Clearly stroking the presidential ego to position himself for a position in the Obama White House in a second term, Zakaria says of the president's Iran policy:
The Obama administration has brought together a global coalition, put into place the toughest sanctions ever, worked with Israel on a series of covert programs and given Israel military hardware it has long wanted. In addition, the Obama administration has strongly implied that it would be willing to use force as a final resort. But to go further and define a red line in advance would commit the United States to waging a war; no country would make such a commitment.
Every sentence is ridiculous, indicating only that Zakaria is trying to be the administration Official Flatterer.
A global coalition to stop Iran? What rot. There is a coalition willing to inconvenience Iran to avoid having to decide to actually stop Iran's drive for nuclear weapons. I'd like to note that Iran seemed to gather a larger global coalition to support them. And Russia and China continue to run interference for Iran, stopping UN action and diluting sanctions whenever they can.
Economic sanctions are the toughest ever? The issue isn't whether the sanctions are stronger than ever. They have been a joke in the past so that's no great achievement. The question is whether they can be effective. Raise your hand if you think Iran's leaders won't commit their people to eat grass to get atomic bombs.
Working with Israel? How? By refusing to meet with Netanyahu? By making it clear we're working with Israel to restrain Israel? Joint missile defense exercises indicate an effort to live with Iran's nuclear missiles and not an indication we are working with Israel to stop Iran.
Zakaria mentions covert operations. At best, they've slowed Iran a bit.
We've given Israel military hardware? So what? We don' want Israel to use them and aren't working with Israel to find a way to use them effectively. Again, this effort is just meant to keep Israel calm enough for now by making them think they'll have the option to strike for a longer period of time with those weapons.
As for not ruling out force, by making clear that virtually anything--including a bout of interpretive dance--comes before that "last resort" of force, we've given Iran no reason to believe we'll ever reach that stage.
And God almighty, defining a red line doesn't guarantee a war. If we are serious about stopping Iran from going nuclear rather than just pretending we are serious until it is too late to do anything about Iran, we eventually must issue Iran an ultimatum to halt progress toward nuclear weapons and submit to intrusive inspections to make sure they do not pursue nuclear weapons.
If we are serious about stopping Iran rather than avoiding responsibility for stopping them, a red line is exactly the sort of commitment we'd make.
As for Zakaria's assumption that Iran will drag the region into chaos if we strike, that is just an excuse for inaction based on Westerners playing games rather than an assessment of what might happen based on past events.
Might things go really bad if we or Israel strikes? Yes. But they likely won't be worst case.
And the worst case if Iran goes nuclear actually encompasses many worst cases such as nuclear war, nuclear terrorism, and nuclear proliferation that results in regional nuclear war. Even the best cases where Iran merely uses nukes to shield their conventional and terrorist aggression is pretty bad.
But hey, at least I have no doubt that Zakaria crafted every word of this article.
UPDATE: Krauthammer covers similar terrain.
Pretending that mullah-run Iran with nuclear weapons isn't that bad is sheer insanity. "Folly" doesn't begin to cover the problems with that attitude.
