Barack Obama decided to appoint Dennis Ross as his point man on Iran. Many people hoping for a rapprochement with Iran feared that Ross, whom is almost a neo-con and very sympathetic to Israel, would wreck such an effort. These people breathed a sigh of relied when it looked Ross would play a secondary role. Alas, that sigh has turned out to be short-term as Ross has quickly built up a huge staff and made himself the main-man on Iran.

Ross is the worst possible person for the job. The Iranians know about his track record and ideology and opposed him from the start:

Widely viewed as a cog in the machine of Israel’s Washington lobby, Ross was not likely to be welcomed in Tehran–and he wasn’t. Iran’s state radio described his appointment as “an apparent contradiction” with Obama’s “announced policy to bring change in United States foreign policy.” Kazem Jalali, a hardline member of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee, joked that it “would have been so much better to pick Ariel Sharon or Ehud Olmert as special envoy to Iran.”

Ross is a hawk on Iran who believes diplomacy is futile and that the United States will eventually have to bomb Iran, or at least acquiesce to Israel’s doing, if it wants Iran to be denied the bomb. Why appoint a diplomat who has written off diplomacy?

Daniel Kurtzer, an Orthodox Jew who served as US ambassador to Israel and Egypt and who was one of Obama’s top Middle East advisers last year, co-wrote a book in which he explained, “The perception always was that Dennis started from the Israeli bottom line, that he listened to what Israel wanted and then tried to sell it to the Arabs.”

This is what Ross will try to do with Iran. In order to achieve a solution, a compromise must be reached. But when it comes to Israel, Ross believes that all regional countries should submit to the dictates of the Zionist state. This will not work with Iran which is not going to be cowed.

As a reflection of Ross’ hawkishness, a new organization called United Against Nuclear Iran is trying to stir up sentiment against Iran and none other than Dennis Ross is the co-founder.

How is a man publicly associated with a hawkish group that is against the Iranian regime still allowed to preside at the chief diplomat over the most sensitive diplomatic initiative the United States has launched in years. Ross is seen in this video attacking the Iranian regime, but somehow this same regime is supposed to place trust in him:

This is how stupid American diplomacy in the Middle East has gotten.