Diplomacy

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in Washington today for a series of meetings at the White House. He'll hold one-on-one talks with US president Barack Obama before a "working lunch" with Obama, vice president Joseph Biden, and several other officials.

Obama's top priority during these talks will almost certainly be pushing for an extension to Israel's temporary West Bank settlement freeze, which is due to expire in September. The end of the freeze would forestall any possibility of direct talks between the Israelis ri the Palestinians.

"There has been a distinct improvement in the White House relationship with Israel since the last meeting" between Obama and Netanyahu on March 23, said Jonathan Spyer, a political scientist at Israel's Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. "Obama will be looking for a payback," perhaps in the form of an extension to the settlement freeze, Spyer said.

But from Netanyahu's perspective, the domestic politics of extending the freeze are... difficult, to say the least. His administration has nothing to show for the current freeze: Israeli-Palestinian "proximity talks" have yielded little concrete progress, save for a rumored land swap proposal offered by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.

(Updated below) Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to quietly mend fences with Turkey: He dispatched Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, his industry minister, on a secret "mediation" trip to Ankara, according to Israel's Channel 2 news.

Israel's decision to slightly ease the Gaza blockade drew a very caveated reaction from around the world. Britain's foreign office said "further work is needed"; Catherine Ashton, the European Union foreign policy chief, urged Israel to allow "many, many more goods... in to Gaza."

By now you've probably heard about Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) endorsing the Gaza blockade at a meeting of the Orthodox Union. Schumer praised the collective punishment of 1.5 million people in Gaza, telling the crowd (to strong applause) that "strangl[ing] them economically" would reduce support for Hamas.

My personal take on the new package of Iran sanctions approved this week is that they won't accomplish anything -- anything good, at least.

The Iranian regime has already warned that the sanctions will preclude further negotiations over its nuclear program. Officials have also warned that the sanctions might scrap last month's so-called "Tehran declaration," the tripartite deal negotiated by Turkey and Brazil. (That might be a bluff -- it would sour relations with both countries, and Iran does need at least a few allies.)

The predicted Security Council vote on new sanctions against Iran came Tuesday, with predictable results: Slight additions to previous sanctions, opposition from Brazil and Turkey and an abstention from Lebanon, and an outburst from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Some commentators, including the Leveretts, lack faith that this fourth round of sanctions will have any serious effect on Iran's behavior, but the White House, armed with a list of 14 "new" measures imposed by Tuesday's resolution, argues otherwise.

The United Nations Security Council says it could vote on a new package of Iran sanctions this week.

Claude Heller, Mexico's ambassador to the UN (and the current Security Council president), said the vote could come as early as tomorrow. UN envoys are scheduled to meet on Tuesday morning to discuss the latest sanctions package, which bars Iran from "any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons," and prohibits Iran from buying several types of heavy weapons (these types of sanctions have been quite difficult to enforce).

I've been doing largely non-stop flotilla coverage at Al-Jazeera for the last three days (including live blogs on Monday and Tuesday), so you'll forgive me for not writing too much about the subject tonight; I need a break. (Issandr El Amrani has a good roundup of flotilla commentary, if you're looking for broad analysis.)

But I do want to quickly comment on the American reaction -- or, rather, the lack thereof -- to the flotilla attack. During the White House press briefing yesterday, press secretary Robert Gibbs was asked (repeatedly) about Obama's refusal to condemn Israel's actions -- something dozens of other world leaders had already done.

Updated: It's been a day since the deadly raid on the so-called "Freedom Flotilla," and the fallout for Israel continues.

Although initial reports said that as many as 19 activists on board the Mavi Mamara had been killed during a nighttime Israeli Navy commando raid early on Monday morning, that toll has since been revised by both the Israeli government and the organizing groups to either nine or 10. Israeli has not released the identities of the flotilla passengers, despite facing a court challenge to do so.

The Obama administration agreed to a compromise yesterday to salvage a month-long round of talks aimed at updating the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty -- and then promptly announced that it may not accept one of the conditions of the deal.

All 189 NPT signatories accepted the 28-page review document in a vote last night. It directs the United Nations secretary-general to convene a conference in 2012, aimed at creating a "WMD-free zone" in the Middle East. The final document also urges Israel to join the treaty (along with India and Pakistan, the other two countries to never sign the NPT).

Update: Here's a link to last week's interview.

Original post: Charlie Rose interviewed Bashar al-Assad last night -- his second conversation with the Syrian president, if I'm not mistaken.

