Bits and Pieces - April 14, 2012

When you think the world is screwed up, try to put yourself back into 1950.

Another war avoided!

Some sense on airport security. I don't suppose anyone who might change the policies is listening, though.

American media isn't giving us near enough on the travails of the Murdoch family. That's a sitcome I'd be willing to watch!

A shout-out to a very enjoyable blog on geology.

Choosing Wisely: trying to figure out the utility of medical and diagnostic treatments.

For those of you who have read the whole post, a really marvelous livecam: a great blue heron nest in New York State. Unlike most livecams, it has sound, so I can listen to the redwinged blackbirds, geese, and ducks that remind me of being at Bosque del Apache. Very lovely.

Bits and Pieces - April 11, 2012

Here's the only article I've found about Ann Romney's ideas on what mothers do that has much substance.

I do love Siberia - here are photos of the Nenets.

Opinions on how international law affects a possible Israeli attack on Iran.

Some of the numbers on the New START Treaty.

Those of you who are interested in raising chickens should follow this blog. Betty Cracker at Balloon Juice is documenting her start in chicken-raising. Here's the latest. And there's even chicken diplomacy.

A Trip to Trinity Site

It’s about a two and half hour drive to White Sands’s Stallion Gate from my home in Santa Fe. I wasn’t sure of what to expect, so I brought reading material, having heard stories of long waits to get in. I left about six-thirty, got there about nine, and the dozen or so cars in front of me moved through the gate expeditiously, drivers showing a picture id to the security people.

From the gate, it’s another fifteen miles to Trinity. The site is on the beginnings of a mountain elevation, and as you approach, you can see the roughly circular cleared area. You also pass the control bunker before you enter an immense parking lot, directed by young soldiers dressed in camouflage mimicking the creosote-bush vegetation that surrounds the gray gravel lot.

Nothing was as I expected. Far more people, but I guess I couldn’t expect the personal attention I got on my trip to Opytnoe Pole, the site of the Soviet Union’s first nuclear test of essentially the same design that was tested at Trinity. We had maybe a dozen people in two vehicles. I would not be surprised if there were (literally, yes!) a thousand times that at Trinity on Saturday. The car license plates were from all over the United States, and I heard, besides English, Japanese and a Scandinavian language.

Everything is, of course, very trampled. The desert is delicate, but lichens and other small organisms form soil crusts, easily destroyed. So the path to the site and the site itself are dust, what you get when you destroy those soil crusts.

One area of the blast site has been covered to preserve the trinitite pavement. I was surprised to see some trinitite still outside that area. A foamy green piece begged to come keep my Opytnoe Pole spherule company, but I sublimated that need into buying a souvenir windbreaker to be part of my Nuclear Diner wardrobe.

What is left of Jumbo has been moved to the parking area. It was smaller than I expected. Explanatory photos are mounted by the blasted cylinder and on the fence around ground zero, but many people didn’t seem to get it. A couple of guys were looking at a picture of Jumbo on its many-wheeled truck and saying that it was built at Los Alamos. I told them it was built in Pittsburgh and transported by train and truck. Why? They wanted to know. So I told the story that General Groves didn’t want to spread his billion dollars worth of plutonium over the desert and the three possibilities they tested at Los Alamos. I recently was told, by someone who has better connections to that very specialized rumor mill than I have, that the reason Jumbo wasn’t used was the concern that if the explosion went as planned, it would scatter giant shrapnel from Albuquerque to Las Cruces. I take that with a grain of salt, but I passed it along to my listeners.

There was a model of Fat Man on a flatbed truck in the ground zero area. It looked smaller in the crater than the Fat Man model does in the Bradbury Museum.

A nice surprise was a bus out to the MacDonald Ranch. Again, much too walked over.

I did manage to step aside and get alone with my thoughts, although it was much harder than at Semipalatinsk. Both areas have a stark, open beauty. The steppe is greener, and in many places the ground was paved with houseleeks, impossible to walk without stepping on little plants. It may simply be that I am more accustomed to the New Mexico flora. In many places, not just at Trinity, the creosote bushes had died but were coming up again from the roots. I hadn’t seen that before and am wondering if it is from last year’s very dry winter, followed by our recent rain.

The most impressive part to me was the depression, a very shallow crater, formed by the explosion. According to one of the signs, it is eight feet deep, little enough that you almost don't notice it. The stone marker is at precise Ground Zero, under where the device was mounted on a tower.

