A ‘politically courageous’ Iranian policy

November 4, 2007

I’m a little surprised Barack Obama’s policy pronouncement on Iran the other day isn’t a bigger deal. Especially among the netroots, I’ve noticed there’s been some fully-justified complaints that Obama has been afraid of taking bold policy positions, and has struggled to articulate new ideas that are both progressive and a break with political orthodoxy.

Obama’s new approach to Iran seems to fit the bill perfectly. It’s possible the senator burnt some blog bridges during the McClurkin flap a couple of weeks ago, and made matters worse by picking up Social Security to create a policy distinction with Hillary Clinton, but Obama’s Iran policy really deserves more credit than it’s received.

In fact, I’d go so far as to argue that this is the policy a lot of Dems have been waiting for. It not only sets Obama apart on a key, pressing foreign policy challenge, but it represents an entirely new way to dealing with an important adversary. Reporting from Cairo, Time’s Scott MacLeod explained Obama’s approach turns Bush’s foreign policy on its ear.

If Obama is trying to distinguish himself from other American leaders on the Middle East, he’s doing a great job. His published views [Friday] on Iran are smart, measured and statesmanlike, in contrast, for example, to Bush’s speech on terrorism last night, in which the president once again raised the specter of Muslim hoards crashing across our borders to destroy the American way of life. […]

Take notice: on Iran, at least, Obama is speaking a new kind of language for mainstream American politics. For nearly 30 years since the Iranian revolution kicked out a shah who had been installed by the CIA, American leaders have been too timid to engage in a constructive dialogue with Iran. That includes Hillary’s husband, whose curiosity was aroused by the moderate Khatami but failed to rise to the challenge of how to achieve a diplomatic opening for the good of both countries. Now Obama says he’s willing to go to Iran to talk without preconditions, reward Iran with positive changes in behavior and demonstrate that the U.S. is not hellbent on regime change. Contrast that with the Bush administration’s approach, which, by the way, is getting a loud echo in the campaign of Republican frontrunner Rudy Giuliani. […]

From Cairo, of course, I have scant insight as to whether Obama’s frank, realistic — and I would even say politically courageous — step toward Iran is in step with the mood of the American people. But certainly Americans now are getting a starker choice in the ways to approach the Middle East.

It’s the kind of bold, break-with-the-past thinking Obama probably should have embraced a lot sooner.

For what it’s worth, the frontrunners in both parties aren’t impressed.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, asked about her Senate colleague’s Iran policy, said that while she would encourage “vigorous diplomacy,” she does not think the president should play as direct a role as Obama is advocating.

“I do not believe the president should initially be engaged in personal diplomacy; I don’t think that’s the smart course to take,” the senator from New York said during a campaign stop in New Hampshire yesterday. “There certainly will be opportunities for a president to become involved, but it has to be planned and managed. I watched my husband deal with difficult problems.”

Without mentioning Obama by name, Clinton added: “And I don’t think you promise without preconditions for the president to meet with the leaders of antagonistic states and get nothing in return, and you thereby undermine or even short-circuit the diplomatic process.”

In a rare moment of bipartisan comity, GOP front-runner Rudy Giuliani agreed with the Democratic front-runner. “This may be one of the few areas in which I agree with Hillary Clinton,” the former New York mayor said in an interview with Bloomberg Television that will air this weekend.

Giuliani described Obama as having “a great deal of inexperience” and being “very, very naive” before launching into a diatribe against Obama’s Iran policy. Obama spokesman Bill Burton responded to Giuliani’s criticism by noting that “it’s time for tough and direct diplomacy with Iran, not lectures from a mayor who skipped out on the Iraq Study Group to give paid speeches, and who was naive and irresponsible enough to recommend someone with ties to convicted felons for secretary of homeland security.”

Good. Campaigns are supposed to be about choices — the starker the better. This is a debate worth having.

I don’t get it. Kucinich has proposed pretty much the same policy as Obama. months ago.
“…“it’s time for tough and direct diplomacy with Iran,…”
Really well past time. It’s well worth trying to give them something for a change instead of always imposing sanctions and treating them like sub-humans. Maybe they should bring some flowers to the table 1st and make an effort to befriend Iran in mutual development. Realistically, they have aided us in the past, they have offered to continue to cooperate with us in the fight against terrorism and terrorists. We should concentrate more on what we have in common and how we can work together rather than act the future conquerors.
Obama’s rhetoric is refreshing and gives pause to the saber rattling this administration is doing. The American public is not fooled about the oil in Iran being a prime motivator behind Bush/Cheney’s actions. The administration is used to equating human lives in terms of barrels of oil. Boehner claims it’s such a small sacrifice to make (as long as it’s not him that’s being sacrificed).

