The Failed Obama Iran Policy: Now What?
On October 25, Ambassador Dennis Ross — among other things, the National Security Council’s czar for Iranian matters — spoke in Florida to an AIPAC conference. It’s worth paying attention when Ross speaks, because he’s one of the best practitioners of the diplomatic arts, and, having done this sort of thing for several administrations, he is always very careful. His words are canonical; you don’t have to wonder if he didn’t mean precisely what he said or whether he is at cross purposes with his president.
His Florida speech can therefore be taken as one of the clearest and most authoritative efforts to defend the administration’s Iran policy, and warrants our serious attention.
He began with a false claim that Obama’s outreach to the Iranian regime is something new. “The first step…was making an unmistakable offer of engagement to the Iranians to show their government — and the rest of the international community — that we were committed to resolving our long-standing differences with Iran through peaceful diplomacy on the basis of mutual respect. We recognized that during the years of not talking, Iran significantly expanded its nuclear program and sowed its breed of terror and coercion across the region.”
This is the administration’s central myth about Obama and Iran. In reality, there were no “years of not talking.” The Bush years were full of talking, culminating in an embarrassing failure. Secretary of State Rice went to the United Nations to await the promised arrival of a high level Iranian delegation that she expected would sign an agreement with the United States. Iran would stop enriching uranium, and America would lift sanctions. But the delegation never arrived.
This was only the latest in a 30-year run of failed “peaceful diplomacy on the basis of mutual respect.” Every president from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama has tried it, and all have failed, even the current crowd, as Ross admits just a few words later: “Iran’s own behavior over the past two years…has demonstrated that it prefers defiance and secrecy to transparency and peace.”
Ross continued, “Iran continues to rely on tactics of intimidation and coercion to gain influence, a pattern clearly on display during President Ahmadinejad’s provocative recent visit to Lebanon and through Iran’s ongoing support for Hizballah.”
Quite right. But he doesn’t go nearly far enough. It’s not just a matter of “intimidation and coercion.” The central issue is NOT Iranian diplomatic recalcitrance; it’s the murder of American soldiers in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
And that is the issue that nobody — not national security officials, not members of Congress, not pundits — wants to talk about. They avoid it with a remarkable single-mindedness, because to acknowledge it means having to respond forcefully, and no president for more than 30 years has been willing to do that.
It’s the poisonous turd in the diplomatic punchbowl, and it infuriates our fighting men and women, who know full well who’s blowing up their brothers and sisters. And even some of their top brass — from Admiral Mullen atop the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Secretary of Defense Gates and all too many service secretaries and commanders — tiptoe delicately around the defining issue of the war. Whatever their private convictions, they are not about to risk their careers by publicly challenging their commander-in-chief.
As for Dennis Ross and his cohorts in the White House and Foggy Bottom, they send birthday greetings to Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:
Obama has been a failure on all fronts. On foreign policy, he has been a disaster not just a failure.
Greetings to the “Iranian” President shpoud be as follows:
May the days of your rule be SHORT and may you oon be replaced by another. DrShalit
If the Greens should overthrow the current regime, expect Obama to take credit via his “smart power” ruse.
The PLAN is to have a meeting with Ahmadinejad to discuss which brand of Islam will rule over the Islamic Republic of America… Obama prefers Wahabism because it has been they with their schools and money that have allowed America Hate to grow to such proportions… They DESERVE to rule over America… Ahmadinejad can have the rest of the world…and the caliphate will allow for peace on Earth becasuse all non believers will be killed….aka; Armeggeddon….
Unfortunately, Congress can only do so much. Even if a conservative Republican Congress takes over in January, the direction of our foreign policy is mostly in the hands of our president. Congress can block certain things the president may want to do, but as for taking stronger actions against Iran either covertly or militarily, that has to come from the president.
We are in a race for time now. We can only hope that Iran does not get a nuclear bomb before a new president can be elected in 2012. If they do get the bomb, then we will face a problem that will make the Cuban Missile Crisis look like child’s play. Unless the regime in Iran collapses soon, certainly within the next year, Iran will have its bomb and there doesn’t seem to be much Obama wants to do about it. After all, foreign policy was always a “distraction” to Obama. Some “distraction.” This “distraction” could set the entire Middle East on fire, and us along with it.
ditto, It is nice to know that there is at least one other person who sees the Iranian bomb as the major threat not only to the Middle east but to the US to say nothing of the rest of the world.
Odd when the pollsters ask voter’s their major concern they do not even list the Iranian bomb as an option. It is as though the public is confronting a clear stupendous danger by ignoring it. Everyone is partying like it’s 1938 and Hitler can be reasoned with.
