Morning Bell: An Audaciously Bad Missile Deal
Conn Carroll /
Describing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s message in a private meeting with the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates Monday, a U.S. official told the Washington Post: “She said we are under no illusions about Iran and our eyes are wide open.” Well someone in the Obama Administration is under a huge illusion, because the Moscow newspaper Kommersant also reported yesterday that President Barack Obama sent a secret letter to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev weeks ago suggesting that he would halt development of the United States’ missile defense program in Eastern Europe if Russia helped resolve the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program.
Iran has strongly resisted international efforts to pressure it to abide by its legal commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and halt its suspect nuclear activities. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, defiantly proclaimed last year that “Iran has obtained the technology to produce nuclear fuel, and Iran’s move is like a train…which has no brake and no reverse gear.” But we must be careful not to personalize the problem. Iran’s nuclear program began under President Rafsanjani and flourished under President Khatami. Both were considered “moderates,” extolled by some observers as leaders with whom the West could do business, but both also practiced diplomacy by taqiyyah, which is a religiously sanctioned form of dissimulation or duplicity.
Meanwhile, Russia has long been an enabler of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Not only have they provided Iran with uranium, supposedly for peaceful purposes, but they have even supplied Iran with anti-aircraft missiles, presumably to be used to stop Israeli forces from attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities.