Heard Around the Hillary-Sphere: News You Can Use & Abuse Edition

Ok, I’m still in a bit of Hillary-news withdrawal but I’m doing my best.

As everyone knows by now, Secretary Clinton’s trip to Qatar and Saudi Arabia was postponed by one day and here is what she’ll be doing on her first day there (Feb. 14th):

TBD AM LOCAL (EST +8 hours) Secretary Clinton holds a Bilateral Meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, in Doha, Qatar.
(POOLED PRESS COVERAGE)

TBD AM LOCAL Secretary Clinton meets with the Staff and Families of Embassy Doha, in Doha, Qatar.
(POOLED PRESS COVERAGE)

TBD AM LOCAL Secretary Clinton meets with the Amir, Shaykh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, and the Qatar Foundation Chairperson and Consort of the Amir, Shaykh Mozah bint Nasser al-Misned, in Doha, Qatar.
(POOLED PRESS COVERAGE)

TBD PM LOCAL Secretary Clinton delivers Remarks at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum, in Doha, Qatar.
(MEDIA TO BE DETERMINED BY U.S.-ISLAMIC WORLD FORUM)

Happy V-Day!

Hopefully there will be a briefing on the plane on the way there and if so I’ll post it.

Given that news of Bill Clinton’s medical issues seemed to grab headlines for two straight days, there is not a lot of new stuff to report but I found a few things discussing the Secretary. Naturally, a lot of it was about her upcoming trip, which is in the news:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leaves Washington Saturday on a trip to Qatar and Saudi Arabia and talks with U.S. allies on Iran and efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The Obama administration has been helping Gulf states upgrade defenses in the face of Iranian nuclear efforts.

Clinton delayed the start of her Gulf trip by one day to fly to New York to be with her husband, the former President Bill Clinton who was briefly hospitalized for a heart procedure.

But aides to the Secretary say the fact she is going through with her trip underscores the importance she attaches to her consultations with Gulf allies.

The Obama administration has in recent weeks been quietly helping several Gulf states, apprehensive about Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, build up their defenses with, among other things, U.S. Patriot anti-missile batteries.

[snip]

In Doha, first stop on the trip, Clinton will deliver an address at a forum on U.S.-Islamic relations and meet with Qatari leaders and other officials attending the conference including Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In Saudi Arabia early next week, she meets with King Abdullah, principal sponsor of the 2003 Arab League peace initiative offering Israel full relations with Arab states if it made peace with the Palestinians and left occupied land.

Crowley said Clinton will try to generate more active Arab support for ongoing efforts by U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell to get Israeli-Palestinian peace talks going again.

“Part of our discussion will be how we push, prod cajole the parties into that negotiation through which we think we can ultimately arrive at a satisfactory peace agreement,” he said.

The spokesman said U.S. Undersecretary of State for political affairs William Burns will meet Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on regional peace efforts on a trip next week that will also take him to Lebanon, Turkey and Azerbaijan…

Hopefully there will be some forward movement on restarting Arab-Israeli peace talks and I hope they are not hinging in any way on sanctions against Iran. But it does seem like sanctions will be a hot topic on her trip, at least according to news accounts:

Washington: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton heads on Saturday to Qatar and Saudi Arabia to build the US’ case for tougher sanctions over Iran’s nuclear plans in meetings with key Arab and Muslim leaders.

Hillary will also pursue the Obama administration’s bid to promote Arab-Israeli peace and “turn the page” on ties with Muslim countries — the latter in a speech to the US-Islamic World Forum in the Qatari capital Doha.

She is departing a day later than planned after her husband Bill Clinton, the former president, had a heart operation on Thursday, but the delay will not cause her to miss any of her meetings, State Department officials said.

Hillary may ask the Saudis — whom she sees on Monday and Tuesday following a speech to the US-Islamic World Forum — to offer the Chinese increased oil supplies to try to win Beijing’s backing for sanctions against Iran.

China imports much of its oil from Iran.

“I wouldn’t rule it out that that might be part of the discussions,” a senior State Department official said when asked whether the chief US diplomat would make such an appeal to the Saudis to win over China.

China appears to be the sole holdout to sanctions among the five veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council, which is also composed of the United States, Russia, Britain and France.

Moscow has hardened its stance toward Iran lately.

During her stop in Riyadh, Hillary is set to meet Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud and Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal. She will meet other Saudi officials in the Red Sea port of Jeddah.

In Doha, she is to meet Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, Qatar’s emir, and Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al-Thani, who is both foreign minister and prime minister.

“Middle East peace will be an issue that will be discussed. Iran certainly will be an issue that is discussed,” Crowley said while declining to enter into details about either topic.

She will also hold similar talks with leaders attending the seventh US-Islamic World Forum, including Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Crowley told reporters.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu will, according to a Turkish diplomat, visit Iran next week to push for a diplomatic solution to the nuclear stand-off.

Interestingly, Iranian human rights activists don’t support economic sanctions because regardless of how the rest of the world tries to “sell” the idea (ie. as only harming the Revolutionary Guard or Iranian leadership) the fact is that they really hurt the average Iranian. This is what Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi thinks of economic (vs. political) sanctions:

Ebadi said the rights situation was deteriorating rapidly and accused security forces of violently suppressing peaceful protests against what the opposition says was the fraudulent re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last year.

