Iran: Squandered opportunity?
From the Chicago Tribune:
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On Tuesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not just reject President Barack Obama’s latest feckless floating nuclear We lost a year. But it was not just any year. It was a year of spectacularly squandered opportunity. In Iran, it was a year of revolution, beginning with a contested election . . . Obama responded. . . With offer after offer, gesture after gesture — to not Iran, but the “Islamic Republic of Iran,” as Obama ever so respectfully called these clerical fascists — the U.S. conferred legitimacy on a regime desperate to regain it. Why is this so important? Because revolutions succeed at that singular moment, that imperceptible historical inflection, when the people, and particularly those in power, realize that the regime has lost the mandate of heaven. With this weakening dictatorship desperate for affirmation, why is the U.S. repeatedly offering just such affirmation? [AO: The writer, Charles Krauthammer, makes a seemingly strong argument. While the Iranian people protested against their rulers, America made multiple attempts to engage the Iranian regime in nuclear talks. According to Krauthammer these offers for talks give the Iranian regime an air of legitimacy it desperately needed. But there is more to the Iranian situation. Specifically, the protests against the Iranian regime was preceded by condemnation by the opposition of any nuclear concessions to the United States. That is, the opposition demanded that the regime not give up on the country’s nuclear ambition. Those demands, which brought together the several oppotion leaders and the speaker of the Iranian Parliament, forced the Iranian regime into the position it is now in: rejecting all offers by President Obama for nuclear discussions. So in a way, the Obama administration’s repeated offers for negations initially created the “opportunity” and maintains it, though other events such as the elections and the death of the dissident Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri are playing important roles in the ongoing “opportunity.” This, more complete understanding of the situation in Iran makes clear that Krauthammer characterization of the situation there as a “squandered opportunity” is, shall we say, inaccurate and incomplete. ] |
Read the full opinion HERE.
