McCain on Iran: Obama still doesn’t know the history
posted at 9:30 am on June 2, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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John McCain will address AIPAC’s Policy Conference today, speaking on the subjects of Israel, Iran, and Iraq, and laying out his views on the most critical foreign-policy issues facing the next administration. His speech will reassure the pro-Israeli lobby that he sees the ties between the US and Israel as “the most natural” of alliances, based on mutual respect for freedom and democracy, and acknowledge the singular nature of both in the Middle East. In doing so, he will reflect back on his first introduction to Israel, courtesy of a Democrat who would find it difficult to fit into today’s party:
The cause of Israel, and of our common security, has always depended on men and women of courage, and I’ve been lucky enough to know quite a few of them. I think often of one in particular, the late Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson. I got to know Senator Jackson when I was the Navy liaison to the Senate. In 1979, I traveled with him to Israel, where I knew he was considered a hero. But I had no idea just how admired he was until we landed in Tel Aviv, to find a crowd of seven or eight hundred Israelis calling out his name, waving signs that read “God Bless you, Scoop” and “Senator Jackson, thank you.” Scoop Jackson had the special respect of the Jewish people, the kind of respect accorded to brave and faithful friends. He was and remains the model of what an American statesman should be.
In discussing Iran, McCain refers once again to Democrats, only in this case showing the vapidity of current posturing by Barack Obama. McCain doesn’t refer to Obama by name in this speech, but it’s clear to whom he refers in this passage that also notes that Obama suggests nothing new:
The Iranians have spent years working toward a nuclear program. And the idea that they now seek nuclear weapons because we refuse to engage in presidential-level talks is a serious misreading of history. In reality, a series of administrations have tried to talk to Iran, and none tried harder than the Clinton administration. In 1998, the secretary of state made a public overture to the Iranians, laid out a roadmap to normal relations, and for two years tried to engage. The Clinton administration even lifted some sanctions, and Secretary Albright apologized for American actions going back to the 1950s. But even under President Khatami – a man by all accounts less radical than the current president – Iran rejected these overtures.
Even so, we hear talk of a meeting with the Iranian leadership offered up as if it were some sudden inspiration, a bold new idea that somehow nobody has ever thought of before. Yet it’s hard to see what such a summit with President Ahmadinejad would actually gain, except an earful of anti-Semitic rants, and a worldwide audience for a man who denies one Holocaust and talks before frenzied crowds about starting another. Such a spectacle would harm Iranian moderates and dissidents, as the radicals and hardliners strengthen their position and suddenly acquire the appearance of respectability.
This is part of the history that Barack Obama ignores. Ten years ago, the Clinton administration took some political risk in making these overtures to a supposedly reformist Iranian president. It resulted in no progress whatsoever. Obama says now that he will meet with the Iranians only after some “preparation”. What preparations will he offer that goes beyond the Clinton administration’s efforts to open diplomatic relations?
Barack Obama probably knows little of these efforts. His shifting explanations on “without preconditions” but with “preparations” has revealed nothing about what he would do with direct presidential diplomacy that the efforts of the US and Europe has not accomplished. It reminds one of John Kerry’s “secret” plan on Iraq — a trial balloon with nothing but hot air to keep it aloft.
McCain will continue to exploit this opening all the way to the general election. Unless Obama can explain his own secret plan on Iran, he will continue to look naive and unprepared to conduct foreign policy for the United States.
