How’s that Rouhani working out for U.S.?
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani’s record torpedoes the hopes placed in him.
It is nearly a year since Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani spoke before the United Nations General Assembly.
Later this week he is scheduled to speak again before the General Assembly, but the enthusiasm expressed last year is nowhere to be seen.
In the run up to his speech there was much excitement among the chattering classes. Take, for example, a couple of paragraphs from an editorial in The New York Times from September 22, 2013, a year ago today:
The next few weeks will be critical for capitalizing on a new sense of promise created by a recent flurry of remarkable gestures: Iran’s leadership has sent Rosh Hashana greetings to Jews worldwide via Twitter, released political prisoners, exchanged letters through the Swiss with President Obama, praised “flexibility” in negotiations and transferred responsibility for nuclear negotiations from conservatives in the military to the Foreign Ministry. Mr. Obama eased restraints on humanitarian and good-will activities, including athletic exchanges between the two countries. …
Mr. Rouhani has a sophisticated, Western-savvy team. His foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, received degrees from American universities and spent most of his adult life in the United States. Together they have raised expectations in a world eager to see Iran play a more constructive role, and the charm offensive is in full swing. Policy experts, journalists and business people are jockeying to attend a number of invitation-only breakfasts, dinners and meetings scheduled by Mr. Rouhani and Mr. Zarif while they are in New York. There’s a lot riding on their visit this week.
But the “remarkable gestures” that The New York Times cited were remarkable hollow.
Sure Rouhani wished Jews of the world a happy new year last year, but he also expressed his support of Hamas to defeat “the Zionist regime,” and apparently re-established ties with Hamas.
Yes Rouhani praised “flexibility” in nuclear negotiations but only demanded flexibility from the West. Now the International Atomic Energy Agency reports that Iran hasn’t come clean about the scope of its nuclear program. (Not that Iran’s record gave any hope that it would play by the rules.)
The released political prisoners were a sham; often harassed or re-arrested when they were no longer in the public eye. Irwin Cotler recently outlined how human rights have actually gotten worse under Rouhani.
It would be nice if, having bet on change, the editors of The New York Times would acknowledge that they judged Iran incorrectly.
The most generous interpretation is that Rouhani was simply window dressing; a kinder, gentler face on the real leader of the regime Ayatollah Khamenei. The more likely explanation is that Rouhani is every bit as extreme as the regime (he boasted of expanding Iran’s enrichment capability when everyone claimed that he compromised in 2003) but is slightly more pragmatic in his willingness to deal with the West.
Instead of acknowledging that no real change has taken place in Iran, most of those who made the mistake are relatively silent. They know that the evidence proves them wrong, but they would prefer to ignore the evidence than to own up to their cheer-leading of one of the most disastrous foreign policy debacles of our time.
[Photo: Kremlin.ru / WikiCommons ]
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Comments
The Left’s entire foreign policy consists of wishful thinking – thus every new Iranian leader is instantly praised as a “moderate” and/or “reformer,” although there have been no meaningful reforms or moderation in the long string of leaders dating from the establishment of the “Islamic Republic.”
Probably the closest thing to a moderate was Bani-Sadr, who was hired and fired by Khomeini during the hostage crisis – and later executed, as have several former Presidents.
For Obama, this delusion has offered the extra bonus of a cover for his taking a pass on stopping the Iranian nuke program.
So the MSM, which fawned over Rouhani’s “promises” of moderation, is now, shall we say “reluctant” to admit they were taken in? Wow!
ADMINS: ny last post, above, included a smilie and a second sentence. These showed perfectly in the Preview, but were gone in the submission. WTF??
Walker – unsure. My best guess is that the smiley came across as a control character and wiped out the rest of the text. I checked in WordPress to see if it came through, but it didn’t show up there either.
Thanks!
A muslim lied? I’m shocked, SHOCKED! I tell you.
“It would be nice if, having bet on change, the editors of The New York Times would acknowledge that they judged Iran incorrectly.”
But do you really expect that? From those guys? Remember– if ever they were wrong than it was somebody else’s fault.
Besides, if the NYT began to acknowledge their errors then everyday would be a Sunday-sized edition.
“They know that the evidence proves them wrong, but they would prefer to ignore the evidence than to own up to their cheer-leading of one of the most disastrous foreign policy debacles of our time.”
Hmm. Kinda describes the Obama Admin. in general, doesn’t it?
But isn’t the Left the annointed ones who base their politics on empirical evidence and the real world? I guess sometimes you have to ignore the real world to “control” it.