Iran, Foreign and National Security

Iran, Foreign Policy and National Security
By Ryan Riell

What is it going to take for the Obama administration to deal with Iran in the appropriate fashion? He is the first President in the last 29 years that has reached out to the Iranian regime since they took 53 Americans hostage in 1979, offering them an “open hand.” He set a self-imposed deadline of December 31st, 2009 for Iran to comply with his mild demands over developing nuclear weapons. President Obama’s “open hand” and “different path” has not worked and in reality, emboldened the Iranian regime.

Now, in the streets of Iran, there is graffiti asking President Obama whose side is he on… the population that is protesting the tyrannical, murderous, terrorist supporting regime or the aforementioned regime? Let me make this clear- there is civil unrest in the streets of Tehran and they are demanding a regime change. Why are we not supporting them more strongly?

Iran is a threat to the stability of the ENTIRE WORLD. There are new reports out that Iran will have an active nuclear weapon by 2011, which will be in the hands of the lunatics Ali Khamenei (the “Supreme Leader”) who is really in charge of Iran and their puppet president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iran has made it perfectly clear- if they are able to come into possession of a nuclear weapon, they will use it to attack Israel, which has an incredibly high potential of kicking off a world war.

It will be interesting to see what the Obama administration will do now that Iran has already verbally blown off their deadline and in less than 36 hours, will have actually ignored it. President Obama’s apology tour throughout Europe and Asia seems to have garnered little support when it comes to fighting a war on terror. How will it work when he has to go the United Nations and ask for sanctions? Russia and China have blocked sanctions at each step… how is he going to change their minds?

I put forth that he will NOT be able to change their minds, so then what? Does he have the intestinal fortitude to move forward without the UN’s full support? At some point, he will figure out that he won’t be able to make the entire world love us, but it is possible to make the proper people in the world fear us.

It’s time to get serious with Iran, is President Obama up for the challenge? The history of Democratic presidents, dating back to 1977 has been VERY WEAK on National security. I understand that President Obama has only been on the job for close to one year and that he has for more community organizing experience than he does real leadership experience. When it comes to National security and foreign policy, there is a steep learning curve, hopefully, President Obama will surround himself with some intelligent and strong advisors that can help him complete his homework before more Iran develops a nuclear weapon.