Is it Condi against Cheney?
Condoleezza Rice seems in control of everything—except events. As she paused for a few minutes in the cabin of her Boeing 757 last week, winging her way to her 63rd country in two and a half years (Spain this time), the secretary of State calmly swatted away questions about the apparent stalemates she faces on so many fronts: Israeli-Palestinian talks, out-of-control nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea, and an emerging cold-war-like confrontation with Russia. (That’s without even bringing up the quagmire in Iraq.) Rice gets through controversy by snubbing it, smiling it out of existence. She’s particularly dismissive when asked whether, at this late date, she is still fighting rear-guard actions against hard-liners in Washington—especially those in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office who don’t like her diplomatic approach to Iran. “There’s always noise in any large system,” Rice told NEWSWEEK in an interview.
She’s not being glib: administration officials universally acknowledge that her views are dominant in Washington. But the rumbling has been getting louder. A NEWSWEEK investigation shows that Cheney’s national-security team has been actively challenging Rice’s Iran strategy in recent months. “We hear a completely different story coming out of Cheney’s office, even now, than what we hear from Rice on Iran,” says a Western diplomat whose embassy has close dealings with the White House. Officials from the veep’s office have been openly dismissive of the nuclear negotiations in think-tank meetings with Middle East analysts in Washington, according to a high-level administration official who asked for anonymity because of his position. Since Tehran has defied two U.N. resolutions calling for a suspension of its uranium-enrichment program, “there’s a certain amount of schadenfreude among the hard-liners,” says a European diplomat who’s involved in the talks but would not comment for the record. And NEWSWEEK has learned that the veep’s team seems eager to build a case that Iran is targeting Americans not just in Iraq but along the border of its other neighbor, Afghanistan.
So, what is Cheney’s office doing, exactly?
In the last few weeks, Cheney’s staff have unexpectedly become more active participants in an interagency group that steers policy on Afghanistan, according to an official familiar with the internal deliberations. During weekly meetings of the committee, known as the Afghanistan Interagency Operating Group, Cheney staffers have been intensely interested in a single issue: recent intelligence reports alleging that Iran is supplying weapons to Afghanistan’s resurgent Islamist militia, the Taliban, according to two administration officials who asked for anonymity when discussing internal meetings.
An official familiar with the interagency group’s deliberations said that Cheney’s aides kept asking what sounded like leading questions, demanding to know whether there was any Iranian entity other than the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—the state security force Washington accuses of arming Iraqi insurgents—that could be responsible for the arms shipments. Cheney’s aides, the official added, appeared less interested in other more mundane items on the Afghanistan policy committee’s agenda. British officials who asked for anonymity because of the nature of their work emphasize that they lack hard evidence linking the shipments to the Revolutionary Guards, and that the weapons could just as easily have been bought on the black market in Iran. But according to one official familiar with the intelligence on Iranian interference in Iraq, Cheney earlier this year began exhibiting particular interest in any evidence detailing Tehran’s aid to anti-American insurgents there. Asked about the vice president’s allegedly keen interest in Iran’s activities in Afghanistan, Cheney spokeswoman Megan McGinn said, “We do not discuss intelligence matters or internal deliberations.”
Rice and Cheney appear to have clashed on the issue of Palestine / Israel and on how to deal with Syria. Rice pushes for more engagement with both Syria and Hamas, Cheney strongly opposes this. Same goes for Guantanamo Bay: Rice tries to soften detention policies at Gitmo, Cheney, well, Cheney is not exactly a fan of anything with the word ’soft’ in it.
Rice says that she and Cheney have a great professional relationship, that he does do anything behind her back. Personally, I find that a bit difficult to believe: after all, people do not become VP by playing fair all the time. People in the toppositions are all a bunch of opportunistic overly ambitious creatures.
Anyway, for now, Rice has more influence than Cheney. She speaks twice a day with Bush. There is, of coure, a ‘but’: she has to deliver.
Now, most of you know me as a hawk, and I am, but if I have to choose between Rice’s approach and that of Cheney, I choose Rice. Yesterday, a commenter at The Moderate Voice accused me of being “eager for war,” which I consider to be a ridiculous statement (if I was eager for war, I would be calling on the US and other nations to attack Iran. Instead I say that, although one should be willing to use force if absolutely necessary, the time or that has not yet come, and there is still hope that ‘we’ can prevent Iran from developing WMDs by peaceful means). However, Cheney does seem to be eager for war. War should never be ruled out, but it should not be the first choice either. With Cheney, it seems to me, war is choice #1.