Stallion Gate is ten miles or so further east on US 380 than the famous Owl Bar and Grill, which seemed to be doing an enormous business as I was leaving, so I decided not to have a chile cheeseburger there. I turned south at that corner. Many years ago, I spent a lot of time at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge photographing birds. Someday, when I have nothing else to do, I will digitize those ten thousand slides.

That was before there was a visitor center and before it cost $5 to drive around the refuge. It was before Socorro’s Festival of the Cranes, and there were times when no other people were on the refuge, even during crane season. Lately I have learned that some people don’t realize that there are any other kinds of birds there.

It was the first time for this camera. I played a bit with the coots, just to get a feel for what might be worth photographing. And I did get lucky: ibis and egrets. I posted one photo yesterday. Here are more.

Great heron with a snack.

White-faced ibis.

White-faced ibis coming in for a landing over snowy egret.


There have been a lot of improvements since my last visit, and lots of water.

Coming back from my Texas trip a couple of weeks ago, I stopped at Bitter Lake NWR and was disappointed. The roads seemed to be fewer than I recalled, and practically all of the cover was gone. I got some really wonderful bittern photos at Bitter Lake a long time ago. In contrast, Bosque is developing some very nice rail and bittern habitat.

If you go:
White Sands opens Trinity Site twice a year, on the first Saturdays in April and October. Information can be found here. A lot of walking is required, perhaps a half-mile from the parking lot to Ground Zero, and just as much to the toilets. People transporters are available. Bring a jacket; the temperature when I arrived was in the sixties, and some people were shivering in shorts. Food is available, along with souvenirs. Looked like mostly burritos, along with various non-alcoholic beverages.

Alcohol and firearms are not allowed on site. Photography is allowed only at Trinity Site. The radiation levels are minimal.

Placeholder

I visited Trinity Site, the place the first atom bomb was exploded, yesterday. I'm working on a photo essay on that, but in the meantime, here's a photo I took yesterday at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, on the way home from Trinity.

White-faced ibis with a snowy egret.

Obama's Signal to Iran - So Much for That

Yesterday David Ignatius told us that President Obama sent a message to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei via Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the United States would accept an Iranian civilian nuclear program if the program was safeguarded and transparent enough to show that it was not directed toward nuclear weapons. This would be a big step toward an agreement between Iran and the rest of the world.

Talks between Iran and the P5+1 are being scheduled for next week or the week after. Earlier, Iran suggested Istabul as the venue. Suddenly this week and Iranian official suggested Baghdad as a preferable meeting place. And now Prime Minister Erdogan says

It is necessary to act honestly. [The Iranians] continue to lose prestige in the world because of a lack of honesty.

Oops.

This may have something to do with the unrest in Syria, where Iran backs the Assad regime. Or it may be something else. Not a good sign for the negotiations.

Update (4/8/12): The Iranians are willing to accept Istanbul for talks. Today, anyway. Hard to say what this means, but it's probably better than their insisting on Baghdad.

Bits and Pieces - April 4, 2012

Driving Inside the Soviets’ Secret Submarine Lair.

Living in a nuclear hell. The Soviets were very casual about disposing of the kinds of nuclear waste that was put into tanks at Hanford and Savannah River in the US: they just poured it into the river.

Clarifying some terms that have to do with the US oil supply.

It has bothered me for some time that so much of Science magazine is behind a paywall. I've wanted to write about their material and didn't many times because I couldn't link to it. Sometimes I take the time to find an article or the press release from Science. Michael Eisen points out that those press releases don't always portray the material accurately.

At first glance, this seems like a good idea: Brazil would take a leadership position in nuclear nonproliferation by eschewing enrichment. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty guarantees peaceful nuclear technology to countries that don't make bombs with it. The problem is that enrichment enables both civilian reactors and bomb-making. Seems to me there needs to be a lot more buy-in by NPT signatories before something like this can happen.

In 2006, Philip Zelikow, then a counselor in the State Department, wrote a memo opposing the use of torture. Yesterday the National Security Archive obtained a copy of that memo through the Freedom of Information Act. Here's the memo, a short article on it in the Washington Post, and more from the National Security Archive.

The Israel-Iran-US Information War

News scoops may happen because of hard work by reporters. That hard work may be supplemented by government officials wanting to leak information that might not be as effectively released through official channels.

