This morning, at a small meeting with various Washington-based analysts and European diplomats, I was asked to speculate on the future of Iran policy. While it's of course impossible to predict, I don't expect to see military action by the U.S. or by Israel. Nor do I expect to see any serious progress towards a political bargain, either a narrow one about the Iranian nuclear program nor an expansive one about Iran's place in the Middle East. Nor do I expect Iran to test a nuclear weapon.

More likely than either is a relentless slide towards a replay of the Iraq saga of the 1990's: a steady ratcheting-up of sanctions, which increasingly impact the Iranian people but fail to compel change in the regime's political behavior; episodic and frequent diplomatic crises which consume the world's diplomatic attention and resources; the growing militarization and polarization of the Gulf; ongoing uncertainty about Iranian intentions and capabilities. Eventually, as with Iraq, the choices may well narrow sufficiently and the perception of impending threat mount so that a President -- maybe Obama, maybe Palin, maybe anyone else -- finds him or herself faced with "no choice" but to move towards war. "Keeping Tehran in a Box" is not a pretty scenario, nor one which I think anyone especially wants, but it seems the most likely path unless better "off-ramps" are developed to avert it. And such "off-ramps" are the most glaring absence in the current Iran policy debate.  

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On Tuesday President Obama will give a major address marking the end of combat operations in Iraq, which delivers on one of his major campaign promises and marks one of the largely unremarked bright spots in his foreign policy record to date.  Given how central Iraq has been to the great foreign policy debates of the last decade, it's somewhat surprising how little attention has been paid to the steady drawdown of U.S. forces from Iraq.  Skeptics on all sides have dominated what little discourse there's been:  many on the left point to the continuing presence of nearly 50,000 troops and many more civilian contractors to mock the notion that the war is over;  many on the right mutter about Obama's refusal to give Bush credit for the surge;  and many serious analysts on all sides worry about the continuing political gridlock in Baghdad and the seemingly shaky security situation.  But Obama's meeting his self-imposed deadline of drawing down to 50,000 troops by this month --- 90,000 fewer than were in Iraq before he took office --- really does matter.   There was only one shot to get the U.S. on the road to leaving Iraq, and Obama has delivered. 

It's worth taking a step back and pointing out some of the key things which have happened in Iraq under Obama's watch, and somethat haven't.  The drawdown of U.S. forces has proceeded on schedule, despite plenty of opportunities and some pressure to slow it down -- the much anticipated revolt of the generals demanding to delay the drawdown hasn't happened. Despite the continuing pattern of violent attacks grabbing headlines, the overall security situation has remained pretty good despite the steady reduction of U.S.forces and the shoddy treatment of the Awakenings movements by the Iraqi government.  Iran, despite its massive investments in Iraqi politics, has proven no more able to dictate the outcomes of Iraqi politics than has Washington, a key development which gets too little attention.   Iraqi state institutions have continued to function, for all their flaws, despite more than a half a year of political gridlock.  And that political deadlock would almost certainly been the same even if the U.S. still had 140,000 troops on the ground --- which is where the "conditions based" withdrawal favored by many of Obama's critics would have us today.   Iraq's not perfect, but who thought it would be?  Winding down America's involvement in Iraq without disaster is nothing to scoff at.

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Two recent arguments about the impact of the rising anti-Islam trend in the U.S. -- from the Stupid!Storm around the Manhattan mosque to the lunacy of "national burn a Quran day" -- on the Arab world strike me as not quite right.  Last week, Bill Kristol cited the translation of a column by Saudi TV station al-Arabiya director Abd al-Rahman al-Rashed downplaying the relevance of the mosque as evidence that the argument should be over.  Meanwhile, several recent articles claim that the mosque had become the #1 topic of discussion on jihadist forums.   Both are wrong, in different ways.  Most Arab columnists agree with the argument that the anti-mosque movement will badly harm Arab and Muslim views of the United States, contra Rashed, but there isn't as much active discussion of it in the forums as you'd expect.  That isn't a reason to relax, though.  The impact is likely to be felt not so much on extremists, whose views about America are rather fixed, but on the vast middle ground, the Arab and Muslim mainstream which both the Bush and Obama administrations have recognized as crucial both for defeating al-Qaeda and for achieving broad American national interests. And that mainstream, not the extremists themselves, is where our attention needs to be focused. 

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This morning, I posted my first contribution to the Atlantic's online debate about Jeffrey Goldberg's much-debated cover story on whether Israel will attack Iran.   I take Goldberg's reporting seriously, particularly since I have heard many similar comments from both U.S. and Israeli officials.   That's precisely why I believe that it's important to engage the argument for an attack on Iran head on.... now, rather than after a bad decision has already been made.  What do I think?   Well, the title chosen by the editors doesn't leave much to the imagination:  "Striking Iran is Unwarranted and It  Would Mean Disaster."  I argue that "the argument for a military strike on Iran remains weak, with massive potential negative effects, very limited prospects for significant positive impact, and much less urgency than its proponents claim. It is Obama's sound strategic judgement, not his lack of will, which makes an attack unlikely."   The entire debate has been instructive.  

