Israel/Palestine

Following President Obama's latest meeting with Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu last night, there is increasing sentiment in Washington the administration's intense efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations are at an impasse.

There are rumors that the White House is considering a pause in its shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East, a recognition that the administration goal to convince the Israeli government to impose a freeze on settlements might not be possible in the near term and the tumultuous situation inside the Palestinian Authority might prevent that side from sitting down at the table.

The Palestinian Authority, for one, is calling on the administration not to take a break in their initiative, while still acknowledging that there is wide space between the current atmosphere and one that could precede a resumption of talks.

"I don't think the administration can impose a pause on their activities. We heard that, it is not official or confirmed," said Ambassador Maen Rashid Areikat, PLO representative to the United States and head of the PLO mission in Washington, "The middle east conflict is too important an issue for the administration to abandon or to take a back seat, I think."

In an exclusive interview with The Cable, the PA's top man in Washington said that his government did not want to sit down with the Israelis unless there is total settlement freeze and unless all final settlement issues are on the table, including refugees, Jerusalem, settlements, security, water, borders, everything.

The Obama administration's process-focused strategy misses the mark, he said.

"I'm not saying that we are totally disappointed or that we have given up hope that there will be good preparation for any future resumption of negotiations, but we are making ourselves clear to the administration and others that this time around, it has to be done right. We cannot just get engaged in a process for the sake of a process. That will lead nowhere."

The Palestinians saw as a misstep, the remarks by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in her meeting in Israel with Netanyahu, where she appeared to endorse Netanyahu's idea of a partial settlement freeze and then later backed off those remarks.

"We were disappointed, we made that clear," Areikat said, adding that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas made it clear to Clinton during their meeting in Abu Dhabi last week that there will be no return to negotiations or political contacts with the Israelis if settlements activities are not totally frozen.

He praised Special Envoy George Mitchell as "a very decent and insightful man of integrity," and said he was not the problem. New administrations make mistakes and Clinton's remarks were simply that.

"We still have confidence that this administration will do something to take things back in the right direction," Areikat said, "This is still a young administration, They have only been in power 10 months. We have to give them the benefit of the doubt."

Areikat said the announcement that he would not seek reelection would not effect his office's work on a day-to-day basis and that PA elections could come as early as Jan. 25. Hamas has pledged not to participate in such elections, placing their legitimacy at question. Akeikat said that no decision has been made by Abbas yet as to how to handle that situation.

He also criticized his Israeli counterpart Michael Oren, Netanyahu's ambassador to Washington, for comparing the writers of the Goldstone Report, which accuses Israel of war crimes in Gaza, to Holocaust deniers.

"This notion that accusing everybody who criticizes Israel as being an anti-semite and a Holocaust denier, I think we should go beyond that. These are clichés that we heard in the 70s and the 80s," Areikat said, "I think we should rise up. They are trying to play on the feelings of Jews around the world."

Photo: The Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia

The House is preparing to vote on a resolution condemning the U.N.'s Goldstone Report, but not before making changes to the text to respond to the complaints of Goldstone himself.

Meanwhile in New York, the U.N. General Assembly was preparing for a possible vote on a resolution supporting the Goldstone Report on Wednesday and Arab U.N. delegations were circulating a draft today.

The Congressional resolution, which simply expresses the opinion of Congress and has no actual force of law, deems the report "irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy," and "calls on the President and the Secretary of State to strongly and unequivocally oppose any further consideration of the [report] and any other measures stemming from this report in multilateral fora."

Sponsored by House Foreign Affairs heads Howard Berman, D-CA, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-FL, the measure is expected to pass by a wide margin.

Justice Richard Goldstone, the primary author of the report, wrote a lengthy memorandum to the bill's sponsors criticizing the text of the House resolution. In a dear colleague letter circulated Monday, Berman and Gary Ackerman, D-NY, responded to each of Goldstone's complaints.

Chief among them was the issue of whether the U.N. Human Rights Council issued a mandate for the report that prejudged Israel's guilt in alleged war crimes committed during the Gaza operation. Berman and Ackerman rejected Goldstone's contention that he altered the mandate to include the examination of rocket attacks on Israel in addition to Israeli actions in Gaza.

