Powerful Persuasion

Lost in the midst of the highly publicized partisan squabbling over the stimulus bill of the past two weeks, a major foreign policy breakthrough by the Obama administration went largely unnoticed.

In his first televised interview with the Arab network Al Arabiya, Obama seemed to extend the olive branch to longtime adversary Iran, stating that were they “willing to unclench their fist, they (would) find an extended hand from the (United States).”

Obama’s words seemed reassuring after 30 years of strained relations with the Islamic republic, particularly when compared with those of his predecessor, who in 2002 famously identified Iran as part of an axis of evil.

For his part, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was surprisingly tactful in his response. He indicated favor for discussions with the United States, albeit with guarded skepticism.

Vice President Joe Biden reiterated the president’s stance when, speaking in Munich last week, he addressed Iran directly: “Continue down your current course, and there will be pressure and isolation; abandon the illicit nuclear program and your support for terrorism, and there will be meaningful incentives.”

Biden was apparently referring to threats of more economic sanctions, though the administration has stated that no option is off the table – including military intervention.

Reading between the lines of the Obama administration’s statements, one cannot help but notice the same bravado and flawed logic that informed the policies of the previous administration.

Simply put, the tone with which the Obama administration addressed Iran was more befitting of a recalcitrant child than of a sovereign nation with a democratically elected government.

Granted, Iran has its fair share of problems. The current Iranian leadership, like its predecessors, has repeatedly proven antagonistic to the Western world, particularly the United States.

However, its animosity has thus far taken a largely rhetorical form, its support of Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon aside.

That being said, the Obama administration’s continued fixation on Iran’s nuclear program is absurd given that all credible evidence indicates that it is indeed for civilian purposes, as its leaders claim.

A 2007 National Intelligence Estimate expressed high confidence that Iran had ceased development of nuclear weapons in 2003; likewise, a 2007 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency supported the findings of the Estimate. Iran is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The Obama administration’s stance on Iran reflects its larger agenda in the region.

Though it has couched its foreign policy in gentler language – for instance, by shying away from the use of the phrase “war on terror” – it has thus far pursued the same discredited interventionist policies of the past eight years.

Nowhere is this more evident than in its plans for Iran’s neighbor, Afghanistan, where 30,000 additional U.S. troops are due to be deployed to quell the resurgent Taliban.

Apparently Obama is convinced, like Bush before him, that the United States can afford to continue squandering hundreds of billions of dollars and unquantifiable amounts of diplomatic capital in military misadventures abroad.

To paraphrase a comment made by Obama on the campaign trail: You can put lipstick on a bad foreign policy, but it’s still a bad foreign policy.