Why America Needs an Iran Deal – and Why Israel Will Inevitably Oppose One: Leverett CNN Op-Ed

(Before It's News)

TND Guest Contributor:   Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett |

In the wake of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech to the U.S. Congress earlier this week, CNN has published Hillary’s Op Ed, “Why Iran’s Rise Is a Good Thing,” see here.  The piece opens,

“In September 2002, then-former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a U.S. congressional committee ‘there is absolutely no question whatsoever’ that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was developing nuclear weapons at ‘portable manufacturing sites of mass death.’  Once Hussein had nuclear weapons, Netanyahu warned, ‘the terror network will have nuclear weapons,’ placing ‘the security of the entire world at risk.’

Fast forward to this week, and Netanyahu was back, this time as prime minister, to make virtually identical claims about Iran.  Yet not only has the U.S. intelligence community disagreed with Netanyahu’s assessment of Iranian nuclear intentions, so does Israel’s, according to leaked documents.  Indeed, more than 200 retired security officers have publicly criticized Netanyahu as a danger to Israel’s security.  Sadly, Netanyahu’s presentation reinforces caricatures regularly advanced by American and Gulf Arab pundits—caricatures of Iran as aspiring Middle Eastern hegemon, bent on overthrowing an otherwise stable regional order.  It’s a misguided perspective that is actually hurting the United States.

In Netanyahu’s view, America should only improve relations with an Iran that stops its regional ‘aggression,’ its support for ‘terrorism,’ and its ‘threat[s] to annihilate … Israel.’  In other words, America should not improve relations with an Iran whose regional influence is rising.

In reality, Iran’s rise is not only normal, it is actually essential to a more stable region.  As nuclear talks with Tehran enter a decisive phase, rapprochement with a genuinely independent Iran—not a nominally independent Iran whose strategic orientation is subordinated to U.S. preferences—is vital to halting the decline of America’s strategic position.”

The piece goes on to explain why it is critically necessary for the United States to abandon its failed and profoundly self-damaging quest for Middle Eastern hegemony and to embrace instead “a regional balance of power—not the chimera of American dominance misleadingly labeled as ‘balance,’ but an actual balance in which major regional states, acting in their own interests, constrain one another.”  The piece also explains why, in this context, U.S. cooperation with the Islamic Republic of Iran is utterly indispensable—and how Israeli elites’ acute recognition that U.S. realignment with a rising Iran would inevitably constrain some of Israel’s preferred national security strategies impels Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders to extraordinary efforts to thwart U.S.-Iranian rapprochement.  To continue reading, click here: http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/04/opinion/leverett-iran-relations/

As always, we encourage readers to post comments, Facebook likes, etc., both on this site and on CNN’s Web site.

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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.

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