by Yoram Ettinger
Burns as the next Director of the CIA highlights Biden's determination to join a renegotiated nuclear agreement with Iran's Ayatollahs.
William Burns is one of the leading veterans of the State Department, representing its deeply-rooted worldview :
*Multilateralism and coalition-building over unilateral policy;
*Military restraint and supremacy of diplomacy/coercive-diplomacy; *International law, human rights and democracy-driven policy;
*Rejection of regime-change initiatives;
*Palestinian prominence in Middle East policy;
*Viewing Islamic terrorism as despair-driven;
*Misperceiving the raging Arab Tsunami as if it were Arab Spring.
William
Burns served as Deputy Secretary of State and Assistant Secretary of
State for Near East Affairs during the Obama Administration. He was part
of the State Department establishment, which considered Saddam Hussein a
potential ally until his August 1990 invasion of Kuwait; played a key
role in the 2009 embrace of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, while abandoning
President Mubarak; was a major proponent of the 2011 US-led military
offensive which transformed Libya into a global platform of Islamic
terrorism; and was one of the early architects of the 2015 Iran nuclear
accord (JCPOA), conducting secret talks in Oman.
Since 2015, William Burns has been the President of the prestigious Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which has espoused the aforementioned worldview of the State Department.
Carnegie's
"Middle East analysis" section is replete with documents, which are
pro-Palestinian and critical of Israel and the last four years' US
policy in the Middle East, including the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and the relocation of the US Embassy to Jerusalem.
Also, Carnegie Endowment documents feature criticism of "Israel's
shrinking democracy," Israel's treatment of "Palestinian activists" and
"Palestinian popular resistance," "Israel's responsibility for the
Palestinian financial crisis," and "Gun violence in Israel's Palestinian
community."
While criticizing pro-US Egypt and Saudi Arabia
because of their human rights record, Carnegie's documents define the
Muslim Brotherhood – which has terrorized the Middle East since 1952,
including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and
Bahrain – as a legitimate political organization.
Iran
The
designation of William Burns as the next Director of the CIA highlights
President-elect Biden's determination to join a renegotiated nuclear
agreement (JCPOA) with Iran's Ayatollahs, which will be wider in scope
and longer in duration.
According to Burns, "We need to find a
way back to an updated nuclear deal with Iran. That will not be a
miracle cure for all our serious differences with the current regime in
Tehran, from its regional aggression to its domestic repression. It
will, however, be an essential starting point for countering its threats
and eventually reducing them…."
The
JCPOA represents a school of thought, which assumes that Iran's
Ayatollahs are credible negotiators, and are amenable to
peaceful-coexistence and power-sharing with their Gulf neighbors. Burns
assumes that Saudi-Iranian peaceful coexistence is possible due to their
mutual interest in stable competition.
"A lot will depend on the
prospects for Saudis and Iranians finding some basis for regional
co-existence—built not on trust or the end of rivalry, but on the more
cold-blooded assumption that they both have a stake in stable
competition."
Burns contends
that lifting sanctions – through the JCPOA – "exposed the regime's
vulnerabilities," since the Ayatollahs could no longer blame the US for
their economic woes, stemming from corruption and mismanagement. He
compared Trump's withdrawal from the JCPOA to the US unilateralism that
led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. "Nixing the nuclear accord was a
dangerous dismissiveness of diplomacy." According to Burns, the
abandonment of the nuclear accord was all coercion and no diplomacy.
A
major dilemma facing the proponents of a renegotiated JCPOA: Is the
Iranian leopard capable of changing spots, not just tactics?
Saudi Arabia
As opined by Burns, "we ought to support them
[Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf States] against legitimate external
security threats, from Iran or anyone else, and back serious political
and economic modernization. [However], they need to stop acting as if
they’re entitled to a blank check from us, end the catastrophic war in
Yemen, stop meddling in political transitions in places such as Libya
and Sudan, and manage their internal rivalries."
Just like Egypt,
Saudi Arabia expects to be targeted for US criticism on account of its
human rights and democracy record, including the attitude toward the
Muslim Brotherhood, which is determined to topple all pro-US Arab
regimes, and is the largest Islamic terror organization with a litany of
political affiliates throughout the globe, including the US (e.g.,
CAIR, ISNA, AMC).
In addition, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United
Arab Emirates are reprimanded, by the incoming US Administration, for
their military involvement in Libya, Sudan and Yemen, which involves
fighting against Iran's Ayatollahs (in Yemen) and Sunni Islamic
terrorists (in Libya and Sudan).
Israel
In
his memoir, William Burns detailed his efforts to explicitly criticize
Israel, when he was the Assistant Secretary of State for Near East
Affairs during the George W. Bush administration. Burns was a proponent
for providing a clear vision for a viable Palestinian state. In June
2002, he told an Israel official that "the one thing Palestinians are
more fed up with than Arafat is the Israeli occupation."
"Our
commitment to Israel’s security is deep-rooted, and its emergence as a
military and economic powerhouse in the region is a remarkable story.
And yet it is hard to see how Israel’s long-term security interests, let
alone its future as a Jewish democracy, are served by the emergence of a
one-state solution, with Arabs in the majority in the land Israel
controls from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean."
Like the State Department's establishment, William Burns is unaware of the demographic reality
west of the Jordan River, which features a dramatic Westernization of
Arab demography and unprecedented Jewish demographic tailwind.
Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, "Second Thought: US-Israel Initiative,, https://bit.ly/3nFoei2
Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/294872
Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter
No comments:
Post a Comment