You worked closely with former US president George W Bush, was the image created by the media anything like the real man?

The media took a dislike to Bush early on. The image of him was very unlike him. The person I know was highly intelligent – he graduated from Yale and Harvard business schools – and who was a voracious reader, constantly reading history books. So he was really quite a different guy.

Why do you think the media’s portrayal of Bush then was so different to the real man?
Most of the major TV and newspapers here are pretty left-of-centre and they just didn’t like him.

Do you think that is the reason current US President Barack Obama has enjoyed such a clear run in the press?
Yes, although it has turned around a little bit. During the 2008 campaign, the media was quite amazingly biased.

Speaking of Obama, as an expert in human rights how do you read the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the US President?
They [the Nobel committee] did him no favour. I really don’t think there was anybody here or in Europe who felt the prize was really deserved. Had they waited three years until he was involved in a re-election then maybe the prize would have helped him. But doing it this early, really it was almost a parody of the stupidity of the Nobel Peace Prize.
I think it was a political decision. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by five Norwegians and they were essentially awarding him a prize for not being George Bush.

Does the public see through Obama’s peace prize?
I think people have high hopes, but it is too soon, he hasn’t actually achieved peace. None of these initiatives has yet worked, maybe they will.

One place where peace is lacking is Afghanistan, what do you think Obama should do there?
We’re on the verge of a very important decision. Initially in March, the President did a policy review and said “Afghanistan is critical, Afghanistan is a war of necessity, Afghanistan is not Iraq”. Now it seems that he is wavering. Politically it is very difficult – the Democratic Party is largely hostile to increasing the number of troops. On the other hand, if he doesn’t increased the number of troops and the war goes badly, he could be blamed. I think the thing people are most concerned about right now is that there seems to be an appearance of endless delay in making this decision.

What will be the repercussions in the Middle East of an unresolved Afghan conflict?
We had the best counter-insurgency leader in our armed forces in David Petraeus, who is now the US central commander, and the best on the ground commander in Afghanistan in General [Stanley] McChrystal, who was chosen by President Obama. These two guys made a recommendation and that recommendation has behind it a unified Pentagon. That hasn’t always been the case but it is here.

Looking at Iran, you have previously said that the strategies that are being used now have been tried before and have all failed. What is the point?
I think we should keep trying even though all the strategies have been tried. The sanctions from the past years, led by Javier Solana, haven’t worked, but that was all before June 2009, the regime is far more vulnerable now. If we can organise credible sanctions, I think it is possible to negotiate our way out of this. The problem is that due to Chinese and Russian positions it doesn’t seem we are going to be able to put together such a good sanction regime.

What is your take on the proposal to export Iran’s low-grade uranium to Europe for enrichment for peaceful purposes?
I share the Israeli view that it will potentially slow down the Iranian march to a nuclear weapon. The critical problem here is the enrichment going on at Natanz; if that goes unaddressed then it is not a very good deal. If that deal is made, then the next step is to keep the threat of sanctions and go for a real freeze – what we used to call freeze-for-freeze, which is when all the sanctions are frozen by the world and all the enrichment is frozen by Iran. That is really what we need to get to if we are going to avoid a worse situation.

Does the military option need to be on the table?
Yes it does because we know from experience with Iran that they do react to threats. I think if want a negotiation, that threat has to remain alive.

Is it a credible threat? Could you see the military option being taken?
Yes. I think it is. My sense is that the next to the last thing the Israelis want is some kind of military confrontation with Iran, but the last thing they want is an Iranian nuclear weapon. If it comes to it in the end, they will wait and they will try to avoid it, but if the rest of the world turns away and left Iran to develop a nuclear weapon or get to the edge of it, I think the Israelis would act.

Do you know how long the Israelis’ fuse is on this issue?
The clock ticks at varying rates. If this latest deal were done, that would slow it down. People have different numbers, six months, 12 months, but it would slow it down.

You have written that the Right is more pro-Israel than the Left, can you elaborate on that?
Of course it didn’t used to be true. But I think the poll data here is quite clear. Generically, the Republican Party is more supportive of Israel than the Democrats are, despite the fact that most Jews are Democrats in the United States. The evangelical community as a whole is extremely supportive of Israel. It is a very significant change. It may date back to the 1973 war, I don’t know, but the trend is pretty clear.

Why has that come about?
There are two different trends: there is no question that the evangelicals – a significant community in the United States – have changed right-wing politics in this way. Not all evangelicals are conservatives, but most are. It is a very, very pro-Israel community. It is remarkable how many evangelicals one can meet and ask “have you ever been to Israel?” People will say, “five times”, or “eight times”, or “I go with my church every year”. Of the American tourists in Israel, more are Christians than are Jews.
That is one trend, the other is that the left is more supportive of Israel. We see this in things like the Goldstone report, in the work of the United Nations Human Rights Council, globally, but also in the US, the Left is very critical of Israel.

One reflection of the Left’s view on Israel was the recent J Street conference, what did you make of that?
You wouldn’t have this phenomenon of J Street if you didn’t have the support of the Obama Administration, but that isn’t all there is to it. It is not just a phenomenon of the Administration, it reflects a view on the Left in the United States that is very similar to a view on the Left in Europe, that Israel is aggressive, Israel committed war crimes, Israel violates human rights. It is a relentlessly negative picture.

What do you think implications of that will be?
If you look at the sheer numbers, that is, ask the American people who do you support? Israel or the Palestinians? Those numbers are pretty steady. I think the more difficult question is age. Those numbers are more steady at age 60 than they are at age 20. There is also an “elite politics questions” – among college graduates, among PhDs support for Israel is lower. So you are getting a leadership phenomenon that is very unfortunate.

Will this change influence US policy? Are there mixed messages coming from AIPAC and J Street?
J Street is still quite a weak organisation when you compare it to AIPAC, which is a very large national organisation that has chapters all over the place. I spoke at an AIPAC meeting this year in Denver, Colorado. Among the speakers who were there were both senators and all members of the House of Representatives in the state of Colorado – you don’t get that kind of thing at J Street, or any other organisation.

Interview by Naomi Levin