"The broadened mandate Justice Goldstone sought was discussed, but not voted on, at an UNHRC plenary session. It was then announced via a press release in an altered formation, more restrictive than the formulation envisioned by Justice Goldstone," Berman and Ackerman wrote.

"Even though Justice Goldstone made earnest efforts to alter the mandate, he did not fully succeed ... we intend to alter the resolution to take account of Justice Goldstone's effort."

UPDATE: As expected, the House overwhelmingly passed the measure, with 344 members voting for, 36 voting against, and 22 voting "present."

Here are the new test portions of the resolution added before passage:

Whereas Justice Richard Goldstone, who chaired the `United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict,' told the then-President of theUNHRC, Nigerian Ambassador Martin Ihoeghian Uhomoibhi, that he intended to broaden the mandate of the Mission to include "all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law that might have been committed at any time in the context of the military operations that were conducted in Gaza during the period from 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, whether before, during or after," a phrase that, according to Justice Goldstone, was intended to allow him to investigate Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians;

Whereas Ambassador Uhomoibhi issued a statement on April 3, 2009, that endorsed part of Justice Goldstone's proposed broadened mandate but deleted the phrase "before, during, and after," and added inflammatory
anti-Israeli language;

Whereas a so-called broadened mandate was never officially endorsed by a plenary meeting of the UNHRC, neither in the form proposed by Justice Goldstone nor in the form proposed by Ambassador Uhomoibhi;

And this clause has been expanded, so it now reads that resolution:

calls on the President and the Secretary of State to continue to strongly and unequivocally oppose any endorsement of the `Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict' in multilateral fora, including through leading opposition to any United Nations General Assembly resolution and through vetoing, if necessary, any United Nations Security Council resolution that endorses the contents of this report, seeks to act upon the recommendations contained in this report, or calls on any other international body to take further action regarding this report.

In which we scour the transcript of the State Department's daily presser so you don't have to. Here are the highlights of today and yesterday's briefings by spokesman Ian Kelly:

• The Afghanistan Electoral Complain Commission has begun sorting through the complaints of election fraud, which will go on for an undetermined time, after which the Independent Elections Commission will weigh in and, well, you get the picture (Don't hold your breath). "It's important that we allow the ECC and IEC the time they need to eliminate the fraud that they have discovered," said Kelly, "The publication of those final and certified results will tell us whether there's a need for a second round."
• The Taliban are not a domestic indigenous group that can be tolerated, somehow less dangerous than al-Qaeda, Kelly said, adding they do pose a treat to the United States and its allies. "I think what we're fighting there is this whole idea of destruction and mass murder in the name of religious extremism. And I would put them all in the same category. They're using the same tactics."
• Kelly rejected the idea that the State Department failed to do the spade work to make sure the Kerry-Lugar Pakistan aid package would be well received in Pakistan, after severe criticism emerged from Islamabad. "I think what we're seeing is a debate and a diversity of opinion in the Pakistani parliament. We welcome this kind of debate," he said.
• Middle East Envoy George Mitchell was in Israel today and met with President Shimon Peres and with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Tomorrow he will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
• The U.N. Goldstone Report is "not on the agenda" of the now moved-up October 14 Security Council meeting, but "we have to assume" that Libya is going to bring it up, Kelly said. "it would be impossible to prevent it from being raised, impossible, because any member can raise whatever subject they want," he added..
• Undersecretary of State William Burns met today in Washington with Prince Nayef, Saudi undersecretary of the Ministry of Interior, who's in charge of combating terrorism.
• The second Russian city that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will visit next week is... Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan!

Israel's ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, today stood by his recent opinion article that compared the writers of the U.N.-sponsored Goldstone Report, which accuses Israel of war crimes, with Holocaust deniers and asserted that the report's writers were portraying the Israeli government as Nazis.

Oren's article, published Oct. 6 in The New Republic,  has ignited some controversy online and in Washington. In it, he wrote (emphasis added):

The Goldstone Report goes further than Ahmadinejad and the Holocaust deniers by stripping the Jews not only of the ability and the need but of the right to defend themselves. If a country can be pummeled by thousands of rockets and still not be justified in protecting its inhabitants, then at issue is not the methods by which that country survives but whether it can survive at all. But more insidiously, the report does not only hamstring Israel; it portrays the Jews as the deliberate murderers of innocents--as Nazis. And a Nazi state not only lacks the need and right to defend itself; it must rather be destroyed.

