Elliott Abrams came to prominence in the Reagan Administration and later served in several national security posts under President George W. Bush. He was Deputy National Security Adviser for Global Democracy Strategy, under President Bush, during which time he also headed the Near East, North Africa desk of the National Security Council. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He spoke with Felice Friedson at The Media Line’s Mideast Bureau on October 26, 2009.
The Media Line: They say a day is like an eternity in the Middle East, and your involvement in Mideast peace making dates back a long time. First tell me, when we hear the phrase “Middle East Conflict”, which specific conflict should come to mind?
Abrams: I think people usually mean the Arab-Israeli conflict or if I can put it in a different way, the refusal since 1948. People usually mean the Arab-Israeli conflict. Another way of putting it, I think, is the conflict that results from the fact that since partition in 1948, the Arabs have refused to accept the existence of the state of Israel as a permanent fact. I think that’s really what’s at the root when people usually refer to the Middle East conflict. Other things in the Middle East, like the case of Iran are usually what we mean when we talk about the Middle East conflict.
The Media Line: Aren’t other conflicts like Sunni-Shia greater? Aren’t they still considered Middle East Conflicts?
Abrams: But the world is less interested in those and more interested in the ones between Arabs and Jews. The conflicts in which Muslim kills Muslim or Arab kills Arab, Sudan as an example, just don’t excite attention.
The Media Line: Media likes to portray Israel as the maverick that’s going to mount a dramatic mission over the Iranian sands, neutralizing Iran’s nuclear threat. Is Israel capable of doing it? Can it even try without a green light from the Obama White House?
Abrams: I think Israel can do a great deal of damage to the Iranian nuclear program. You know it’s not on the level with the U.S. Air Force. Nobody’s air force is on the level of the U.S. Air Force, just in terms of size and number of fighters and bombers and tankers and missiles and so forth. I do believe that Israel would set the Iranian program back some years and things can happen in those few years, like the government of Iran is in big trouble internally, it can fall. How long is that government going to last? Ten years? Five years, who knows? I think we should take seriously the fact that both the United States and Israel do have some kind of military option. The Obama administration would like to avoid the use of that option by Israel or the U.S. but so would we all.
Everyone would like to avoid an Iranian nuclear weapon without any turn to violence.
The Media Line: The concern is that there are so many different plants throughout Iran; it would take massive armies to take them out almost simultaneously. How could Israel handle that?
Abrams: Nobody is talking about armies and nobody is talking about invading Iran. When I hear people sometimes compare Iran with Iraq, or people say ‘you know, if there’s a strike on Iran, it’ll be just like the Iran-Iraq war. No, no, no. Nobody is talking about anything like that. What we would be talking about is a very brief air strike on a very small number of locations. I don’t agree with the view that you hear a lot in Washington and elsewhere that there are so many targets in Iran, it’s now impossible to attack them all. It’s true. It’s impossible to attack them all. But you don’t need to attack them all. There are a few critical targets like Natanz obviously, where they have something like 8,000 centrifuges. I think the Iranian regime understands full well that they could be quite vulnerable and set back for some period of time.
The Media Line: There are those who say Iran is an existential threat to Israel? Is that hyperbole?
Abrams: Well if you think about the world in 2009, how many cases are there in which one nation is saying it wishes to eradicate, destroy, annihilate or end the existence of another? There is actually only one, which is the case of the government of Iran. Now, it’s a rhetorical device. It’s just a matter of making speeches, unless or until they get a nuclear weapon. At that point, we have this amazing combination of somebody in possession of the ability to annihilate saying I would like to annihilate another country. I think it may sound like hyperbole and rhetoric if you’re sitting in Washington or London or Beijing, but if you’re sitting in a place where the bombs might land, it’s not going to sound quite so relaxing.
The Media Line: As we sit here, there are think tanks and strategists, many people, trying to figure out if sanctions or other means are going to make a difference in stopping nuclear proliferation. Do you feel that sanctions work and do you feel that there are other angles that have not been addressed?
Abrams: I think sanctions can work. They worked in the case of South Africa. They worked in that case because they were global, they were multilateral. It’s a lot tougher for unilateral American sanctions to work. In the case of Iran, I do think sanctions can still work and I would give you the Iranian offer which they may not be serious about, but the offer to remove all of their low-enriched uranium to Russia. Why would they entertain such an offer? Why would they make such an offer? What is that about? I think it’s a sign of weakness on the part of the regime. I think they are desperate to avoid additional economic sanctions. The political situation inside Iran is making them very anxious. In the months since the June election, they have not eliminated opposition to the regime and the regime itself is split. The clerics are split. This is big trouble for the regime and they don’t want additional economic sanctions. They will do a lot to avoid sanctions. So if we can, we the P5-plus-1, the global community so called, if we can credibly threaten additional economic sanctions against Iran, I think it is still possible to freeze their nuclear program.