Mr. Ledeen — By telling us to listen carefully to Dennis Ross’s words, you must mean we should do because what he says reflects the Administration’s thinking. How else to explain your subsequent critical comments indicating that everything he said is either a lie or a shading of the truth? In my humble opinion, I think Dennis Ross should have left the Administration as soon as his diplomatic recommendations were questioned because of his religion. The fact that he did not tells us what a toad he is.
Calling Dennis Ross a toad insults toads. Toads are harmless creatures with warts. Ross is a poisonous creature and smooth as can be.
In a more serious vein: There is, as Ledeen suggests, great benefit to hearing clear articulation of the administration’s position and, given the administration’s proclivity to talk in different accents out of three sides of its face, Ross is the rare individual who can do it.
The policy is one of appeasement and the policy is set in stone. Or Foggy Bottom which sounds a bit squishier but is stone stubborn nonetheless. Stuffed shirts in striped pants have set the course and there is no possibility of deviating from it.
How else can one explain every president since Carter kissing Muslim Persian asses when the Bastards are murdering our men and women? And not only those in uniform.
Reliance on Persia began when Churchill as Navy Secretary switched from coal, which Britain had in abundance, to oil from the Persian Gulf to fuel the British Navy. At a time when some two hundred men–half the crew of a capital ship–did nothing but shovel coal and it required twenty-four hours of shoveling to get a capital ship underway, it was an excellent decision. Needless to say, it never entered Churchill’s mind that an Englishman would ever kiss a Persian’s ass. The thought would have been inconceivable to a man like Churchill regardless of how low Britain might fall.
Kissing Persian ass begins at Foggy Bottom. There is an uptick in the usual discontent in Iran. An old Ayatollah in exile in Paris is taping fiery sermons to undermine the Shah and sending them to the old country with his hashishi.
Does the CIA know this? Have they bucked the information up to State? Has the President been informed? Anybody suggest bullet in the old degenerate’s head? He’s in an apartment in Paris, barely guarded. Exactly the sort of operation ordinary taxpayers might naively imagine the CIA was invented for.
Alas, what late night discussions were held at foggy bottom, if discussions were, in fact, held at all remains, well, foggy. CIA and State missed years of precipitous decline and never predicted the fall of the Soviet Union. Beside such monumental failure, millions of seditious Jihadist tapes being circulated around Iran without the CIA tumbling to it is a minor glitch. The Department of State after all, didn’t have a single Farsi speaker on its multimillion dollar payroll.
And so a valuable American ally whose father we had installed was allowed to fall ignominiously, abandoned at the last even by the American diplomats and politicians he was closest to.
The American Media Corps was much cheered. For years American journalists had scanted the breathtaking freedoms to women instituted by the Shah and his appeal to pre-Islamic Persian greatness. They focused instead on the Shah’s ruthless suppression of the Fourteenth Century Islamist fanatics who hated the Shah and his Twentieth Century reforms, so contrary to the Mullahs and Sharia Law.
Then the Ayatollah’s followers rioted,invaded the sovereign American grounds of the American embassy, murdered Marine guards, tortured and murdered a CIA section chief and took a large number of State Department employees hostage. The United States never had better justification to invade, smash the opposition and reinstall a friendly government. Instead our government, James Earl Carter at its head, kissed ass–a strategy not unfitting a government with an ass at its head. And successive governments, no doubt on strong advice of State, have kissed ass ever since.
Our problem today is that State and CIA have developed a taste for it. Kissing Persian ass, I mean. They can’t get enough. And they stubbornly insist on the privilege.
How does an elitist empty suit kiss ass? Not by getting down on his knees and puckering his lips, heaven forfend. He sends birthday greetings to Muslim tyrants slaughtering American Marines.
While the premise in this article is manifestly correct, the Green Movement will never be able to liberate Iran without US boots on the ground.
Not necessarily a replay of other US Middle East interventions, but a more targeted approach.
In other words, a quick in and out cadre of hit squads, aiming at the heart of the regime, coupled with the decimation of the Revolutionary Guards.
Not all war efforts have to resemble one another.Some must be pinpointed, swift and short in duration.
At the end of such efforts the rest of the terror players in the region will be both stunned & cowed into overall submission.
The clap trap coming out of Washington is nothing more than smoke and mirrors.It will ensure the death of many millions in the near future.
what are you smoking today in Israel?
m
Falafel I deleted your personal comments about another commenter; please do that elsewhere if at all.
Miriam,
Please lay off of Adina. She’s at least contributed actual thoughts, ideas, etc as compared to you who (as is typical of your contributions, both of them) merely denigrate. Furthermore, Adina lives in “the target zone” so to speak — this would, in my opinion, grant her opinions a little extra weight than a place that does not have a “#1″ listed next to it in Ahmadinejad’s list of targets and the order in which he plans to hit those targets.
FF
whatever it is he is smoking, you ought to try it, it may stop the automatic answering machine in your head you mistake for a brain.
