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Hillary Mann Leverett Dissects Netanyahu’s Speech on HuffPost Live

Wednesday, March 4, 2015 19:13

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TND Guest Contributors: Hillary Mann Leverett and Flynt Leverett |

On HuffPost Live for the Netanyahu speech to Congress yesterday, Hillary underscores this key point: “The United States is looking to accept the Islamic Republic of Iran as a critical player in the region. That will, by definition, curtail or contain some of Israel’s preferred foreign policy and national security strategies. And that’s what [the Netanyahu visit] is all about.” What’s at stake, she argues, is “how the Middle East—and the United States—is dealing and will deal with the rising power of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Hillary points out that Iran’s rise, within the international legal system, is particularly problematic for Israel because Israel “looks at many of its neighbors, especially the Islamic Republic of Iran, as not capable of being part of the international community or international legal structures…a position which resonates very strangely in the Middle East, because, of course, Israel is the only country in the region that has a nuclear arsenal and refuses to sign up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. [This] may be why Israel doesn’t want Iran to have a program—they want to retain their nuclear monopoly over the Middle East.”

But trying to continue to force Iran to cede its internationally recognized sovereign and treaty rights to indigenous nuclear power production, “is not only not feasible, but leads us on the path to yet another war. And President Obama promised us, when he first ran for office, he wasn’t going to get us into another ‘stupid war.’ Those were his words. And unfortunately that’s the path that Prime Minister Netanyahu would otherwise have us be on.”

Obama, of course, has not always lived up to that promise; witness his disastrous intervention in Libya. Let’s see if he lives up to it in the Iranian case, which is so critical to the future of the Middle East and to America’s trajectory as a great power in the 21^st century.

To see Hillary’s in-depth discussion of the intersecting dynamics of U.S.-Iranian and U.S.-Israeli relations on HuffPost Live, both before Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, click on the first video above or here, where she talks one-on-one, and on the second video above or here, where she is part of a panel with Rami Khouri from the American University of Beirut, and afterward, click on the second video above or here, 59:10 into the video.

Those who watched Netanyahu’s speech to Congress live or who view it on video may notice Alan Dershowitz, Hillary debate opponent in two segments on CNN last week, see here, sitting next to Elie Wiesel and Sara Netanyahu (the prime minister’s wife) in the gallery.

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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.

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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.