There's a lot of buzz -- much of it generated by AIPAC, WINEP, and other parts of the Israel lobby, and a lot of it, no doubt, by Ross himself -- that hawkish Dennis Ross is going to get a big job in Hillary Clinton's State Department.

It's an insider battle, one that I've chronicled since last summer, between Obama's more dovish Middle East advisers and hawks such as Ross. Among the doves: Dan Kurtzer, Dan Shapiro, and the once-upon-a-time exiled-from-Obamaland folks such as Zbigniew Brzezinski and Robert Malley, who may be back in Obama's good graces. But Ross is, according to insiders, making a comeback.

A blog at Politico reports that "Obama backers concerned with Israel, are carefully eyeing the interplay between two of his most important advisers on the Middle East," Ross and Kurtzer, an Orthodox Jew who served as US ambassador to both Israel and Egypt.

Writing in Asia Times, Kaveh Afrasiabi suggests that Ross is in line to be Obama's point man on Iran. Several sources I've spoken with say that Ross believes that, ultimately, there is no alternative to a US military strike against Iran to stop its nuclear program. (On the links between Ross, and other Obama advisers, and various Iran hawks and neocons, look at my TomDispatch piece from last week.) Afrasiabi quotes Ross on Iran: "We are headed on a pathway now that will lead to the use of force."

The right-wing Jerusalem Post slams the idea of Kurtzer while snuggling up to "veteran Middle East hand Dennis Ross":

Leftist ideologues in Israel are lobbying for the appointment of retired ambassador Daniel Kurtzer to be the administration's Middle East envoy. Were Obama to take their bad counsel, Kurtzer would arrive, not as an honest broker, but as a divisive figure whose views are at variance with those of mainstream Israel.

Steve Clemons, at the New America Foundation, has a clever idea which, he says, came from Brzezinski: why not name Ross to be US ambassador to Israel?

Brzezinski ... said that Dennis Ross would make an excellent and important US Ambassador to Israel. I think he's right -- and it's time to start whispering about Ross's fate again and get him back in the mix as envoy to Tel Aviv -- but not as czar of Middle East negotiations.

That would put Ross safely in a place where he probably couldn't do any harm, and where he'd have to deliver the bad news to Israeli hawks if Obama, whose Middle East policy looks like it might be shaped by Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, decides to push Israel on a Palestinian state.

Even if it's looking less and less likely that Bibi Netanyahu, the head of the rightist Likud bloc in Israel, will win February's election -- but especially if he does -- Obama ought to give Ross the mission of defeathering Israel's hawks in 2009.

Comments (9)

1. It's looking less likely? According to what?

   Posted by scottbp at 12/10/2008 @ 11:08am

2. obama will appoint who he appoints and then tell them what to do.

   and he will not be attacking iran. we will not be attacking anybody else any time soon unless unforseen, desperate situations arise that force us to.

   we can't afford it and iran's going to get the bomb regardless.

   Posted by ibbleblibble at 12/10/2008 @ 11:53am

3. Posted by ibbleblibble at 12/10/2008 @ 11:53am

   IBB, it won't be us attacking Iran, that job will fall to the Israelis. Heck, if the Bush administration didn't stop them, why should an Obama adminstration be any different?

   Posted by ACook at 12/10/2008 @ 12:15pm

4. Iran is going to become a nuclear power in the ME. Then we will have nothing to say to them. What we should realize is the fact that hawkish Israel and a hawkish Bush administration has only served to encourage nuclear development by Iran. They are not developing nuclear weapons for agression, no one does. They are developing them for the same reason everyone else has (except for the US). Deterrence.

   Posted by Extraneous at 12/10/2008 @ 12:41pm

5. Posted by ACook at 12/10/2008 @ 12:15pm | ignore this person | warn this person

   thats good at least. let them do their own dirty work if they insist. i just hope they don't expect us to rubber stamp anything.

   we have enough of our own problems these days.

   Posted by ibbleblibble at 12/10/2008 @ 12:45pm

6. I sincerely hope that Mr. Obama does not, as much of the media seems to do, regard the issues of Palestine/Israel and Iran through the lens of a football match over the Israel ambassador post and the naming of Hillary Clinton to the State Department.

   Neither Clinton nor any of the other figures Mr. Obama has surrounded himself are in a way the figures who can end the Palestine/Israel crisis and help start that land towards a better future, and any figure who regards the proposition of an Israeli or American attack on Iran with anything besides the greatest dread should not be in or around a POTUS at all.

   Posted by syfriendly at 12/10/2008 @ 3:48pm

7. It's looking less likely? According to what? Posted by scottbp at 12/10/2008 @ 11:08am | warn this person

   Iran is going to become a nuclear power in the ME. Then we will have nothing to say to them. What we should realize is the fact that hawkish Israel and a hawkish Bush administration has only served to encourage nuclear development by Iran. They are not developing nuclear weapons for agression, no one does. They are developing them for the same reason everyone else has (except for the US). Deterrence. Posted by Extraneous at 12/10/2008 @ 12:41pm | warn this person

   I agree with both posts. One can never count Bebe out. Israel, the U.S. and Iran have all had their chance to negotiate with one another throughout the Bush years only to see all three of them negotiate with one and leave the other out. Iran has done its share to reach out to the U.S. and Isreal only to be repeatedly spurned. Many a time has Israel believed that they have more in common with Iran than the Arab states but have been thin skinned to irresponsible statements by Iran about Israels tenure in the M.E. neighborhood, never meaning to follow through but voicing such idiocy essentially for public consumption. One exception to Extraneous' post: I don't agree that we will have nothing to say to Iran should they go nuclear. It is then when we will have little choice but to talk to them. Our mistake has been the lack of communication with all nations in the neighborhood (save Israel & Iraq, of course.) It is Irans procurement of nuclear status that may well motivate the Israelis to get off the dime and see their responsibilities through to a Palestinian state. Not addressing this fundamental point (including East Juresalem as the capital) is only a formula for possible disaster.

   Posted by Damascian at 12/10/2008 @ 9:40pm

8. The current revisionist lie is that Ross and Clinton put together a great deal for peace, but Arafat turned it down. Actually, the deal cooked up in the last days of the Clinton presidency was a terrible and unacceptable deal for Palestinians. It divided the West Bank up into many sections, and left most major illegal Jewish settlements intact. Arafat had to veto that poison pill. But Clinton and Ross are deified as great men of peace. That is the current mythology. And since every Obama appointment is AIPAC-approved, I would not be surprised to see Ross in the Obama administration.

   Posted by philbq at 12/11/2008 @ 02:53am

9. Mr Dreyfuss, if you think Obama is going to attack Iran "pressured by AIPAC" or whatever...

   you've lost it.

   Posted by Mask at 12/11/2008 @ 09:09am

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