PBS hasn't posted a video of the interview yet -- we'll update when they do -- but BusinessWeek posted a few excerpts. Most are predictable -- Assad denied that his government shipped Scuds to Hizballah, for example -- but two lines jumped out at me.

For basically as long as Lebanon has existed as a modern nation, foreign forces have found the country a useful proxy to assert their regional interests in the Middle East, so it's not exactly breaking from script for the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress to assert an extremely self-interested agenda during Prime Minister Saad Hariri's first visit to Washington since coming to power last summer. (Nor is it strange for America to be self-interested, but I digress.)

Hariri met with Obama on Monday; he spent Tuesday with Vice President Joe Biden and members of Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Looking at the reporting that has emerged in the past two days, those meetings have been dominated by topics of American concern: the alleged transfer of Scud missiles from Syria to Hizballah, the disarming of Hizballah, and Lebanon's role in the U.S.-led effort to sanction Iran. Shelved, for the most part: Discussion of America's mired attempt to kick-start Israeli-Palestinian peace.

The Israeli government passed on an offer from Qatar to re-establish limited economic ties, according to a report in Ha'aretz -- but why?

The two countries never had full diplomatic relations, but Israel maintained a trade office in Doha since 1996. Qatar's government shuttered the office last year, at the start of Operation Cast Lead, and gave its employees seven days to leave the country. Qatar was the only Gulf country to have economic ties to Israel.

Tuesday's big announcement by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- that the United States had reached agreement with the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council to table a new Iran sanctions resolution -- was clearly meant to upstage what had already begun to be perceived as the previous day's diplomatic coup by Iran: a nuclear fuel swap deal brokered by Brazil and Turkey.

Washington's immediate pushback has left international diplomats and American pundits confused and angry. Brazilian and Turkish officials are reportedly "outraged"; Gary Sick called the U.S. announcement a "gratuitous insult"; and Marc Lynch tweeted that "trashing the Turkish deal was a mistake."

But let's take a clear-eyed look at what's really happening.

John Brennan, Barack Obama's counterterrorism adviser, thinks the U.S. government needs to strengthen what he calls "moderate" elements within Hizballah.

"Hezbollah is a very interesting organization," Brennan told a Washington conference. "There is certainly the elements of Hezbollah that are truly a concern to us what they're doing. And what we need to do is to find ways to diminish their influence within the organization and to try to build up the more moderate elements," Brennan said.

The White House denied just last month that it was planning to engage Hizballah, and you might remember the absurd flap earlier this year over Rob Malley (a former U.S. official) holding low-level talks with Hamas.

Update 5/18/10 4:07 p.m.: In opening remarks before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the United States, Russia and China had agreed on a draft United Nations Security Council resolution that would impose sanctions on Iran. Clinton said that the United States and the rest of the P5+1 would "rally the international community on behalf of a strong sanctions resolution that will, in our view, send an unmistakable message about what is expected from Iran."

Original post: In the wake of Monday's announcement that Turkey and Brazil have convinced Iran to ship around half or more of its low-enriched uranium out of the country, the media has been quick to proclaim winners and losers.

The Israeli tabloid daily Maariv carried a story on Thursday exposing what the newspaper purported to be a "secret" plan hatched by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to "pester" Saudi Arabia with a global information campaign that could involve lobbying the U.S. Congress and European parliament, and perhaps even filing lawsuits, all with the intent of exposing the kingdom's "involvement in financing terrorism, the state of human rights ... the status of women and numerous other issues." (Original article in Hebrew here.)

The White House just e-mailed reporters a statement on the Iranian-Brazilian-Turkish nuclear fuel swap agreement announced earlier today. We've posted a full copy of the statement after the jump. It calls the agreement a positive step, but highlights a number of concerns, including the question of whether Iran will continue to enrich its uranium up to 20 percent.

The leaders of Iran, Turkey and Brazil announced an agreement this morning for a nuclear fuel swap, reviving a long-stalled plan from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The agreement now heads to the Vienna Group -- the U.S., Russia, France, and the IAEA -- for approval. If those parties sign off, Iran will be obligated to ship 1,200kg of low-enriched uranium (at 3.5 percent enrichment) to Turkey within one month. In return, Iran will receive 120kg of enriched uranium (at 20 percent enrichment) -- to be delivered within one year -- for use in the Tehran Research Reactor.

Brazilian diplomats say Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's last-minute diplomacy paid off: They've told reporters that Iran agreed to a nuclear fuel swap, and that final details of the agreement will be announced on Monday morning.

The Turkish foreign ministry confirms those reports, too. Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan postponed a trip to Azerbaijan to fly to Iran to join in the fun.