Russian and Iranian Press Think Hillary Clinton’s a Hawk While Israel Complains She’s a Dove

This post originally ran on Truthdig contributor Juan Cole’s website.

How is the international press responding to the Democratic National Convention and the formalization of Hillary Clinton’s status as the party’s standard-bearer in the presidential campaign?

BBC Monitoring helped me find these reports, which I’m paraphrasing or quoting from their translation:

Boaz Bismuth in the Hebrew edition of Yisrael Hayom (Israel Today), which is pro-Netanyahu, criticized the Democrats for their message that the US is unprecedentedly strong. He wrote that polls show Americans to be concerned about terrorism and rising crime. Then he pointed to the Syrian government siege of east Aleppo (with Russian aerial help) as another thing the US has to worry about.

This newspaper is given away free and is owned by allegedly corrupt US casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, so its talking points are Republican ones. Actually, crime is not rising in the US; violent crime is at historic low. And, while the siege of east Aleppo is troubling from the point of view of human rights (you’re not allowed to starve out civilians), it is hard to imagine most Americans caring, one way or another.

The Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti reported on 29 July that Vladimir Vasilyev, chief scientific staff member at the Russian Academy of Science’s USA and Canada Institute, said that the previous week,

Trump backed off from Russia and Ukraine . . . Then Trump called NATO an outdated organization, and said that it needs to reconfigure its operations, and that the main threat now is the fight against terrorism . . .Trump has given to understand that to this end, it is possible to develop cooperation with Russia, search for points of engagement, and fight against terrorism together. At a press conference on 27 July, Trump also said he was ready to agree to the return of Crimea to Russia and study the issue of lifting sanctions from Russia . . .”

Vasiliyev obviously loved what he heard from Trump. He saw Clinton as replying to Trump. He said she put Russia basically as the no. 2 threat facing the US after Daesh (ISIS, ISIL). He thinks she signalled that she would be harder on Russia than was Obama.

Source: BBC Monitoring trans of RIA Novosti, Moscow, in Russian 1040 gmt and 0855 gmt 29 Jul 16

As for Iran, IRNN was happy that the Democratic platform included support for the JCPOA, the Iran deal on Iranian enrichment. But it warned that the Dems also seem bent on harming Iran over its alleged support of “terrorism.”

Hirad (@Hirad1986) tweeted in Persian: “One of the reasons that Hillary is more dangerous than Trump is that Hillary is eager to start wars and can bring Europe on her side more easily.”