John Bolton, writing in yesterday's WSJ, believes there has been a "substantive collapse of U.S. policy and resolve in the teeth of Iran's progress in its nuclear program." Obama's move toward direct negotiations with Iran, in Bolton's view, only allows Iran to buy more time "to marry its impending nuclear weapons with its satellite-launching ballistic missile capability."
Ambassador Bolton points out that we deferred to Europe to use its diplomacy to try to convince the mullahs to reduce Iran's nuclear program and Europe has failed. So, what is Obama doing? He is repeating the same approach as Europe, but this time it will be the U.S. who is offering the carrots and sticks.
Bolton is also critical of our policy of dealing with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Syria in an attempt to end the Arab-Israeli conflict in Gaza. By doing so we only enhance the bargaining power of those terrorists. Instead, Bolton recommends we focus on changing the Tehran regime, since it is the "disease, the central threat to the region."
A third mistake we are making, according to Bolton, is to legitimize Iran as a factor in Iraqi affairs. Bolton has no trust whatsoever in the mullahs, and neither should we. He believes Iran's mullahs have demonstrated that they want unstable neighbors in Iraq and Afghanistan, so that they can undermine U.S. interests at every turn.
Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says Iran has now amassed enough fissile material to produce at least one nuclear weapon.
1 comment:
I personally liked Tom Clancy's approach in one of the Jack Ryan plots. We found the mullah, called the press, and hit the guy and the building with one precise missle and told the world we could do it. Wow. Would that make for impressive foreign policy?
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