The Media Line: What about individual sanctions?
Abrams: Sanctions by individual countries—
The Media Line: And targeting individuals within Iran?
Abrams: You know, we should be doing that because it’s the right thing to do, but it isn’t going to be powerful enough. We, the United States, are pretty much sanctioned out. We can’t alone deprive Iran, for example, of the ability to import gasoline. 40% of the gasoline they use, they need to import. If the world could agree to prevent that, their economy would freeze very quickly. I think in the current political situation, they would actually agree to a freeze on their nuclear program. I believe that. But I think the question is, whether the Russians and Chinese are going to be willing to go along and allow these kinds of sanctions.
The Media Line: Turning to the groundswell on the ground— young people— many were surprised at how they took to the streets during the elections. Do you feel that much needs to be done to reach out to these young people who oppose what’s happening right now in the current government?
Abrams: I think we can try to do things for them. We can try, for example, to get them resources. Most importantly, we should do more broadcasting to make sure they have all the information they need. Fundamentally though, we’re not going to overthrow the government of Iran. If anyone is going to change that regime, it’s going to be Iranians. I think our critical contribution is to speak freely, openly, candidly and make clear to the people of Iran whose side we’re on – namely theirs. My greatest fear about the negotiations that are commencing with Iran is that they legitimize that regime. And that is the thing that we have to avoid above all else— abandoning the people of Iran and giving the government of Iran the chance to say ‘the world doesn’t care about you.’
The Media Line: Ralph Bunche won the first [Nobel] peace prize for his work in the Middle East back in 1950. There have been five more since. So why is the problem still not fixed?
Abrams: Because it’s extremely complicated. I tend to the view that fundamentally problems are not solved at conference tables. They are solved in the real world, and the real world changes are reflected at a conference table, at a negotiation. So what we need to concentrate more on is pragmatic, on-the-ground developments.
The Media Line: You opposed the Oslo accords as being bound to fail. Why did they?
Abrams: You know, my view of Oslo was, they should be seen in the context of a century or century and a half struggle between moderates and extremists on the Palestinian side. Once upon a time it was Haj Amin Al Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, later it was Yasser Arafat, willing, happy to kill Jews for their political ends. But there have always been Palestinians who just want to build Palestine, who just wanted a better life for the Palestinian people. That struggle goes on. It seems to me that what was wrong with Oslo was that just at the point when the extremist leadership of Arafat was really collapsing, Oslo brought them back to center stage.
The Media Line: Israelis fondly look back on the George W. Bush years; a vast majority of them bestowing the term “Pro-Israel” on the former president. How close did President Bush come to achieving some sort of significant agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians?
Abrams: President Bush was more optimistic about that than I was. I did not think that we were that close. A lot of people were saying – as they said in 1990 and 2000 – they are an inch apart the Palestinians and the Israelis, we’re almost there. My sense was always that neither side wanted to go that extra inch because what it meant was a compromise that neither side really wanted. I did not think that the institutional development on the Palestinian side, like the development of the Institute of Justice, including courts and jails and a police force, was sufficient for Palestinian statehood at that moment, [or] sufficient to guarantee Israeli and Palestinian security. I didn’t think we were that close. I do think that President Bush deserved the accolade of being very pro-Israel because he was. His speech to the Knesset in 2008 I think demonstrated that. He was also very pro-Palestinian. I don’t think that’s a contradiction. What he wanted was the best for both sides. He wanted peace, he wanted justice, he wanted a better future for both sides.
The Media Line: President Bush allowed Israeli leaders to believe that he signed-off on the idea that there will be some changes from the 1967 borders in any final settlement. Obama came in and said the new administration had reviewed every note, every memo and every transcript from the Bush years and found no such understanding as described by the Israelis. You said you were there. Are the Israelis on firm ground in believing that some of their post-1967 communities will survive any agreement?
