"...Cinton has made a big mistake in giving Dennis Ross a role..."

Lang at SST, here

"Hilary Cinton has made a big mistake in giving Dennis Ross a role as her advisor for the Gulf and "Southwest Asia."

The man is chairman of a foundation that is an arm of the Jewish Agency, the organizational mainspring of the world Zionist movement. The Jewish Agency and the Israeli government are so closely connected that it is hard to say where one ends and the other begins. The foundation that Ross heads is devoted to advancing the interests of the Jewish People worldwide. That is the foundation's exclusive purpose. Obviously, the Jewish Agency and it subsidiaries overseas and in the United States have every right to exist and to foster whatever interests that they choose, but should someone so closely associated with a group devoted to other than the interests of the United States as a whole have a key role in American foreign policy? Why would anyone who is not a Jew think that Ross represents his or her interests? Is it difficult to "connect the dots" in his case? Does this man have a US security clearance? In what sense is he not an agent or representative of the Jewish Agency? Why is he not registered under the "Foreign Agent Registration Act? (FARA). Just about everyone in the Islamic world believes that Ross is an Israeli agent. Someone should sue over this man's employment at the heart of US foreign policy.

According to press reports (Kessler et al) someone in the traveling party has disclosed the substance of a private meeting between Secretary Clinton and Sheikh Al Nahyan, the foreign minister of the UAE. I presume that it was Clinton herself who made the disclosure. The "he" attribution in the story means nothing. Reporters often mis-identify sources as a courtesy. If anyone other than Clinton disclosed the "matter" of the meeting, then that person should be fired. Kessler. of the Washington Post writes that Clinton told Al Nahyan that the Obama Administration does not expect a serious and positive response from its rhetorical gesture toward Iran (open hands, etc.). Is this "leak" an attempt to spur an Iranian response or is it a manifestation of Ross's notion (mentioned by Glen Kessler) that a rejection by Iran of US overtures is to be desired so that this rejection can be used as leverage in pushing for tighter sanctions against Iran? In either case, the disclosure and the remark both point to a negative attitude towards a real opening to Iran.

This is not promising."