American Spectator calls Obama's Iran Blunder(s)

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Obama's Iran Blunder By Peter Ferrara
...the Middle East is headed for nuclear war.***Obama is not a one to stop this.***...the theocrats who run Iran have told us exactly what they plan to do....build nuclear weapons, and..."wipe Israel off the map." They have said this plan is rooted in their fundamental religious beliefs and doctrines regarding the return of their God to Earth. They have said they will not abandon this plan for anything, not trade concessions, financial aid from the West, or security guarantees. Their conduct is consistent with carrying out this plan... laugh off this threat as mere talk? ...Of course not. But so what? That is the policy of our own intellectual elite, the...national media, and...of our President as well. Last weekend's election fiasco in Iran revealed how weak the mullah fascist dictatorship really is....The Iranian people rallied to him (Mousavi) only because he was the only game in town. The motivating factor at work is really disgust with Ahmadinejad...But the mullahs stand with him because he truly represents their philosophy, policies, and religious doctrines....if America were still a serious country our policy toward Iran would be regime change,...begin at a minimum...with American arms for the Iranian opposition. ...trade embargoes adopted in particular by suppliers of refined gas would further weaken the regime...No American invasion would be necessary, just as it was not necessary to bring down the Soviet bloc....Obama is not considering any of this. He remains committed to the self-loving, delusional, Narcissism Doctrine he campaigned on...still planning to sit down with Ahmadinejad and the other mullah tyrants and sweet talk them into giving up their nuclear program and their aggression against Israel.
...every President all the way back to Jimmy Carter conducted talks with Iran, begging it to end hostilities. But we never got anything out of it. Carter begged for release of the American hostages, but the Iranians held them until the very moment Reagan was sworn in. ...during his administration Carter the fool publicly pressured the Shah of Iran endlessly over human rights, until the Shah fell to the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Islamic revolution. But now we hear not a word from Carter about human rights under the far more repressive Islamic theocracy, though Carter is still running his damn fool mouth, even recently approving of Ahmadinejad's "reelection." This is explained by Carter's anti-Americanism, as the Shah was a loyal ally of America, while Iran's Islamic tyrants today are bitterly anti-American.

For Obama, ...he plans to cut a deal...Any such grand deal would sell out the Iranian people, and the Israeli people as well,...Given his Muslim sympathies, Obama does not seem to be concerned about that....During the campaign, he even touted Roosevelt's negotiations with Japan before World War II as a model. Those negotiators were still in Washington on the morning of Pearl Harbor. during the campaign...he proclaimed that allowing Iran to develop nuclear weapons would be unacceptable. Now...he is safely elected,...Administration…seems to be backing away from Obama's campaign promise that Iran won't go nuclear on its watch: Vice President Joe Biden said yesterday on "Meet the Press" that "we are not going to allow Iran to go nuclear any more than the rest of the world is going to allow [emphasis added] it."Indeed, in his wildly overhyped June 4 speech in Cairo, Obama suggested that American nuclear weapons are no more acceptable than Iranian nukes, revealing his inner flower child...This anti-American sentiment is common among the Left in America and elsewhere. It is unfair for America to have nuclear weapons, but then to insist that other nations cannot, to the point of threatening war to stop them. This opinion comes from viewing the issue as a citizen of the world, rather than as an American. From an American perspective, I am not interested in being fair to terrorist-sponsoring dictatorships like Iran or North Korea or Syria or anyone else who threatens America with nukes. I am interested in the national defense of America and its people....To have a President of the United States who does not understand this is a developing tragedy for the American people, not to mention Israel, whose own nukes Obama has already suggested are no more legitimate than Iranian nukes. ...Joe Lieberman has been trying to explain that Bush's doctrine of spreading democracy and human rights around the world was originally the liberal Democrat position. But Obama embraces instead the old Nixon doctrine of Realpolitik, seeking to cut deals with the established dictators from Iran to North Korea to Russia and across the globe.

Obama and his Administration revealed their hopeless naïveté, and again narcissism, in foreign policy by sensing last week a developing Mousavi victory, and seeking to take credit for it as a result already of Obama's knock 'em dead, June 4 Cairo speech. The Democrat party–controlled national media dutifully played this Democrat party line, raising the possibility that the Cairo speech would already show powerful impact in the electoral downfall of Ahmadinejad. But in so brazenly stealing the election, the mullahs have shown how childish Obama and his people were to have believed in the integrity of the Iranian political process. This foolish naïveté comes from the same people who do not even allow free elections in their hometown of Chicago.