Abrams: Yes, there is no question about that, and in every negotiation there has been, the Palestinians have understood in private that these major communities—the major blocs as we call them are going to stay in Israeli hands. I think that is a fact of life. I would say that in 20 years of negotiations, the Palestinian leadership has privately acknowledged that and talked about things like swaps. We did have an agreement with the Israelis with respect to settlements. It was not written down except in people’s private scrawled notes. It was not a treaty. It was not a formal agreement, it was an oral agreement. We had the kind of relationship with Israel that permitted us to do important things on the basis of talking to each other. We didn’t have to have treaties ratified by Congress. So the Obama officials are correct when they say ‘we’ve reviewed all the treaties and so forth and it’s not there,’ but they did not recall what we told them during the transition and they were told about this, as they were told about some other things that they then conveniently forgot later with respect to Afghanistan.
The Media Line: Is it fair to say that when President Bush entered office the focus was on an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, but that when he left office it was between Israel and the entire Arab world?
Abrams: In our assessment of why President Clinton’s efforts failed – and he made many powerful efforts to get an agreement – the Clinton administration believed, and we agreed, that the lack of broader Arab support for the Palestinians in the compromises they would need to make was important. So we thought, ‘if we ever get around to this, after the Intifada, if there is another round of negotiations, we should try to bring the Arab states in to support the Palestinians.’ And that was Condi Rice’s idea with Annapolis, to bring the Arab states in early so there is a broader agreement that does involve the Arab states. The heart of it remains the negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians and the Arab states can’t substitute for that.
The Media Line: Is the agreement between Israel and all Arab nations a deal Israel can’t refuse—or a deal Israel can’t sign?
Abrams: I would say it depends about what’s in the deal. Israel can refuse if the Arab states make an offer that is simply unreal and I would say the Saudi plan was unreal in the sense that it gave no room for negotiation or compromise over ’67 borders period. Later, when it was adopted by the Arab league, with all the refugees returning, or so-called refugees returning—well that’s not to happen and those have never been the terms discussed in any serious negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. So the Israelis can refuse and they did. It would be much better if the Palestinians, in these negotiations, someday accept that they are going to have to make difficult compromises. It would be much better if they had the full support of the Arab states and when we get to that point, we can only hope and try to cajole them into agreeing to provide that support.
The Media Line: Help us understand the Middle Eastern version of negotiations without conditions. In your role as an American mediator, how do you deal with negotiators who say there are no conditions as longs as Israel stops building; the Palestinians stop firing missiles, and so on?
Abrams: We’ve always tried in the United States to talk to [both] Palestinians and Israelis, Israelis and Arabs. We really do want a solution that benefits Israelis and Palestinians. What has been harder sometimes to convey is that we are not going to jam anything down the throats of the Israelis, partly because that’s not how we treat allies and partly because the things that people have proposed we jam down their throats are not going to produce peace. That’s the other thing. We were able to make an independent assessment of that and also make an Israeli assessment of that. The notion for example, is that the only way for peace is by a square inch by square inch return to the ’67 borders. The ’67 borders produced war after war after war. Why is that a good thing? I think there is a path forward but again it doesn’t start on a table in Geneva or some place. It starts on the ground, particularly in the West Bank.
The Media Line: Prime Minister Netanyahu says an economic foundation for the Palestinians is more important than setting a date for statehood; the Palestinians say he just wants to deflect progress, and Prime Minister Fayyaad set a date for statehood. Who’s right?
Abrams: I can understand the Palestinian desire to have a sense of timing in the sense of ‘no this is going to take another 50 or 100 years.’ I do think that setting a date is not possible [as we saw with] the Road Map. It was called a performance-based road map towards getting a Palestinian state. You can’t tell me the date, sitting here today, when there will be an adequate Palestinian military police force, when there will be a court system that works, when Palestinians will be able to provide law and order fully for their own people, and so forth. So I don’t understand how it’s possible to pick a date out of the sky, and say ‘one year, or four years, or two’ – who knows? I think what we need to do is move in that direction knowing, that as we move in that direction of course, life for Palestinians is getting better, because each of these improvements is a real improvement in the economy, in mobility, in self-government, in the amount of justice available in the West Bank. That’s the direction I would move in. I can understand why Palestinians want to move faster. Anyone in their situation would. I think that the last few decades have proved that efforts to move faster than the real world permits are just going to collapse.
The Media Line: I believe you cautioned against America pushing for Palestinian elections when there was a distinct probability that Hamas would win. Another round of elections is set for January. What would you counsel your successors in the White House to do?
