The Terrorist Next Door (25 page)

Obama glibly dismissed criticism of his meeting with Chavez, remarking, “It's unlikely that as a consequence of me shaking hands or having a polite conversation with Mr. Chavez that we are endangering the strategic interests of the United States.”
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As we'll see shortly, that assumption is dangerously wrong.

 

• Obama bowed not only to the King of Saudi Arabia, but also broke out a weird, half-bow in April 2010 for Chinese dictator Hu Jintao as they met at a Nuclear Security Summit in Washington.
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I'd also mention Obama's full-on, he-must-have-dropped-a-contact-lens bow to the Emperor of Japan in November 2009, but hey, Japan is only a former enemy, not a current one.
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“C'mon Stakelbeck,” you might say, “Chavez is just a clown. As for Ghaddafi, he's washed up, and it was the Bush administration, not Obama, that normalized relations with him. Oh, and the bows were just signs of inexperience early on. Ahmadinejad is a whole different story. There's not a snowball's chance that Obama would be caught dead in the same room with that Holocaust-denying madman, let alone shake his hand.”

My reply? How soon you forget. As far back as July 2007, during the Democratic primaries, then-Senator Obama declared that, if elected
president, he would indeed meet with Ahmadinejad—without preconditions. He did not back down from that stance when pressed in the ensuing months—convinced, no doubt, that by the sheer force of his own dazzling charisma, he could talk the Iranians out of their genocidal pretentions.
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Eventually it became apparent that Obama was going to win the Democratic nomination, and the mainstream press decided it would no longer be prudent to ask their man difficult questions about pesky distractions like national security. So the president-to-be was no longer pressed about a potential tête-à-tête with Ahmadinejad. Turns out it wasn't necessary. The Obama administration's repeated, cringe-worthy attempts to engage in dialogue with the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism have told us all we need to know.

 

• In March 2009, on the occasion of Iran's annual New Year's celebration known as Nowruz, Obama sent a video greeting called “A New Year, A New Beginning” to the “people and leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
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By referring to Iran as an Islamic Republic, which he did twice during his stunningly naïve, 600-word ode to engagement, Obama sent a clear signal that the United States, under his watch, was fully prepared to co-exist with the current regime. Any threat of regime change, any promotion of Iranian democracy, was now officially off the table. In other words, “Rest easy, mullahs—continue to develop nuclear weapons, sponsor terrorism, menace Israel, jail non-Muslims, and crack the skulls of democratic activists. We will not stand in your way.”

After some years of nervousness during the presidency of George W. Bush, when regime change was an option at least being considered in Washington, the Iranian terror masters viewed Obama's use of the term “Islamic Republic” as a sign they were now safe. America, under the Obama administration, respected the Iranian regime and would accept Ahmadinejad and the mullahs as the legitimate government of Iran. A new beginning, indeed—at least for the United States. Following Obama's deferential video address, Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, publicly rejected The Great Healer's plea for dialogue, declaring he'd seen no evidence of a positive change in U.S. policy toward Iran.
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Undaunted, Obama once again sent Nowruz greetings to the “Islamic Republic of Iran” in March 2010, reminding the regime that his “offer of comprehensive diplomatic contacts and dialogue stands.” And once again, he ended up with egg on his face when his outreach efforts were denounced by Khamenei, who accused the United States of plotting to attack Iran.
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• In June 2009, as mass protests raged in cities across Iran following the fraudulent reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the Iranian presidency, it seemed that the Islamic regime's 30-year reign of terror may be coming to an end. The protests, which became known as the Green Revolution, saw millions of Iranians take to the streets over a period of several weeks in a show of civil unrest the likes of which had not been seen in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Many demanded a recount that would see opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who was widely viewed as the real winner in the tainted election, unseat Ahmadinejad as president.

The mullahs reacted to the protests in typically brutal fashion, sending their plainclothes
Basij
goon squads to beat, arrest, and murder protestors in horrifying scenes that were broadcast throughout the world. The Iranian people were literally dying in the streets for a chance at democracy. This was not the Egyptian uprising of 2011, when the most likely candidate to replace the strongman Hosni Mubarak was a much worse alternative, the Muslim Brotherhood. In the case of Iran,
nothing
could be worse than the mullahs.

