OUR UNSERIOUSNESS ABOUT IRAN – AT 8:11 A.M. ET:  After the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, and the British and French declarations of war against Germany, there followed a long lull that came to be known as the "phony war."  Some assumed the sides just wouldn't fight.  They were wrong.

Now we have the "phony policy."  It's our policy toward Iran.  The president and his trusty sidekick, Hillary, say that an Iranian nuclear bomb is "unacceptable."  They make much noise about "crippling" sanctions.  Or sanctions that "bite."  Or something.

But nothing much happens, and virtually every report we've read from knowledgeable Washington sources tells us that the international law firm of Obama & Clinton is resigned to an Iranian nuke, and will try to "deter" the Iranians once they have the monster weapon. 

The Wall Street Journal, in a scathing editorial this morning, tears the Obama policy apart and condemns it to the environmentally approved dustbin of history: 

'Our aim is not incremental sanctions, but sanctions that will bite." Thus did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seek to reassure the crowd at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee two weeks ago about the Obama Administration's resolve on Iran. Three days later, this newspaper reported on its front page that "the U.S. has backed away from pursuing a number of tough measures against Iran" in order to win Russian and Chinese support for one more U.N. sanctions resolution.

Hillary would have made a great Hollywood agent.  She doesn't know where the lies stop and the truth begins. 

This fits the pattern we have seen across the 14 months of the Obama Presidency. Mrs. Clinton called a nuclear-armed Iran "unacceptable" no fewer than four times in a single paragraph in her AIPAC speech. But why should the Iranians believe her? President Obama set a number of deadlines last year for a negotiated settlement of Iran's nuclear file, all of which Tehran ignored, and then Mr. Obama ignored them too.

And...

The Iranians have good reason to think they have little to lose from continued defiance. Tehran's nuclear negotiator emerged from two days of talks in Beijing on Friday saying, "We agreed, sanctions as a tool have already lost their effectiveness." He has a point.

And now the truth.  Drumroll please.  Faster:

All of these actions suggest to us that Mr. Obama has concluded that a nuclear Iran is inevitable, even if he can't or won't admit it publicly. Last year Mrs. Clinton floated the idea of expanding the U.S. nuclear umbrella to the entire Middle East if Iran does get the bomb. She quickly backtracked, but many viewed that as an Obama-ian slip.

The only question is, which ally will Obama blame when Iran gets the bomb?  Israel?  The new Iraq?  Maybe he could find something about Italy.  He will not blame himself.  Never has.  Heavenly creatures do not blame themselves.

And what will be the consequences of this major foreign-policy failure?  The Jo

The Journal points out that, even foreign-affairs hands who accept the inevitability of a nuclear Iran, concede the meaning:

...even they acknowledge that a nuclear Iran "would be seen as a major diplomatic defeat for the United States," in which "friends would respond by distancing themselves from Washington [and] foes would challenge U.S. policies more aggressively." And that's the optimistic scenario. 

Finally...

President George W. Bush will share responsibility for a nuclear Iran given his own failure to act more firmly against the Islamic Republic or to allow Israel to do so, thereby failing to make good on his pledge not to allow the world's most dangerous regimes to get the world's most dangerous weapons. But it is now Mr. Obama's watch, and for a year he has behaved like a President who would rather live with a nuclear Iran than do what it takes to stop it.

COMMENT:  The Journal is right about Bush.  During his second term he allowed his foreign policy to be taken over by Condi Rice and other members of his father's crowd.  The result was decline, drift and indecisiveness. 

The Obama administration is even worse.  I think Bush was sincere about wanting to stop a nuclear Iran, even though his vision was frustrated by his own appointees.  I don't get the sense that the Obama administration is sincere at all.  I don't think the president cares all that much.  I suspect his reasoning is that we can't morally prevent a "third-world" country from having the bomb, when we have so many.  That passes for strategy in some circles.

April 5, 2010