So much for the “bold and aggressive diplomacy” with Iran that presidential candidate Barack Obama promised.
Eight months after Tehran unleashed a murderous repression of anti-regime protesters — to a mostly timid response from Washington — Team Obama now believes that Iran is becoming a military dictatorship.
So says Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, currently touring the Arab world. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard, she declared, are taking control of Iran’s political establishment — which she rightly finds profoundly troubling.
The irony in all this is rather profound.
In urging Iran’s political leaders — that would be Mahmoud “Death to America” Ahmadinejad, among others — to “take back the authority which they should be exercising on behalf of the people,” Clinton actually found herself pining for the early days of the Islamic Revolution.
Remember that great friend of democratic rule, Ayatollah Khomeini?
Yet Clinton laments that today’s Iran is “a far cry from the Islamic republic that had elections and different points of view within the leadership circle.”
Moreover, she seems unable to recognize that the Revolutionary Guard — far from undermining figures like Ahmadenijad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini — are the shock troops leading the crackdown on Iran’s nascent pro-democracy movement.
You’d think Clinton would understand this — after all, in 2007 she voted for a controversial Senate resolution declaring the Guard to be a terrorist movement and calling for economic sanctions, and took a lot of political grief for it.
Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden both bitterly opposed the bill. Obama labeled it a “reckless” exercise in “saber-rattling” (though later reversing course); Biden called it “a serious mistake.”
Now Team Obama is decrying the Guard — even while rallying behind those who’ve unleashed them in the first place.
Amazing.
Meanwhile, Clintion also warns that Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons would trigger “a nuclear arms race in the region” — adding that “then you have all kinds of opportunities for problems that can be quite dangerous.”
Gee, ya think?
As a candidate, Barack Obama vowed to “do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
As the situation in Iran deteriorates, President Obama should get cracking.