Governments may also release information officially that is not true.

Both seem to be happening in the case of Iran, Israel, and the United States. The motives seem to be many and not entirely decipherable.

Iran claims that its nuclear program is for peaceful uses. It has admitted to the pursuit of technologies related to nuclear weapons in the past but says that nuclear weapons are not a current goal, and the ruling mullahs repeat that nuclear weapons are religiously forbidden. However, some of the activities in Iran’s nuclear program lay a foundation for production of nuclear weapons if that decision is taken, and, as a signatory of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran is obligated to explain those activities, which it has not. Iran loudly announces advances in its nuclear technology, sometimes claiming more than has been achieved. Putting an Additional Protocol into effect and allowing IAEA inspectors easy access to more sites would help to show the program’s goals, but Iran claims that IAEA inspections in the past have included spies.

Israel has been agitating for an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites and additional sanctions against Iran. Israel claims repeatedly over the years that Iran’s program is reaching a point of no return. The “redline” for attack is poorly defined: the ability to enrich, the development of underground sites, or that Iran can produce a nuclear weapon by some date in the future, some of which have passed with no nuclear weapon in evidence. The poor definition itself may be intended to generate uncertainty. Israel, of course, has long concealed its nuclear weapons programs from the world and even now will not admit to them.

The United States has issued two National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) that say that Iran is not seeking nuclear weapons. It has also pressed for an end to Iran’s enrichment program. The second may be contrary to the goals of the NPT, but that has been fuzzed up by United Nations Security Council resolutions that Iran is in violation of its NPT obligations by withholding information about former weapons work; such resolutions are consistent with limiting a signatory’s rights under the NPT. The Obama administration seems to emphasize an end to Iranian enrichment less than the Bush administration did. At the same time, the President and Secretary of State say that upcoming talks represent a window of opportunity that will not remain open forever.

Evidence on Iran’s nuclear program is difficult to come by, as is information about the sources of that information. The NIEs and the IAEA report from last November don’t provide sources as part of their standard procedure. One likely source has been much discussed: the so-called laptop of death, which may well be a thumb drive or other electronic format. This turned up in 2007 and seems to be part of the IAEA’s evidence, although the IAEA also says that it has done additional checking of the claims it lists in the November report. How much more do the intelligence services of Israel, America, and other countries know about the Iranian program than shows up in the media?

Does Israel really plan to attack Iran? What would be the American response? Presumably President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu discussed these questions more candidly than either has revealed to the press. “We’ve got Israel’s back” is inherently ambiguous. “We’ll back you no matter what you do”? or “We will respond only if Israel is about to be destroyed”?

What are Iran’s intentions for its nuclear program? If they are peaceful, why doesn’t it cooperate more fully with the IAEA?

Motivations are harder to read. Does Iran want a deterrent or a path to regional hegemony? Are Israeli leaders really concerned about a second Holocaust, or are they worried about losing their nuclear weapons monopoly in the region? How far is America influenced by Israel? What do the leaders of the three countries actually believe about the others?

Sheera Frenkel published three articles (here, here, and here) at McClatchy in the beginning of March based on interviews of Israeli officials. She tries to sort fact from propaganda. Bernard Finel suggests three possible motivations for Israel’s latest blast of saber-rattling. There are probably more.

More recently, Mark Perry got a scoop in Foreign Policy: Israel is purchasing the right to use air bases in Azerbaijan, just north of Iran, useful for refueling or landing planes damaged in an attack. Perry’s information is from “several high-level sources I've spoken with inside the U.S. government.” A single source might be speaking on his/her own, but not “four senior diplomats and military intelligence officers.” So the conclusion was easily drawn (by the Christian Science Monitor, Ron Ben-Yishai at Y-Net, and others in Israel) that the United States was trying to scuttle Israel’s preparations for an attack on Iran.

Actions are a somewhat firmer clue than statements. Israel’s war drums have lowered their volume, and Israel seems to be backing off from its apparent sabotage of the Iranian nuclear program. Iran is willing to begin talks again on its nuclear program while warning that it can reply in kind to a military attack. The United States is not advertising detailed expectations of the talks while maintaining a hard line that there must be results.

Articles like this one, of which there have been many over the last month, depend on the author’s best guess as to what the situation and motives are. That goes for what I write as well. Additional layers of “should” are often brought in, the authors recommending what they see as the most desirable actions. Those “shoulds” incorporate more of the hypothetical and unstated assumptions.