  • The short-sighted corporate powers-that-be in this country want Iran’s oil just as badly as they want Iraq’s. We are locked into our oil-dependent doom, and I see no one on the horizon, in either party, who is serious about shifting us in other directions. If they were, they’d risk losing all corporate backing. And, short of publicly funded campaigns, corporations call the shots. Period.

  • As much as I’d like to see Obama’s policy carried out vis-a-vis Iran, I doubt that the same nation which refused to engage with Vietnam for three decades and embargoed Cuba for five is going to do so. The combination of arrogance and petulance that characterizes American efforts at diplomacy over time has been enhanced by the current administration but not invented by them.

    It would take Secretary of State with the intelligence of George Marshall and a President with the courage of FDR to remake our diplomacy. At present, I see neither another Marshall nor another FDR waiting in the wings.

  • You know Iran was moving rather nicely toward reform and greater moderation before Bush came along. Iran has a relatively young population and the post-revolution generation, who were kind of the engine driving their budding political reformist movement, not only didn’t hate America the way many of their fathers did, they looked up to us as a model for what they dreamed Iran could be. They wanted to be America.

    Certainly we were beginning to engage Iran diplomatically by the end of the the Clinton administration to a greater extent than had been possible in almost a decade, since the Reagan administration backed Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war. But Clinton did have the good sense to keep it at arms length, denying the hardliners who still control Iran (and still do hate us) the excuse they were looking for to crack down on the reformist movement. Of course George W. Bush ultimately did provide them that excuse with that crack of his about the “Axis of Evil.” That single sentence was like a bullet through the heart of the Iranian reformist movement on several different levels and began the unraveling of years of agonizingly hard won gains, leaving us with assholes like Mahmoud Ahmadinijad as the new, new face of popular Iranian politics.

    But that’s where we are now. The next president is going to inherit a very complex and difficult relationship with Iran. To say we need to do a better job of engaging them diplomatically than the Bush administration has is setting the bar much to low, I’m afraid. We need to do a good job of engaging Iran diplomatically. It remains however that there are yawning gulfs between us and bridging that divide will require a lot of very patient and delicate work. That’s going to be no less true whether they insist on barging into the middle of the process personally or has the good sense to delegate the trickier parts to experienced diplomats who have an intimate understanding of the region, the culture, the players, the history and current realities of the situation.

    I guess talk like that makes good stump material though. There never seems to be any shortage of people out thee looking for simple-sounding solutions to a complicated problems, even though those never actually seem to work — complicated problems more typically have complicated solutions that require a lot of ongoing tinkering to make them work at all.

  • I think part of Obama’s problem may be that it seems like he only comes through after weeks of prodding and pushing for him to do so, and whether it is the correct perception, or one that is being created by a combination of media coverage and his campaign’s failures, I still see Obama as someone who has to sit back and see what everyone else is doing before he takes the plunge. Unfortunately for him, the whole process moves so quickly that by the time he raises his hand and says, “Um, I have an idea,” no one’s really listening.

    Now, I am not advocating for someone to leap without looking, but how long has he had to look? A long, long time – this Iran thing didn’t just materialize overnight.

    And I’m not saying it’s the wrong approach to Iran, either.

    I am, however, chuckling to myself over Rudy “Hey, I don’t have any experience with this at all” Giuliani calling out Obama for his inexperience.

  • Pingback: Matt Ortega » Barack’s “Politically Courageous” Iranian Policy

  • It’s the kind of bold, break-with-the-past thinking Obama probably should have embraced a lot sooner.

    If he’s going to do his Dem Convention speech the way he did it, title his book The Audacity of Hope, etc., he should at least show how he’s going to change things, and not make himself look like he’s just going to be a treading-water, middle-of-the-road moderate. I guess it could be that part of it has to do with holding his cards close, which is okay if he’s able to win on his charm and the trust he’s developed. But if that can’t carry him to the White House, it doesn’t matter if he was trying to save his ideas for the end-game or for after he wins the election.

  • “There certainly will be opportunities for a president to become involved, but it has to be planned and managed. I watched my husband deal with difficult problems.”

    I don’t think Hillary should keep playing along with the unspoken assumption that First Lady experience across-the-board doesn’t count. So I hope we hear more language like that quoted from Hillary.

