Talk Talk W/ Mullahs
Counseled by policy wonks, who are encouraging Obama to follow through with his big plan. Wank tanks identify Iran as Obama’s biggest challenge and advise him to start direct talks with the terrorism-supporting, hostage-taking, nuke-lusting regime that is responsible for the murder of American soldiers. Because blowing up Iranian nuke facilities is distasteful, and oil woes mean they can be bribed. Times of London:
Iran poses the greatest foreign policy challenge to the new president with Tehran on course to produce a nuclear bomb in the first year of an Obama administration, an unprecedented coalition of top think tanks warned yesterday.
You know, he says that like the Bush admin has not been heavily engaged in mutli-lateral diplomacy trying to persuade the Iranians, with carrot and stick, to lay off the nukes. They have shown no interest.
Actually, the advice Obama needs is not direct talks. He came up with that on his own, and presumeably CFR and Brookings are just trying to give him cover, seeing as direct talks with terror-hearting, truth-skirting mullahs has been heralded as an incredibly bad idea.
What Obama could use is some advice that bombing the mullahs needs to be an option lying in plain view on the table between them before, during and after any talks which, Iran’s oil woes and the unlikely benefits of regional involvement notwithstanding, are going to end with lies and meaningless deals that the mullahs will violate.
The report laid blame for much of the crisis squarely with the Bush administration, whose war in Iraq fuelled Iran’s ascendancy as a regional power.
The Brookings/CFR report also says Iran’s rise is Bush’s fault, because he took Saddam out. Yeah, that didn’t make any sense to me either. What ascendancy? They were working on those nukes and terrorizing the neighborhood before Bush got there, but they haven’t built it … yet, Obama. If anything, Bush set them back on both the terror and nuke fronts, flanked them in Iraq and Afghanistan, and linedEurope and the Un up against them. Maybe that’s what they are trying to say here:
But the authors warned against an “ABB” – anything but Bush – approach, urging Mr. Obama to build on some of the changes in direction over the last two years. “Change for sake of change is not a good idea,” Mr. Hass said. “Great powers have to be predictable.”
Yes. That means the mullahs should be able to predict that failure to comply with the international community’s demands will have dire consequences.
Here’s someone else advocating talks who at least recognizes that Bush in fact accomplished an Iranian setback … he just shouldn’t have eased off on the pressure … and that the misrepresentation of the NIE was an American setback. Dennis Ross at Newsweek thinks “sharper sticks, more appetizing carrots” can get the mullahs to behave, and that the Chinese can be brought on board while Europe is weaned from its Iranian habit. Good luck. Allow me to suggest a very big, sharp stick.
Which leads to my other advice to Obama: Get on making the stick bigger, sharper. As Ross notes, it was the Saddam takedown that got Iran’s attention. Remember what worked for FDR … guns, not butter. If you want to go ABB on anything, make it boosting the size of the US military.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:46 pm Comments (2) on Tuesday, December 2, 2008
2 Responses to “Talk Talk W/ Mullahs”
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December 3rd, 2008 at 12:57 am
We’ve been trying diplomacy, contrary to anti-Bush myths, for years, we and the Euros. So far it has accomplished diddley-squat. What is plan B, Mr. Obama, if your new, improved, now with extra scrubbing power diplomacy doesn’t work any better? Because that is what you will need.
I think that there is no carrot sweet enough, no stick short of war sharp enough, to wean the Ayatollahs away from their desire for nukes. Nuclear weapons are their ticket to the Big Boys club, to the Great Powers Table at the banquet of international power. With nukes they can carry out thier dearest wishes for genocide of the Jews and imperial expansion. Everybody will be afraid of them and no one will dare take action against them for whatever terrorism they support anywhere. What can the diplomatists offer to make up for giving up this heady prospect? Nada. Zilch. Anything that might be offered for them to give up nukes,, they can get by extortion once they’ve got the nukes.
The naivete of the constant calls for diplomatic efforts even when they have achieved, and can achieve, nothing is astonishing.
December 3rd, 2008 at 8:31 am
President Bammo: Please dispatch Jimmah Cawtah to Mullahland ASAP. Say, on the 20th of January, as you take the oath. That will be a nice tie-in with the 28th Anniversary of the American Embassy Hostages being released as Ronaldus Magnus took the oath of office. Yep, Jimmah has a long record–just ask Baby Kim–of persuading Outlaw Despots out of Nuke ambitions.