Talking Tough to Iran
posted Wednesday July 9, 2008 under iran, shameless-self-promotion by andy_grottoThat’s the title of a short piece published today that the UK Guardian asked me to write on Obama’s proposed Iran policy, about which I have very nice things to say.
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If it were only this simple, Andy. All one has to do is talk the Iranians out of their decades long goal to obtain nuclear weapons and make peace with their declared enemies ‘Satan’ and the ‘Zionist Regime’.
You ignore the fact that Iran has declared the US its enemy, has committed multiple acts of war against the US for nearly 20 years and is supremely positioned to join the nuclear club within a year, along with an open threat to destroy its ME ally.
Could you tell us exactly what you or Obama would say to them to get them to change their minds?
If a school bully beat you up over a 20 year period, would you want to talk him out of doing it again?
— J House · Jul 9, 04:34 PM ·
Andy, the way you describe Obama’s plans makes them sound very much like… ahem, the current administration’s approach. I guess the importance would be in the details, and there no much room in them in an op-ed. But this is of course where the devil lies. So: what exactly could be in the Obama package offered to Iran, that would be so different from the current P5+1 package?
— kerbihan · Jul 10, 04:31 AM ·
Nice little “short Piece”. Maybe you could have more emphasized on Obama willing to talk withouth pre-condition to Iran. That is the bulk of the difference in approach between Bush (therefore Mccain) and Obama team. One major possible consequence of this is to be able to formaly find a security framework for the region (entente) instead of an informal, cold war like status-quo.
— ataune · Jul 10, 07:39 AM ·
Wow, that is a serious picture of you – quite a contrast to your ACW avatar!
Good article, btw.
— Andy · Jul 11, 01:05 PM ·
Nice straw man argument… the Bush Iran policy is to muake us appear tough? You and Obama have really outdone yourselves with that brilliance observation…
— chris · Jul 12, 03:16 AM ·
Mr House either doesn’t know about or chooses to ignore the case of the Mossadeq government. Of course the US is Iran’s enemy. What else could it be? Come on guys – The US and UK invaded Iraq to steal its oil and would like to do the same for Iran. There are other reasons too, of course. Defending Israel for religious reasons, denying influence to China and Russia and maintaining control of an area of strategic importance. As for Iran’s nuclear program, since both the IAEA and the National Intelligence Estimate both affirm that Iran has no nuclear weapons program, why shouldn’t it enrich uranium under the NPT? What’s the problem? Also what’s the problem with my other contributions? Jeffrey, you don’t really like debate on your site do you?
— Robbie · Jul 22, 08:28 PM ·