Does AIPAC want war? Washington, DC - For all it has done to promote confrontation between the United States and Iran, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has worked to avoid the public perception that AIPAC is openly promoting war.
In AIPAC's public documents, the emphasis has always been on tougher sanctions. (If you make sanctions "tough" enough - an effective embargo - that is an act of war, but it is still at one remove from saying that the US should start bombing.) But a new Senate effort to move the goalposts of US policy to declare it "unacceptable" for Iran to develop a nuclear weapons capability - not a nuclear weapon, but the technical capacity to create one - gives AIPAC the opportunity to make a choice which all can observe. If the Lieberman resolution becomes an ask for AIPAC lobbyists at the March AIPAC policy conference, then the world will know: AIPAC is lobbying Congress for war with Iran.
Does AIPAC want war? Will AIPAC and Bibi get their war? Washington, DC - These are strange times for those of us who follow the debate about a possible war with Iran.
It is clear that the Israeli government and its neoconservative camp followers here in the United States are increasing pressure on President Obama to either attack Iran or let Israel do it (in which case we would be forced to join in). But the idea of another war in the Middle East is so outlandish that it seems inconceivable it could actually occur. Still, the conventional wisdom holds that it can, because this is an election year and the assumption is that no-one will say no to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. War enthusiasm will rise to a fever pitch by March, when AIPAC holds its annual policy conference.