Abrams, Elliott
- Council on Foreign Relations: Senior Fellow
- National Security Council (2001-2009)
- Project for the New American Century: Founding Member
Elliott Abrams, a well-known neoconservative ideologue, is a senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. A key adviser on Mideast policy at the National Security Council (NSC) during the George W. Bush presidency, Abrams was a leading proponent of pursuing an aggressive “war on terror” after the 9/11 attacks.
Abrams was also a key figure in the Ronald Reagan administration before being convicted (and later pardoned) of charges related to the Iran-Contra scandal. He is the son-in-law of former Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz and writer Midge Decter, the trailblazing couple who helped shape neoconservatism in the 1970s.[1] His spouse, Rachel Abrams, who passed away in 2013, was an activist based at the Emergency Committee for Israel.
Abrams has used his perch at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), including his CFR blog “Pressure Points,” to comment on high-profile U.S. foreign policy issues and discuss political problems in the Middle East, often with a view to encouraging U.S. intervention, promoting a right-wing Israel-centric agenda, and launching rhetorical broadsides against regimes he does not favor.[2]
Observers have frequently accused Abrams of maintaining stark double standards that undermine his arguments. A case in point was his response to the dispute between Iran and Saudi Arabia that erupted in early 2016 after the Saudi regime executed the high profile Shiite cleric and political dissident Sheik Nimr Baqr al-Nimr. When a group of protestors attacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran, Abrams used the occasion to denounce Iran as well as the historic nuclear deal that was finalized in 2015 between Tehran and several world powers. He wrote that the incident was “another piece of evidence that Iran refuses to live by the rules of civilized diplomatic practice, and that its behavior has gotten worse not better since the signing of the nuclear deal.”[3] One observer remarked on how “the sacking of Riyadh’s embassy in Tehran, rather than Nimr’s execution, was of great concern for Abrams.”[4]
Despite his track record of errors and misjudgments, Abrams continually benefits from various forms of public rehabilitation, in part because some of his views are less hardline than those of other neoconservatives. This has led some observers, like Josh Marshall of the liberal-minded Talking Points Memo blog, to describe him as a “respectable neoconservative,” a phrase that others might consider to be a contradiction in terms, especially when applied to Abrams.
In early 2016, Abrams’ tendency to benefit from comparison to other foreign policy hardliners was on clear display after he was included on the list of advisers to Sen. Ted Cruz‘s presidential campaign. Also on the list was the notorious Islamophobe Frank Gaffney, director of the Center for Security Policy. Observers quickly pointed to potential tension on the team between Abrams’ call for dialogue with moderate Muslims and Gaffney’s full-throttled anti-Islam rhetoric. Abrams exploited the comparison, telling Bloomberg that Cruz did not support extreme views on Muslims, like Donald Trump‘s call to bar Muslims from entering the country. As other writers pointed out, however, Cruz in fact has a track record of bigoted policy views, including his call “for an explicit religious test to determine which refugees fleeing conflicts abroad can come to the United States, urging the exclusion of all Syrian Muslims.”
On Iran
Iran has long been a focus of Abram’s advocacy. A vocal opponent of the negotiations that led to the 2015 nuclear deal, he accused the Obama administration of being naïve in its efforts at rapprochement with Tehran, even after moderate President Hassan Rouhani was elected in 2013. “We are fooling ourselves if we see in [President Hassan] Rouhani a reformer who wishes to change the Iranian system, move toward democracy, and abandon the nuclear weapons program. That ‘Rouhani narrative’ was carefully constructed to ensnare Western diplomats, officials, and journalists. We have no excuse if we fall for it,” Abrams wrote in his CFR blog in October 2013.[5]
Regarding negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, Abrams wrote in mid-2014 that “the road to peace does not lie through weak agreements with brutal dictatorships” and that “any agreement that strengthens the Iranian regime–that enhances its reputation, that gives it greater leverage in the Middle East, or that strengthens its strangle-hold on the Iranian people–serves neither the cause of freedom nor that of peace.”[6]
Remarked one commentator: “If the negotiations fail, the chances of military action increase exponentially. The consequences promise to be disastrous, both to the people of Iran and to the global economy. More death and misery. But, for Mr. Abrams, all that suffering can be winked at.”[7]
After a comprehensive nuclear agreement was reached between Iran and the P5+1 world powers in July 2015, Abrams accused President Obama of “throwing in the towel” and said that the administration had “acted as Iran’s lawyer.” In a National Review article, he wrote: “Iran has won a great victory: A weak country has outmaneuvered and outnegotiated the United States and the EU. … The rise of Iran means great danger ahead.”[8]
Vox’s Matthew Yglesias wrote in response: “What John Kerry and his team think is that if they had held out even more than they did, the international coalition to maintain the sanctions would have unraveled as foreign leaders concluded that the US, rather than Iran, was being unreasonable. This is the key point on which the whole thing turns, and yet Abrams has literally nothing to say about it—he has no argument.”[9]
