Posted by
Andrews on Friday, March 20, 2009 11:42:47 AM
I wrote earlier about Obama's mistake in trying to appease Iran. By offering to normalize relations in exchange for the meaningless token gesture of toning down their rhetoric, not only would he gain nothing, but he would effectively sell out Israel and Iraq, our two allies in the region, who rely on our support in defending themselves against Iran. Not only that, but he would rgant legitimacy and rpestige to Iran whicht hat nation could use to undermine the Saudi regime, gain leverage with Syria and otherwise strengthen their growing power in the region.
However, it gets worse.
Iran has pretty much refused to bite. And that bodes ill for all of us. Though it does say a lot about both Iran's situation and their assessment of Obama.
First, their thoughts on Obama. By telling him they are not interested it lets us know that Iran thinks Obama is so eager for a foreign policy success, so desparate to "rverse course" with Iran, that they can snub him and be confident he will come back again and again. In other words, they think they don't even need to make a token concession to get his friendship.
And why would that be?
Well, it could mean that they think Obama is a pushover, and that is quite likely, but even more likely, it means they are a lot closer to having some working bombs than we think. If Iran is that close, they likely think that they can snub Obam abecaus,e next time he makes an offer, ratehr than demanding a token concession from Iran, eh will be offering concessions to Iran.
What is really frightenening however, is, given Obama's track record, I don't think Iran is wrong in their assessment. If they had some sort of threat to hold over the region, I have no doubts Obama would be more than willing to sell out our interests to "keep the peace" or "maintain stability", allowing him to expend all his political capital in issues about which he cares (environmental reform, health care, and so on). Unlike Bush, who sacrificed his domestic agenda for security, I have a feeling Obama would let our security come second to his domestic agenda.
Which makes Iran's lack of response pretty savvy politics on their part.