Long before his inauguration, Barack Obama lucidly explained how he would deal with Iran. During the campaign he said he would "engage" its leaders by offering talks without preconditions—without even asking them to stop chanting "death to America" when concluding their speeches.
His premise was that President George W. Bush's policy had been incoherent and unsuccessful in stopping Tehran's drive to acquire nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Both charges are true. It was certainly illogical of Mr. Bush to denounce the Iranian regime as part of the "axis of evil" and then to seek its support in Afghanistan when forming the first, provisional Karzai government, and then again in Iraq to calm down the truculent preacher Moqtada al-Sadr and his violent Mahdi militia.
Read Full Article »