Which Part Of “Great Satan” …
… don’t they get? NYT, Gates says the U.S. overture to Iran isn’t open-ended:
JERUSALEM—Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned Monday that the American overture to engage Iran in talks about its nuclear program “is not an open-ended offer” as Ehub Barak, the Israeli defense minister, expressed impatience that the Americans were willing to talk to Iran at all.
At a joint news conference here, Mr. Barak made clear that he did not agree with the American policy of trying to engage Iran, but he acknowledged that Israel was in no position to dictate to the United States.
By “not open-ended” he’s clearly not refering to the bottom, where all the logic fell out pretty much as soon as they tried to pour it into that bucket. The only hopeful sign in all of this is that they might finally be looking for a way out of that bad idea that doesn’t look like an acknowledgement that it never was a good idea, compounded by the fact that they stuck with it even after the Obama base finally figured out it was a morally bankrupt idea. Weird how they stuck with it even when the murderous, mendacious terrorism-supporters on whose cooperation it depended were mocking it from the start. Too bad they’ve wasted so much time. Because unless the Obama admin has entirely come to its senses, which I doubt, it needs to figure out another way of dealing with this problem that doesn’t involve blowing up Iran’s nuclear facilities. Yeah, yeah, I know, “sanctions.” Because those have such a great track record with dictatorships that want nukes.
Anyway, the mullahs have until late September before Obama shifts from thumb-twiddling to full brow-furrowing on this issue.
Mr. Gates, speaking with Mr. Barak after meetings at the King David Hotel, said that President Obama hoped to hear Iran’s response to the offer of talks at the time of the United Nations General Assemby in late September.
Nonetheless, he said, “we’re very mindful of the possibility that the Iranians would simply try to run out the clock.”
About that clock, let’s see: Two months till the end of September. Several weeks and/or months of dickering about sanctions, if they can get them past the Russians and Chinese. OK, best case scenario, how long does the clock tick before the Obama admin/UN Security Council to figure out the mullahs don’t give a damn about sanctions? Estimates variously put the mullahs one to two to five years out from their nuke. At which point a different clock starts ticking. That’s the one that allows Iran to bully the rest of the Middle East even more brazenly than it already does, that revives the Arab nuke arms race, that maybe even sees Iran lobbing one at Tel Aviv. You know, like they keep saying they want to.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 12:30 pm on Monday, July 27, 2009
2 Responses to “Which Part Of “Great Satan” …”
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July 27th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
How do we know Robert Gates isn’t simply telling the Israelis what they want to hear? After all, Barry The Won is never actually wrong about anything.
July 30th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Well, he was definately wrong about diplomacy working with the Iranian mullah’s.