Indeed, as Ralph Peters wrote in Tuesday's New York Post,

The ruling mullahs' contemptuous handling of Iran's presidential election was their response to "the Cairo effect" announced a tad prematurely by the White House. Our president's public flagellation of America only emboldened the junta in Tehran -- leaving Iran's power brokers more defiant, determined and dismissive than they've been in years. And the strongest response Obama can muster to the blood in Tehran's streets is: "I am deeply troubled by the violence that I've been seeing on television." How bold, how manly, how inspiring….

As Peters concludes:

But the point really isn't whom the voters chose. It's that Iran's entrenched interests read Obama's meant-to-be-conciliatory remarks as a confession of weakness, a signal that the United States is at the end of its strategic rope. The result was that the mullahs and state corporatists no longer saw a need to play pretend. Bush worried them, Obama doesn't. They judged correctly that Washington wouldn't so much as issue a tough minded statement in response to this mockery of an election. And they were right.

The Netanyahu Doctrine

Instead of pressuring Iran to give up its nuclear threat, Obama instead browbeats Israel for the continuing conflict with the Palestinians. He stated in his Cairo speech,

[I]t is also undeniable that the Palestinian people…have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than 60 years they've endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations -- large and small -- that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. And America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.

But this situation for the Palestinian people is not caused by Israel, which did not drive them out of Israel in the first place, and which has long agreed to a Palestinian state. It is caused by the Palestinians themselves, who have always insisted that they will not live with Israel in peace. Their founding organizational documents, their public statements, their public education, their TV and radio broadcasts, their rejection of more than reasonable Israeli peace proposals all insist that their goal is the destruction of Israel.

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last Sunday:

[T]he simple truth is that the root of the conflict was, and remains, the refusal to recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own, in their historic homeland. In 1947, when the United Nations proposed the partition plan of a Jewish state and an Arab state, the entire Arab world rejected the resolution. The Jewish community, by contrast, welcomed it….

The Arabs rejected any Jewish state, in any borders. Those who think that the continued enmity toward Israel is a product of our presence in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, are confusing cause and consequence. The attacks against us began in the 1920s, escalated into a comprehensive attack in 1948 with the declaration of Israel's independence, continued with the fedayeen attacks in the 1950s, and climaxed in 1967, on the eve of the Six Day War….All this occurred during the 50 years before a single Israeli soldier set foot in Judea and Samaria."

Netanyahu added:

Many good people have told us that withdrawal from territories is the key to peace… Well, we withdrew. But…every withdrawal was met with massive waves of terror, by suicide bombers, and thousands of missiles….In 2000 and again last year, Israel proposed an almost total withdrawal in exchange for an end to the conflict, and twice our offers were rejected. We evacuated every last inch of the Gaza strip, we uprooted dozens of settlements and evicted thousands of Israelis from their homes, and in response we received a hail of missiles on our cities, towns and children. The claim that territorial withdrawals will bring peace…has up till now not stood the test of reality."

Netanyahu noted that Israel is rooted deep in the history recounted by the Bible, which the Palestinians have also rejected:

The connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel has lasted for more than 3,500 years. Judea and Samaria, where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, David and Solomon, and Isaiah and Jeremiah lived, are not alien to us. This is the land of our forefathers. The right of the Jewish people to a state in the Land of Israel does not derive from the catastrophes that have plagued our people. True, for 2,00 years, the Jewish people have suffered expulsions, pogroms, blood libels, and massacres which culminated in the Holocaust….There are those who say that if the Holocaust had not occurred, the state of Israel would not never have been established. But I say that if the state of Israel had been established earlier, the Holocaust would not have occurred.

The Obama Administration fundamentally misconceives the problem of Iran and Islamic terrorism. It is not due to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It is the same problem that the Communists and the Fascists had with us. Just as it was with them, the Islamists' ultimate goal is world conquest and domination. And just as did they, the Islamists recognize that America stands in the way of that goal.