Iran is Next

This just in from Der Spiegel:

But the long-smoldering nuclear dispute with Tehran may be about to take a sensational turn. SPIEGEL has learned from intelligence sources that Iran's new president, Hassan Rohani, is reportedly prepared to decommission the Fordo enrichment plant and allow international inspectors to monitor the removal of the centrifuges. In return, he could demand that the United States and Europe rescind their sanctions against the Islamic Republic, lift the ban on Iranian oil exports and allow the country's central bank to do international business again.

Rohani reportedly intends to announce the details of the offer, perhaps already during his speech before the United Nations General Assembly at the end of the month. His foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, will meet Catherine Ashton, the European Union's top diplomat, in New York next Sunday and give her a rough outline of the deal. If he were to make such wide-ranging concessions, President Rohani would initiate a negotiating process that could conceivably even lead to a resumption of bilateral diplomatic relations with Washington.

This has surely been in process for some time. But what an amazing confluence of events! Iran observes us following a two-track, force/diplomacy path with Syria: We are willing to strike; but we prefer diplomacy to achieve CW elimination in the interest of non-proliferation. We will even take a risk - working with our erstwhile Russian adversaries to secure the weapons. All this is a great blueprint for moving strongly ahead with Iran.

Obama has just taken a huge risk in the Syria actions: he has chosen to trust Russia, that they will work effectively with their client Syria to identify and begin the removal of Syria's CW. He retains the option of force, but if Russia fizzles out, he will be embarrassed. If Iranian President Rohani does, in fact, offer to shut down the Fordo enrichment facility, Obama will be faced with new trust and leap of faith issues: whether/how much to pull back on the sanctions and does the West affirm Iran's right to enrich uranium, subject to inspections.

Up until now, we and our partners have said: no enrichment, and no sanction relief until all your work is done. This won't fly, I don't think. Just like Reagan helped Gorbachev convince his hardline Russian associates that letting go of satellite Europe was OK, because the US was going to dramatically reduce its strategic weapons along with Russia - we need to help Rohani sell an agreement to the Iranian hardliners and the Supreme Leader Khamenei. We need to affirm Iran's right to enrich, subject to inspection; and we need to offer quick sanction relief. Most likely, Obama will be hammered from the Right if he supports these moves.

Hang onto your hat! Exciting times are right here, right now!

Looking Ahead

Received positive comments on yesterday's posting "Reflections", where I argue that Obama is an integral leader, that he operates in and out of an integral level of consciousness, that he sees things differently than 95% of other people, and that he will engage skillfully and coherently in strategies that look unconnected, discontinuous, or just plain stupid to most others. Smartypants picked up my post in her posting today titled (marvelously) "A Both/And Leader in an Either/Or World". In future posts, I will flesh out the details of the integral leadership model. Today I want to look just a bit ahead, say out to Christmas.

For a reference point, I will use George Stephanopoulos' excellent interview with the President that aired this morning, including the  Roundtable discussion following the interview segment, with Matthew Dowd (ABC), Cokie Roberts (NPR), Paul Gigot (WSJ), Justin Amash (R, MI), and Donna
Edwards (D, MD). There is nothing unusual about this roundtable group, except that it was a bit more articulate, more thoughtful, and less doctrinaire than Meet the Press, Face the Nation or Fox News Panel Plus. Summary points from This Week's panel (shared in large part by the other networks panels):

• Assad and Putin are the big winners from yesterday's events; the Syrian opposition and the US are the big losers.
• Obama has taken a hit to his leadership image - the zig zags, turnabouts and reversals are clear evidence of shoddy thinking, poor planning, indecisiveness, and, yes, ineptitude.
• 2013 will amount to a total write-off for the President: gun control rejected; immigration reform probably stuck in the House;  healthcare/ACA a train wreck; a failed Syria policy requiring rescue by Putin;  and a possible shutdown and/or debt default.
• Obama's miscues in Syria will probably embolden Iran to keep pursuing nuclear weapons.
• Obama's power as President is almost reduced to irrelevancy.

Reflections

I was thrilled beyond words this morning, when I went online to Huffington Post and saw this:

I sensed right away that this was possibly a transforming moment. So I "noodled" on this idea for several hours. And here are some thoughts and reflections:

