hurricanemaxi
Joined: 10 Aug 2011
Posts: 120
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 Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 6:50 am Post subject: Goldberg: To Avoid All-Out War Give Iran One Last Chance |
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Three years ago, President Barack Obama came into office with a very good idea: He would reach out to the mullahs in Iran to see whether they were interested in rethinking their hate-based relationship with the U.S.
So Obama, despite criticism from Republicans, wrote private letters to the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and made a public appeal for a fresh start.
“In this season of new beginnings, I would like to speak clearly to Iran’s leaders,” Obama said in a message broadcast in early 2009. “We have serious differences that have grown over time. My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us, and to pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran and the international community.”
When the Iranian people rose up later that year, Obama only tepidly endorsed them, and he was measured in his criticism of the vicious manner in which the Iranian leadership suppressed the protests. He may have been motivated partly by an assessment that the uprising wouldn’t succeed, and that the U.S. would still have to grapple with the Iranian theocracy. His approach was neither morally nor emotionally satisfying, but it showed a certain cold logic.
Nothing happened, of course: The ayatollahs showed no interest in Obama’s entreaties.
Getting Tougher
Fast-forward three years. The Obama administration is now tougher on Iran than was the administration of George W. Bush. It has imposed the most sweeping sanctions ever placed on the country, including sanctions against the Iranian central bank. It is helping coordinate a threatened international boycott of Iranian oil (IATBXOIL). And, according to diplomatic sources I spoke to last week, it has asked its Gulf Arab allies -- including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- to sharply limit their contacts with official Iranian delegations.
So Republicans who still call Obama soft on Tehran are either delusional or cynical. His administration has moved a long way from engagement. In fact, it now appears to be moving inexorably toward war.
The issue that will provoke that war is the Iranian nuclear program. The administration has left itself no maneuverability on this question. Last month, Denis McDonough, the deputy national security adviser, told a group of Jewish leaders that he was furious “that there are people out there who doubt our resolve to stop Iran.”
On Jan. 8, Leon Panetta, the secretary of defense, said that the U.S. would act if it found that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon: “I think they need to know that if they take that step -- that they’re going to be stopped.”
It appears that Iran is unmoved by such threats. Not only has it intensified its belligerent rhetoric -- threatening to shut the Strait of Hormuz to oil-tanker traffic (OPCRIRAN) and suggesting that U.S. aircraft carriers aren’t welcome in the Persian Gulf - - it has sentenced to death a former Marine named Amir Mirzaei Hekmati on charges that he spied against Iran for the CIA. (The U.S. denies that Hekmati was a spy.)
More ominously, the pro-regime Iranian newspaper Kayhan reported that uranium enrichment has begun at a nuclear site called Fordow near the holy city of Qom. This is a consequential move: Most of Iran’s nuclear sites are vulnerable to air attack, but Fordow is a hardened underground site. Because Israel has only a limited ability to penetrate deeply buried bunkers, a decisive move underground by Iran could push Israel to attack preemptively. \
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