Obama’s Appeasement Video To Iran Didn’t Do Squat

Is anyone surprised at the response from Iran on Obama’s video to the Iranian people? 

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissed overtures from President Barack Obama on Saturday, saying Tehran does not see any change in U.S. policy under its new administration…

”They chant the slogan of change but no change is seen in practice. We haven’t seen any change,” Khamenei said in a speech before a crowd of tens of thousands in the northeastern holy city of Mashhad…

Khamenei asked how Obama could congratulate Iranians on the new year and accuse the country of supporting terrorism and seeking nuclear weapons in the same message.

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Khamenei said there has been no change even in Obama’s language compared to that of his predecessor.

Which is actually completely untrue. Obama went and kissed the Iranian governments ass in that video and basically told them the policy of regime change is kaput. But the Iranian government understands they cannot, nor will they ever, agree to some kind of reconcilation because the US is the great satan. That is what their whole regime is based on. The evil of the west and of Democracy.

I mean come on, over the last twenty years the Iranians have said “hey, just do this and we will sit down with you,” and once we did what they required they gave us the middle finger. Kenneth Pollack’s book, The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America, describes some of this during the Clinton administration: (h/t Tigerhawk)

In truth, many American officials, myself among them, were beginning to get frustrated with Tehran: the United States had now made nine gestures (liberalizing visas, sending the wrestlers and other cultural exchanges, putting the MEK on the terrorism list, taking Iran off the counternarcotics list, allowing the sale of food and medicine, agreeing to the ILSA waivers, sending Albright to the “six-plus-two” talks on Afghanistan in hope of meeting Kharrasi, [President Clinton’s] Millennium Evening dinner near apology, and the spare parts for the Boeing aircraft). In return, the United States had not gotten very much, especially since the smuggling of Iraqi oil through Iranian waters had resumed in 1999. Nevertheless, we thought it worth making one last grand gesture….

So, on March 17 [2000], Albright gave the famous speech. She issued the apology quoted in the introduction to this book. She announced the lifting of the import ban on Iranian foodstuffs and carpets. She said any number of other warm, welcoming things about Iran. And she again called on the Iranian government to begin an official dialogue with the United States, with no preconditions and no demands for a rapid solution to what we acknowledged were extremely complicated problems. The Europeans were ecstatic. Our Iranian interloculators were impressed and hopeful that it would have a positive impact in Tehran. A number of groups inside Tehran hailed the speech and the partial lifting of the sanctions as a remarkable gesture on the part of the United States, to which Iran should respond positively. Then, ten days later, [Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah] Khamene’i gave his thoroughly negative response… (337-339)

Just a few days ago an American minister delivered a speech. After half a century, or over 40 years, the Americans have now confessed that they staged the 28th Mordad [August 19, 1953] coup. They confessed that they supported the suppressive, dictatorial, and corrupt Pahlavi shah for twenty-five years. Please pay attention. We are in the year 1379 [by the Islamic calendar], more than forty years have elapsed since 1332 and the coup d’etat of the 28th Mordad. It is only now that they are admitting that they were behind the coup d’etat. They admit that they supported and backed the dictatorial, oppressive, corrupt and subservient regime of the shah for twenty-five years. And they are now saying that they supported Saddam Husayn in his war against Iran. What do you think the Iranian nation, faced with this situation and these admissions, feels? … In the course of those days, during the war, we repeatedly said in our speeches that the Americans are helping Sadam Husayn. They denied this and claimed they remained impartial. Now that 12 years have elapsed after the end of the war, in a center [the American-Iranian Council] this American Secretary of State is official admitting that they helped Saddam Husayn. The question is, what good will this admission do us? … What goes does this admission — that you acted in that way then — do us now? … An admission years after the crime was committed, while they might be committing similar crimes now, will not do the Iranian nation any good. (xxv)

And now Iran says you want better relations Obama? Stop fighting us about a nuke and give up Israel and THEN we will sit down with you.

Tigerhawk puts it well:

Americans, in the end, should understand this and be realistic about it. We have, with fits and starts, been exporting our own revolution — founded on individual liberty and popular sovereignty — for more than two centuries. The Islamic Republic understands this, and is going to do everything possible to keep us from winning. As long as the Islamic Republic rules Iran, our only policy is sustained and coercive containment and, if necessary, interdiction. Appeasement will do nothing but make us look helpless, which will erode, rather than enhance, American power.

Sometimes “soft power” is not power at all. It is just softness.

Sometimes? Soft power never works. Appeasement never works. As Tigerhawk said, it just makes us look weak…..and with Obama as President who can blame them for thinking we are once again the paper tiger.

Curt

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