It’s important to be alert for those “shoulds”, for the background and expertise of the authors of articles claiming to know the intentions and plans of any of the parties. And to remember that there’s a lot that isn’t known. There’s some hard selling going on.

Cross-posted at Nuclear Diner and The Agonist.

Sapote

Photo: Helmut

Blowin' In The Wind

I don't see a way to embed this, so you'll have to believe this still:

If you go to this link, you will see the current state of winds across the US, moving and changing.

E. J. Dionne Says What I've Been Thinking

The irony is that if the court’s conservatives overthrow the mandate, they will hasten the arrival of a more government-heavy system. Justice Anthony Kennedy even hinted that it might be more “honest” if government simply used “the tax power to raise revenue and to just have a national health service, single-payer.” Remember those words. - E. J. Dionne

Now that Americans are beginning to recall their responsibilities as citizens and are protesting against the worst injustices some would like to perpetrate (Governor Walker in Wisconsin, the War on Women), I've been thinking that a Supreme Court pander to the radical right might just activate the realization that we need healthcare and that single-payer simplifies a number of issues. And that realization might just drive a movement that would provide the support for single-payer that wasn't there when the ACA passed.

Update: Ezra thinks not. But where he and I part company is that he's looking at the political parties (after saying this is an unfortunate way to frame the discussion) and I'm looking at the electorate. Yes, the pusillanimous Congress we've got would go the way he's saying. But will the voters stand for it?

Bits and Pieces - March 27, 2012

Did you know the first US patent for a color TV was awarded to a Mexican inventor? This is a cool site with an enormous store of information. And it has the good sense to feature Estonia as one of its up-front countries.

It's hard to tell if Anne-Marie Slaughter is doing a bit of cherry-picking here, or if the examples she cites are really a trend. In either case, good job, Secretary Clinton!

Doing science while brown. And in a hoodie. Women are subject to excessive scrutiny in some of the same ways as black people, so I've got some feeling for the need to be perceived as totally harmless in a paranoid world. I recommend some serious meditation, particularly by white males, on how it would feel to have to calculate your every move on pain of death, rape, or arrest.

Do We Need Stories?

I've just completed a two-week safari across Texas. I stayed with or visited friendly natives, including Steve Hynd of The Agonist and Newshoggers and a number of long-time friends from other venues. The news was not good for all of them, part of the reason I made the trip.

All of them have stories and represent stories in my life. Sometimes they figured in stories that many others have heard and read, like the story of Wen Ho Lee and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. But, for the most part, their stories are something shared among us and a small number of friends.

So I've been surrounded by stories, and other friends and acquaintences provide me many more.

Maybe that's why I'm not enthralled by fiction. Another friend (many stories) lent me the 19 discs of Moby Dick, to listen to as I crossed boring territory. But none of it was boring. Some was very flat, but that allowed me to see trees, ranches, and windmills in the distance. It also allowed me to realize that land I've thought of as flat, like that between Roswell and Vaughn, New Mexico, isn't flat at all.

There were different types of vegetation, different ways of signing the roads, different roads. The road surfacing in Texas is much noisier than that in New Mexico. Probably gives better traction during rains, but it was a relief to get back to quieter travel. Different buildings, different ways of orienting buildings relative to the roads. And wonderful wildflowers once I hit the Hill Country! Still haven't uploaded the photos to this computer; maybe tomorrow.

So I didn't listen to a single one of those Moby Disks. Mostly I didn't listen to anything radio or cd, although I spent some time with Rush Limbaugh (very repetitive) and Faure's nocturnes and barcarolles (for which, thanks to Jim!).

I don't read many novels. People have asked me about this. I don't have full answers; it's hard for me to find a novel that intrigues me enough to read. Sometimes I read a bestseller that I think I should read, frequently disappointing, and sometimes a trashy novel that goes quickly. One problem I have in reading novels is that if they engage me sufficiently, somewhere past about two-thirds through the book, I have to finish it, even if it means staying up until two in the morning.

I have a large backlog of books to read, mostly nonfiction, biography and history. I bought a novel today that contains a large historical component. I also bought two nonfiction books.

