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    Riyadh Fears an American Attack on Iran
    By G.M.
    Le Figaro

    Thursday 15 November 2007

"If the Iranians want to hurt the United States, they'll try to shut down our oil supply lines," explains the Saudi Social Affairs Minister.
0aFearing reprisals from Tehran against its oil installations, Saudi Arabia has approached Moscow, which has the Iranians' ear in the nuclear crisis.

    After betting on dialogue, Saudi officials seem resigned to an American attack against Iran. "We are getting closer and closer to a confrontation," asserts Social Affairs Minister Abdel Mohsen Hakas to Le Figaro. "George Bush's tone makes us think he has decided what he is going to do," adds Rihab Massoud, right-hand man to Prince Bandar ben Sultan, former Saudi ambassador to the United States and very well-connected on the other side of the Atlantic. The implication: the American president will not leave the White House without having "dealt with" the threat Iranian nuclear capability represents.

    Officially, the Saudi monarchy, allied to Washington, opposes any new conflict, fearing to see the destabilization of the Middle East exacerbated. "But, if it does break out, the Saudis tacitly endorse it," notes a Western diplomat in Riyadh. Saudi Arabia dreads Tehran's growing influence in Sunni Arab countries, like Arabia, just as much as it does its nuclear capability. "When someone talks to the Saudis about nuclear issues," the Western diplomat continues, "they answer: Iranians in Iraq, Iranians in Lebanon, Iranians in Palestine and Syria."

    Based on its oil wealth and guardianship over the Muslim holy sites, Saudi Arabia sees itself as the defender of the Sunni world opposite Shiite Iran. In the summer of 2006, Riyadh denounced the "adventurism" of the Lebanese Hezbollah, allied with Iran, which started the hostilities with Israel.

    In spite of that Iranian attempt to work its will in a country dear to the Saudis, during the months that followed, Prince Bandar met several times with his Iranian counterpart at the head of Iran's National Security Council, Ali Larijani, who has just resigned. Under King Abdallah's aegis, it has been a tenet of Saudi policy to maintain contact with its neighbors.

    "Talking With the Iranians Produces No Result."

    "For the last six months, we have not been back to Iran," deplores Rihab Massoud. "On the nuclear question, as with the Lebanese issue, we have the feeling that talking with the Iranians produces no result."

    Saudi Arabia was still disappointed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Riyadh in March, which did not result in a single Iranian concession. On the contrary, the Saudis continued to observe Tehran's growing hold over Iraq's Shiites; and today, with the sound of boots approaching, they fear Iranian infiltrations among their own Shiite minority living in the Kingdom's eastern, oil-rich provinces.

    Very few Iranians were seen for Ramadan this October in Mecca. Most recently, the only high-level meeting was that between Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef and his Iranian counterpart from Intelligence and Security, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei. Expected at the next summit of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) this weekend in the Saudi capital, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is still supposed to have a discussion with King Abdallah.

    Even if the Americans don't need [to use] Saudi territory to strike Iran, Riyadh worries about possible Iranian reprisals against its oil installations. "If the Iranians want to hurt the United States, they'll try to shut down our oil supply lines by attacking the Abqaiq terminal or the Ras al-Tannoura refinery," warns Mr. Hakas. These fears explain Saudi diplomacy's extreme caution about taking any side with respect to Iran. "When we propose a common declaration on the nuclear issue, they refuse," acknowledges a French diplomat.

    All along the coast of the Persian Gulf, neither the Saudi Army nor its Navy gives the impression of getting ready for a conflict. When, several months ago, an Iranian ship - seeking to test the opposing side's riposte abilities - entered Saudi territorial waters, Riyadh's response was, once again, perfectly proportionate.

    While France and Great Britain encourage a hardening in the sanctions against Iran, Saudi diplomacy wants to believe in Russian mediation. "The Russians have good relations with the Iranians," deems Rihab Massoud, "They could play a useful role."

    After Vladimir Putin's visit - the first by a Kremlin head to the Saud - Prince Bandar want to Moscow; and, to reward its new Russian partners, Riyadh is supposed to buy about a hundred helicopters from them. "But the Russians confided to us that the atmosphere in Tehran strangely reminded them of the atmosphere in Baghdad during the months prior to the war in 2003," Rihab Massoud observed bitterly.

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    Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.

 

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    Go to Original

    Freedom's Watch Focus Groups War With Iran
    By Laura Rozen
    Mother Jones

    Monday 19 November 2007

The hawkish advocacy group recently rolled out a multi-million dollar ad blitz in support of the troop surge in Iraq. It's now test marketing language that could be used to sell a war with Iran.

    Laura Sonnenmark is a focus group regular. "I've been asked to talk about orange juice, cell phone service, furniture," the Fairfax County, Virginia-based children's book author and Democratic Party volunteer says. But when she was called by a focus group organizer for a prospective assignment earlier this month, she was told the questions this time would be about something "political."