Speaking to The Cable today, Oren defended the comparison.

"I think there is a parallel between Holocaust denial and denying Israel's right to the means and the ability to defend itself," Oren said, adding that he wasn't trying to say that the violations alleged of Israel in the January Gaza operation were of the same character or on the same scale as the Nazi atrocities.

Speaking this morning to a packed audience at the Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank, Oren more extensively criticized the Goldstone Report, which will apparently be discussed at the U.N. on Oct. 14, warning that it could set a precedent that could result in U.S. troops being charged with war crimes for civilian deaths in Afghanistan.

On a separate issue, Oren said that Israeli and American negotiators were close to a deal on the issue of Israeli settlement construction as a precursor to a resumption of peace negotiations.

"The settlement issue as a major flashpoint has greatly been removed," Oren said, referring to the ongoing discussions, which include the visit of U.S. envoy George Mitchell to Jerusalem today.

"They have reached significant progress on the idea of a time-limited freeze that would not really impact Jerusalem and that would provide for a certain amount of normal growth construction," Oren said, adding that as of today there is no final agreement on the length of the freeze or the specific parameters.

He said the Palestinian side was still not happy with the proposed language, however.

Oren also reiterated that that U.S. President Barack Obama had promised Israel that the current engagement with Iran would not be open-ended and said that Israel was working with the United States on a package of sanctions for if and when the talks failed.

"In the prime minister's meeting with the president in the Oval Office [in May], the president assured us ... that the engagement would be limited, that there would be a reassessment at the end of the year," Oren said. "On the basis of that pledge, the prime minister came out and supported the president's policy of engagement, with that proviso that it would time-limited."

Subsequent developments, such as the disputed Iranian election, have spurred "a growing willingness on the part of the [Obama] administration not only to put limits on the engagement but to talk seriously about putting together a package of what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called ‘crippling sanctions' against Iran," Oren added.

The Israeli government has agreed to go along with President Obama's policy of engaging Iran at least until the end of the year, Israeli's new man in Washington said Monday.

Speaking to the conservative Washington congregation Adas Israel on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, Amb. Michael B. Oren spelled out the cautious approach that Israel has taken to the new international effort to hold talks with the Iranian regime, stressing that the support of the Jewish state for talks with Tehran (which begin Thursday) was not open-ended.

"The government of Israel has supported [Obama's] position on engagement with Iran. It was not an easy position to adopt," Oren told the fasting congregants. "We see a clock ticking on the wall, but we support it, with assurances that this will not be an open-ended process, that by the end of the year, the [U.S.] administration will have a good idea about where Iran stood on this process, and that failing to persuade Iran diplomatically to stop enriching uranium on its soil, the United States would lead the international effort to impose crippling sanctions on Iran."

As for when or under what circumstances Israel might launch a unilateral strike against Iran, he said, "We'll defer that answer until later on."

Oren also lashed out at the United Nations, and particularly the recent Goldstone Report, which accused Israel of committing war crimes during the last military action in the Gaza Strip. The report was ordered by the office of the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights, and was the result of an investigation by former South African judge and International Criminal Tribunal prosecutor Richard Goldstone.

Assailing the credibility of the report, Oren said it "established a mandate that assumed Israel's guilt in advance, which included a judge who published her findings condemning Israel for war crimes in advance, which conducted its hearings under the auspices of Hamas ... and thanked Hamas for its cooperation."

"We take that kind of cooperation very, very seriously as a very severe threat to Israel's security," he added.

He compared it to a hypothetical situation whereby the U.N. would investigate American operations in Afghanistan by holding hearings under the auspices of the Taliban.

"We in Israel as a democracy, and as a Jewish state, are taking the responsibility upon ourselves by investigating ourselves," he added, referring to several ongoing inquiries the Israeli military is conducting into alleged abuses during the January Gaza operation.

Oren, who first moved to Israel to live on kibbutz at age 15, was born and raised in northern New Jersey by what he calls "a mildly Zionist" family. He had to renounce his American citizenship upon taking up his new post.

He supported Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 and has said that Israel must ultimately close settlements in the West Bank to preserve its identity as a Jewish state. A YouTube video of him giving these remarks evoked criticism in Israel when his name was originally floated for ambassador to Washington.

