Obama's Non-Nuclear Options With Iran
Crosswinds: But for the United States, it's not either or. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
In my continuing series exploring Barack Obama's challenges in the Middle East, I now turn to Iran.
Iran is not as serious a challenge to Barack Obama as Aipac and some conservatives in the United States make it out to be. Nor is it as dangerous a threat to Israel’s existence as Israel’s reigning Likudists, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, makes it out to be, especially since anything Iran would lob at Israel would have a return address.
Still, Iran is among Obama's top foreign policy challenges, starting with that one, overriding and loaded question, which says as much about those who ask it than about the implications of its answers: Should Iran Be Allowed to Get the Bomb? And more broadly, how should Obama deal with Iran? Read the full answers.
Obama and the Middle East: The Series So Far:
- Obama's "New Day" Opening to Iran
- Why Pakistan Is Barack Obama's Biggest Middle East Challenge
- How Obama Can Resolve the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict
- Obama on Iraq, Afghanistan/Pakistan and Israel/Palestine
- Obama in Turkey: At the Gates of Islam
- Obama and Israel: Analysis of Barack Obama's AIPAC Speech
Comments
George Washington on Israel
“A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.” ~George Washington Farewell Address
“The nation which indulges toward another habitual hatred or habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interests.” ~ George Washington
“Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.” ~ Thomas Jefferson