Biden Concludes Bush Was ‘The Problem’ On Iran — But Obama’s Worse
On September 25, 2009, Iran revealed to the International Atomic Energy Agency that a secret missile base and uranium enrichment installation near the city of Qom. Iran revealed the existence of the facility when, according to U.S. officials, “Iran learned that the secrecy of the facility was compromised.” President Obama described the Qom facility as being “inconsistent with a peaceful program.”
Just prior to this announcement on September 18, then-CIA director Leon Panetta told reporters that although Iran is “proceeding to develop a nuclear capability in terms of power and low-grade uranium, there is still very much a debate going on within Iran as to whether or not they ought to proceed further.” At the time, the Qom facility was not operational. Today, it is.
In December 2009, TIME Magazine declared the Obama administration’s engagement policy towards Iran failed. If only the Obama administration had taken the lessons contained within that article to heart; instead they proceeded with a policy of outreach as though the bloody crackdown on dissidents had never occurred.
In October, 2010, Iran sent a delegation to Rome to meet with Gen. David Petraeus on NATO’s transitioning strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Richard Holbrooke told the New York Times that the Obama administration was informed in advance that Iran would be participating in that international conference, and that the administration had no problems with that.
They should have. To invite Iran to participate in a conference on the status of these conflicts where the regime has been waging a proxy conflict with the United States should boggle minds. It was Defense Sec. Panetta himself who said in July, 2011, as the insurgency in Iraq grew more intense ahead of the American withdrawal, that “we’re seeing more of those weapons going in from Iran, and they’ve really hurt us.”
If the Arab world is today more wary of the Iranian regime, it is not due in any way to the Obama administration having amassed a stable of allies. In fact, the Arab world recognized that it no longer had the luxury of playing a duplicitous game of fomenting anti-Western hatred among their citizens while relying on the NATO powers to contain Iran as an aspiring regional hegemon. When it became obvious that no one would protect them from Iran but themselves, Morocco, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, in varying ways and through differing channels, lashed out at or distanced themselves from the Mullahs in Tehran.
Syria, Iran’s one true ally, has become unstable, not through any actions of the Obama administration officials or surrogates, but as a result of the Arab Spring. The United States’ once-in-a-generation opportunity to overthrow the Assad family’s grip on power in Damascus went ignored. If anything, Hamas and Hezbollah are using this opportunity to consolidate power in South Syria and Lebanon. They are not, as Biden insists, weakened by the chaos.
It should be clear that these are a series of suboptimal outcomes that have resulted from the outreach policy towards Iran. The increase of interstate tensions in the Middle East was avoidable. It is not a beneficial American foreign policy which provokes nations that have friendly relations with Washington to voluntarily withdraw from the American sphere of influence. But the Obama administration, so bereft of foreign policy successes, now touts this as an achievement.
A true accounting of the Obama administration’s failed Iran policy requires a book, not a column. It will be a sad read once it is published. But much of it could have been avoided if the Obama administration, having been rebuffed after a genuine attempt to reach out to Iran, had changed course.
Today, Iran is the dominant security threat the world faces and the prospects for an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities — and the regional war that could provoke — grows ever more likely. A President of the United States has a responsibility to do what they can to preempt such an event. Obama’s administration has thus far been unable to reduce the temperature in the Middle East. It is arguable that the White House’s outreach policy has exacerbated the situation. Perhaps when Biden says “we were the problem,” he means the Obama administration.
Watch the Biden speech below:
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This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