It seems to me that there are stories everywhere: those of our friends and the institutions we attach ourselves to; the everyday workings of our communities and the world; and the natural world. On that last, I realized on this trip through Texas wildflowers that they mostly grow in recently disturbed soil; where what we call weeds grow. And I met a little boy whose knowledge of dinosaurs and wonder at my watch exceeded mine.

Or the LBJ story I told you in a previous post and which we Americans still haven't come to terms with.

So I was pleased to read Tim Parks's consideration of whether we need stories of the kind in novels. His reasons are different from the ones I've given, but are not incompatible with them.

My Body, My Choice

I'm listening to CSPAN broadcasting a rally in Washington, DC, against Obamacare (now the official name)

"It's my body and my choice," says one male speaker. "Keep the government from getting between my doctor and me."

The applause was thin; some of the audience may have been thinking what I was: that this is what women have said about the laws intended to intrude into their health care.

I'm just wondering if he thinks that applies to women too. Or if the Tea Party members there will take up this formulation.

The Western White House

I've been traveling across Texas the past week and a half. I stayed with friends in Marble Falls, and on Wednesday we went to Lyndon Johnson's ranch, now a state and national park.

You sign up for a permit, and you get a cd narrating the drive around the park.

It's a beautiful place, across the Pedernales (pronounced Per-de-nales by Johnson and my Texas friend) River from the Highway 290. There's a long, well-paved runway, and the small Lockheed jet that LBJ used after leaving his 707 in Austin, stands under a roof.

The Western White House. How many times we heard that phrase during LBJ's presidency! You come to it after driving past the older homes on the property, earlier generations of Johnsons, and the family cemetary where LBJ and Ladybird lie. The hangar where he held press conferences now holds exhibits - Johnson making his speech on the 1964 Civil Rights Act, photos of him and Ladybird - and a desk where $2 buys you a ticket to tour the house.

It's a nice limestone home under old oak trees. An office that gave him about as much room as my office gives me, with three secretaries added. IBM typewriters, cord phones, three televisions for the three networks with one of the first remotes ever. The rest of the house is not extraordinary except for the thinking that pursued me.

"Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" echoed through my head after an enlarged LBJ-Humphrey campaign button caught my eye.

And yet...the Civil Rights Act. Johnson's observation that his signing it would end the south's support of the Democratic party has been much cited. It's quite a contrast to most current political approaches: the good of the country came first.

If the Republicans hadn't picked up the South, that party wouldn't be quite so crazy today. And if Johnson hadn't signed the Civil Rights Act, that probably wouldn't have happened. But the country would have been torn apart anyway. The ending of the Vietnam War and the draft wouldn't have been enough.

Alternative history always intrigues me. But there are so many possible paths, and so many unexpected events possible. Who would have thought that it would be a Southern, typically corrupt Dixiecrat brought to the presidency by an assassin's gun who would do so much to end segregation?

Photo of the Day

Seems like the Phronesisaical crowd is traveling. Here's a hint as to where I am!

Bits and Pieces - March 10, 2012

Seeds from plants that survived the Hiroshima atomic bomb will be planted in the Irkutsk University Botanical Garden. Keep us posted on their progress, Viktor Kuzevanov!

I'm wondering, as does Frank Munger, whether these atom-bomb shelters were intended for short-term use only. I was in the Silmet plant's shelter in Estonia, and it was quite spacious, with rollaway cots, ventilators that could be hand-powered if necessary, and other necessities. Much nicer than the one pictured here.

Here are pictures of what the cores of the Fukushima reactors probably look like. The "corium" mentioned in the text refers to the melted mixture of fuel element, cladding, and whatever else was in the way as it melted and dropped.

Elaine Blair recently wrote a review of Michael Houellebecq's latest book, which got her thinking about American male authors who write about, um, men and their insecurities. She posts her thoughts on that. I've been unable to read most modern fiction for some time now, just not interesting to me. What Blair writes about is certainly part of it. And it ties in with the recent count of reviewers and authors in the leading magazines: not much change from last year, my estimate pretty much 75% male across the board. Guys, we're not interested. But it gets published anyway because it's guys publishing it.

And here's a guy who seems to think a lot about sex but must be thinking about money too: Rick Santorum.

Added later: Ezra Klein assembles the studies that show that Daylight Saving Time is mostly a scam. My personal interest in this is that I'm a morning person, and just about the time it starts to be light when I wake up, they set that back another month or so. :-P Plus, how can we "save" daylight, when we don't even have twelve hours of it a day yet?