In August 2015, Abrams penned a controversial piece for the Weekly Standard that accused President Obama of resorting to anti-Semitism in his criticisms of the deal’s opponents. Pointing to Obama’s spirited defense of the Iran deal during an August 2015 speech at American University, Abrams wrote that “The president … must know that he is here feeding a deep line of anti-Semitism that accuses American Jews of getting America into wars. His American University speech was an eloquent denunciation of those who disagree with him as warmongers with dual loyalty, who will be ‘demanding’ war with Iran. This speech divides Americans not according to principled opinions, nor even by party, but mostly by religion.”[10]
He added: “The basic idea is simple: to oppose the president’s Iran deal means you want war with Iran, you’re an Israeli agent, you are in the pay of Jewish donors, and you are abandoning the best interests of the United States.”[11]
Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine rebuked Abrams and others who leveled similar charges against Obama: “[W]here is the evidence that Obama himself has engaged in this kind of rhetoric? His critics rely heavily on the power of translation. The various J’accuse! columns are filled with inflammatory terms—’disloyal,’ ‘Jewish lobby’—that the authors use to describe Obama, but that Obama did not actually use. The headline for Abrams’s column in The Weekly Standard—“Obama and the ‘Amen Corner’”—features a phrase uttered not by Obama but by Pat Buchanan more than two decades ago. In the absence of direct evidence, or even indirect evidence, the critics instead read deeply into straightforward claims Obama has made.”[12]
Abrams has also expressed support for statements by 2016 GOP presidential candidates Jeb Bush and Scott Walker declaring they would rescind the Iran deal and revert to a confrontational approach with Iran. “The new president will want to think about possible Iranian responses and how to blunt them as well. And Bush is right in saying that we need a comprehensive Iran strategy—something the Obama administration has lacked. Reversing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the Iran deal is formally known, is only part of that, and blunting Iran’s terror and aggression in the region are critical,” Abrams wrote in a July 2015 piece for Newsweek.[13]
Abrams has on numerous occasions sought to lay the groundwork for direct U.S. confrontation with Iran. In August 2012, for instance, he argued in the Weekly Standard blog that Congress should vote on a joint resolution to give the president the authority to go to war with Iran.[14] In a January 2011 post on his CFR blog, Abrams highlighted apparent setbacks in Iran’s nuclear program to urge the United States to aggressively pursue regime-change strategies in that country, including strengthening sanctions. He wrote: “The new Republican leaders of the House Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, and Intelligence Committees—respectively Buck McKeon, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and Mike Rogers—ought to make this their first order of business. They should be asking right now what more the United States and our allies can be doing to stop the Iranian nuclear weapons program, make our sanctions more effective, and support democratic dissidents in Iran.”[15]
On Syria
Abrams has also been a fervent supporter of launching strikes on Syria. In the wake of the takeover of swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria by the so-called Islamic State group (IS or ISIS), Abrams called for a “wider use of power in Syria than solely attacking ISIS.” Air strikes, he wrote in September 2014, should be “broad enough to greatly restrict Assad’s ability to use air power as an instrument of terror.”[16]
Abrams has further implied that American ground forces should be deployed in Syria and Iraq, writing: “If not American [ground forces] then those of some capable force, will also be needed. Combat forces may not be needed, but advisers certainly will be and in the thousands. It is not at all clear that any other forces–Jordanian, Emirati, or Saudi–can actually perform this function that Americans perform so well.”[17]
In June 2015, Abrams argued in a piece for the National Journal that the “United States needs to recommit itself to the downfall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.” He further posited: “ISIS in Iraq cannot be defeated so long as it has Syria as a sanctuary. This means more support for rebels in Syria than we are now giving; the current train-and-equip program is too small and weak to have much impact. It means grounding Assad’s air force. It means safe havens in Syria, formed with the cooperation of Turkey, Jordan, and other allies—who, with other Sunni nations, are willing to do more if they are led by the United States.”[18]
Abrams has sought to tie U.S. intervention in Syria and Iraq to the Iranian nuclear issue, saying that a “display of American power and leadership in Iraq and Syria” should “remind Iran that in the end it is a third world nation of 75 million confronting a superpower.”[19]
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In early 2013, Abrams was a leading neoconservative critic of President Obama’s nomination of former Sen. Chuck Hagel to serve as defense secretary during Obama’s second term. Instead of focusing on policy disagreements, however, Abrams publicly and repeatedly accused Hagel of holding anti-Semitic views, writing in the Weekly Standard that “Hagel seems to have a thing about ‘the Jews.’”[24] He repeated the charge in an NPR interview, leading the network’s ombudsman to admit that he was “troubled” that Abrams was “allowed to use NPR to make an inflammatory allegation for which he offered precious little proof.”[25]
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As Campaign Adviser
