At Tablet, Lee Smith explains what the Petraeus affair could mean for U.S. Iran policy:
According to former Petraeus aides, leading military officials, policymakers, and analysts close to the four-star general that I spoke to this week, Petraeus understood, more than anyone else in our national-security apparatus, that the Islamic Republic is at war with the United States. By Petraeus’ reckoning, they said, it’s not possible to strike a grand bargain with Iran over its nuclear weapons program because the larger problem is the regime itself, whose endgame is to drive the United States from the region. And no arm of the regime is more dangerous than its external operations unit, the Qods Force, whose mastermind, Qassem Suleimani, is considered by Petraeus to be a personal enemy.
In seeing Iran as a threat to vital U.S. interests, Petraeus bucked the mainstream of more than 30 years of U.S. foreign policy. Presidents and legislators from both parties, as well as military and civilian officials, have tended to downplay the Iranian threat, seeking engagement with Tehran in the vague hopes of reaching a deal that might lead the regime to finally call off its dogs and leave us in peace. Petraeus, on the other hand, fought the Iranians.
As Smith goes on to explain, that fight was literal; while leading U.S. Central Command, Petraeus battled Iranian proxies in Iraq and Afghanistan. “During the course of almost a decade, Petraeus became Washington’s institutional memory of all of Iran’s activities directed against the United States and its allies,” writes Smith.
What does that mean for the U.S.’s Iran policy? Not much directly. But Smith argues that Petraeus was one of the few people at the top of the administration who truly understood the Iranian threat. He understood that the regime was the problem, and that negotiations weren’t going to solve it. Losing someone like that means losing an advocate at the top levels of government who could bring that perspective to the table. That’s a loss that won’t be easy to make up for.
On a lighter note, in case you were wondering what Iranian hardliners have to say about this whole mess, Max Fisher flags this bizarre article from Iran’s Serat News:
When the Terrible Organization kneels before a woman!
The forces that the CIA can bring to accompany it, the most elite of which can be seen with the existence of individuals like Petraeus, who even though the head of an important organization kneeled [when] confronted with an infiltrator and a woman whose spirit of militarism had distanced her from her family for years.
Paula Broadwell for close to ten years cooperated with the American military forces. Even though she has a husband and two children, but she enthralled herself to militarism and was present in countries like Afghanistan following Petraeus who was at the time the American commander in Afghanistan. … If we look at the course of the lives of the past leaders and managers of the CIA it can be seen to be full of these type of people in positions of power with a brutal soul.
I guess that’s what America gets for allowing women to leave the home without a male relative supervising.
Well, she is a brassy, iron pumping woman. n nReminds me of the female marine in Aliens 2, except prefers generals to enlisted men.
Bingo! n nWhat might Broadwell have been working on, really working on, and has either she or Petraeus really left Langley? I am not going any further than this because I might actually be right…. n nAlana, I know both of the meanings you intended by your last line, but there is a third one you may not have thought of — the Iranians are never going to think that she is still in the Army (which I somehow suspect Broadwell still is) and if you don't respect women (they don't) then you won't fear them either because you won't believe them capable of doing anything you need to worry about. n nOnce someone is defined as the "bimbo sleeping with the boss", particularly if the woman reenforces this perception, no one will pay any attention to her and she can blindside everyone. n nAnd if the Iranians are going to be even more extreme in this regard, well, then, well…. n nOne of the training pictures for police officers is a woman sitting in the passenger seat of a car — the woman has very nice breasts which are almost completely revealed by her outfit — and almost no man initially sees the handgun wedged between her leg and the center console of the car. The gun is in plain sight, but not seen…. And there is a reason why they have that picture to train officers with….
Obama has no Iran policy, apart from whatever Iran tells him it is.
Agreed. And sometimes it is better to be out of the government than in it. n nRemember too that the CIA is not the only intelligence service in the world worried about Iran…
One other possibility here is that this is a turf battle being fought between various folk over US military and diplomatic policy relative to Iran, with the various women (Broadwell and Kelly in particular) being proxy warriors for their respective male combatants. Patraeus, if he truly does feel about Iran as he does, may well have (a) decided to retire and go to CIA and (b) leave the D/CIA post two days after the election because of Obama's foreign policy — knowing that Obama was essentially going to cut & run from Afghanistan meant that there was no sense staying there, and believing that Romney was going to win (as a *LOT* of people did), he stayed at CIA but once it became apparent that Obama was going to be POTUS for another four years, there is no sense being there, and an affair (real or not) is a good excuse to leave — his children are grown so he can't use "wanting to spend more time with his family" and were he younger and female, he could use the traditional "want to have another child" excuse. n nWhat will be interesting is to see where both he and Broadwell go — she will have her doctorate within 18 months or so if she doesn't completely crack up, and then we could see her on the faculty of some university, or over to Heritage or something. And as much as Petraeus might like the Presidency of Princeton, I don't think he is done dealing with Iran quite yet — I don't think either one of them are — and in this country the opposition party is inevitably in the think tanks (if the Dems are in power) or in the universities (if the Republicans are in power) — and essentially become a government in exile and feed stuff to their side for use against the party in power. n nI think this is all about the security of Israel and the balance of American policy between pro-West/Israel views and pro-Islamic ones. I still say that Michelle Bachmann's concern last July about Spitzer's wife and others associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and others being given NSC (and other high level) security briefings is part of this. I think Petraeus wants to leave CIA over policy disagreements with Obama — if the resignation truly was because of the affair, Obama would have immediately accepted or refused to accept it — he wouldn't have essentially waited two days and not notified the Congressional leaders in the interim. n nThe way this happened strikes me as him being told he must take a certain line or resign, so he does the latter, and then there is the quiet dance of "is he really serious?" as they try to talk him out of it, and fail. Obama had to know that Congress (including the Dems) would be p*ssed learning of Petraeus' resignation from the media, this was an insult to their egos, and they are going to investigate this just out of hurt feelings and Obama has to know that. If his people really intended to ask for Petraeus' resignation because of the sex stuff, and he intended to hold it until Friday afternoon before a 3-day weekend in hopes of burying it, he would have at least tipped off the Dems. n nNow if both Petraeus and Broadwell disappear from public view by Christmas, not die or anything but we just don't hear anything about anymore, then let me just say that will be very interesting. Very interesting indeed.
And I have always said that the more ad hominum attacks that are directed at someone, the more likely it is that there is another – quite valid – reason why the person is being attacked. n nMichelle Bachmann is written off as "crazy" — she is not! I know what "crazy" is — Education is really close to Psychology and I took some of the psych courses rather than the we-hate-white-guys ones where possible because I actually wanted to learn something, and then I worked 5 years in public housing where half my clients were de-institutionalized mental paitents from a now-closed state hospital — I very much know what "Crazy" is and Michelle Bachmann most definitely is not. n nI have met Michelle Bachmann personally — I stand on my judgment of her. n nNow we have another apparently bright woman being written off as the bimbo who slept with Petraeus. Hmmmm…. Do we see a pattern here? n nAnd as to that picture of the two of them in the airplane, if a woman is really REALLY interested in some intellectual thing, it can sometimes trigger sexual responses. n nI really don't know — but I keep coming back to everyone saying how out of character it would be for her to have an affair…
Somehow, I take comfort in knowing the Saudis and GCC have a voice in Obama's foreign policy regarding Iran.