The Obama administration may now have among its members a secretary of defense who can’t get its position on containment of a nuclear Iran straight. But the administration continues to lay down markers on its commitment to stopping Tehran’s nuclear ambitions as if Chuck Hagel’s nomination was an aberration, rather than a signal that is being interpreted in Iran to mean that it need not worry about President Obama’s threats. Vice President Biden’s speech at the annual AIPAC conference today in Washington contained more pledges that the president wasn’t bluffing on Iran. While nothing Biden said, let alone the utterances of the president on this subject, guarantees that the U.S. will ever act to stop Iran, the accumulation of their rhetoric is going to make it even harder for them to back away from their promises.
The vice president arguably went even further than the statement President Obama made at last year’s AIPAC conference when he specifically disavowed containment as an option. While Biden’s typically long-winded and meandering speech contained some highly questionable statements, such as his defense of engagement with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood government, his remarks also took the administration another step down the road to confrontation with Iran. Instead of merely alluding to the use of force by saying that all options were on the table, he made the case that the current futile diplomatic process with Tehran was defensible because it gave the administration the ability to tell the world that it had done everything possible to avoid conflict before resorting to force.
The “if we will be forced to use force” phrasing can, of course, be represented as an empty promise or just a cheap political point being made on the eve of the president’s trip to Israel. The U.S. decision to go along with the West’s decision to make concessions to Iran at the most recent P5+1 talks last week is hardly indicative of strength or resolve. Yet by spelling out a scenario in which, as the vice president said, “God forbid” the Iranians don’t give in on their nuclear ambition, the administration has raised the possibility of using force against Iran from the purely speculative to a rational scenario.
Hagel’s confirmation places a man who was an opponent of sanctions–let alone the use of force–against Iran in a position as a senior advisor to the president. That may have encouraged the Iranians to think that Obama doesn’t mean what he says about never allowing them to gain nuclear capability. But by sketching out a scenario in which four years of feckless engagement and a reliance on failed diplomacy and often unenforced sanctions was justified as a necessary preliminary to a last resort attack on Iran, Biden has turned up the heat on the Iranians and laid the foundation for public support for another Middle East conflict. If, as the New York Times reports today, Biden is going to play an outsized role in foreign policy during the president’s second term, his AIPAC speech may be looked back on as a moment when that claim was validated.
It is certainly possible to doubt Obama’s word–or Biden’s–on this subject. The Iranians may wise up and accept a weak offer from the P5+1 group that will defuse the crisis and allow them to eventually go nuclear anyway in the same manner that their North Korean allies did after signing nuclear agreements with the West. But if they continue, as they have for the last decade, counting on their ability to run out the clock with the U.S. via diplomatic delays and deceptions, Biden offered some hope that this administration might actually be considering taking action to end this farce before an inevitable announcement of an Iranian bomb. It must be hoped that Tehran was listening and drawing the appropriate conclusions about the need to abandon their nuclear gambit before American threats become reality.
So he went in front of AIPAC and exclaimed that Obama's policy is one of plausible deniability. Wow.
Sure sure. Joe "Shotgun" Biden will personally unload two barrels against those pesky Mullahs. n nBut let's backtrack and get this straight. n na) Iran really really tests President Obama and fightin' Joe's patience by attempting to run out the clock–oh no, thar's trouble a brewin!!!!! n nor else!…. n nb) Iran "wises up" and chooses option B and signs an unenforceable and unenforced agreement and, like North Korea, drives its nukes through its loopholes and weaponizes anyways. n nWe already feel reassured! n n
'Joe "Shotgun" Biden will personally unload two barrels against those pesky Mullahs. ' n nOr whoever else happens to be at the door. nOf course, this means destroying the last line of defense between himself and whoever is outside, and then facing them with what they know is an unloaded weapon. n n
A more accurate question: n n"Is Obama Listening to Biden’s Threat"?
Obama Biden and the whole administration is nothing but blowhards who couldn't scare our enemies but could scare our friends who thought they could depend on this government for nlasting friendship. They now know what kind of friend we are. They should not put their trust in America as long as the Obama administration is in power, I have lost trust in them myself !! nSo be it !!!
