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Dennis Ross appointed NSC senior director

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  • Dennis Ross appointed NSC senior director

    Wasn't sure where this would fit, so a I thought I'd post it here.

    NSC names Ross senior director

    The White House sought for the first time Thursday to answer basic questions about a key player in President Barack Obama’s approach to what the administration is calling the “Central Region” of foreign policy, a vast tract of the globe spanning from Pakistan to Israel.

    The National Security Council announced that Dennis Ross would serve as its senior director, and as a special assistant to the president, with responsibility for developing a coherent strategy across a region whose dynamics have been scrambled by the violent aftermath of a contested election in Iran.

    Some of Ross’s more hawkish allies suggested that his arrival at the White House implied a rightward turn for the administration, but several government officials suggested that the shift is more subtle, and that Ross’s main addition will be a clearer sense that the broad region’s many problems are deeply connected.

    "Dennis will be a good addition to the already strong team built by General Jones and Tom Donilon," said a senior NSC official, Denis McDonough, who said that the four current NSC officials holding portfolios in Ross's area "will continue their strong work in this important region."

    “Dennis will be responsible for the region overall where he will bring additional experience and his proven ability as a strategist to ensure we are ready for the challenges of today and tomorrow in this region,” he said.

    Ross comes to the NSC from the State Department, where he was initially expected to play a central role in American policy toward Iran, and specifically on hoped-for negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program. Officials said they’d always envisioned him filling a big-think post, and that the move doesn’t detract from the roles of his deputies or superiors. And Ross has been a frequent presence at the White House for months. With no serious public negotiations with Tehran developing, suggestions that he could be a sort of Iran “envoy” – parallel to Middle East Envoy George Mitchell and Richard Holbrooke, the envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan – never materialized.

    “This is extremely smart policy and very good politics,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator for presidents of both parties who criticized Ross as appearing too close to Israel in his recent book, The Much Too Promised Land. “The president wants a strategy to see how the pieces fit together, I don’t think he’s getting what he needs. He’s bringing somebody on who thinks conceptually and seriously in terms of policy.”

    Ross’s portfolio will include also include Iraq, still full of U.S. troops and civilians, and Syria, where the U.S. has hinted at a diplomatic opening aimed at separating the country from Iran. He may also, one government official said, serve – as he did on Obama’s campaign – the role of reassuring the Israelis and American friends of Israel, with whom he’s closely associated, of Obama’s intentions.

    A carefully-worded NSC Statement said Ross would "work with" Don Camp, Senior Director for South Asia; Lt. Gen. Doug Lute, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Adviser and Coordinator for Afghanistan-Pakistan; Dan Shapiro, Senior Director for Near East and North Africa; and Puneet Talwar, Senior Director for the Gulf States, Iran and Iraq, whose regions he appears to be absorbing.

    Ross’s allies on the right trumpeted the move as a shift toward the more confrontational stance toward Iran that they, and the Israelis, have long sought.



    “Dennis is much more of the view that you cannot solve major problems in the region without dealing with Iran. It’s Iran first, it’s not the Palestinians first,” said Dan Senor, a former chief spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, who also suggested that Ross would quickly trump other Obama advisors.

    “He’s going to become the de facto National Security Advisor because of the portfolio he has, because of the experience he has, and because of the relationships he’s accumulated abroad,” he said. “Mitchell is marginalized because Dennis has Mitchell’s portfolio – only he’s closer to the center of decision making.”

    A White House official dismissed Senor’s comment, noting that Ross reports to both National Security Advisor James Jones and Jones’s powerful deputy, Tom Donilon, and that Donilon will continue to run crucial interagency processes. Another administration official suggested Mitchell’s stance – which has at times been more confrontational toward Israel – would hold sway.

    “Mitchell’s much closer to the president on the subject matter than Dennis is,” the latter official said.

    Ross’s positions are not, perhaps, that clear. Though he’s associated with a pro-Israel hard line, and was a co-chairman of the hawkish group United Against Nuclear Iran, he also served as a key staffer to presidents and secretaries of state of both parties, and has long been a close Obama advisor on the Middle East. He’s the author of a recent book, with David Makovsky, that sought a middle path between President Bush’s hard-edged “Freedom Agenda” and heartless realism, and Makovsky, in an interview with POLITICO, offered U.S.-Soviet relations as a model for containing Iran.

    “The U.S. negotiated nuclear arms with the Soviets at the same time as it pressed human rights concerns,” Makovsky said.

    Ross has “always believed that you do both in parallel” he said of engagement and pressure for domestic change. Makovsky described their joint position on Israel and Palestine as “skeptical of a grand bargain. We’re not calling for throwing a hail marry – but we think you can throw a screen pass.”

    And Ross’s appointment was also greeted warmly by some advocates of the Palestinians, who have been pleased with Obama’s approach and see no immediate signs of change.

    “The president has a very clear vision – it’s hard not to see all of the senior officials in the administration are taking since they’ve been appointed as not reflecting the president’s position,” said Hussein Ibish a Senior Fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine.

    “The admin is not thinking in terms of Palestine first, Iran second, etc. – they’re thinking of how their moves on each of these folks affect the others.”

    Ross’s abilities in the games of politics and diplomacy, and his clarity as a briefer, are legendary, and both friends and detractors suggested his place in the White House would likely transform him into a central figure in the administration.

    “He’s such an astute bureaucratic operator that I figured [when Ross first went into the administration] that he’d either be gone by now because he determined there was nothing for him to do, or he’d be running the place,” said Miller.

    NSC names Ross senior director - Ben Smith - POLITICO.com
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