Abrams: You know, Americans believe in elections. We believed in them in Japan and in Germany after World War II. We believe in them in Iraq and Afghanistan these days. We believe it’s a way to provide a legitimate government for Palestinians as well. I think the mistake we made in the Bush administration was to allow a terrorist group, Hamas, to participate in the elections and to retain all of their weaponry. I think if you go back to Oslo, terrorist groups were not supposed to participate in post-Oslo elections. I think this is a general view in Europe too that armed groups should lay down their arms, and then participate in elections. The mistake we made was that we did not say to Hamas, ‘when you are willing to give up terrorism, and promote political goals by the ballot box, then and just then can you participate in elections in the Palestinian areas.’ I’m not opposed to elections in Palestinian areas. I think that you should have to choose between trying to seize power by guns, and offering your program to the Palestinian people peacefully.
The Media Line: How could any process move forward without Hamas and Fatah coming together unified in some way?
Abrams: Well I don’t think that unity between a terrorist group and Fatah is a way forward. I think all that does is it destroys efforts to create a new, more moderate, more progressive Palestinian government. You’re going to get the lowest common denominator there, which is going to be a Palestinian government that contains terrorists. I don’t see how that helps the Palestinian people and in this, I think the Egyptian, and other nations’ efforts to force a unity government are an advantage to the Palestinian people. I think terrorism needs to be left behind, and political, economic and social reform – institution building – is the way forward. I am not in favor of anybody doing a coalition government with a terrorist group.
The Media Line: President Abbas is not the most powerful person in the Palestinian areas today, so what can happen if there were elections and Hamas does not come into play and you’re left without leadership.
Abrams: Well, somebody is going to win the election and people have a raw memory of the legislative election. Of course, President Abbas easily won the presidential election. The Parliamentary Legislative election was quite close. It was 44% to 41%, Hamas over Fatah. Who knows why or how much of it was religious versus secular or how much of it was a rejection of the corruption of Fatah over Arafat. Some of it may have been that the leadership of Hamas had better politicians. I think it is possible for Fatah to win the elections by saying to the Palestinian people, ‘look at what we are doing in the West Bank and how we are doing in the West Bank, and look at Gaza, which is not only living in poverty but is increasingly a kind of Taliban, a Wahabi-type state where Hamas is telling people what clothing to wear, not to mention what they are doing in the schools.’ I don’t think Palestinians, who I think have the highest literacy rate in the Arab world – I think over 90% – are going to choose to go live in a kind of Taliban-like republic. I think that if Fatah and the PA can perform for Palestinians living in the West Bank, all Palestinians are going to look at that and say, ‘you know, that’s the way forward.’
The Media Line: A lot has been written about the deterioration in relations between the U.S. and Israel under the Obama administration. What’s your take?
Abrams: We achieved a level of trust and confidence and intimacy in the Bush administration, achieved partly during the Intifada, when we gave such strong support to Israel to resist and fight back against terrorism, which in the early years of the Bush administration, was suffering terribly, if you look back at some of the suicide bombings that killed over 1,000 Israelis in total. So we achieved something as yet that I think the Obama administration has not yet achieved. But I think the alliance between Israel and the United States is quite strong. I see it in Congress and I see it in the American people. I don’t think people realize, for example, that the majority of American tourists who visit Israel are Christians. The support among tens of millions of Christian-Americans for Israel is really quite overwhelming and tremendous. So I think the relationship between the United States and Israel as countries is as strong as ever. I do think there has been some trouble with the Obama administration and they need to fix it.
The Media Line: Finally, your prediction: where will the Mideast be, peace-wise, when the Obama term in office is over?
Abrams: Well now, I’m a Republican and this raises the question of when the Obama term [will be] over. Is it a one-term presidency or a two-term presidency? Sitting here today, we don’t know. It’s of course very early on, too hard to judge. I am hopeful. I think that if I can put it in a non-partisan way, and say where will we be ten years from now, I think there is quite a decent chance the people of Iran will have risen up and replaced this regime which they clearly loathe with a different regime. That’ll change the Middle East because a lot of the problems of the Middle East are really owed to the regime in Iran. It is plausible to think of real progress toward a Palestinian state. I don’t know whether there will be a Palestinian state but I know we will be a lot closer to it because what is happening now in the West Bank seems to me to show the practical way forward. So I know there are a lot of people who say the Middle East is only on the verge of blowing up. I actually think things are going to look better five or ten years down the road than they do today.
The Media Line: Elliot Abrams thank you very much.
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