When Barack Obama was a senator running for presidency in 2008, he promised “hope” and “change” not only for the American people but for the world. Since the day he took office, people polled in foreign lands have registered more support for our president than the American people time and again. His healing, meditative “cool” was inflated to the point where he won a Nobel Peace Prize for his “potential” to bring about world peace. But this last week it became clear — if it wasn’t already obvious from the Arab Spring — that our president has pursued a naïve and dangerous foreign policy, this time with regards to Iran, that threatens the stability of the world.

Despite numerous political claims by many Democrats and Congressman Ron Paul, Iran is not pursuing a nuclear program for “peaceful” purposes. The International Atomic Energy Agency report released last week very clearly confirmed the world’s worst fears: Iran’s protestations of innocence are a complete lie, and they are not only developing nuclear weapons test sites and nuclear detonators, but also figuring out how to fit nuclear warheads onto their existing missiles. At best, this development will mean that our closest ally in the Middle East, Israel, will be forced to take military action and destroy Iran’s nuclear development site to preserve their security. At worst, Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon will set off an arms race in a region of the world in which everyone is holding a knife to everyone else’s throat. That, in turn, will force Russia to reverse disarmament and compel other regional powers such as China and India to increase their own nuclear armaments.

It doesn’t take a genius, much less a political science or global studies major, to figure out that a multipolar world makes for an unstable world. Despite this imminent threat, our president only offers yet more words. One cannot help but see Neville Chamberlain’s “peace for our time” repeating in our president’s foreign policy. Momentarily laying aside the fact that Iran’s president and grand ayatollah are radical Islamic fundamentalists in addition to being genocidal lunatics, the evidence that this strategy of appeasement has completely failed abounds. In 2009, the president failed to lend any support to the Iranians protesting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s fraudulent re-election and, more recently, offered only more tough talk in response to the Iranian government’s complicity in a plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the U.S. All this talk, in addition to “tough” U.N. sanctions, has evidently done nothing to dissuade Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon or curtailing their evil goals, even allowing Ayatollah Khomeini to retort that any interference in Iran’s nuclear development will be met with “a strong slap and an iron fist.”

Our president has tried to appease the despots of Iran with engagement. Now we see what comes from trying to be chums; an unstable international system, a weakened relationship with one of our closest allies and being no closer to world peace. Let us hope our president grows a spine, otherwise get ready for the Armageddon that John Hagee has long predicted.

Daily Nexus conservative columnist Jeffrey Robin thinks the “iron fist” is failing to prove its might.

 

 

 

 

 

In Response, Left Said:

 

This is precisely what I’m talking about: a list of complaints with no solutions. There’s a lot of harsh criticism of the president’s handling of the Iranian nuclear crisis (which few, if any, in the U.S. political system seriously doubt the existence of), but no explanations of what would be a better course of action.

My counterpart also describes Obama’s policy during the Arab Spring as “naïve” and “dangerous,” despite the fact that Republicans criticized Obama for not saying anything before he did and for saying anything at all afterward. In a second digression, he criticizes the president for not acting during the 2009 Iranian uprising. Obama pretty clearly demanded Iranian respect for human rights and democracy. What were we supposed to do — overthrow the regime? It’s not that easy.

Targeted sanctions on nuclear materials trade, the oil industry (tied to government officials due to corruption) and the Revolutionary Guard Corps; broad, sweeping economic sanctions prohibiting most trade with Iran; suspected industrial sabotage by U.S. government organizations. Clearly my counterpart realizes war with Iran is unfeasible and/or unreasonable, or he would have spelled it out more clearly. So I’ll just ask him: What the hell more do you want?

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