I believe a simple blockade would bring down the regime. If we don’t want to have an open act of war clandestinely sabotage oil tankers until no one buys their oil.
It is shocking, how those at the State Department, and this administration, deny the reality of Iran. I have to assume that their jobs, are more important to them, than the safety and security of the American people. I really wonder when, principle will take precedence with government beaurocrats. When the truth of a situation, will empower them to stop pushing a falsehood, and resign their positions in protest, rather than endanger the country. Once out of government service they can communicate the truth to the American people, instead of the politically correct policy of the moment.
We are in real danger from Iranian aggression and a possible Iranian nuclear weapon. We could see Americans by the tens of thousands, die here in the homeland, if terrorists succeed in smuggling into our country, and detonating a nuclear device, in one or more of our cities. Do our diplomats have no regard for that fact?
I do not expect to see any real action from this President. He is mired in a false political doctrine in regards to the reality of Iran. Does he not, by now, realize his policy is a failure? I believe it is just not in his character to act in the manner necessary to counter this threat. We will have to hope that we can hold off the Iranians for two more years, until we get a president with some “cojones”. As we learned with the first Iranian hostage crisis, resolved by the election of Ronald Reagan, the`Iranians only understand power and resolve.
Unfortunately, Obama and the Progressive left battle evil — and that’s exactly what Iran is — from a naive perspective, deeming that their self-proclaimed intelluctualism will somehow be enough to dissuade the tyrants who foster grand designs.
“We cannot play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent.” –Ronald Wilson Reagan
The USSR was brought down, in part, because of America’s unshakeable resolve and the strength of Her character. Radical Islam (is there any other?) will not be defeated by anything less. It is the new global plague. That is why it is paramount that America has a Reagan-like leader who is willing to call evil what it is.
“REAGAN VS. OBAMA IS LIBERTY VS. TYRANNY”
http://heir2freedom.blogspot.com/2010/10/reagan-vs-obama-is-liberty-vs-tyranny.html
While Ross is an impressive operative, he doesn’t make the policy. Along with every other ‘career Jew’ in State (on ME issues) or on the NSA, Dennis Ross is also tied to – and emotionally – the Oslo process, the enforcement of Israeli subservience to ‘smart’ (and powerful) Americans, a self-satisfied construct that is abetted by many in the Israeli establishment.
Regarding Iran, I would say that Obama doesn’t really have a clue. He doesn’t have a problem with Islam. He thinks it’s overall a good idea. He has no reasonable set of ethics to guide him, so Iran is as ‘exceptional’ as any other place (and in it’s own way, the Iranian gov’t is certainly ‘exceptional’). Obama can’t stand the idea of a ME in which Israel plays a central role in creating a new order of things; again, he’s aided and abetted by ‘tactical’ Israeli leaders who can’t see that happening either.
He ‘knows’ that the survival and well-being of Saudi Arabia is a point of critical interest to the American elites who can ultimately pull his chain and remove him from office. So that might be a motivation to act, and yet he genuinely seems not to care, to be focused on the disaster to occur at the polls tomorrow. One of the byproducts of the upcoming and resounding Republican victory may be for Barack Obama to ‘bunker down’ and simply turn off the LEDs and refuse to play (except golf).
Chucky Schumer recently referred to PJ Crowley as ” some guy from the State Department named Crowley.” Wisest comment ever to spring from Senator Shvitzer’s mouth.
Gibbs at the White House, Crowley at State. What a combo. An Obama sponsored jazzdance duet with four left feet.
Bottom line, After more than 30 years of defiance, Komeini’s thrust has not been countered with any kind of proportionality. It will take a US president with an authentic sense of duty to change this. Right now we can only see what will never happen if you put a poseur in the white house. The electorate seems to be waking up, though, and we may yet take care of business. As Mr. Ledeen likes to say, Faster please!
David Aikman the Religion correspondent at Time ( if memory serves ) Said a couple of years ago , that Irainian youth love America, and that if the Mulahocracy were thrown down that %80 would become Christians .
I rather doubt the degree of enthusiasm for Christianity among Iranianj youngsters, but “love America” is universally acknowledged.
Once the US economy begins to fail like just before 9-11, then the new Republicans will allow a new war. Simple.
Ali I didn’t know you were such a Marxist.
Because the US is not supporting peaceful revolutions to overthrow draconian tyrants, why does it suppose that it can escape the fate of others who refused to the same, earlier?
The odiousness of Stanley Baldwin has been repeated time and time again, because of a number of variables. One is, an unwillingness to challenge, “I’ll believe it when I see it”. Just because people have taught themselves not to see what is in front of them, that doesn’t make them right.
“ I will stand with the Muslims, if the political winds shift in an ugly
direction.”
Barack Hussein Obama, The Audacity of Hope
He published that book before the American people elected him President. What were they thinking?
Thinking that em….maybe the muslims deserved to be treated fairly for a change?
