Obama’s open door policy to Iranian negotiations a “bomb”

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Well that didn’t take long to “wait” in order to “see”…. Iranian leadership, stolen elections and brutal Tiananman Sq tactics on dissent be damned, the big Zero – aka Eunuch in Chief – has decided to leave open the door with Iran over it’s nuke program. From the WaPo article:

The Obama administration will leave open the door for discussions with Iran over its nuclear ambitions even as demonstrators question the legitimacy of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election, administration officials said Sunday.

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The legitimacy of the government, while questioned by the people of Iran, is not the critical issue for the U.S. goal of preventing Iran from developing a nuclear capability, Rice said.

“It’s in the United States’ national interest to make sure that we have employed all elements at our disposal, including diplomacy, to prevent Iran from achieving that nuclear capacity,” she said.

Both Rice and David Axelrod, Obama’s top adviser, said Ahmadinejad doesn’t appear to have the final say over Iran’s foreign policy. Axelrod, dismissing Ahmadinejad’s harsh language against the U.S. and Obama as “bloviations,” said being open to talks with Iran is not an effort to reward the country.

“We are looking to … sit down and talk to the Iranians and offer them two paths. And one brings them back into the community of nations, and the other has some very stark consequences,” Axelrod said.


White House officials pointed to Obama’s remarks last week, urging engagement. “My expectation would be … that you’re going to continue to see some multilateral discussions with Iran,” Obama said Friday.

This, of course, means the big Zero has thoroughly embarrassed his staunch supporters who post here on FA, parsing words and claiming Obama hadn’t decided yet to deal with a regime who was not only illegitimate, but has demonstrated some of the most oppressive tactics we’ve seen in recent times on their young citizens. What was obvious to those of us not injecting the O’prozac was that he intended all along to deal with Ahmadinejad and Khamenei… regardless of the brutal treatment of the protesters and the Ayatollah’s certification of a bogus election.

Axelrod, just today in a morning interview on “This Week” in Washington, reveals the WH’s plan to parse words… er, Iranian leaders… by stressing Ahmadinejad isn’t in charge of Iran’s foreign policy, so they really aren’t negotiating with anyone the world may consider in office illegitimately

Huh?

Is this some sort of a bizarre pass to the Ayatollah’s culpability in all this? Afterall, this is the guy who hand picks acceptable Presidential candidates and abets the stolen election with his certification. And it was that same Ayatollah who is “in charge of foreign policy” that gave the orders to come down hard on the protesters. Needless to say, Axelrod and Obama’s sleight of hand to transfer emphasis to the Ayatollah and away from Ahmadinejad doesn’t mean bumpkis in reality. An oppressive despot is an oppressive despot. Not to mention, we’d be the world’s biggest fools to believe any agreement they make.

Instead, Axelrod lays on the BS, saying that the US intent to talk to Iran shouldn’t be considered a reward.

Axelrod stressed that the Obama administration’s willingness to hold diplomatic talks with the Iranian leadership was not to be regarded as a reward.

“We are not looking to reward Iran. We are looking to … sit down and talk to the Iranians and offer them two paths. And one brings them back into the community of nations, and the other has some very stark consequences,” Axelrod said.

But he was careful to signal that the White House doesn’t think Ahmadinejad has the final say over Iran’s interaction with the West.

“We are also mindful of the fact that the nuclear weapons in Iran and the nuclearization of that whole region is a threat to that country, all countries in the region, and the world. And we have to address that. We can’t let that lie,” Axelrod said.

Of course the irony is that whether or not the clueless in the Oval Office gang believe Ahmadinejad does not decide foreign policy, the Presidency most certainly is the power that oversees their nuclear production. Which of course brings up the additional quandary that his rival, Mousavi, was the guy who launched Iran’s nuclear program to begin with. Boy, can that Ayatollah pick ’em, or what? And I thought we had lousy choices for POTUS here in the states…

Needless to say, Ahmadinejad’s electoral loss would have at least made a definitive statement of dissatisfaction by the Iranian population, even tho it would not have necessarily instantly catapulted the nation into a status more receptive to pro-western idealogy. But it was a start towards “change” that has been quelled by the very entity that Obama and Axelrod now tout as being the “go to guy” for foreign policy.

Wow… I’m so relieved.

But, as Jonah Goldberg pointed out just a few days ago, Obama’s Iranian policy is a bomb. His grand vision of taming the untamable in Iran would disappear if the regime fell because of the protests. And if the revolt was unsuccessful, anyone cutting deals with them after the world watched the oppressive and bloody tactics “…will have a hard time washing the blood off his own hands.

Here is the one immutable fact of Barack Obama’s foreign policy agenda as it relates to Iran: It’s over. The rule book he came in with is as irrelevant as a tourist guide to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

If the forces of reform and democracy win, Obama’s plan to negotiate with the regime is moot, for the regime will be gone. And if the forces of reform are crushed into submission by the regime, Obama’s plan is moot, because the regime will still be there.

Politics and decency will simply demand that the world condemn or shun the regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei if they come out on top. Even the most soulless realists will be repulsed by the blood on the regime’s collective hands.

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According to many analysts. Obama’s still clinging to his hope of talking Iran out of its nuclear program. That’s why he initially said there was little difference between Mir Hossein Mousavi and Ahmadinejad, and why his recent denunciations only followed similar rhetoric from the Europeans and our own Congress. He just doesn’t want to let go of the diplomacy option.

No doubt this is part of his rationale. But Obama has also made it clear that he sees the elimination of Iran’s nuclear problem not as a stand-alone priority but as one part of his Middle East two-step. His inseparable goal is to also push Israel into a peace settlement with the Palestinians. As an unnamed Iran expert in contact with White House officials told Foreign Policy’s Laura Rozen, “Obama is dedicated to diplomacy in a manner that is almost ideological. … He wants to do some stuff in the Middle East over the next eight years. He may not be able to achieve half of them unless he gets this huge piece of the puzzle (Iran) right.”

That “stuff” seems to be some grand Middle East transformation, whereby Obama promises to negotiate away Iran’s nuclear program in return for Israeli movement on an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. In effect, Obama would be using the threat of a nuclear-armed Ahmadinejad as a Medusa’s head to petrify Israelis into concessions.

Whether such a strategy would have worked is open to huge quantities of skepticism. Now, after what’s happened in Iran in recent days, such a plan is simply impossible.

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Well, Bush is gone. Obama has extended his hand. And the regime is supplying fresh evidence of the absurdity of his approach. All that’s left for Obama now is to abandon his own ideological rigidity and start over.

Checkmate for Obama… now it’s to see when he figures out his pieces of the chessboard have been wiped out while he was still trying to carve out his legacy.

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I got a surprise chuckle this weekend when I took my son to see “Transformers”. They actually take a shot at obama in the film as wanting to negotiate his way out of the bad guy Decepticon attack and has his lackey tell the US military strike force and Autobots to stand down. The film even intimated that the “President” would give up the Shia LeBeouf character; since the Decepticons wanted him. (Sorry, if I spoiled this for anyone).

That line was missing from the one I saw. I was looking for it too.
Good movie. I liked it.