Obama responds to McCain on Cuba

OBAMA: I have to say, first of all, Wolf, his charges aren’t serious. That’s the problem. I have never said that I was prepared to immediately normalize relations with Cuba. The only person who has flip-flopped on this issue is John McCain who in 2000 said that he would be prepared to start normalizing relations even if a whole host of steps have not been taken. That is a reversal from the position he is taking now.

And what I have also said is that I will be willing to engage in direct talks with Cuba. Now, I know that John McCain likes to characterize this as me immediately having Raul Castro over for tea. What I’ve said is that we would set a series of meetings with low level diplomats, set up some preparation but that over time I would be willing to meet and talk very directly about what we expect from the Cuban regime. And so John McCain keeps on making these statements that simply aren’t based on anything I’ve said.

BLITZER: He says that you would be ready, in his words, to sit down unconditionally for a presidential meeting with Raul Castro. Those were his words.

OBAMA: And what I’ve said is I would be willing to meet without preconditions but with a lot of preparation and this is the same argument that we’ve been having with respect to Iran. This is the same argument that we’re going to be having throughout the next several months should I end up being the Democratic nominee.

John McCain essentially wants to continue George Bush’s policies of not talking to leaders we don’t like and not talking to countries we don’t like. It has been a failed policy. Iran is stronger now than when George Bush took office. Partly because he engaged in a war in Iraq that John McCain facilitated that has strengthened Iran.

The fact that we haven’t talked to them has not had them stand down on nuclear weapons. It hasn’t led them to stop funding Hamas and Hezbollah. It hasn’t stopped them from threatening Israel and so what I have said is we should open up direct talks.

By the way, George Bush’s own secretary of defense, Robert Gates, has indicated the same thing. I believe the same thing – I believe that the same thing is true when it comes to Cuba and I believe, by the way, that the same thing is true with North Korea. That’s one of the few areas where we’ve seen some progress, primarily because the Bush administration reversed its policy of not having direct talks with these rogue nations and we’ve actually started seeing some progress. Prior to that, North Korea developed a series of nuclear weapons.

BLITZER: There seems to be some confusion whether you would be willing, personally, as president, to sit down, without preconditions, with Ahmadinejad of Iran or other Iranian leaders. Is your openness to a meeting with Iranian leaders inclusive of Ahmadinejad?

OBAMA: I think this obsession with Ahmadinejad is an example of us losing track of what’s important.

I would be willing to meet with Iranian leaders if we had done sufficient preparations for that meeting. Whether Ahmadinejad is the right person to meet with right now, we don’t even know how much power he is going to have a year from now. He is not the most powerful person in Iran.

And my expectation, obviously, would be to meet with those people who can actually make decisions in terms of actually having them stand down on nuclear weapons or stopping funding Hamas or Hezbollah or meddling in the affairs of Iraq.

But the bottom line here, Wolf, is that John McCain wants to pursue policies that George Bush has pursued for the last eight years with no success. When it comes to Cuba, what he is now saying is essentially the policy we’ve pursued for 50 years and the Cuban people are not more free.

And the notion that we would keep doing the same thing over and over and over again when it doesn’t work and that somehow is a sign of toughness is extraordinarily naive, I think does a disservice to the Cuban people. That’s the kind of break from the Bush administration that I want to initiate when I am president of the United States.

McCain doesn’t know who real leader of Iran is

McCain Gets Basic Iran Fact Wrong:

McCain doesn’t realize that the Ayatollah Khamenei is the head of the Iranian govt, the supreme leader, even higher than the president of Iran

Isn’t he supposed to be strong on Foreign Policy?  How can he be trusted if he doesn’t know the basic facts?

Oil now $129.00 a barrel

Just keeps rising

Oil prices spiked a new trading high Tuesday, sweeping past $129 a barrel as supply concerns intensified the momentum buying that has lifted crude deeper into record territory.