In his new role, Oren speaks in proud but pragmatic terms.

"Peace is a great goal, we all desire it," he said Monday. "But we've accomplished all that we've accomplished in the last six decades without peace."

CORRECTION: The initial version of this post incorrectly stated, "Oren said that Israel had no choice but to hold in reserve its right to strike Iran first, saying, 'If you know someone is going to cause harm to your family, you are compelled to launch a preemptive strike against them. You can't let that person come.'"

Oren was actually responding to a question from moderator Jeffrey Goldberg about whether Israel's use of power since its inception was in accordance with Jewish moral standards, and the above quote references the teachings of the Talmud. Oren was not speaking about Iran; he was making the argument that Israel had in fact exceeded the Talmud's moral requirements in its recent operations in Gaza. FP regrets the error.

The Defense Department has posted a photo gallery of Defense Secretary Robert Gates's meetings this week in Israel, Jordan, and Iraq.

Here (from left to right), Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Sandy Versbhow, Gates, U.S. Ambassador to Israel James Cunningham, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East Colin Kahl, and NSC Senior Director for North Africa and the Middle East Daniel Shapiro share a working lunch with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his advisors. Netanyahu's national security advisor Uzi Arad is to his immediate right, military adjutant MG Meir Klifi, in uniform, is to his left, and advisor Ron Dermer is to his far left.

At a news conference with his counterpart Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak at the King David Hotel last Monday, Gates was asked about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recent controversial remarks about a "defense umbrella" protecting regional allies from Iran.

"Well, there are a number of paths that we are following [in] an effort to try and get the Iranian government to reconsider what appears to be its intent to develop nuclear weapons, the economic sanctions that [Israeli Defense Minister Ehud] Barak spoke of are clearly one of those paths," Gates said. "Another path on the diplomatic and security side is trying to persuade the Iranians that their own security interests are diminished by their policies, not enhanced."

"They would be better off without a nuclear weapons program," Gates continued, "partly because it would be destabilizing, partly because it might set off an arms race in the Middle East." Gates said the United States has been looking to develop security relationships with its allies in the region, pointing to maritime surveillance, air defense, and missile defense capabilities that the U.S. had worked to enhance over the past two years.

Gates also voiced his support for U.S. Special Envoy George Mitchell's Middle East peace efforts, which include pushing Israel to freeze settlements in the West Bank, urging the Palestinians to resume negotiations, and pressuring Arab governments to show Israel intermediate gestures towards normalization.

"As part of our steadfast support for Israel, the United States continues to provide a robust, annual military assistance package," Gates said, noting that Washington contributes financial and technical assistance to Israel's defense. "Of course, achieving long-term security for Israel is ultimately dependent on a sustainable, comprehensive Middle East peace. The goal is vitally important for regional stability. To help move the process forward, we will continue to address further Israeli security requirements to make a two state solution possible."

It was Gates's first trip to Israel in more than two years.

Uzi Arad, the national security advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, may be made Israel's ambassador to London, Israel's Channel 2 reported Sunday. The allegedly contemplated shuffle was described as a demotion.

An aide in Arad's office reached by The Cable Sunday said she didn't want to comment on the report, and Arad himself could not immediately be reached.

But one Israeli analyst cautioned that the report, by Channel 2's political commentator Amnon Abramowitz, may be a "trial balloon" from Netanyahu's office "designed to warn Mr. Arad to shut up."

Arad made controversial comments in interviews this past week that reportedly further exacerbated tensions between the Obama and Netanyahu governments, and angered his boss.

"Senior administration officials in Washington commented with astonishment and anxiety on the interview given by Arad in response to the statements by President Obama, who said at the start of the week that the U.S. had not given Israel a green light to attack nuclear facilities in Iran," Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported Friday.

Arad, a former Mossad official, told Israeli daily Haaretz in an interview that he saw no Palestinian leadership with which Israel could pursue peace negotiations. "I also do not see a Palestinian leadership or a Palestinian regime, but a disorderly constellation of forces and factions," Arad reportedly said. 

