Republicans Talk Tough on Iran

The Media Line

But analysts skeptical about sea change in Mideast policy in a GOP White House

Tender toward Israel, tough on Obama and toughest of all on Iran.

That was the tone of the Republican presidential debate over the weekend – the first one devoted to foreign policy – but analysts said no one should expect a revolution in Middle East policy at the White House if any of the eight candidates succeeds in beating Barack Obama in general elections a year from now.

“It’s safe to say that a Romney or Caine presidency will attack issues differently and will be more inclined to be hawkish on the Iranian issue and less inclined to pressure Israel on the Palestinian issue. But you can only say more or less inclined, because there are so many variables,” Jonathan Rynhold, who is writing a book on the Arab-Israel dispute in American political culture, told The Media Line.

With Obama’s prospects for re-election dimmed by American’s weak economy and high unemployment, the Republicans stand a good chance of capturing the White House in 2012. Over the last months, the Gallup Poll and others have found Obama losing to whoever the Republicans chose as their candidate in next year’s elections, an unusually poor standing for an incumbent president.

But even as GOP candidates attack the president for his stands toward Israel, Iran and the Arab Spring, opinion polls show that Americans broadly support the president on foreign policy issues. Another Gallup Poll released two days before the Republican debate showed 49% of Americans approve Obama’s handling of foreign affairs against 44% disapproving, giving him especially high markets for the war on terrorism and the withdrawal from Iraq.

But that didn’t stop the candidates from attacking the president on the two lightning-rod issues in the Middle East – Israel and the Palestinians and Iran’s nuclear program.

Michele Bachmann said developments in the Middle East are setting the stage for nuclear war against Israel. Iran is working with countries like Syria and groups like the Palestinian Hamas movement, the Minnesota congresswoman asserted, concluding that “the table is being set for worldwide nuclear war against Israel.”

On Iran, the candidates competed with one another to expressed disdain for Obama’s policies, calling for tougher sanctions against Iran and in some cases going so far as to urge regime change. Keeping Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons would merit a military strike, preferably by Israel and, if not, then by the U.S.

“One thing you can know is if we elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. If you elect me as the next president, they will not have a nuclear weapon,” said
Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and the current front-runner for the Republican nomination.

Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the House of who has re-emerged as a serious contender after a downturn in the polls, declared he would launch covert operations against Iran. "There are a number of ways to be smart about Iran, and a few ways to be stupid. The [Obama] administration skipped all the ways to be smart."

Running against the tide, Ron Paul, the Texas a congressman who has staked out a Quixotic position in the Republican race as an isolationist, reiterated his stance he wanted no part in a military strike. “It's not worthwhile to go to war,” he said.

Seyed Mohammad Marandi, associate professor in North American Studies at the University of Tehran, expressed skepticism that much would change toward Iran in a Republican administration, noting that Obama had begun his term with what many Iranian perceived as a more conciliatory stance toward their country that gradually grew chillier.

“It really doesn’t matter who is in the White House when it come to Iran all that much. the Iranians believe that the U.S. in general is not a rational player and that when it comes to Iran and the Middle East at large the U.S. takes a very unreasonable position,” Marandi told The Media Line.

On Israel, the candidates were uniformly pro-Israel. Indeed, when Texas Governor Rick Perry sought to demonstrate his credentials as a fiscal hawk by saying he would insist that countries getting U.S. foreign aid would have to make their case for assistance, he was forced to make a post-debate “clarification” by e-mail.

Asked if the foreign aid test would include Israel, Perry answered “absolutely,” although he predicted that Israel would pass. But, seeking to extinguish any hint that Israel might be left with less than the $3 billion in annual military aid it now received, the e-mail elaborated: “Gov. Perry recognizes Israel as a unique and vital political and economic partner for the United States in the Middle East … My bet is that we would be funding them at some substantial level.”

On the Arab Spring – an issue that has created deep policy dilemma for the Obama White House as it tries to balance support for democracies in the region with U.S. economic and military interests – the Republican candidates had very little to say.

Rami G. Khouri, who writes a column for Beirut’s Daily Star newspaper, suggested in a commentary over the weekend that Americans are confused by developments in the region that have seen staunch American allies ousted from power by opposition leaders he said favor American values.

“The first level of American perplexity is how to respond to Arabs who are willing to risk their lives for freedom and democracy. There is no clear consensus on this across the U.S.,” he said. “Americans instinctively are attracted to support subjugated people who fight for their freedom, whether in Kosovo or Benghazi; on the other hand, free Arabs are likely to express views, make demands or adopt policies that go against prevailing U.S. positions.”

Rynhold, who is also a senior research at the Begin-Sadat Center at Israel’s Bar Ilan University, said the candidates’ emphatic and across-the-board support for Israel reflects the growing centrality of the Jewish state among Republicans, a trend he said went beyond Zionist Evangelical Christians and extended to much of the party’s base.

In the end, however, he said a Republican sitting in the White House with four years in front of him or her until the next elections would be influenced by policy advisers and changing conditions than by past campaign promises. He pointed to George W. Bush’s softening line on Iran after the 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate determined that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program and to Obama’s warming toward Israel over the past year.

“They [Republican presidents] will look at every situation that comes up in a certain manner that is more hawkish,” he said. “It doesn't mean they will come into office and fire off a missile the next day. They will look at things differently and assess them differently.”

Marandi of Tehran University said that the Middle East policy options for whoever occupies the White House from 2013 because the financial crisis in Europe and the Arab Spring “on the whole works to the disadvantage of the U.S. and therefore to the advantage of Iran,” he said. “The American position will be much weaker by the time a new president comes to office or Obama is reelected.”