Reports: White House efforts to block Iran pressure generating broad, bipartisan House and Senate skepticism
As Kerry prepares to present Israel with security plan, speculation swirls over credibility of U.S. security assurances
As
reports mount Hezbollah preparing for war against Israel, leaders blame
Jerusalem for overnight assassination claimed by Sunni group
Buzzfeed: debunked Arafat poisoning story divided Al Jazeera, generated broad international coverage anyway
What we’re watching today:
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Multiple outlets reported
yesterday and today on persistent bipartisan skepticism in Congress
towards the Obama administration's stance on Iran, with the White House
meeting resistance as it tries to convince lawmakers that they should
wait for the formal implementation of a recently announced interim
agreement - which would subsequently be followed by a minimum of six
months of negotiations - before passing any new legislation pressuring
the Islamic republic. The State Department last week formally acknowledged that
the Geneva agreement between the P5+1 global powers and Iran had not
yet come into force, giving Iran a window during it could continue its
nuclear activity without regard to the deal, even as the anticipation of
reduced sanctions began to ease Iran's economic isolation. Politico quoted Rep.
Rick Larsen (D-WA) expressing frustration over the sequencing and
insisting that the U.S. "shouldn't step first." The outlet more broadly
described how 'despite nearly two hours of questioning from lawmakers,
concerns linger among both Democrats and Republicans,' including over
language in the Geneva agreement that allows Iranian scientists to
continue expanding their stockpile of enriched material. Foreign Policy
Magazine (FP) had earlier in the week noted that "like
perhaps no other foreign policy issue, Iran sanctions have pitted
President Obama against a sizeable portion of his own party," and
revealed that a bipartisan group of Senate lawmakers was "closing in on
legislation that would impose new sanctions on Tehran after six months."
FP quoted Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) questioning the consistency
behind the Obama administration's simultaneous claims that old economic
sanctions had coerced Iranian leaders to come to the table against their
will, but that new economic sanctions would cause Tehran to walk away
from the table by evaporating bilateral good will. Journalists have for
weeks been pressing administration officials on exactly that tension.
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The Associated Press (AP) late on Wednesday provided an overview of
a security plan that Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to
present to Jerusalem this week in an effort to boost U.S.-backed
Israeli-Palestinian talks that the outlet bluntly assesses "have made no
progress, despite an April target date for reaching a deal." Israel's left-leaning Ha'aretz had previously disclosed the existence of the proposal, noting that it
would seek to address among other things Israel's provision that it be
allowed to station military forces in the geo-strategically critical
Jordan Valley for an extended length of time. Palestinian leaders have
demanded the opposite, and it is widely thought that Washington will
attempt to bridge the two positions by offering the Israelis a range of
security assurances. The Ha'aretz report however triggered speculation
by experts and journalists regarding the credibility of such assurances,
with AP diplomatic writer Matthew Lee tweeting that "post-Iran
deal [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] can be expected to be
skeptical." Obama administration officials have recently faced criticism
for seemingly reversing themselves on a range of assurances provided
over the years to allies and lawmakers. The White House has specifically
been blasted for conceding that Iran will be allowed to continue
enriching uranium in the context of a comprehensive agreement, and for
misleading journalists who in early 2013 were probing whether
government-to-government negotiations were taking place between
Washington and Tehran.
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The New York Times today outlined the
range of motives for, and the potential cascade effects of, the
overnight assassination of Haj Hassan Hilu Laqis, a top Hezbollah figure
who the outlet noted was "variously described as running the group's
sophisticated telecommunications network and working to procure
strategic weapons." The Times emphasized both that Laqis's
death was a "significant loss" for the Iran-backed terror group, and
that "any of the group’s primary enemies - Israel, the Syrian insurgents
the group is battling, or their backers, such as Saudi Arabia or
Lebanese Sunni militants - could have had reason to want him dead."
Laqis was widely believed to have been playing a central role in
Hezbollah's military operations in Syria against the largely Sunni
rebels fighting to overthrow the Bashar al-Assad regime, and a
previously unknown Sunni group claimed responsibility for the killing. Mordechai Kedar, a research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, further outlined to
Jerusalem Post that "Sunni jihadists... promised long ago that they
would kill [Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah]... in this case, it seems
they were able to get [his] friend." For their part Hezbollah leaders almost immediately blamed Israel, declaring
that the Jewish state would face "all the consequences for this heinous
crime." The Christian Science Monitor late Wednesday reported that Hezbollah
has been openly preparing for war with the Jewish state, setting up
camps across southern Lebanon "which include firing ranges, assault
courses and urban warfare sites." The group was described as "training
thousands of new recruits to the organization." Hezbollah has seen its
decades-old brand as an anti-Israel 'resistance' organization shattered
by its participation in the Syrian conflict, and analysts are increasingly concerned that
it might seek to provoke a conflict with Jerusalem in order to halt a
precipitous slide in its domestic and regional stature.
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Controversy
intensified today regarding the degree to which national and global
media outlets had been overly credulous in suggesting earlier this year
that the 2004 death of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was due
to polonium poisoning, after the disclosure earlier this week of a new
French forensic report debunked the conspiracy theory. Despite there being zero plausible scenarios under which tests conducted in recent years could have detected polonium poisoning dating to Arafat's death, an explicitly inconclusive Swiss
lab report describing heightened polonium on some of the terrorist's
personal belongings was sufficient to generate broad international
coverage suggesting poisoning. Skeptics quickly uncovered evidence that
the conspiracy theory was being driven in part by Al Jazeera, as fodder
for a multi-year series of sensational broadcasts suggesting that
Arafat had been murdered. Buzzfeed today published an expose based
on documents leaked from inside the Qatari outlet that reflected 'deep
internal concern... with the scientific researcher involved in the
[Swiss] report.' One Al Jazeera journalist worried at the time that the
station's coverage - which included a story touting the report as a
"smoking gun" - "is going to look biased." Buzzfeed noted that the Swiss
report nonetheless generated headlines "in most of the Arabic and
English-language press." Prominent examples include the Associated Press, Reuters, The New York Times, CNN, ABC News, CBS News, the BBC, the Telegraph, Salon. The Guardian went so far as
to demand a new investigation into Arafat's death, declaring that "the
proposition that he was poisoned with polonium-210 will surprise few,"
that "suspicion points strongly" at Israel as the party which poisoned
him, and that "if peace is ever to be achieved between Israelis and
Palestinians, the culture of assassination and killing has to stop."
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