Obama's Iran negotiation is gone
This has been sitting on my browser for two days, but it's too good not to share. Jonah Goldberg simply nails it. According to many analysts, Obama is still clinging to his hope of talking Iran out of its nuclear program. That's why he initially said there was little difference between Mir Hossein Mousavi and Ahmadinejad, and why his recent denunciations only followed similar rhetoric from the Europeans and our own Congress. He just doesn't want to let go of the diplomacy option. Obama has also made it clear that he sees the elimination of Iran's nuclear problem not as a stand-alone priority but as part of his Middle East two-step. His inseparable goal is to also push Israel into a peace settlement with the Palestinians.Read it all. So far, at least, there is no sign that Obama is abandoning his ideological rigidity when it comes to Israel.
Obama promises to negotiate away Iran's nuclear program in return for Israeli movement on an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. In effect, Obama would be using the threat of a nuclear-armed Ahmadinejad as a Medusa's head to petrify Israelis into concessions. Whether such a strategy would have worked is open to huge quantities of skepticism. Now, after what has happened in Iran in recent days, such a plan is simply impossible.
For years, conservatives have said that the Iranian regime can't be negotiated with. Some emphasized that anti-Americanism is at the core of the regime's identity. Some noted that Obama-style "open-handed" overtures to Iran were rebuffed.
Others pointed to the messianic and conspiratorial zeal that animates Iran's clerical junta. Many invoked Iran's steadfast animus toward our ally Israel as well as its sponsorship of "scholarly" Holocaust-denial and the more tangible support for Hezbollah and others bent on murdering Jews. Iran's efforts to derail democracy and stability in Iraq by supporting attacks on American troops is also part of the talk-is-folly brief.
None of that was sufficient evidence for Obama, in part because anything associated with Bush's freedom agenda was deemed absurd and ideologically rigid.
Well, Bush is gone. Obama has extended his hand. And the regime is supplying fresh evidence of the absurdity of his approach. All that's left for Obama now is to abandon his own ideological rigidity and start over.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:56 PM
1 Comments:
The Administration has a learning curve. Half the year has gone by and rest of it will be consumed by a pointless argument over a settlement freeze. I would also add US leverage upon Israel is also gone as well.
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