In between President Obama’s address to the United Nations Tuesday morning and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s speech later that day, we noticed a New Yorker profile of a prominent Iranian operative fighting for Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. We were struck by a section about the impact of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq on Tehran:
“They were scared s - - tless,” a former CIA officer in Baghdad told the magazine. He went on to say that the military intervention in Iraq gave America “an enormous upper hand” with Iran. In response, Iran slowed its “plans to develop a nuclear weapon . . . lest it invite a Western attack.”
These words provide good context for Obama’s claim at the UN that “without a credible military threat, the Security Council had demonstrated no inclination to act.” That’s right, but what the president ought to have said is this: When bad guys believe they can act without fear of American force, the world become more dangerous.
That’s because the most credible threats today come from terrorists and rogue regimes. That’s true whether it’s the Syrian army turning nerve gas on women and children, an al Qaeda affiliate killing four of our diplomats in Benghazi, another bringing death to a shopping mall in Kenya or Iran supporting its Quds forces abroad while pursuing nuclear weapons at home.
Before the General Assembly, President Obama said diplomacy can prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. For his part, President Rouhani said he believes that if America can refrain from “warmongering,” then “we can arrive at a framework to manage our differences.”
Somehow we liked it better when the Iranians were eager to talk because they feared they would be next to be attacked. That’s why we worry about the president’s credibility now that a strike on Syria has been all but taken off the table. If Obama thought it was hard to get the Security Council to do anything without a credible military threat, what makes him think Tehran will be any more accommodating after seeing him back down on his own red line?