As I wrote yesterday, a lot was hanging on whether United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon would decide to ignore the urging of President Obama and go to Iran for the meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement. Doing so would make a mockery of the administration’s claim that they had successfully isolated the Islamist regime as part of a campaign to force it to give up its quest for nuclear weapons. But when faced with a choice of offending the Non-Aligned Movement and its Iranian host or President Obama and Israel, Secretary General Ban picked the lesser of two evils from his point of view and affirmed today that he was heading to Tehran.
There are those who will say with justice that nobody has cared about the Non-Aligned Movement since the fall of the Berlin Wall rendered this Third World strategy of playing the West against the former Soviet Union moot. However, Ban’s visit puts the icing on the cake for the ayatollah’s effort to show how the world is refusing to shun them the way other rogue regimes have been treated. That Ban would decide to go to Iran only a week after its leaders issued a new round of statements calling for the elimination of fellow UN member Israel is an outrage in itself. But by hosting the representatives of 120 countries with the head of the world body along with them, the Iranians have good reason to argue that this demonstrates that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s claim that she has successfully isolated Iran is a joke.
With the sanctions that the administration belatedly imposed on Iran not being strictly enforced and the P5+1 diplomatic process having completely collapsed, the president’s strategy for dealing with the Iranian threat is a shambles.
Ban’s visit merely illustrates what the Israeli government has been pointing out in recent weeks as it stepped up a campaign to get Washington to declare whether it would make good on President Obama’s pledge to stop the Iranian threat. Iran isn’t isolated. Nor has it been brought to its knees by sanctions. In fact, there is no prospect of either U.S. goal being reached in the foreseeable future.
As much as Israel’s critics may deplore what they see as unwarranted pressure on the president to declare his intentions during his re-election campaign, his strategy has failed. With time running out before Iran’s nuclear progress renders a strike impossible, the president must state his intention to act or admit that he has no intention of doing so even after November.
Obama was never serious about Iran and he clearly let Iran know that years ago. The first Iranian nuclear test will be as soon after an Obama inauguration as possible. And if Obama does not win, Iran will have a nuclear test ASAP anyway because that's how they think.
This idea of isolating Iran has been a failure but it was a success in one sense. It has restrained Israel and it has allowed Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton to look busy. One might actually conclude that the whole point to this idea was never to stop Iran; rather it was to stop Israel. n nWhat a mixed up world and political process this is.
Ban not go to the meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement?? What was anyone thinking? n nThat would be like the Prom Queen not going to the Prom! n nForget what one might think or at least hope the UN stands for. In reality this is it. n nAs for the Obama strategy: Yes, what there was of it has collapsed. The real question should be: Does he care? The problem is that everything Obama has said and done about this or indeed anything in the Middle East in general indicates that he does not care, I mean not really care. I am wondering if he will care when Neville Chamberlain's bust is taken off the shelf and replaced by Obama’s as the most disastrous international democratic statesman of all time. The disgrace may be of such a magnitude that the tarnished Nobel Peace Prize may need to be shelved as well.
I do not think Iran is going to get to the point of developing a nuclear weapon. Either they will stand down and deal with turning over their highly enriched uranium and dismantling the weapons program for good, with transparent inspections forever, or they are going to feel the heat, and soon.
We are in Syria, right now. Our mission is to secure the chemical and biological weapons…plus. We will have help from Brit and France.
I believe there is a good chance Hezbollah will react then, anything can happen. I would expect a rather “articulate” reply from Israel.
We have been preparing for this for like 40 years, so excuses not and no errors in judgement I beg of you.
I do not think Iran is going to get to the point of developing a nuclear weapon. Either they will stand down and deal with turning over their highly enriched uranium and dismantling the weapons program for good, with transparent inspections forever, or they are going to feel the heat, and soon. r n We are in Syria, right now. Our mission is to secure the chemical and biological weapons…plus. We will have help from Brit and France. r n I believe there is a good chance Hezbollah will react then, anything can happen. I would expect a rather “articulate” reply from Israel.r n We have been preparing for this for like 40 years, so excuses not and no errors in judgement I beg of you.
Iran is forsaking nukes.