• When was the last time we teamed up with another country to make peace, instead of war? Certainly there has been no true peace initiatives since 9/11 - i.e., 2001. I suspect the last major peace initiative was the Dayton Accord in 1995, ending the Bosnian War. Americans cherish peace, yet we clearly engage in a lot of war. Why? Am honestly not sure: Perhaps we think that peace only comes after the war has been won. Perhaps Reagan's continuing use of the Peace Through Strength motto has been seared into our consciousness, regardless of Party. We have witnessed great leaders who "waged peace" highly successfully: Gandhi in India; Mandela in South Africa, and King here in America. But these were neither shooting wars nor conflicts between nations. On balance, most of us in the US and elsewhere have a binary view of conflict: if you win, I lose, and vice versa. And we are completely immersed in the consciousness of scarcity, resource conflict, and fear of the other. Clearly, Gandhi, Mandela and King operated from a different level of consciousness, where abundance, peacemaking, and trust were the qualities seen first, and were part of each leader's basic operating system. Developmental psychologists call this level of consciousness integral, and tell us that less than 5% of the world has attained this consciousness level. Obama, I believe, is part of this small percentage of people who see things whole; who trust the complexity of events to reveal deep structures and patterns, not single point answers or finite solutions; who know with absolute conviction that truth is found not in resolving paradox, but living in its tensions; that flow and generative action requires letting go of ego; and that all people, at every developmental level have something important to say, even your adversaries and enemies, because the brain is not capable of 100% error. In the precise sense that I believe Jesus meant it in the Beatitudes - "Blessed are the peacemakers...", Obama is a peacemaker, while also remembering that Jesus told us to be "Gentle as a dove, and shrewd as a serpent."
• We see with the consciousness we have. That is perhaps why most commentators simply cannot see what Obama's up to. They are looking for the binary juxtapositions: winner or loser; strong or weak; enemy or friend. The idea of engaging your enemy as the one and only way to find a solution for the conflict you both share an interest in - simply doesn't compute; you can't see it. Running parallel and entirely oppositional strategies simultaneously can also be hard to detect, especially if it hasn't been openly declared. Letting your opponent/adversary/enemy get all the credit for whatever breakthrough is achieved - even going so far as to "plan a gaffe" that your Secretary of State will offer as a seemingly offhanded proposal, which can be accepted by your opponent in such a way that he gets all the credit - none of this makes sense to our pundits - that operational mode doesn't compute - power is everything; the powerful are always the winners; never let your guard down; he who has the gold rules, etc, - so folks just cannot see it when something like what has just happened, occurs. And central to this: Obama truly does not care. He is not attached to being the "last man standing"; he is attached only to the result, to the outcome, to the vision - the North Star he has been following. You may not believe me, or really understand what the hell I am talking about. But this is what has just gone down, and the actions, the patterns, the apparent sudden reversals, the willingness to look the fool - all these are products of an integral consciousness. Obama is an integral leader.
• We now have a peacemaking template. It will be used a good bit in the next three years - first in Syria to eliminate their CW and get to a negotiated peace; then in Iran, where I am convinced the leadership will understand this as non-proliferation through peacemaking, and not through threatening or making war; then in North Korea, where we will work with China to  deweaponize the North Koreans; and finally Israel-Palestine. I predict all of these will be partly or largely solved by the end of Obama's second term.

Needless to say, a glorious day!

The Key for Success

This picture and article are from yesterday's Financial Times. Well written. Pretty balanced. But still a very incomplete conclusion, that this was Putin's week, and that he rescued Obama, and that Putin is clearly the winner. Always the binary view: If you win, I lose. If I am right, you are wrong. You are either a friend or an enemy. In Philosophy, this worldview is called Manichaean - the world is starkly divided between the forces of Light and those of the Darkness, between Good and Evil. These completely separate and irreconcilable forces are in perpetual conflict, that will not be resolved until Armageddon and the Last Day, the Day of Judgment.

What is the Key For Success in Diplomacy? Not caring who gets the credit.

We Have A Deal!

The headline says it all! Huffington Post has the details.

Nest up: Iran!

Deadlines Approaching

We are approaching two critical domestic deadlines: October 1 for the Budget and October 18 for the Debt Ceiling. My earlier analyses assumed there would be short term Continuing Resolutions (60-90 days) passed before those dates for both the Budget and the Debt Ceiling. Now I am not so sure,

Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic writes that "The GOP is About to Crack Up: Three Theories Why". In a lead New York Times article this morning,  Jonathan Weisman writes "Boehner Seeks Democrats' Help on Fiscal Talks". And BooMan Tribune writes this afternoon "Will Boehner Call Off the Attack?" So what's up?

The GOP wants to put through a 90 day CR, without taking a Do-or-Die stand on defunding Obamacare. Tea Party members - 43 of them - have revolted. Without them, Boehner can't pass a CR without Democrats' help. But Democrats want a budget with the sequester taken out, a No-No for Conservatives. On the Budget CR, Boehner seems to have two choices:

• Kick the can a bit down the road. Tell conservatives he will fight the Obamacare defunding fight when the Debt Ceiling comes up, and ask Conservatives to back him now.
• Do a deal with Democrats, raising the 2014 Budget up to, or close to non-sequester levels, and pass the Budget CR with mostly Democratic votes, effectively breaking the Hastert Rule, risking a challenge to his Speakership.

Either course is perilous: in the first instance, he raises Tea Party expectations about what a Debt Ceiling negotiation can accomplish; and in the second, he alienates his Conservative base, which could cost him his Speakership.

Suspect he'll go with the former; but it's not clear he can get the 218 votes he needs to pass the Budget CR without Democratic help. The House is supposed to go on Fall recess after next week, and noise is already being heard about the need to cancel the recess. If they do, there will be 11 more work days in September. If they don't, only the five days next week.

We could have a shutdown over the Budget on October 1, just as the debt ceiling drop-dead date arrives.

I think something will get cobbled together for October 1. If so, October 18 may be the crisis date. If not, October 1 it is. Government shut-down, with a possible default crisis two weeks later.

I cannot see how the GOP makes it through to Christmas without either a shut-down, a debt-default or near default, or both.

And this should cook their chances to hold the House in the 2014 mid-terms.

Obamacare Stories

I always respond to stories like this:



This is a spot Obamacare/OFA paid to shoot. But how about this one, from a local Indiana TV news station. What happens when these start popping up more frequently around the country? (Both spots from The Obama Diary)