    She should just say, “Yeah, I spent 8 years being a First Lady, and I was a politically engaged First Lady who knew a lot about the issues and talked to my husband and all our friends and his staff about policy a lot within the extent of what I had security clearance for. I wasn’t there just to meet with dignitaries and throw tea parties, I was always a person who knew a lot about policy, talked a lot about it, thought a lot about it, stayed informed a lot about it, and continued to do all this throughout my time with Bill in the White House. So, yeah, it counts as experience. I had about as close-up a view of what the president was doing as you can get, barring a few people working with Bill who had more security clearance than me by nature of their jobs in the administration.”

  • bjobotts said: I don’t get it. Kucinich has proposed pretty much the same policy as Obama. months ago.
    “…“it’s time for tough and direct diplomacy with Iran,…”

    I don’t really get it either. From what I have heard, seems all the Democrats are taking that stance when it comes to Iran. Maybe that’s why nobody is paying much attention to it when Obama says it.

    As far as no administration ever dealing with Iran, we cannot forget the Reagan administration and their arms for hostages deal. Even though it was an under the table, stab America in the back deal, it was dealing with Iran none the less.

  • “There certainly will be opportunities for a president to become involved, but it has to be planned and managed. I watched my husband deal with difficult problems.”

    Laura Bush in 2012!

    : )

  • Dennis wrote:

    Laura Bush in 2012!

    Well, Laura Bush sure isn’t a Hillary Clinton– what Hillary was like showed during President Clinton’s terms in office, and what Laura Bush is like has showed during her own husband’s.

    Giuliani described Obama as having “a great deal of inexperience” and being “very, very naive” before launching into a diatribe against Obama’s Iran policy. Obama spokesman Bill Burton responded to Giuliani’s criticism by noting that “it’s time for tough and direct diplomacy with Iran, not lectures from a mayor who skipped out on the Iraq Study Group to give paid speeches, and who was naive and irresponsible enough to recommend someone with ties to convicted felons for secretary of homeland security.”

    Ha. That’s right- Giuliani criticizing Obama on anything seems pretty laughable.

  • Well, Laura Bush sure isn’t a Hillary Clinton…

    Yeah, Laura is pretty much of a cipher. However, I think that Hillary’s emphasis of her White House experience isn’t exactly the Best Thing either. Start with NAFTA and work through Bill’s inability to constructively engage a willing Iran.

    I’m convinced that we need to do better than the Bush’s and the Clintons.

  • I think Hillary may be concerned that if she talks about her First Lady experience, unscrupulous people will try to make it sound like she’s trying to make it sound like she was running the White House or she was the un-elected co-President. This last point (un-elected co-President) is kind of beside the point, since it’s natural that a person might turn to their spouse for input on some of the most important decisions of their life, whether they are professional decisions or not, and that doesn’t change when you are electing anyone else besides Bill Clinton– whenever the voters elect anybody, the voters would have to be kind of stupid not to figure “maybe his/her spouse is going to influence him/her, and take that into account. But, there are no limits almost to what you can get people to be hysterical over.

    I think as a fix, Hillary should just say what I said in my number 7 comment, and then say “I know there may be people out there who are going to try to make it sound like I’m trying to make it sound like I was the President because I mention my experience as First Lady, and of course, I’m not saying anything near to that. All I’m saying is that my First Lady experience was as relevant for considering me for the Presidency as my Senate experience. I’m not saying at all I was making decisions for the President. Just ask [examples of people who worked in the Clinton White House], and they’ll tell you who I talked to, how often they saw me, when they saw me, what I was doing, what I was like. I was a fully-engaged First Lady and an ex-law professor and litigator who was fully interested in and capable of understanding what was going on with the nitty-gritty of the White House operations.”

    And then to go into the detail of the argument I presented in my first paragraph of this comment, people from her campaign and her endorsers who are going on the Sunday shows and the weekday news/pundit shows (shows that the people who are looking out for more than just the sound bite are more likely watching) can go into that.

    TKO wrote:

    Swan, since you keep shoving Billary down our throats,

    Wow, thanks for cutting my expectation of being able to talk about the candidates I like as much as anyone else does off at the knees…

    Re: Your article, it sounds to me like Hillary should think about how much of her efforts should be limited to behind-the-scenes, low-profile stuff in order to achieve the best result. Trying to help out the Israelis and Palestinians negotiate is definitely an endeavor requiring a lot of sensitivity and thought. Hopefully she will read the article and consider the writer’s point.

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