The June contract for light, sweet crude traded as high as $129.31 in electronic pre-opening trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange before settling back to $128.75, up $1.70.

Prices are currently being driven higher by supply concerns. This latest surge comes after OPEC’s president was quoted as saying his organization won’t increase its output before its next meeting in September.

The imminent expiration of the June contract is adding to the volatility. The contract will end at the close of trading Tuesday.

‘Bush intends to attack Iran before the end of his term’

THE JERUSALEM POST

US President George W. Bush intends to attack Iran in the upcoming months, before the end of his term, Army Radio quoted a senior official in Jerusalem as saying Tuesday.

The official claimed that a senior member of the president’s entourage, which concluded a trip to Israel last week, said during a closed meeting that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were of the opinion that military action was called for.

However, the official continued, “the hesitancy of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice” was preventing the administration from deciding to launch such an attack on the Islamic Republic, for the time being.

The report stated that according to assessments in Israel, recent turmoil in Lebanon, where Hizbullah de facto established control of the country, was advancing an American attack.

Bush, the officials said, opined that Hizbullah’s show of strength was evidence of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s growing influence. They said that according to Bush, “the disease must be treated – not its symptoms.”

In an address to the Knesset during his visit here last week, Bush said that “the president of Iran dreams of returning the Middle East to the Middle Ages.”

“America stands with you in firmly opposing Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions,” Bush said. “Permitting the world’s leading sponsor of terror to possess the world’s deadliest weapon would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations. For the sake of peace, the world must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

Bush is a moron, an attack would raise oil to around 7-8 dollars a gallon and threaten our troops in Iraq; on the plus side however, it would kill McCain’s chances in November

Edit:

Administration is now denying the report, somehow i’m not convinced

The White House on Tuesday flatly denied an Army Radio report that claimed US President George W. Bush intends to attack Iran before the end of his term. It said that while the military option had not been taken off the table, the Administration preferred to resolve concerns about Iran’s push for a nuclear weapon “through peaceful diplomatic means.”

Army Radio had quoted a top official in Jerusalem claiming that a senior member in the entourage of President Bush, who concluded a trip to Israel last week, had said in a closed meeting here that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were of the opinion that military action against Iran was called for.

The official reportedly went on to say that “the hesitancy of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice” was preventing the administration from deciding to launch such an attack on the Islamic Republic for the time being.

The Army Radio report, which was quoted by The Jerusalem Post and resonated widely, stated that according to assessments in Israel, the recent turmoil in Lebanon, where Hizbullah has de facto established control of the country, was advancing an American attack.

Bush, the official reportedly said, considered Hizbullah’s show of strength to constitute evidence of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s growing influence. In Bush’s view, the official said, “the disease must be treated – not its symptoms.”

However, the White House on Tuesday afternoon dismissed the story. In a statement, it said that “[the US] remain[s] opposed to Iran’s ambitions to obtain a nuclear weapon. To that end, we are working to bring tough diplomatic and economic pressure on the Iranians to get them to change their behavior and to halt their uranium enrichment program.

It went on: “As the President has said, no president of the United States should ever take options off the table, but our preference and our actions for dealing with this matter remain through peaceful diplomatic means. Nothing has changed in that regard.”

In an address to the Knesset during his visit here last week, Bush said that “the president of Iran dreams of returning the Middle East to the Middle Ages.”

“America stands with you in firmly opposing Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions,” Bush said. “Permitting the world’s leading sponsor of terror to possess the world’s deadliest weapon would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations. For the sake of peace, the world must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

Hyping the threat from Iran

Barabara Slavin makes some good points about why we should not exaggerate the “threat” posed by Iran:

War talk against Iran is rising again in Washington as the Bush administration enters its final months with little to show for its labors in the Middle East. Yet the consequences of attacking a third Muslim country in seven years could be far worse than an already precarious status quo. Iran hawks anxious to blunt Iran’s growing regional influence also fail to grasp the real constraints on Iranian expansionism, instead creating a bogeyman that, like Saddam Hussein, may turn out to be a chimera.