    On the appointed day, she drove to the offices of Martin Focus Groups in Alexandria, Virginia, knowing she would be paid $150 for two hours of her time. After joining a half dozen other women in a conference room, she found, to her surprise, that she had been called in to help some of the country's most prominent hawks test-market language that could be used to sell a war against Iran to the American public. "The whole basis of the whole thing was, 'we're going to go into Iran and what do we have to do to get you guys to along with it,'" Sonnenmark, 49, tells Mother Jones.

    The client paying for the focus group session, according to Sonnemark, was Freedom's Watch, a high-powered, well-connected advocacy group that launched a $15 million ad campaign this summer in support of the surge of American troops in Iraq. Among the group's leadership: former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer and Bradley A. Blakeman, a former deputy assistant to President Bush. The focus group session suggests that Freedom's Watch may be looking beyond Iraq and expanding its mission to building support for military action against Iran.

    Sonnemark says she only learned of the organization's involvement after members of her politically mixed group were handed a flier bearing a bald headed eagle-its insignia. "I saw Freedom's Watch's logo on the bottom of the flier," Sonnenmark recalls. She says she vaguely knew Freedom's Watch was a pro-war organization at the time of the focus group and was aware of its recent pro-surge television ads. But as the leader of the group began the discussion, she found that his main focus was not Iraq. "He was asking questions about [Iranian president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad going to speak at Columbia University, how terrible it was that he was able to go to Columbia and was invited," Sonnemark says. "And he used lots of catch phrases, like 'victory' and 'failure is not an option.'"

    "Of all the focus groups I've ever been to," Sonnenmark wrote in an email to a group of fellow volunteers for the 2006 Senate campaign of Jim Webb, "I've never seen a moderator who was so persistent in manipulating and leading the participants."(Webb, for his part, is lead author of a Senate letter warning President Bush not to attack Iran without direct congressional approval; see here and here.)

    The upshot of the November focus group? "After two hours, [the leader] asked three final questions," Sonnemark recalls: "How would you feel if Hillary [Clinton] bombed Iran? How would you feel if George Bush bombed Iran? And how would you feel if Israel bombed Iran?" Sonnenmark says she responded, "It would depend on the circumstances.... What is the situation in Iraq? Do we have international support?"

    When Mother Jones contacted Martin Focus Groups, an employee at its Alexandria offices who identified himself as Steve declined to comment on whether the organization had conducted a focus group for Freedom's Watch. (In 2003, Steve Weachter, the manager of the firm's Alexandria offices, told a local Virginia newspaper, "We help whoever calls. It could be about cigarette smoking, drinking, whatever. We could even have a group to evaluate Pepsi one day and Coke the next." In the same article Donna Carter, the assistant manager at Martin, recalled the time the outfit was conducting a Republican focus group in one room and a Democratic group in another.) Freedom's Watch spokesman Matt David declined to confirm the November focus group session, saying, "As a general policy we won't comment on our internal strategy."

    Freedom's Watch can certainly afford to fund public opinion analysis about a potential war with Iran. Its top donors include Sheldon Adelson, the CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, a philanthropist for pro-Israel causes, and, according to Forbes, the third wealthiest man in the United States; John Templeton, a conservative philanthropist; Mel Sembler, a shopping mall developer from Florida, former U.S. ambassador to Italy, and a board member of the American Enterprise Institute; Matthew Brooks and Richard Fox, co-founders of the Republican Jewish Coalition; and Kevin Moley, a former advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney and past U.S. ambassador to international organizations. One of group's financial backers told the New York Times that Freedom's Watch easily expected to raise $200 million in donations by November 2008. Raising big money "will be easy," said the anonymous benefactor, who added "that several of the founders each wrote a check for $1 million."

    Sonnenmark believes that the group's strategists were probably not encouraged by the results of the focus group she took part in. "I got the general feeling that George Bush didn't have a shot in hell" of winning public support for an Iran attack. Some members of her group suggested that should Hillary Clinton be elected president she might have more domestic credibility to make such a controversial decision. As for the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran, Sonnenmark's fellow focuses seemed to indicate that they did not believe the legitimacy of such an action was necessarily up to them to decide.

    Sonnemark only took part in one test marketing session. Another, comprised only of men, entered the room after her group left. But one purpose of focus groups is to provide advocates with information they can use to best craft a pitch or an argument. And even if Sonnenmark and the other members of her group were not persuaded by the language used during their focus group session, their responses could help Freedom's Watch to hone its message. Still, Sonnenmark was not overly worried she had assisted Freedom's Watch in devise rhetoric for a new military campaign. "It is not going to be so easy this time around," she says.

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    Laura Rozen is the National Security Correspondent for Mother Jones.