And perhaps we ought to stop sacrificing American children for Israeli liars?
I dunno. Just a guess.
Iran on the offensive, not the defensive:
http://debka.com/article/9118/
Hizb drills to choke Hariri’s gov’t into submission.
think you’ll get away with it?
looks to me like the biggest threat to you radicals is the internet… iran is way far down the list when it comes to actual threats to america…
…but as more and more people become aware of where this impulse to war is coming from, and the idiocy and immorality of it (oh! i forgot… we left our morals behind), the more likely there’s gonna be some unpleasant reckoning down the line somewhere.
on the other hand, if some jews want to make a living by being persecuted for their stupidity and immorality, who am i to quibble…?
…given, of course, that i can stay out of the line of fire.
Thanks for the revelation of your ghoulishness and utter depravity. Have a nice Halloween?
sometimes i worry bout your appetite
Greetings.
Interesting quote”The central issue is NOT Iranian diplomatic recalcitrance; it’s the murder of American soldiers in both Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Am I hearing this correctly? Those GIs volunteered to fight Islam .Some may live and some may die fighting in a war.Soldiers do not get murdered in wars, they are killed
while fighting.
Green movement is not the answer, they are Islamists only different in color. Incidentally, the green shade they use is what’s known as the “Hussein green” which is widely used even in banners and head gears worn by Hamas terrorists. Same donkey, different saddle for Iran? Iranians say:”No thank you.”
Iranian people desire a SECULAR democracy.
Enought of this imposed Shiitism by the west on Iran since 1979.
Thank you.
There are 2 green movements. the one which wants the complete overthrow of the regime and is secular and has the support of the majority. and then there is the green movement that wants to keep the regime, and its beef is about power. This is a well rehearsed game by the regime, and the west are stupid enough to fall for it.
The west and the US need to support the secular and democratic green movement and not the reformist part of the regime.
We have already been down this road! We were told that Saddam had WMD and that we had to invade to assure the security of everyone! See how that lie turned out, we invaded and occupied a country that had no WMD’s and we wasted american lives and treasure (borrowed from China!) on a lie. Now we have those who are going down the same path? What is it with you people? Our economy is in shambles, our own citizens are loosing their homes and jobs at an alarming rate and all you want to do is attack Iran! How about taking care of our own for goodness sake and lets stop playing world cop! It is a role that we really can not afford anymore!
stop inventing stories, hugh miller; i don’t want to invade Iran. Never did.
Do you really believe this or is it just a really great scam?
Please get a clue about how humans work. Whatever Iranians feel about America, no one wants foreign powers mucking about in their internal national affairs. The very best way to make sure the Green folks never ever come to power is for America to publicly back them and support them.
As for the military issues, again one wishes that some thought would happen before you spout off. Is Iran helping people kill Americans? Sure thing. What are we going to do about it? Thing is, our forces are kinda busy at the moment, and thing is Iran has a million men ready to make our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan really sorry if we attack Iran. And we can bet they learned a few things from Hizballah, who went toe-to-toe with Israel’s very capable forces. Plus they can make resupply of our troops pretty difficult for at least a week.
Our hands are pretty tied, and you seem to be one of the few unable to see that.
not invasion with troops; support the sixty-seventy million Iranians who want to be rid of the regime.
Vartan, you said: “and then there is the green movement that wants to keep the regime, and its beef is about power. This is a well rehearsed game by the regime, and the west are stupid enough to fall for it.”
In my opinion, the west, i.e., US Democrat Party, UK, France et al. were actually behind the second green movement you refer to that wants to keep the regime. The west (or east for that matter) have no desire for a secular democracy in Iran, nor do they care about Iranians living under a democracy or a ruthless theocracy. They’re just after meeting their economic and strategic goals in the region.
All the west cares about is keeping their Islamist regime (which was installed in 1979) intact minus a few figures like Ahamdinejaad and Khamenei who have stepped out of line and switched their allegiances towards Moscow and Beijing instead of Washington, London and Paris.
In short, the west wants a “make over” of the Islamist regime in Iran with their own stooges back on top. Enter Moussavi & Karrubi et al. Then, the west will proclaim that we now have a “good” Islamist regime in Iran vs. the old “bad” one under Ahmadinejad!
No one in the west or the so-called opposition is talking about regime change in the true definition of that term to a secular democracy, except maybe a few figures like Reza Pahlavi, and that is why he is being isolated by the west and is getting zero support.
Disclaimer: I am not a monarchist and have never been one. Thank you.
so everything is the opposite of what it seems, right?
you really don’t have to quote me back to me; i wrote it in the first place. and what does “arch” mean? are there “rectangular” lefties and “semicircular” paleocons?
i kinda have to admire you people with the courage to stick your necks out, but the philosophy that makes that kind of behavior necessary is really, really, really haywire.