Why Obama Is Tougher on Iran Than Romney Could Ever Be – Jeffrey Goldberg – The Atlantic
Why Obama Is Tougher on Iran Than Romney Could Ever Be – Jeffrey Goldberg – The Atlantic.
It seemed, a few weeks ago, that the Iran issue was waning; now it seems to be waxing again. If you want to read an article that is giving Centcom commanders pause (not that they aren’t worried already), read Joby Warrick’s excellent account of Iran’s Persian Gulf military preparations. The Iranian Navy — both Iranian navies, in fact, the regular navy and especially the Revolutionary Guard Corps navy (IRGCN)– could do some real damage to American warships, if there is a Gulf confrontation. (I wrote about the threat of the IRGCN’s speedboats here.)
Israel has been inundated this past month with visits from high-ranking U.S. officials, all coming armed with intelligence to suggest that there is still time for the West to act against Iran’s nuclear program (and by time, they mean post-November 6 time). Israel is also getting a visit this weekend from Mitt Romney, who is attempting to convince Americans that he will be tougher on Iran than Barack Obama. In my Bloomberg View column this week, I lay out why this might not be the case — why, in fact, Romney would be seriously hamstrung in his dealings with Iran, if he is elected president. Here are just a few of the reasons why he would have a potentially hard time confronting Iran militarily:
Explore posts in the same categories: UncategorizedRomney would be a new president in 2013, which could plausibly be the year for a preventive attack. He will be inexperienced, and his national security team will be new and potentially inexperienced as well. The learning curve on Iran is steep, and the Iranian regime knows it. The Obama team is deeply knowledgeable, appropriately cynical about Iranian intentions, and has had the time and confidence to make course corrections.
Romney, by all accounts, is uninterested in inheriting the mantle of President George W. Bush, who invaded two Muslim countries and lost popularity and credibility as a result. Romney, despite his rhetoric, is more of a pragmatist than Bush, and far more cautious. An attack on Iran is an incautious act, one that even Bush rejected.
The unilateral use of force in the Middle East for a liberal Democrat like Obama is a credential; for a conservative Republican like Romney, it could be an albatross. I argued in a previous column that Romney is more likely than Obama to oversee a revitalized Middle East peace process. That’s because conservatives are better positioned to make peace; liberals are generally better positioned to launch preventive strikes at the nuclear programs of rogue nations. We know that U.S. voters, and world leaders, allow Obama extraordinary leeway when it comes to deadly drone strikes, precisely because of his politics, character and background. (We are talking about a man, after all, who won the Nobel Peace Prize while ordering the automated killing of suspected Muslim terrorists around the world.) Romney will get no comparative slack.
WarSclerotic 
July 30, 2012 at 6:45 PM
Even if Obama should go now for a campaign against Iran, lets be serious : this man is dangerous for Israel and his reelection will be a disaster for our place in the region. With Iran, without Iran…lets face it : those persians clowns can be easy neutralised. But Obama is a looming danger for the jewish people and i don’t say this because i believe he may be an undercover muslim.
His false rhetorics, his actions, his believes and talent to deceive the masses ,all this and more make him a person that any good christian should be worry about.
July 30, 2012 at 8:37 PM
This analysis by Jeffery Goldberg is an insult to our intelligence.
” The Obama team is deeply knowledgeable, appropriately cynical about Iranian intentions, and has had the time and confidence to make course corrections.”
If the Obama team were deeply knowledgeable about Iranian intentions they would have destroyed the Iranian nuclear sites long ago. For who responsible would have remained idle at the prospect of the Iranians panning to destroy 2/3 of the human race?
http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Opinion/Article.aspx?id=244996
“Iran is led by a group of irrational men who believe they can hurry the arrival of the Mahdi – the 12th Imam who, according to Shi’ite Islamic tradition, went missing in 874 CE and will return under conditions of global chaos. The Iranian leadership appears willing to sacrifice the population of its own country to achieve this goal.
In his book The Rise of Nuclear Iran, former Israeli ambassador to the UN Dore Gold writes, “Mahdi Khaliji, an Iranian Shi’ite scholar… has noted that there are apocalyptic hadiths [received Shi’ite traditions] that the Mahdi will not return unless one-third of the world population is killed and another third die. But Ahmadinejad and his followers believe man can actively create the conditions for the Mahdi’s arrival in the here and now…”