There is no doubt that Iran’s reach has increased considerably since 2001. Toppling Hussein and the Taliban eliminated Iran’s worst enemies and allowed it to build on long-standing ties with Shiite co-religionists in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran has benefited from the failure to resolve the Arab-Israeli dispute to forge new ties with Hamas and to deepen its relationship with Hezbollah. After the Bush administration rejected offers to negotiate with Iran without preconditions in 2003 and 2006, Tehran accelerated a nuclear program that could give it the material to make bombs.

But to respond to these challenges by ordering a military strike on Iran risks solidifying Iran’s gains, putting American soldiers and U.S. allies in Iraq in an untenable position and sending already stratospheric oil prices over the moon. An attack would also reflect an exaggerated view of Iran’s real capabilities and goals.

Iran’s reach is limited by the U.S. military presence in the region, domestic weakness and historic divisions between Arabs and Persians, Sunnis and Shiites and among Shiites. The most popular cleric among Shiites around the world is Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who, though born in Iran, has lived in Iraq for the last half-century and opposes theocratic rule.

A country whose boundaries have barely changed since the 16th century, Iran is not able to or interested in recreating the Persian Empire and is not about to become a second Nazi Germany or Soviet Union. As Mohammad Atrianfar, a veteran publisher who is close to former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, told me recently in Tehran: “We are not going to stretch our legs beyond the capacity of our carpets.”

Those who fear a rising Iran tend to see a few patterns, not the whole tapestry. Thus they miss the fact that Iran’s goals appear to be largely defensive: to achieve strategic depth and safeguard its system against foreign intervention, to have a major say in regional decisions and to prevent or minimize actions that might run counter to Iranian interests.

In its efforts to achieve those goals, Iran has re-armed Hezbollah but does not dictate that group’s actions. When Hezbollah recently showed its muscle by occupying much of West Beirut, senior Iranian officials said the decision was made by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah without prior consultation with Iran, in reaction to Lebanese government moves that threatened the organization’s military communications.

In Iraq, Iran has become embroiled in a proxy war with the United States through support for the Mahdi army of Muqtada al-Sadr and renegade militias. Iran is also providing assistance to the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in hopes that whatever Shiite faction comes out on top in Baghdad will be beholden to Tehran.

Still, there are limits to Iran’s power in Iraq. Iraqi leaders, including those who once lived in Tehran, want to retain ties to the United States to balance relations with Iran. There is little affinity between Iranians and Iraqis, even those who share Iran’s Shiite faith. This is a consequence of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, which Iraq started and which killed more than a quarter of a million Iranians, as well as grievances that go back centuries. I well recall being told by an Iranian, as violence mounted in Iraq in 2006, “What do you expect? They killed our Imam Hossein.” The reference was to the most emotional event in the history of Shiism: the murder of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson in 680 by the army of the Sunni caliph, Yazid, on the plains of Karbala.

Iranians, with a long historical memory, also see their pre-Islamic culture as superior to that of the Arabs and bemoan the seventh century battle of Qadisiyya, when the Arabs defeated the Persian Empire and converted its subjects to Islam by the sword. Many Iranians are not happy to have their hard currency earnings lavished on what they regard as “Arab” causes and would prefer that the money stays at home. March parliamentary elections focused on Iran’s high inflation and mismanaged economy. Pragmatic conservatives are already lining up to run against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in elections next year – elections he could lose unless a U.S. attack rallies the Iranian people around him.

For policymakers in this U.S. administration and the next, it is critical to see Iran in its true dimensions. Many analysts remain convinced that Iran would curtail malign behavior in return for an end to U.S. sanctions, progress toward Arab-Israeli peace and full integration into regional forums and the international community. “At some point, Iranians will be willing to trade the Arabs for the United States,” said Adnan Obu Odeh, a former Jordanian information minister and ambassador to the United Nations. “They want to survive.”

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