“I am against economic sanctions and military attacks. However, if the Iranian government continues to violate human rights and ignore people’s demands, then I start thinking about political sanctions,” Ebadi told a human rights forum on Iran.

“Do not sell weapons to the Iranian government,” she added.

Ebadi, speaking to Reuters afterwards, made clear that political sanctions should be imposed “the sooner the better, because human rights violations in Iran are growing every day.”

“I don’t mean cutting ties off totally with the Iranian government. What I mean is downgrading ties with the Iranian government, for example recalling respective ambassadors from Iran, downgrading diplomatic relations from the ambassador level to the charge d’affaires or consular level.

“In that way, it is not a total severing of ties but you manage to demonstrate to the Iranian people that human rights is respected and considered (as being) of the utmost importance by you,” she said through an interpreter.

“Do not give visas to any government officials or any delegations representing the government,” she told Reuters.
[snip]

Ebadi said existing economic sanctions hurt ordinary Iranians rather than the elite. “Sadly, thanks to the support of China and Russia, the Iranian government has a way of circumventing these sanctions. Therefore such economic sanctions will only affect the people.

“Wider economic sanctions only hurt innocent people and we are against that,” she said.

Iranian authorities say last year’s presidential poll was fair. Hundreds of thousands of government supporters turned out on Thursday to mark the anniversary of the Islamic revolution.

Human rights defenders, journalists and lawyers have been arrested during eight months of protests and more than 50 people from the minority Baha’i faith are in prison, Ebadi said.

The Iranian government controls Internet and phone access and jams western broadcasts to cut off activists, said Iran’s most famous human rights lawyer, whose influence in the country of 70 million is seen as limited.
Ebadi disclosed she had urged U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay to find a solution “before Iran becomes another Zimbabwe.”

Ebadi was addressing a preliminary forum for Monday’s U.N. Human Rights Council session, when Iran will be in the dock in a periodic examination of member states’ records.

I’ve been seeing new rumors in the news about the possibility that Hillary Clinton might be tapped to eventually be a Supreme Court Justice. Now, granted, if that’s what she wanted, I think she’d make a great one. That said, in some of my tinfoil-hat moments, I can’t help but question the motive behind these rumors. I wrote about my overall suspicion of all the silly Dick Morris and Ben Smith-inspired rumors about Hillary’s unhappiness and lack of power at the State Department over on another website a few months ago (you can read it here). Over on The Daily Beast, they are at it again:

The political bombshell of the year could turn out to be Supreme Court Justice Hillary Clinton.
 
Don’t laugh. It’s politics.  Stuff happens. And a lot stranger stuff has happened in recent years.  Two words.  Sarah Palin.

Last week, ABC News reported: “Lawyers for President Obama have been working behind the scenes to prepare for the possibility of one, and maybe two Supreme Court vacancies this spring. Court watchers believe two of the more liberal members of the court, Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, could decide to step aside for reasons of age and health. That would give the president his second and third chance to shape his legacy on the Supreme Court.”

In one stroke, Obama would eliminate any remaining bad feelings—and become a Hillaryland hero.

Given the Clintons ambition for power, most would agree that Hillary doesn’t see secretary of State as the final chapter in her career. Certainly she’d like to be president.  But increasingly, she has to view that prospect as a declining one. As tough as the Clintons are, the book Game Change provides a pretty good insight into just how much that campaign took out of her. The prospect of going through that kind of microwave experience again can’t be terribly attractive.  Although, one thing we do know about the Clintons when it comes to the presidency: they never quit.
 
Some have suggested Hillary play musical chairs with Joe Biden in a second term. Biden actually wanted to be secretary of State more than he wanted to be vice president. So, he’d probably be game.

The problem with this scenario is that in terms of power and influence, the veep slot would be step down for Hillary. And Team Obama never liked the idea of giving Bill Clinton entrée to meddle around the familiar old 18 acres.  On the other hand, the surest route to a party nomination is to launch your candidacy from the cat bird’s seat of the vice presidency.  

But if in the end if it’s about what is realistic, and how Hillary could have the greatest impact on society, most would agree she could have the greatest political influence by hanging around for a couple of decades casting votes and writing opinions on the Supreme Court…

This article is sort of a condescending, back-handed slap at Hillary in my view. As if the only thing Hillary Clinton craves is power. Also, has Hillary ever given the slightest hint that she even wants to be on the Court? Yes, the SCOTUS is influential as we learned in 2000 when Scalia and friends handed George W. Bush the presidency with a pretty bow on top. But given Hillary Clinton’s career has been one of outspoken activism on behalf of issues she cares about, it seems strange that she would want to give that up for a life of purported objectivity (granted, Justices are anything but objective in many cases). I also am suspicious because the article, written by two GOPers, seems to champion the idea that Hillary not run for POTUS again. It seems that the mainstream media and pundit class only seem to rally around Hillary when they perceive she’s not a “threat” to them (ie. not heading towards 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue). Look at that loser Chris Mathews- he’s suddenly had a change of heart about the Clintons now that she’s no longer running for POTUS? How convenient. I don’t know, that’s just my take.

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