The final nail in the coffin of President Obama’s Iran policy is being driven in this week in Tehran, where the usual cast of Ayatollah-friendly kooks are being joined by prominent Sunni Arab leaders, a few Westerners and a United Nations chief.
Officials representing 120 governments — a majority of the world’s countries — started arriving at the mullahs’ capital yesterday for a summit of the NonAligned Movement, which Iran presides over until 2015.
The week-long meet-and-greet, which will feature a heavy dose of the familiar anti-Yankee, anti-Western and anti-Semitic ranting, seems to suggest a worrisome shift in global power — and not in our direction.
Move over America: New powers are stepping in to assume a leadership role they believe Washington has abandoned, and they’re attracting a following.
The newcomer with the biggest stick? Iran. It’s moving into a role of regional dominance — just as its clerical leadership has long promised. And with an alarming international endorsement.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. For nearly four years, America’s strategy to stop Iran’s nuclear dash was based on a “dual track” approach: increasingly painful sanctions on the one hand, diplomatic overtures on the other.
Feeling the pain of economic and diplomaticisolation , went the logic, the “reasonable” mullahs would soon give up their quest for nuclear weapons.
Yet, among the 120 state representatives flooding Tehran this week, there will be 50 heads of state or government. So much for diplomatic isolation.
Yes, the group includes the usual suspects: Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, North Korea’s speaker of the people’s assembly Kim Yong Nam. Oh, and Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir. (After the International Criminal Court slapped the Darfur butcher with war-crime charges, member countries were asked to arrest him. This week he’ll walk Tehran’s red carpet, no handcuffs.)
But supposedly more tolerable, if not more respectable, folk will also be guests of the mullahs: Mohamad Morsi, the Islamist president of Sunni Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country; President Hamid Karzai of our protectorate, Afghanistan; US-dependent Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas; Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh; Australian UN ambassador Gary Quinlan.
And UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will add the necessary diplo-glitz to the festivities.
OK, it was swell of Ban to condemn Iranian leaders last week for spewing anti-Semitic rhetoric and describing how they intend to wipe Israel off the map. But cancel the Tehran trip? Nah. Ban’s rumored to harbor ambitions for future leadership of South Korea — a country so dependent on Iranian oil that Obama waived its obligations under a “worldwide” oil embargo.
With so many dignitaries pouring in, it’s no wonder the Iranian press has gone gaga over this week’s events.
Here’s how Iran’s ambassador to Switzerland, Ali-Reza Salari, summed up the mood in an interview with IRNA, the state-owned news wire: “NAM’s support for Iran’s nuclear rights in the face of the UN Security Council resolutions shows the real attitude of the global community.”
To believe headlines in the Iranian press, the word “isolation” better describes what America, Israel and the wimpy European powers that support them face than anything imposed on the mighty, world-leading Islamic Republic.
Normally, this can be dismissed as standard Tehran bravado. This time, the headlines have a point.
Why did Obama’s attempt to turn Iran into a pariah fail? Maybe the world was taking notes as America, under Obama, dilly-dallied in Syria; led from behind in Libya; yoyo’ed on the Arab Spring; scurried from Iraq, leaving it to the mullahs’ mercy, and announced it would quit Afghanistan the same way.
When the chance came for a regime change in Tehran in 2009, Washington was asleep. And now the White House sounds more concerned about an Israeli attack on Iran’s facilities than about the centrifuges spinning inside them.
So Iran’s up, America’s down, right? Well, maybe not yet. Despite our recent glorification of lame-lipped diplomacy, our deference to the “international community” — and our persistent economic malaise aside — America remains theindispensableworld leader.
Moreover, Tehran’s mullahs are still hated by a vast majority of Arabs and Sunnis, and even most Iranians can’t wait to get rid of them.
But given our trajectory, how long can US supremacy last? What is it that the countries in Tehran this week are betting on?
Surely, America’s current path won’t convince anyone that we’re serious about taming Iran. Even beyond that, the fact remains: Unless we project a more muscular tone, the image of America as an isolated former power may soon become reality.