For a change: some good news. Global poverty in 2010 was at half its 1990 levels.

More on Murdoch: in Russia, yet!

Bits and Pieces - International Women's Day Edition

We don't make much of International Women's Day here in America, and from the last barrage of invective, legislation intended to humiliate women, and defunding of women's health services, it's easy to see why. Maybe when we all give up our shoes and independent voices and don the veil, our men will deign to celebrate our proper behavior.

Which is unfair to those men who haven't joined the Republican jihad, like my blog partners. Having grown up in a man's world, I really like what I'm seeing in younger men's attitudes. There's hope yet.

The Guardian does a much better job of link-collecting than I could. Of course, it's all from their site, but it looks like a good selection.

And yesterday was Purim, another celebration of a woman, but Marsha B. Cohen says they're getting it wrong.

Added later: Why aren't there more women in foreign policy?

International Slutty Women's Day

In Arizona, the state Senate passed a bill saying that doctors can intentionally keep critical health information from pregnant women and can’t be sued for it. The idea is that if women know that a pregnancy is threatening their health, they might terminate it. And we know that would be wrong.

What Obama Will Say To Netanyahu

Want to know what President Barack Obama will say to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu when they meet Monday? Obama tells us in his interview with Jeffrey Goldberg.

…our argument [to Prime Minister Netanyahu] is going to be that it is important for us to see if we can solve this thing permanently, as opposed to temporarily. And the only way, historically, that a country has ultimately decided not to get nuclear weapons without constant military intervention has been when they themselves take [nuclear weapons] off the table. That's what happened in Libya, that's what happened in South Africa. And we think that, without in any way being under an illusion about Iranian intentions, without in any way being naive about the nature of that regime, they are self-interested. They recognize that they are in a bad, bad place right now. It is possible for them to make a strategic calculation that, at minimum, pushes much further to the right whatever potential breakout capacity they may have, and that may turn out to be the best decision for Israel's security.

I don’t understand “pushes much further to the right” and suspect that it is Obama’s one verbal slip in the published interview. The sense of it seems to be “pushes off” or “pushes into the future.”

But, whatever that phrase was intended to mean, the overall meaning is clear: Obama plans to to argue to Netanyahu that the only way to solve the problem of Israel’s fear of Iran is not to attack, but to persuade Iran to give up any quest for nuclear weapons peacefully. That is the implication of “permanently, as opposed to temporarily.” All of the previous discussion of a potential attack on Iran by US government officials and by many Israeli former officials has been that an attack would delay Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons “temporarily” while hardening its intent.

Early in the interview Obama states his criterion: “Does the problem get solved?” The last sentence of the published interview is “My message will be much more specific, about how do we solve this problem.” Those two references prepare for and emphasize the message.

And Obama has something concrete to bolster his argument. Last week an agreement was reached with North Korea about its nuclear program. North Korea has been as difficult to deal with as Iran, so progress there in diplomacy implies that diplomacy may succeed with Iran. This weakens the calls for war from Israel, whether intended as bluff or genuine, so there was rapid pushback from senior Israeli officials that there was no analogy between North Korea and Iran.

Obama has his say in this interview. Jeffrey Goldberg was a good choice for interviewer, someone who can hardly be charged with being too critical of Israel or pulling his punches. Obama and his people knew what Goldberg would ask; he has been asking those questions for some time in his blog. So the answers were fully prepared.

Obama sets the stage to make it easy for Netanyahu to agree that now is not the time for a strike on Iran. That sentence could also read “Obama is boxing Netanyahu in so that he can’t declare war on Iran.” Some of both are operative, and Netanyahu can take it one way or the other. An early indication that he is taking it in the first sense comes from Barukh Binah the Deputy Chief of Mission for the Israeli Embassy to the United States. “Israel can rely on the US, full stop,” he said at a reception by the American Jewish Committee in his honor. He would not have said that without approval from Netanyahu.

There are still ways that Netanyahu might insist on war sooner rather than later in his meeting with Obama, and he has upset expectations before.

But let’s look at what Obama said, and why I say it boxes Netanyahu in.

Throughout the interview, Obama emphasizes that Israel’s actions are their choice and that there are better and worse choices, a reasonable thing for one head of state to say to another, and in contrast to some recent Israeli commentary that insists that Obama say or do particular things.

