On Iran’s Nuclear Program, “Regime Change” and Force
Biden is, like every American politician, opposed to Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. But he’s also opposed to making Iran or “regime change” there the focus of American policy in the Middle East. He would not take the use-of-force option off the table, “But we have time: Iran is years away from having a bomb and a missile to deliver it. We need to use the time wisely,” he said in 2007.The Bush administration, he said, “spent five years obsessed with the idea of getting rid of the Iranian regime. None of us like[s] the regime, but think about the logic: We want you to renounce the bomb—and by the way, when you do we're still going to try to take you down. The result: Iran accelerated its efforts to get the bomb and it is much closer now than it was when President Bush took office. We need a policy that isolates Iran, not America and tips the balance in Iran against pursuing nuclear weapons. That means keeping our allies, Russia and China on the same page as we ratchet up economic and diplomatic pressure on the government to stop pursuing nuclear weapons. At the same time, there are growing fissures within the ruling elite - we need to exploit them.[…]”
“Force must be the last option because it's a bad option. First, with our forces bogged down in Iraq, our threat to use force doesn't look very credible. Second, we can set back Iran's program but not stop it. Using force would lead to retaliation by Iran, including against our troops in Iraq. It would cause the Iranian people to rally behind Ahmadinejad and the extremists. Third, even a 'limited' strike would be perceived as something much bigger by the Iranians and could spark a real war. The only thing worse than a poorly planned intentional war is an unplanned unintentional war.”
On Israel and Palestine
To end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Biden supports convening an international conference styled after the Madrid conference of 1993, with a two-state solution as the goal.
“A new conference would bring together moderate Arab states like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia along with Europeans, Israelis and Palestinians. The goals of the conference should be enunciated clearly: bringing an end to violence and speeding negotiations for a two-state solution,” he wrote in 2002. “Painful compromises will be required on both sides. Palestinians will have to yield on the right of return to Israel, which would destroy the Jewish nature of the state. Israelis will have to understand, as most already do, that a Palestinian state will require dismantling most settlements.
On Pakistan: “A Serious Overhaul”—and $2.5 billion in annual aid
Since 2001, the Bush administration sent more than $12 billion in mostly military aid to Pakistan without achieving its goal—to stop Pakistan from being a haven for the Taliban and al-Qaeda. To address Pakistan’s mounting problems, Biden in July 2008 proposed tripling, to $1.5 billion over 10 years, non-military American aid to Pakistan.
“This aid would be unconditional,” Biden says. “It’s our pledge to the Pakistani people. Instead of funding military hardware, it would build schools, clinics, and roads and help develop the Federally Administered Tribal Area, where extremism is taking deeper root.”
The $1.5 billion in non-security aid would be in addition to the projected $1 billion in annual military aid to Pakistan, although Biden would make military aid conditional on performance: “We should be willing to spend more if we get better returns—and less if we don’t.”
