The #1 Threat to America is... Dennis Ross?

J.J. Goldberg (no relation, except if you're conspiracy-minded) delivers a devastating critique of Roger Cohen's recent piece on the making of Iran policy. Read the whole thing, but here is Goldberg's conclusion:

In a 5,000-word article in the August 2 Sunday Times Magazine, (Cohen) unraveled the tangled lines of authority in Obama's Iran policy-making. The loose thread, he strongly suggested, was veteran diplomat Dennis Ross, an "ultimate Washington survivor," who started at the Obama State Department, left in a "fiasco" and moved in a "bizarre odyssey" to the National Security Council.

Ross's role in the administration raises many questions in Cohen's mind, but the one that comes up over and over throughout the article, "a recurrent issue with Ross, who embraced his Jewish faith after being raised in a non-religious home by a Jewish mother and a Catholic stepfather, has been whether he is too close to the American Jewish community and Israel to be an honest broker with Iran or Arabs." In the crisis atmosphere following the Iranian election, "Can this baggage-encumbered veteran... overcome ingrained habits and sympathies?" Indeed, "Will the Iranians be prepared to meet with Ross?" -- a "reasonable question given Ross's well-known ties with the American Jewish community."

That, in effect, is the dilemma facing American policy toward Iran at this pivotal moment: Is there too much Jewish influence? We've heard the question before in Hamas sermons, in Al Qaeda videos and on some left-wing blogs. Now it's been incorporated into the nation's newspaper of record.