain itself the way it is, and if President Obama can see this through, he will have a legacy of peace and stability that will be quite remarkable…I think we saw a very smart move by President Obama, by the Democratic Party—frankly, that I hadn’t seen for six years—to lead the agenda, to take charge, to actually lead. They came out hitting after the loss in the midterm elections. From January 20, with the State of the Union speech, what they’ve done on immigration, on a range of things—the Iran issue has become part and parcel of that: ‘let the president lead on foreign policy, let him succeed.’ And then the chips will fall where they may in 2016. And I think that the Democrats are now quite confident, as they haven’t been in a few years, that this will come to fruition on a range of issues for Obama and help surge the Democrats to victory in 2016.”

Finally, as continuing tensions between Washington and Moscow prompt mounting calls for the United States and the West to provide “defensive” weapons to Ukraine, Hillary counters that the only real solution to the crisis is for Washington and its partners to “rebuild the relationship [with Russia and President Vladimir Putin]”—to “talk to them,” to “take their interests seriously,” and to “look at a serious way to go about having a neutral Ukraine.”

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

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Click here to learn about “Going to Tehran,” co-authored by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett. This article originally appeared at the “Going to Tehran” website and is reprinted with permission.

About the authors:

Flynt Leverett is a professor at Pennsylvania State University’s School of International Affairs and is a Visiting Scholar at Peking University’s School of International Studies.

Dr. Leverett is a leading authority on the Middle East and Persian Gulf, U.S. foreign policy, and global energy affairs. From 1992 to 2003, he had a distinguished career in the U.S. government, serving as Senior Director for Middle East Affairs at the National Security Council, on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff, and as a CIA Senior Analyst. He left the George W. Bush Administration and government service in 2003 because of disagreements about Middle East policy and the conduct of the war on terror.

Dr. Leverett has written extensively on the politics, international relations, and political economy of the Middle East and Persian Gulf. In a series of monographs, articles, and opinion pieces (many co-authored with Hillary Mann Leverett), he has challenged Western conventional wisdom on the Islamic Republic of Iran’s foreign policy and internal politics, documented the historical record of previous Iranian cooperation with the United States, and presented the seminal argument in American foreign policy circles for a U.S.-Iranian “grand bargain”. His new book is Going to Tehran: Why the United States Must Come to Terms with the Islamic Republic(also co-authored with Hillary Mann Leverett).

Dr. Leverett has published opinion pieces in many high-profile venues, including The New York Times, POLITICO, and CNN, and contributes frequently to Foreign Policy. He has been interviewed about Iran and its geopolitics on leading public affairs programs around the world, includingCharlie Rose, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Empire and Riz Khan (Al Jazeera English), Viewpoint(Abu Dhabi Television), Spotlight (Russia Today) and Washington Journal (C-Span), as well as in leading publications such as Der Spiegel and Le Monde. Along with Hillary Mann Leverett, he was featured in the PBS Frontline documentary, “Showdown With Iran”, and profiled in Esquiremagazine.

Dr. Leverett has spoken about U.S.-Iranian relations at foreign ministries and strategic research centers in Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. He has been a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale University.

Dr. Leverett holds a Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University and is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

# # # #

Hillary Mann Leverett is a Senior Professorial Lecturer at the American University in Washington, DC and a Visiting Scholar at Peking University in Beijing, China. She has also taught at Yale University, where she was a Senior Lecturer and inaugural Senior Research Fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. She is also CEO of Strategic Energy and Global Analysis (STRATEGA), a political risk consultancy. Her new book is Going to Tehran: Why the United States Must Come to Terms with the Islamic Republic (co-authored with Flynt Leverett).

Mrs. Leverett has more than 20 years of academic, legal, business, diplomatic, and policy experience working on Middle Eastern issues. In the George W. Bush Administration, she worked as Director for Iran, Afghanistan and Persian Gulf Affairs at the National Security Council, Middle East expert on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff, and Political Advisor for Middle East, Central Asian and African issues at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. From 2001-2003, she was one of a small number of U.S. diplomats authorized to negotiate with the Iranians over Afghanistan, al-Qa’ida and Iraq. In the Clinton Administration, Leverett also served as Political Advisor for Middle East, Central Asian and African issues for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, Associate Director for Near Eastern Affairs at the National Security Council, and Special Assistant to the Ambassador at the U.S. embassy in Cairo. She was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and a Watson Fellowship, and in 1990-1991 worked in the U.S. embassies in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt and Israel, and was part of the team that reopened the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait after the first Gulf War.

Ms. Leverett has published extensively on Iran as well as on other Middle Eastern, Central and South Asian, and Russian issues. She has spoken about U.S.-Iranian relations at Harvard, MIT, the National Defense University, NYU, the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs, and major research centers in China. She has appeared on news and public affairs programs on BBC, CNN, MSNBC, and Al Jazeera (Arabic and English), and was featured in the highly acclaimed BBC documentary, Iran and the West. She appeared in the PBS Frontline documentary, “Showdown With Iran”, and was profiled in Esquire magazine. Her articles, often co-written with Flynt Leverett, have appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The National Interest, Politico, the Penn State Journal of Law and International Affairs, the Washington Monthly, and The International Spectator. She has provided expert testimony to the U.S. House Government Reform and Oversight Committee.

Mrs. Leverett holds a Juris Doctor from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Arts in Near Eastern Studies from Brandeis University.