Abrams has served as an adviser to numerous political campaigns. In 2012, he was the foreign policy adviser to Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) during the Mitt Romney presidential campaign. During the campaign, Abrams drew attention when he pushed Congress to vote to authorize the president to go to war with Iran.[32] Commenting on Abram’s proposal, ThinkProgress opined: “The fact that an adviser who played a key role in molding Ryan’s foreign policy views is defending dangerous brinksmanship raises serious questions about whether the Romney-Ryan policy might tilt hawkish once in office. Indeed, one commonality amongst the advising corps is a worrying willingness to casually advocate the use of American military force.”[33]
More recently, Abrams has advised 2016 Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio, who is also strongly opposed to U.S. détente with Cuba. Rubio has close ties with numerous prominent neoconservatives and has echoed typical neoconservative notions about foreign policy. “The whole question of the expansion of freedom of democracy is of greater interest to him as a foreign policy theme than it is for many other people,” Abrams has said about Rubio.[34]
In March 2015, Mondoweiss reported that Abrams—along with other hardline “pro-Israel” figures like Sheldon Adelson and Bill Kristol—was a funder of Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R-AR) ultimately successful 2014 Senate campaign.[35]
Commenting on Abrams’ resilient prominence in the U.S. foreign policy establishment despite a host of scandals—from Iran-contra to Iraq to the Hagel fight—Salon’s Jordan Michael Smith wrote that “Abrams’ bizarre reincarnation as a pseudo-statesman shows that even committing crimes counts as insufficient to merit excommunication from government service.” Smith quoted a former Joint Chiefs chairman who said of Abrams, “This snake’s hard to kill.”[36]
The NSC Neocon
Abrams was widely regarded as a key champion within the George W. Bush administration of the neoconservative line on foreign affairs, shunning negotiations in favor of confrontational U.S. policies and promoting views in line with those of hardliners in Israel, who have rejected land-for-peace proposals like those negotiated as part of the Oslo peace talks, which Abrams opposed.[37]
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History and Trajectory
Throughout his career, Abrams has moved back and forth between government and a web of right-wing think tanks and policy institutes, holding positions as a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), advisory council member of the American Jewish Committee, and charter member of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC).
Abrams’s family ties have also placed him at the center of neoconservatism. His 1980 marriage to Rachel Decter brought him into the Podhoretz clan, a key family associated with neoconservatism.[48] Abrams became a frequent contributor to the American Jewish Committee’s Commentary magazine when it was edited by his father-in-law Norman Podhoretz. While in the Reagan administration, Abrams also frequently made appearances at the forums organized by mother-in-law Decter’s Committee for the Free World in the 1980s, a rightist foreign policy pressure group that was co-led by Donald Rumsfeld.
As an aide to Senator Jackson in the 1970s, Abrams began his political career mixing the soft and hard sides of the neoconservative agenda as both a proponent of Jackson’s strategically driven human rights policies and as an advocate of his proposals to boost the military-industrial complex. Through Jackson, Abrams became involved with a group of Cold Warriors called the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, which was led by Democratic Party-affiliated neoconservatives like Penn Kemble.
Former members of Jackson’s staff who later received posts in the Reagan administration foreign policy team included such neoconservative operatives as Feith, Perle, Frank Gaffney, Charles Horner, and Ben Wattenberg. Another up-and-coming neoconservative who was close to Jackson and later joined the Reagan administration was Paul Wolfowitz, who together with his mentor, Albert Wohlstetter, advised the senator on arms issues. Other Jackson Democrats who secured appointments in the Reagan administration included Jeane Kirkpatrick, as UN ambassador, and neoconservatives on her staff, such as Joshua Muravchik, Steven Munson, Carl Gershman, and Kenneth Adelman.
Abrams is best known for his role in the Iran-Contra scandal. He was indicted by a special prosecutor for intentionally deceiving Congress about the Reagan administration’s role in supporting the Contras—including his own central role in the Iran-Contra arms deal. In this deal, national security staff led by Oliver North brokered the sale of weapons from Israel to Iran in exchange for Iran helping broker the release of six Americans held hostage by Hezbollah. Some of the money made from the sale was channeled to the U.S.-backed and -organized Contras, who were spearheading a counterrevolution against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Congress had prohibited U.S. government assistance to the Contras because of their pattern of human rights abuses. At the time of his involvement, Abrams was the assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, working under George Shultz. Abrams pleaded guilty to two lesser offenses (including withholding information from Congress) to avoid a trial and a possible jail term. Throughout the proceedings, Abrams denied knowledge of the NSC and CIA programs to support the Contras. He blamed Congress for the deaths of two U.S. military members shot down by the Sandinistas in an illegal, clandestine arms supply operation over Nicaragua. He described the legal proceedings against him as “Kafkaesque” and called his prosecutors “filthy bastards” and “vipers.”[49]
Abrams and five other Iran-Contra figures were pardoned on Christmas Eve 1992 by President George H.W. Bush, shortly before he left office.[50]
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