By Shoshana Bryen
WASHINGTON, D.C.–According to The New York Times, “Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has warned in a secret three-page memorandum to top White House officials that the United States does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran’s steady progress toward nuclear capability.”
A journalist wrote to JINSA, “It seems to me the Jewish community has contributed to that (lack of policy) by making the very mention of ‘containment’ politically toxic-as if even planning for that contingency, however much it is unwanted, is an act of appeasement. Where’s the error in my reasoning?”
The short answer is that the Obama Administration has not taken seriously Jewish concerns regarding any foreign policy area. It is an error to think he gave credence to what “the Jews” said about Iran.
The longer answer is the reason we don’t have a policy for containing a nuclear Iran, if indeed we don’t, is because President Obama appears not to have believed we might have to do it. As a candidate and as President he said a nuclear Iran was “unacceptable.” And because it was unacceptable, it wouldn’t happen. He would engage the regime, he said, and then be prepared for “crippling sanctions” with international support he said, and then leave “all options” on the table.
He appears not to have anticipated the failure of his first two options.
Perhaps he thought that because he wasn’t President Bush the Iranians would do what he said was in their interest-give up nuclear weapons in exchange for warm fuzzies from the United States. He provided the warm fuzzies, but what the Iranians think is in their interest apparently is different from what the President thought they were supposed to think was in their interest. How inconsiderate of them to believe that the spread of radical Shiite Islam and assumption of hegemony in the Gulf was more important-and more possible-than accommodation with the democratic West.
The President was similarly unprepared for the failure to obtain Russian and Chinese agreement on sanctions-which we assume he assumed he could get because he wasn’t President Bush. Oddly, President Obama resembled no one as much as he did his Oval Office predecessor after his love-fest with the Russians last week. President Obama, no less than Mr. Bush, appears to have looked into the eyes of the Russians and found men with whom he believes he can do business. But like the Iranians, what the Russians and the Chinese think is in their interest apparently is different from what the President thought they were supposed to think was in their interest.
(Ditto Syria, by the way. President Obama had their interests all laid out for them, but they didn’t agree and now they’re either shipping or planning to ship Scud missiles to Hezbollah-which should be a wake-up call about the interests of the Government of Lebanon as well as the Government of Syria.)
Having ignored the option of regime change, not wanting a military option and REALLY not wanting an Israeli military option, the President appears not to have considered the possibility that the need for containment would actually arise.
Secretary Gates, the realpolitik-ist, may be the last lonely realist.
But that won’t stop journalists and others from blaming “the Jews.” Indeed, the Administration already has done so by saying that Israel’s failure to “solve” the Palestinian problem prevents the Arabs and others from joining with us to “stop” Iran’s march toward nuclear capability.
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Bryen is senior director of security policy of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Her column is sponsored by Waxie Sanitary Supply in memory of Morris Wax, longtime JINSA supporter and national board member