It’s hard to say exactly what’s caused the Democratic presidential race to tighten in recent weeks. Some of the fluctuation, I’d argue, is to be expected at this stage of the process — undecideds start to break, supporters start having second-thoughts, etc.
That said, it’s also fair to say that John Edwards and Barack Obama have been using Hillary Clinton’s vote on the Kyl-Lieberman Iran measure to undermine some of her support, particularly among Dems who’ve been terrified of the prospect of a war with Iran.
With that in mind, do yesterday’s NIE revelations about Iran’s non-existent nuclear-weapons-program matter in the Democratic race? Arguably, the news matters quite a bit. The Obama campaign issued this statement yesterday afternoon:
“By reporting that Iran halted its nuclear weapon development program four years ago because of international pressure, the new National Intelligence Estimate makes a compelling case for less saber-rattling and more direct diplomacy. The juxtaposition of this NIE with the president’s suggestion of World War III serves as an important reminder of what we learned with the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq: members of Congress must carefully read the intelligence before giving the President any justification to use military force.”
As with many Obama criticisms, this one might be a little too subtle for a mass audience, but I think Matt Yglesias is right about the underlying point: Clinton didn’t read the 2002 NIE — if she had, she might not have supported the Iraq AUMF — and she hadn’t read this NIE before voting for the Kyl-Lieberman measure.
Now, contrast that with the Clinton campaign’s statement after yesterday’s news.
“The new declassified key judgments of the Iran NIE expose the latest effort by the Bush administration to distort intelligence to pursue its ideological ends. The assessment of the NIE vindicates the policy Senator Clinton will pursue as President: vigorous American-led diplomacy, close international cooperation, and effective economic pressure, with the prospect of carefully calibrated incentives if Iran addresses our concerns. Neither saber rattling nor unconditional meetings with Ahmadinejad will stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Senator Clinton has the strength and experience to conduct the kind of vigorous diplomacy needed to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.”
There’s obviously multiple shots at Obama here, including the emphasis on experience and the criticism of so-called “unconditional meetings with Ahmadinejad,” but Ezra’s criticism seems fair: the Clinton campaign statement seems to miss the point of the NIE developments, and downplays the critical point that Iran’s nuclear-weapons program has been out of commission for more than four years. “This country does not need a Democratic candidate dedicated to hyping threats to in order to score political points or imply their ceaseless willingness to take the country to war,” Ezra said.
And then there’s John Edwards’ statement.
“The new National Intelligence Estimate shows that George Bush and Dick Cheney’s rush to war with Iran is, in fact, a rush to war. The new NIE finds that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that Iran can be dissuaded from pursuing a nuclear weapon through diplomacy. This is exactly the reason that we must avoid radical steps like the Kyl-Lieberman bill declaring Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, which needlessly took us closer to war. And it’s why I have proposed that we pursue a comprehensive diplomatic approach instead.”
Edwards gets the 2003 point right and gets the Kyl-Lieberman dig in.
If Clinton was on the defensive about Iran before, it’s probably about to get worse. As Yglesias concluded, “[T]he push for Kyl-Lieberman and similar measures looks an awful lot like a deliberate effort to change the subject away from Iran’s alleged nuclear program specifically because the main actors in the administration knew their case on this point was about to collapse. Democrats who voted for Kyl-Lieberman look, under the circumstances, likes dupes at best.”