"…the accumulation of their rhetoric is going to make it even harder for them to back away from their promises." n nGet ready to eat your hat, Tobin. I thought Bibi had passed the verbal point of no return last year and I was proven dead wrong. Now if the guy living with Iran's nuclear gun aimed at his head can talk big and do nothing, what makes you believe that Obama will not?
Still, Jonathan Tobin fails to comprehend that Obama will blame Israel for Iran's "bomb." It is as though Tobin fails to connect the dots, between what Obama is doing re: domestic politics, and what he is doing with US foreign policy. n nOne more try: Nothing Obama says is the truth. Everything he does is within the context of "not letting a crisis go to waste." His only aim is to collapse the United States, so he can "transform" what remains into the kind of nation that suits him—for the benefit of those he calls "his people." As for Israel, Obama and "his people" do not like the Jewish state. And so they mean to do it great harm. But not in obvious ways, i.e., not by openly acting in Israel's "worst interests." Rather Obama is carefully laying the same traps for Israel that he continually lays for his opponents in Congress. n nAt a point soon, an announcement will be made, that a "nuclear deal" has been reached with Iran. We are already getting that from the latest "offers" made by the international community, which has just backtracked from complete cessation of uranium enrichment to something more "acceptable" to the Iranians. The deal will require Israel to dismantle its nuclear arsenal and, presumably, its own enrichment facilities and permit the same kinds of "intrusive inspections" Iran will be subjected to by the IAEA. Of course this "deal" will not be acceptable to Israel. And that is the "trap" Obama is laying for Israel, one the Jewish state cannot avoid. n nBut this was already pre-negotiated. The only folks surprised by this "deal" will be folks like Jonathan Tobin, who reminds us of those Jews who, during the 1930s and 1940s, couldn't bring themselves to believe that Hitler would do what he had repeatedly promised to do! No, they said then, "he doesn't really mean it." n nWell, Hitler "meant it," and so does Obama! He "means" to honor the "promises" made to his late father, re: exacting revenge for both colonialism and slavery. And, just as with Hitler, Obama's ideas are twisted and weird, and scary. But whoever said this president is in his right mind? Do his actions and words suggest he is? Since they don't, and since it's becoming increasingly obvious that there is something seriously wrong with our president, then why do writers like Jonathan Tobin keep writing as if we were dealing with someone whom we "disagreed" with? n nWas the issue with Hitler, for instance, that we "disagreed" with him? n nObama means to checkmate Israel just as he he means to checkmate the GOP. The game he plays is meant to destroy, not compromise with, his opponents. And Israel—not just Netanyahu—is an enemy to Obama. Why? Because Obama is loyal to Islam. How does one know this? Because, "one" is not blind—there is Obama's book Dreams from my Father, and there is Frank Marshall Davis, and there is Jeremiah Wright, and there is the photo showing Obama bowing low before Saudi King Abdullah, the "keeper of the holy places of Islam." And there has been a bizarre, Orwellian program to pretend we are not engaged in a fight with radical Islam, but with abstract "disturbances abroad." Add these things together, along with a hundred other actions and persons and writings, and the picture that emerges is NOT what Jonathan Tobin writes! n nOur question must be—why Jonathan Tobin continues to write the way he does, as if he were swimming in a tranquil, distant sea of his own imagining?
Israel will dump its entire nuclear arsenal on Iran before it unilaterally disarms. n n
Excellent post. n nAs to why Jon Tobin writes what he does? n nBecause there is a line establishment pundits can't as yet cross, and Tobin does not want to cross that line. n nHe comes as close to the line as he can. It is a conscious decision, I think. n n n
Methinks Hagel is a minor wind in this. If anyone thinks Obama will do anything militarily to stop Iran, Iet me know. I have a few bridges for sale. Hagel matters not. It's all with what Obama wants to decide, and there's little doubt as to what that will be if push comes to shove.
Hagel matters inasmuch as he is a signal to all that Obama has selected the most anti-Semitic persons he can find to work for him. There can be no doubt among the mullahs that they have an ally in the White House.
AIPAC did not budge for Hagel. O & B believe that they can impress IL with what appear to be empty promises. nI still wonder what did Hagel tell Schummer? He may have dropped the ball big time. nIL is in position of force in the ME and should not allow to be set-up by the US!