As events unfolded and the Iranian regime's atrocities grew worse, I received daily reports from Iranian dissidents and pro-democracy activists in Tehran. At some point during the course of every conversation, my Iranian contacts all asked the same question, in a tone of utter desperation: “Where is Obama?” They were expecting the so-called leader of the free world to make a strong and unequivocal public statement
in support of the protestors and to condemn the Iranian regime for its bloody crackdown. In essence, what they wanted—and fully anticipated—from a sitting American president as they stood up to tyranny was something along the lines of “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” or “Ich bin ein Berliner.” Instead, from President Obama, they got this:

The world's most dangerous regime, an avowed enemy of the United States, was teetering on the brink of collapse—and we didn't want to
meddle
? Mind you, no one was expecting American boots on the ground in Tehran. There are many ways a U.S. administration can back a courageous, fledgling democracy movement, both publicly and behind the scenes: think of Ronald Reagan's support for Lech Walesa's Solidarity movement in Communist Poland during the 1980s. That was the kind of “meddling” that won the Cold War.

A few emphatic statements by Obama in support of the Iranian people early on in the protests, an influx of funds to Iranian pro-democracy leaders on the ground, stepped up activities by U.S. agents inside the country: all of these could have possibly helped tip the scales decisively against the regime—or perhaps they wouldn't have. You can never know in such situations unless you act boldly, like a true leader should, and
give it a try
. What about a joint statement released by Obama along with the leaders of Germany, Great Britain, and France presenting a united front in support of the Iranian people? Something.
Anything
.

On June 18, 2009, some 1 million Iranians took to the streets of Tehran to protest the Islamic regime.
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In a brutally repressive country with one of the most fearsome intelligence apparatuses in the world, it was an earthshattering moment. But we didn't want to meddle, and so a potentially historic opportunity for a free Iran was lost. The Iranian regime eventually restored order, tightened its grip, and returned to its familiar pattern of developing nuclear weapons and threatening Israel and the West.

Compare Obama's deafening silence during the Iranian uprising to his loud praise for the Egyptian revolution in February 2011, in which a staunch opponent of Islamic jihadism, Hosni Mubarak, was forced to resign as Egyptian president. It was universally acknowledged at the time that the group with the most to gain from Mubarak's ouster was the powerful, well-organized Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Yet Obama helped push Mubarak—a longtime U.S. ally, albeit an unsavory one—out the door anyway, setting up a situation where Egypt, the most populous and influential Arab nation, may very well fall into the Brotherhood's radical hands in the not-too-distant future. In short, the Obama administration had no qualms about “meddling” in the affairs of Egypt, bolstering Islamists in the process. But the Obamis just couldn't bring themselves to do the same with an arch-enemy like Iran.

Then-White House spokesman Robert Gibbs added insult to injury shortly after the Iranian protests died down by referring to Ahmadinejad as “the elected leader of Iran.”
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Gibbs later tried to backtrack, but his comment was logical enough in light of his boss's reference to Iran as an “Islamic Republic.” A few years ago, a statue of Ronald Reagan was erected in Warsaw to honor his unyielding support for Poland in its fight against Communism. It's safe to say that when Iran's regime finally does fall, busts of Barack Obama won't be coming to Tehran.

 

• In December 2009, at a security conference in Bahrain, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was snubbed not once, but twice, when she attempted to speak to Iran's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki. Clinton apparently
chased after Motakki both inside and outside a gala dinner held during the conference in a futile attempt to get him to acknowledge her. That's right: an American secretary of state pursued an official from Iran, an illegitimate, terrorist regime, and was rebuffed. Twice. In front of other world leaders and diplomats. Apparently, the “new beginning” in U.S.-Iranian relations envisioned by the Obama administration includes lots of groveling and public embarrassment for U.S. officials. Clinton's Mottaki debacle was later recounted in
Foreign Policy
magazine:

If Clinton's experience was any indicator, an encounter between Obama and Ahmadinejad at the UN may not consist of a handshake, but rather the president of the United States playing a game of pinthe-tail-on-the-tyrant.

• Although Iran is directly assisting in the murder of U.S. troops in Afghanistan (not to mention Iraq), President Obama told a gathering of
journalists in August 2010 that the Iranians “could be a constructive partner” in creating a stable Afghan nation, and as such, should be involved in any regional talks on the matter. He added that the United

States and Iran have a “mutual interest” in fighting the Taliban.
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As noted by Stephen Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn at the
Weekly Standard
, on the very same day that Obama argued for an Iranian role in Afghanistan's future
,
“in the Farah province, which shares a border with Iran, Afghan and Coalition forces killed two Taliban facilitators of foreign fighters—each carrying automatic weapons and large amounts of Iranian money. Colonel Rafael Torres, a Coalition spokesman, noted that ongoing external support for the Taliban ‘only brings instability and peril to the Afghan people.'”
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A hint about which “external” force Colonel Torres was referring to: it starts with an “I” and ends with an “N.” As Hayes and Joscelyn described in their piece, the incident in Farah province provided just a small glimpse of what Iran is up to in Afghanistan—not opposing the Taliban, as Obama suggested, but directly assisting them: