Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Motto	Insight and Analysis on U.S. Middle East Policy
Formation	1985
Headquarters	Washington, D.C.
Type	lobby

Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) is a spin-off from AIPAC established in 1985 to expand the Israel Lobby's influence over policy. Martin Indyk, WINEP's founding director, had previously been research director of AIPAC. Whereas AIPAC mainly focuses on the Congress, WINEP was developed into a highly effective think tank devoted to maintaining and strengthening the US-Israel alliance through advocacy in the media and lobbying the executive branch.

Corruption

Sibel Edmonds has identified several people from WINEP as involved in high level corruption.

Experts

Samer Abu Libdeh	Soner Cagaptay	Patrick Clawson	Michael Eisenstadt
Christopher Hamilton	Simon Henderson	Michael Herzog	Mark Hicks
Emily Hunt	Mehdi Khalaji	Michael Knights	Martin Kramer
David Makovsky	Hala Mustafa	Mark Parris	Robert Rabil
Dennis Ross	Robert Satloff	David Schenker	Raymond Tanter
Jeffrey White	Moshe Yaalon

History

On the eve of the 1988 presidential elections, with the first Palestinian intifada underway, WINEP made its bid to become a major player in US Middle East policy discussions by issuing a report entitled "Building for Peace: An American Strategy for the Middle East." The report urged the incoming administration to "resist pressures for a procedural breakthrough (on Palestinian-Israeli peace issues) until conditions have ripened." Six members of the study group responsible for the report joined the first Bush administration, which adopted this stalemate recipe not to change until change was unavoidable. Hence, the US acceded to Israel's refusal to negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization despite the PLO's recognition of Israel at the November 1988 session of the Palestine National Council.

When Israel became serious about attempting to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, it circumvented the US-sponsored negotiations in Washington (and the pro-Israel lobby) and spoke directly to representatives of the PLO in Oslo. The result was the 1993 Oslo Declaration of Principles.

Thus, the adoption of WINEP's policy recommendation to "resist pressures for a procedural breakthrough" by both the Bush and Clinton administrations delayed the start of meaningful Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, contributed to the demonization of the PLO and multiplied the casualty rateof the first Palestinian intifada.

Despite what might reasonably be judged as a major policy failure, WINEP's influence grew, especially in the mass media. Its associates, especially deputy director Patrick Clawson, director for policy and planning Robert Satloff and senior fellow Michael Eisenstadt, appear frequently on television and radio talk shows as commentators on Middle East issues. Its board of advisors includes Mortimer Zuckerman, editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report, and Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief of The New Republic.

WINEP's advocacy extended to matters far beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Well before most Americans took note of radical Islam as a potential threat to their security, for instance, WINEP and its associates were promoting the notion that Israel is a reliable US ally against the spread of Islamism. After Israel expelled over 400 alleged Palestinian Islamist activists from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in December 1992, Israeli television Middle East analyst and WINEP associate Ehud Yaari wrote an op-ed in the New York Times summarizing his Hebrew television report of a vast US-based conspiracy to fund Hamas. WINEP's 1992 annual Soref Symposium "Islam and the US: Challenges for the Nineties" focused on whether or not Islam was a danger to the United States. At that event, Martin Indyk argued that the US ought not to encourage democracy in countries that were friendly to Washington, like Jordan and Egypt, and that political participation should be limited to secular parties. This recommendation seemed like a formula for ensuring that Islamist forces would forsake legal political action and engage in armed struggle - precisely what happened in Egypt from 1992 to 1997.

The Clinton administration was even more thoroughly colonized by WINEP associates than its predecessor. Eleven signatories of the final report of WINEP's 1992 commission on US-Israeli relations, "Enduring Partnership," joined the Clinton administration. Among them were National Security Advisor Anthony Lake, UN Ambassador and later Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, Undersecretary of Commerce Stuart Eisenstat and the late Les Aspin, Clinton's first secretary of defense. Shortly after assuming office in 1993, the Clinton administration announced a policy of "dual containment" aimed at isolating Iran and Iraq. The principal formulator and spokesperson for that policy was Martin Indyk, in his new role as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs at the National Security Council.

In the George W. Bush's administration, however, WINEP's influence was outflanked on the right by individuals linked to more monolithically neo-conservative and hawkish think tanks like the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

WINEP's aim to influence foreign policy in relation to Iraq was also evident in letters to Clinton in 1998. The letters called on Sadam's Hussain's removal from power, but at the time they were unable to sell a war to Clinton in order to achieve that objective. Many of the letters signatories had close ties to pro-Israel groups like JINSA or WINEP, signatories included Elliott Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Bernard Lewis, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz.

 

Related Quotation

Page	Quote	Author	Date
John Mearsheimer	“Although WINEP plays down its links to Israel and claims that it provides a ‘balanced and realistic’ perspective on Middle East issues, this is not the case. In fact, WINEP is funded and run by individuals who are deeply committed to advancing Israel’s agenda … Many of its personnel are genuine scholars or experienced former officials, but they are hardly neutral observers on most Middle East issues and there is little diversity of views within WINEP’s ranks”	John Mearsheimer Stephen Walt	January 2007

 

Employees on Wikispooks

Employee	Job	Appointed	End
Martin Indyk	Executive Director	1985	1993
David Makovsky	Director of the Koret Project on Arab-Israel Relations

 

Known members

8 of the 62 of the members already have pages here:

Member	Description
Patrick Clawson	Zionist academic who suggested that the United States should consider the use of "crisis initiation" as a way to provoke Iran into war.
Roger Hertog	US-Israeli millionaire, "the one man who has, far more than anyone else, financially enabled the neoconservative movement to exist"
Michael Herzog
Mehdi Khalaji	Iranian exile writer who frequently contributed to Western Commercially-controlled media suggesting crippling sanctions and military action against Iran. He and wife main suspects in the largest financial corruption case in Iranian history.
Martin Kramer	Wrote that Middle East experts "failed to ask the right questions at the right time about Islam"
David Makovsky	Director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Dennis Ross	US diplomat, author, US Director of Policy Planning under GHWB
Moshe Yaalon	Former General in the IDF, accused of war crimes

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