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In May I released a report for CNAS co-authored with Kristin Lord about the Obama administration's strategy of engagement which warned that "as the administration entered its second year, there was a palpable sense that the Obama bubble had deflated." We warned that Arab publics, in particular, had grown frustrated at Obama's perceived failure to deliver on the promise of the "new beginning" outlined in Cairo and had begun to lose hope in his ability to meaningfully change American policies towards the region. The findings of the annual survey of Arab public opinion conducted by Shibley Telhami, released publicly today, offer stark evidence for this deflating bubble.  

Telhami reports that positive views of President Obama have dropped from 45 percent in 2009 to 20 percent today, with his negatives rising even further -- from 23 percent to 62 percent -- as fence-sitters waiting to see what he delivered render their verdict. Only 12 percent express favorable views of the United States, compared to 15 percent in the final year of the Bush administration.  Only 16 percent declare themselves hopeful about administration policies, compared to 51 percent last year, and a statistically insignificant 1 percent are pleased with the administration's policies towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sixty-three percent declare themselves discouraged, up from 15 percent. Deflating bubbles don't get illustrated much more starkly than this. While there are always problems with public opinion surveys in the Arab world, and results should be taken with caution, these findings are consistent with other recent surveys and with almost all other streams of evidence. I would argue that the results actually do not contradict last week's more optimistic reading of the administration's foreign policy -- but they do point to some significant and uncomfortable realities about the costs of failing to deliver meaningful change.  

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My esteemed colleague Steve Walt writes today that Obama is in trouble for 2012 in part because he's "0 for 4 on the big ticket items that have defined his foreign policy agenda."   I've got to disagree.  There may be no full-scale successes yet --- as if anybody thought Obama could solve the world's problems in a year and half --- but he's actually doing far better than Walt suggests.   Specifically, I'd largely agree with Walt on Afghanistan and Israel-Palestine, but both Iraq and Iran are more likely to be winners than losers.   Beyond that, though, Obama will gain in stature by comparison with the lunacy currently dominating the Republican political establishment --- which will likely only escalate as the political season develops and every GOP wannabe tries to outbid on the crazy.  

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Most of the response to the WikiLeaks Afghanistan document release thus far has focused on the absence of major revelations, with most of the details reinforcing existing analysis rather than undermining official discourse about the war. A similar response is appropriate to a story making the rounds that the documents bolster the case for significant connections between Iran and al-Qaeda. Information in the documents, according to the Wall Street Journal, "appear to give new evidence of direct contacts between Iranian officials and the Taliban's and al Qaeda's senior leadership." What's more important in these stories than the details found in the documents about Iran's activities in Afghanistan is the attempt to spin them into a narrative of "Iranian ties to al-Qaeda" to bolster the weak case for an American attack on Iran.

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Last evening in New York, I joined a strong panel organized by the UN's Alliance of Civilizations at the New York Times to discuss U.S. relations with the Muslim world.   The room was packed to hear Roger Cohen, Joe Klein, Martin Indyk, Reza Aslan, Dalia Mogahed and I talk about a variety of issues.   A surprising amount of the discussion ended up focusing on Israel, which perhaps shouldn't be that surprising, with some real sparks between Aslan and Indyk in particular over the possibility of a two state solution.  While I took part in a variety of conversations about Israel, Iran, democracy, and Obama's foreign policy more generally, my main concern was the dangerous resilience of "clash of civilizations" narratives in American and global discourse about Islam.  For all of Obama's efforts to change that narrative, to move away from a war on terror and focus on partnerships and respect, recent trends only confirm how deeply ingrained the older confrontational narratives really are.  Why? What can be done?

The power of these post 9/11  confrontational narratives about Islam has been on full display  of late.   What I like to call stupidstorms break out with alarming regularity, driven by right wing media:  the frenzy around anodyne comments by the NASA director about engaging Muslims, the firing of Octavia Nasr over her Hezbollah tweet, the especially nasty clashes over the Ground Zero mosque complex.   The sheer amount of disinformation, vitriol, and agitation against Muslims and Islam in pockets of the right wing media (new and old) beggars belief.  Part of the blame also lies with right wing politicians, who cynically (or, more frightening, sincerely) exploit the anti-Islam tropes to drum up votes and to grab attention.   And part of the blame lies in the reality of the persistence and terrorist attacks of al-Qaeda affiliates and sympathizers. , and the polarizing effects of the escalating arguments over Israel, Gaza, and Iran.   It isn't just the right wing echo chamber, though --- the frenzies over the Captain Underpants failed bomber and the Times Square failed bomber show a mainstream media still hardwired to fall back into the comfortable tropes of the war on terror.  

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