Israeli reports said Netanyahu was infuriated by Arad's charge in the same interview that the previous Israeli governments of Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert failed to stop the Iranian threat. "The leadership scattered its efforts and resources instead of concentrating them," Arad said. "It preoccupied itself with other issues, such as the disengagement and Annapolis .... it did not home in on the main issue -- Iran."

"The prime minister is not willing to discuss directly the way in which Israel governments have dealt with the Iranian threat - neither in the past nor the present," Netanyahu's bureau said in a statement reported by Haaretz.

Arad's public criticism of the past two Israeli administrations' efforts on Iran is seen as taking a swipe at Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Mossad chief Meir Dagan, two key holdover members of Netanyahu's cabinet, the Israeli analyst said.

U.S. Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell is expected to go back to the region the week after next, administration sources told The Cable Sunday, where he will meet with Barak, among others.

UPDATE: An official with Israel's National Security Council, speaking on background Monday, said Arad isn't leaving his job.

As White House and Office of the Vice President aides formed a united front against widespread media speculation about a change in policy signaled by Vice President Joseph Biden's statement on a Sunday news show that Israel is a "sovereign nation" that could "determine for itself" how to deal with threats from Iran, analysts said that Israel may be wary of any such green light in any case.

In e-mails and phone calls today, administration officials insisted that Biden's comments were neither a signal of any change in policy, nor any sort of freelancing. Asked if Biden's remarks might have been part of an intentional messaging campaign to step up pressure on Iran to negotiate over its nuclear program, officials gave an emphatic "no." But for all that, the remarks were widely seen both in Washington and abroad as a message intended less for Jerusalem than for Tehran.

Israel's "biggest nightmare" is that one day the U.S. government "‘would call it and say 'OK guys, take care of it,'" said Tel Aviv University Iran expert David Menashri in a call Monday arranged by the Israeli Policy Forum, a U.S. nonprofit organization that supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Asked by ABC's George Stephanopoulos if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was right to give Obama until the end of the year to see if engagement with Iran was succeeding before taking matters into his own hands, Biden said, "Look, Israel can determine for itself -- it's a sovereign nation -- what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else." Repeated follow-up questions from Stephanopoulos elicited similar responses.

"Some in the [Israeli] media are portraying [Biden's comments] as a 180-degree switch and as an indication that the administration is beginning to realize that 'engagement' may not work," said former Israeli Consul General to the United Nations Alon Pinkas. "That it is absolutely NOT a change, and if anything, it should be interpreted as a bad sign rather than a positive encouragement."

Biden's message "is the absolute worst-case scenario from Israel's policy-planning perspective," Pinkas elaborated. "'We will not prevent' means the U.S. will neither support nor encourage [Israeli attacks on Iran] or in other words, 'Do what you think is appropriate, but bear the consequences.'"

Although Israeli officials have expressed unending skepticism about the Obama administration's intentions to try to engage with Iran, and are often seen as chafing against Washington, Israel has conducted an intensive campaign over the past several years to make Iran's nuclear program an international rather than just an Israeli problem.

The reason, explains Georgetown University's Daniel Byman, is that Israel doesn't want to take on Iran by itself. "Militarily, this is a difficult operation," Byman said Monday, noting that Iran's nuclear program is widely dispersed, compared with Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, which Israel struck in 1981. "This is much farther geographically, and that means planes can't loiter as long. They would [presumably] be flying over air space [in Iraq] controlled by the United States. You have to put together a strike package that's much more difficult. It also requires superb intelligence that may be lacking."

"There was no intention to change the position, and nothing the vice president said in any way indicates a change in U.S. position," said a White House official of Biden's remarks Sunday. "What he said and what [chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael] Mullen said taken together reflect our position: Israel is a sovereign nation, Israel is an ally and Israel has a right to defend itself and other countries cannot dictate how it defends itself. That being said, it would not be helpful if Israel were to act against Iran." Any interpretation that Biden's remarks signaled a change in U.S. policy is "spin," he added.

Biden did, however, strike a different tone when answering a similar question back on April 7. Asked if he were concerned that Netanyahu might strike Iranian nuclear facilities, Biden told CNN: "I don't believe Prime Minister Netanyahu would do that. I think he would be ill advised to do that."

How to account for the seeming discrepancy? "Any tonal difference is not intentional at all," the White House official said.

