http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/022710.html

Everyone throughout the F/P community is aware of the issue of rapprochement or normalizing relations with Iran. There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of such an event occurring in secret like Nixon’s overture to China. The “tough guy” credibility act helped to sell his ‘fait accompli’ to right wingers and defense hawks after the fact. Brawny rhetoric or posturing had nothing to do in accomplishing it. Had Nixon tried to sell rapprochement in the public square where Obama is forced to pursue it, its arguable the US/China visit would ever have happened.

The big difference is Israel.

There is massive opposition to rapprochement with Iran from the powerful Israel lobby and the Zionist sympathisers and this makes Obama’s task much harder than Nixon’s.

Nixon did not have this problem when he dealt with China.

“the US is the only country that has ever actually used nuclear weapons, so why should it feel responsible to stop other states from obtaining such weapons? why does it feel that it can tell others what to do? they dont have any legitimacy.”

It’s called “pulling up the gangplank behind you.” The gangplank pullers don’t necessarily have any greater legitimacy — they’re just on the uphill end of the gangplank.

“Already, at the outset of the negotiating process, Iran’s credibility was undermined by the convoluted manner in which Tehran complicated a promising compromise for a cooperative Iranian-Russian-French arrangement for processing its enriched uranium.”

I gather that “convoluted” and “complicated” meant Iran’s insistence on something other than handing over all of its low-enriched uranium in exchange for a promise that someday it might get back some 20%-enriched uranium – unless, of course, the US had happened to think of some other strings to attach in the meantime. If one believes, as I do, that it was just this side of sheer lunacy for Iran’s representatives even to suggest that Iran’s government might actually approve this fuel-for-promise exchange, then what Brzezinski describes as “convoluted” might better be characterized as “imaginative” good faith.

Any thoughts on this?

“The big difference between Nixon/China and a rapprochement with Iran is the former was a secret undertaking, while any deal with Iran will be accomplished in the light of day.”

A deal with Iran (unlikely as it is) could just as easily be secret until announced. The bigger difference, I think, is that Nixon had tough-guy anti-China credibility. He was not perceived as some watercress-and-parsley eater who would give away the store just so that every one around the world would like him more, which is exactly how Obama would be portrayed if he struck any deal with Iran that’s even remotely close to what Iran predictably would accept.

Short of exhibiting courage, the best political approach for Obama seems to be the one he’s taking. Press for sanctions, and then finger-wag at Russia and China when those don’t get implemented or are too watered-down to have any effect. Timidity cast as toughness. And if Obama is not up to the task of demonizing Russia and China when the need arises, he probably doesn’t deserve to be the leader of the free world in the first place.

By the way, did anyone else come away with the same impression of Brzezinski’s “Audacity and Hope” piece to which someone helpfully posted a link yesterday: that Brzezinski still seemed to be giving Obama credit based entirely on “conceptualizing” rather than actual steps taken? Brzezinski mentioned that he wrote this several months ago (sounds like late November, early December), which may explain his patient optimism, or he may simply feel that the best way to get Obama off the dime is to ignore what has (not) happened and just express a mixture of praise for Obama’s conceptual audacity and hope that he’ll someday act on those audacious concepts.

Ummm, Hillary, isn’t that exactly what YOU have been doing for the past three weeks?