Debating Obama's outstretched hand to Iran.
There's a certain mythology that's taken hold about President Obama's Iran diplomacy. Nile Gardiner summarizes it well:
As it has done with Russia, the Obama presidency has attempted to â??resetâ? relations with Iran. But with both Moscow and Tehran, Washington has failed. Both hostile powers have grown emboldened and aggressive in the face of American weakness, and Iranâ??s brazen attempt to kill a foreign diplomat in the capital city of the United States showcases the folly of the White Houseâ??s softly-softly approach towards the ruling mullahs.While Washington dithers, Iran is marching closer and closer to developing a nuclear weapon, which according to some estimates is just six months away.
We now know that President Obama wasn't 'dithering' or naively offering olive branches but instead escalating a covert campaign of cyber-sabotage from the very first days in office. If you think cyber attacks are small potatoes, consider how one unnamed U.S. military official framed the emerging U.S. cyber war doctrine: "If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks."
This raises the question of just how sincere President Obama's efforts were to engage the regime in Tehran. The Leveretts, pointing to an argument they made in 2009, insist that those efforts were completely insincere and fatally undermined any chances for a negotiated settlement:
If anything, we may have underestimated the degree to which Obama was prepared to let half-baked schemes undermine any chance he might have had, at least in theory, to pursue serious diplomacy with Iran. Obama apologists... want us to believe that the President meant well on engaging Tehran, but that what they describe (with no evidence whatsoever) as the Islamic Republicâ??s â??fraudulentâ? 2009 presidential election and the resulting â??disarrayâ? within the Iranian leadership stymied Obamaâ??s benevolent efforts. This is utterly false.
I'm not sure about this. Negotiating with an adversary while simultaneously fighting them is not all that uncommon in international diplomacy. To take one contemporary example: the U.S. is negotiating with the Taliban while both sides trade blows. The U.S. was able to make strategic arms control deals with the Soviet Union while both sides engaged in a global standoff that involved plenty of dirty tricks.
Still, this does underscore the fact that there's really not much more Governor Romney could do to thwart or impede Iran's nuclear progress that President Obama hasn't already tried. There may be one or two arrows left in the quiver short of a military assault, but not many.
(AP Photo)