Did Biden coordinate with the White House to pressure Iran to respond to the still-outstanding offer of talks with Washington? Again, the answer from the White House was no.

Washington foreign-policy hands, however, were skeptical that the message was not quite deliberate.

"It's crazy to think the principal audience of this comment was in Jerusalem and not in Tehran," said Jon Alterman, director of Middle East Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "I think the principal goal ... is to diminish the comfort level that people in the Iranian leadership may have that their actions don't have consequences." 

Deliberate or not, Biden's comments could increase the uncertainty in Tehran about U.S. intentions. "When the Iranians are confident the U.S. is going to sit on the Israelis, that creates one set of plans," Alterman continued. "And when they can't be sure of that," that creates another.

Pinkas, the former Israeli diplomat, agreed that Biden's intended audience may have been Iran. "There is a case to be made for the U.S. to pressure Iran through an implicit Israeli pending attack," he said.

The vice president is not trying to rattle sabers through Israel, one Washington foreign-policy hand said on condition of anonymity. "But if Iran feels further isolated, it's a not unwelcome result," of what Biden said, he added.

"There may be something to the effect that the White House planned Biden's comments on Iran yesterday, to keep the Iranians off balance and honest," one Hill foreign-policy aide said Monday. "What I found interesting was the juxtaposition of Biden's comments with those of Admiral Mullen, who continue to take the cautious perspective of the U.S. military that any preemptive strike would be destabilizing and not helpful to the cause of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Asked about Biden's comments during his own appearance on CBS's Face the Nation, Admiral Mullen cautioned that "any strike on Iran ... could be very destabilizing."

An Israeli strike would be risky for Israel and its U.S. ally, Georgetown's Byman stressed. "Diplomatically," said Byman, it means that "Israel is acting alone." Meanwhile, Iran "can retaliate through Hezbollah among other options" against Israeli and possibly U.S. targets, including in Iraq -- said to be a chief concern of the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno. "Israel would pay that price if it was sure that the operation would succeed," Byman said. "But given military limits, that is uncertain."

Although the vice president is frequently portrayed as lacking message discipline, current and former aides that say on foreign policy, the three-decade veteran of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is deeply knowledgeable. "He knows his brief," one aide said.

Biden's reputation "for not having an internal editor means people give him more slack," the Hill foreign-policy aide said. "It's part of his charm as well as a liability. You get the straight-up deal with him. He's not a good liar. He says what's on his mind. In some cases, that's helpful, particularly with foreign leaders."

Biden was recently asked by President Obama to lead administration efforts on Iraq, where he made a surprise visit last week. The vice president is scheduled to travel to Georgia and Ukraine later this month to signal the U.S. commitment to their independence from Moscow.

Aides say that Biden and Obama have different styles, but share highly compatible views on foreign policy and national security.

"Here is the thing," one White House official said. "While polar opposites stylistically, there were no two candidates in Democratic primary who were closer on the issues. That speech -- 'I don't oppose all wars, just [dumb] wars' -- that's Biden. He has no problem with going to war," when necessary, the official said.

Biden is seen as a "muscular Democrat, because he was a leading proponent of taking action in the Balkans," a person familiar with his thinking said on condition of anonymity. "Which is ironic, because he originally ran for his Senate office against the Vietnam war." He does not consider himself a "Scoop Jackson Democrat," as some in Democratic foreign-policy circles locate him.

At times in recent weeks, the vice president was reported to have been more forward-leaning in internal discussions about how much support the administration should express for Iranians protesting disputed elections results. In a Meet the Press interview two days after Iran's disputed elections, Biden went further than the administration had previously and said he "had doubts" that the vote count was fair. But as events moved quickly on the ground in Iran, the White House began to use increasingly strong language to condemn the Iranian regime's crackdown on demonstrators, while trying to preserve its efforts to pursue engagement with Iran.

Biden downplayed any such rift in the interview with Stephanopoulos Sunday, while reiterating the administration's singular message to Iran. "Look, the Iranian government has a choice," Biden said. "They either choose greater isolation ...or they decide to take a rightful place in the civilized, big, great nations ... And so the ball's in their court."

"They are still working to engage," CSIS's Alterman said of the Obama administration. "But the Iranians are concerned that any engagement will expose how much weaker Iran is than the United States."

Khalid Mohammed-Pool/Getty Images