The Iranian Calamity And The President’s Obsession With A Little Street In Jerusalem

Marty Peretz
The New Republic
24 April '10

Frankly, I do not think that Barack Obama ever really believed that an accommodation with Iran over its nuclear designs was possible. What follows is that he prevaricated about this promising turn in diplomacy and that one, all the while knowing he was going straight down a dead-end street. And going down that street in a quite cavalier fashion so as to keep his critics at bay. Some Americans were even persuaded by the seemingly confident president that he must have something up his sleeve. After all, we’d like to have faith in his strategic savvy, especially when a Hitlerian maniac has appeared on the world scene and appeared, as it were, with nukes. Alas, that confidence was a bad attribution.

The fact is that Dr. A’jad was correct. He was tilting against no hard American strategy at all. This is confirmed by the January intelligence document by the secretary of defense, Robert Gates, which was leaked a week ago. It concluded that we had never had a systematic approach to the challenge from Tehran and, given the fact that whatever planning we did operate from had failed, we had even less to go on now. Yes, Obama compelled his defense chief to re-remember things. But what Gates then said said nothing.

There was, of course, the ongoing Edgar Bergen-Charlie McCarthy ventriloquism act about sanctions. First, they would be “ferocious.” All the way down to, well, “we have to get Russia and China on board” and, of course, that would make the sanctions much less than punitive or, as the secretary of state promised, “biting.” It’s too bad Mrs. Clinton doesn’t still have presidential aspirations. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be parroting Obama deceits on Iran. Or, at least, she wouldn’t be.

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