I think it has to do with a legitimate concern on the part of Israel that they are a small country in a tough neighborhood, and as a consequence, even though the U.S. and Israel very much share assessments of how quickly Iran could obtain breakout capacity, and even though there is constant consultation and intelligence coordination around that question, Israel feels more vulnerable. And I think the prime minister and the defense minister, [Ehud Barak,] feel a profound, historic obligation not to put Israel in a position where it cannot act decisively and unilaterally to protect the state of Israel. I understand those concerns....

***

I think the prime minister has a profound responsibility to protect the Israeli people in a hostile neighborhood, and I am certain that the history of the Holocaust and of anti-Semitism and brutality directed against the Jewish people for more than a millennium weighs on him when he thinks about these questions.

I think it's important to recognize, though, that the prime minister is also head of a modern state that is mindful of the profound costs of any military action, and in our consultations with the Israeli government, I think they take those costs, and potential unintended consequences, very seriously.

***

In my discussions with Israel, the key question that I ask is: How does this impact their own security environment? I've said it publicly and I say it privately: ultimately, the Israeli prime minister and the defense minister and others in the government have to make their decisions about what they think is best for Israel's security, and I don't presume to tell them what is best for them.

But as Israel's closest friend and ally, and as one that has devoted the last three years to making sure that Israel has additional security capabilities, and has worked to manage a series of difficult problems and questions over the past three years, I do point out to them that we have a sanctions architecture that is far more effective than anybody anticipated; that we have a world that is about as united as you get behind the sanctions; that our assessment, which is shared by the Israelis, is that Iran does not yet have a nuclear weapon and is not yet in a position to obtain a nuclear weapon without us having a pretty long lead time in which we will know that they are making that attempt.

In that context, our argument is going to be that it is important for us to see if we can solve this thing permanently, as opposed to temporarily. And the only way, historically, that a country has ultimately decided not to get nuclear weapons without constant military intervention has been when they themselves take [nuclear weapons] off the table.

***

I think that in the end, Israel's leaders will make determinations based on what they believe is best for the security of Israel, and that is entirely appropriate.

When we present our views and our strategy approach, we try to put all our cards on the table, to describe how we are thinking about these issues. We try to back those up with facts and evidence. We compare their assessments with ours, and where there are gaps, we try to narrow those gaps. And what I also try to do is to underscore the seriousness with which the United States takes this issue. And I think that Ehud Barak understands it. I think that Prime Minister Netanyahu, hopefully when he sees me next week, will understand it.

And one of the things that I like to remind them of is that every single commitment I have made to the state of Israel and its security, I have kept. I mean, part of your -- not to put words in your mouth -- but part of the underlying question is: Why is it that despite me never failing to support Israel on every single problem that they've had over the last three years, that there are still questions about that?

Goldberg agrees that that is a fair restatement of his question.

Obama has imposed an impressive structure on the interview, very difficult for an interviewee to do. He builds up to his statement of his position for the Monday meeting. He alludes to the severity of war and its likely ineffectuality in persuading Iran to give up its nuclear program without saying much of that explicitly. Israel and the United States are partners and should continue to work together.

At the extreme, Obama is laying a basis for cutting Israel loose if it chooses to attack Iran. It’s unlikely that Obama would do this, but he needs that flexibility. His representatives have put the arguments for attack and diplomacy on the table over the past few weeks. Obama says in this interview he will come down on the side of diplomacy.

There is more to the interview, of course. There are those macho statements that have been getting all the news coverage. More about them to come.

Update: The text of President Obama's speech to AIPAC is very similar, emphasizing diplomacy over war.

Cross-posted at Nuclear Diner and The Agonist.

Bits and Pieces - Early Edition

President Obama's interview with Jeffrey Goldberg is really important, with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's visit coming up on Monday. There's a lot to it, and I hope to write more later.

For your viewing pleasure, a Soviet monument in Bulgaria. I love this kind of stuff. Via.

Bits and Pieces - Science Edition

The story of how the Lord Howe stick insect, Dryococelus australis, was nearly lost to the world but is now making a comeback.

Don't get bitten by a T. Rex!

And, speaking of endangered and exotic species, E. J. Graff presents the statistics of women's participation in the big-time literary magazines.

There is also a rather wonderful article in the 24 February Science magazine about how atmospheric energy is dissipated through the drag on falling raindrops, but I have several additional points I want to make on that, so they will come another day.