Is Obama up to the task?
Foreign Policy Initiative director Jamie Fly wonders whether President Obama is up to the task of dealing with Iran. The Obama administration was quick to condemn Ahmadinejad’s speech, delivered just several miles from the hallowed ground where the World Trade Center towers once stood. But the fact that President Obama went to New York even thinking that there might be some progress on the diplomatic front with Iran raises serious questions about his strategy for preventing a nuclear Iran.What could go wrong?
The day before the dueling speeches, the administration was in engagement mode. "We want the engagement to be a real engagement, and we will do some intensive thinking now to have an arsenal of ideas. But we also think it is time the Iranians produced an idea or two," a senior diplomat told the Washington Post.
In recent months, the Obama administration has appeared serious about the “pressure track,” obtaining Russian and Chinese support for a new round of United Nations Security Council sanctions, and convincing European and other allies to pursue further measures.
But these actions obscure the fundamental problem with this administration’s Iran policy. Obama’s efforts to pressure Tehran are not about getting Iran to halt its weapon program. Instead, it serves one purpose – to get Iran back to negotiations – negotiations that Iran clearly has no intention of taking seriously. Ahmadinejad made that clear with his characteristically bombastic performance at the UN rostrum.
The facts are this. After more than eighteen months of outreach by the Obama administration, Iran is rapidly nearing a nuclear weapons capability. The greatest opportunity for reform in Iran in years went out with a whimper last year after the president remained silent as the regime gunned down peaceful protesters in the streets. Iran continues to kill Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. And now the Iranian leader has come to New York and made the president and his top advisors look dangerously naive. After being humiliated by Ahmadinejad’s performance yesterday, Obama deployed a tougher tone, telling an interviewer from BBC Persia today that there are a “host of options” if Iran fails to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
The excerpts released this week from Bob Woodward’s book depict an indecisive president uncomfortable with his role as commander in chief. Hopefully, Woodward got it wrong because with Iran approaching the threshold of a nuclear weapons capability, America desperately needs a commander in chief who is up to the task.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:09 AM
1 Comments:
Obama may surprise us but I doubt it.
And most of the American people have soured on his presidency.
We'll see what happens in November.
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