By Scott Erickson
Sunday, January 26, 2014
When President Obama announced in late November that a
deal between the United States and Iran had been struck that would effectively
halt Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon, supporters of the current
administration hailed the success of diplomacy. “Today, that diplomacy opened
up a new path toward a world that is more secure, a future in which we can
verify that Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful and that it cannot build a
nuclear weapon.” Mr. Obama declared.
Many at the time offered a different assessment of the
president’s nuclear deal with Iran. It was deemed naive, short-sighted, and
consistent with Mr. Obama’s penchant for seeing potential in the empty rhetoric
of less-than-trustworthy adversaries. Time, and the Iranian government itself,
is validating that criticism.
Following a recent interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria,
the intransigence of Iranian president Hassan Rouhani caused even the CNN host
himself to characterize the Iranian nuclear deal as a “train wreck.”
In the interview, following a question posed by Zakaria
concerning the dismantling of existing centrifuges, Rouhani emphatically stated
that no such dismantling would occur “under any circumstances.”
The disconnect between what Obama administration officials
have declared the Iranian nuclear deal to mean and what the Iranians themselves
have articulated the agreement to mean, is both stark and disturbing.
It should really come as no surprise, however. Be it
Afghanistan, troop withdrawals in Iraq, or the Iranian nuclear deal, the Obama
administration appears as much enamored with pursuing popular agreements for
the sake of having “achieved” them as it does with actually realizing the
long-term national security objectives of the United States.
President Rouhani ascended to office having departed from
the inflammatory rhetoric that defined his predecessor, Mahmoud Admadinejad. At
the United Nations last year, Rouhani stated that, “Commensurate with the
political will of the leadership in the United States and hoping that they will
refrain from following the short-sighted interest of warmongering pressure
groups, we can arrive at a framework to manage our differences.”
He also promised that “peace is within reach.”
But Rouhani’s diplomatic verbiage notwithstanding, any
clear-headed assessment of Rouhani’s actual willingness to work with the United
States, in any way other than that which was in the best interest of Iran,
could have been gleaned from a perfunctory analysis of his previous statements
related to the United States.
One decade prior to having reached the nuclear deal with
the United States, Rouhani, while acting as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator,
wrote in an article that, “The fundamental principle in Iran's relations with
America -- our entire focus -- is national strength. Strength in politics,
culture, economics, and defense -- especially in the field of advanced
technology -- is the basis for the preservation and overall development of the
System, and will force the enemy to surrender.”
Note that Rouhani did not refer to the United States as
an international partner or even as an adversary. Rather, he underscored his
belief that the Untied States should be seen as an enemy of the Islamic
Republic and that any relations with the United States should serve to
strengthen Iran’s geopolitical position, not undermine it.
Not to be viewed as a singular occurrence, or the
proverbial slip of the tongue, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy
(WINEP) compiled a list of Rouhani’s most inflammatory beliefs and comments, an
understanding of which suggest a worldview unqualified to merit the faith being
placed in it by the Obama administration.
Among WINEP’s findings was that Rouhani blamed the events
of September 11 on the “wrongs and mistakes of American policies.” He also
suggested that Flight 93, which crashed into an open field in rural
Pennsylvania following the heroic efforts of passengers onboard, was actually
“shot down by the U.S. Air Force.”
Additionally, Rouhani had previously conveyed support for
Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the siege and takeover of
the U.S. embassy in Tehran, and the belief that the United State’s relationship
with Israel rendered a middle east arms race a near certainty.
Rouhani’s image as a reformer, hailed by the media and
loosely based upon rhetoric belied by his past, should not have served as the
basis upon which the Obama administration sought to ease sanctions upon Iran in
the hope of gaining complicity in the pursuit of a diminished nuclear threat.
Rather, Rouhani’s past should have served as a cautionary
warning sign that the Obama administration place less faith in empty rhetoric
and more faith in hardened reality.
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