Sunday, July 05, 2009

Obama's bizarro-world Iranian policy

President Obama's original foreign policy with respect to Iran was based on the principles that Iran was a "normal" power that could be usefully negotiated with and that the United States was not going to "meddle" in Iran's internal affairs. The recent Iranian electoral protests created a shift in that policy. The United States would present Iran with some criticism of its internal response to the protests, but the United States wouldn't consider the Iranian goverment to be delegitimized by them.

Now we have another shift in Obama's Iranian policy. Instead of being highly restrained in how we meddle in Iranian internal affairs, we're now going to shamelessly meddle in Iranian internal affairs:
Vice President Joe Biden seemed to give Israel a green light for military action to eliminate Iran's nuclear threat, saying the U.S. "cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do."
Here's another way to view the problem with America's Iranian policy. The Iranian protesters presumably have four things that they hold dear: (1) America not attacking Iran; (2) peaceful Iranian nuclear power; (3) hatred of Isreal; (4) delegitimizing the current Iranian regime. As of today, our Iranian policy is now attacking Iran to destroy their capacity for nuclear power if diplomacy fails; having Israel conduct the attack; while conceeding that the Iranian government is otherwise 100% legitimate.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home