The Virginian-Pilot reports that former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates restated his opposition to military strikes against Iran last night. The Republican made the comments to an audience of nearly 2,000 in Chrysler Hall as a speaker for the Norfolk Forum:
Neither the United States nor Israel is capable of [...]]]>
The Virginian-Pilot reports that former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates restated his opposition to military strikes against Iran last night. The Republican made the comments to an audience of nearly 2,000 in Chrysler Hall as a speaker for the Norfolk Forum:
Neither the United States nor Israel is capable of wiping out Iran’s nuclear capability, he said, and “such an attack would make a nuclear-armed Iran inevitable. They would just bury the program deeper and make it more covert.”
….”The results of an American or Israeli military strike on Iran could, in my view, prove catastrophic, haunting us for generations in that part of the world.”
….United Nations sanctions aimed at discouraging Iran’s nuclear ambitions are starting to have an impact on the Iranian economy, he said, and “that’s our best chance going forward, to ratchet up the economic pressure and diplomatic isolation to the point where the Iranian leadership concludes that it actually hurts Iranian security and, above all, the security of the regime itself, to continue to pursue nuclear weapons.”
Gates also said the US Government should indicate that Israeli leaders “do not have a blank check to take action that could do grave harm to American vital interests.” Though Gates describes the Islamic Republic as “one of the greatest risks to Middle East stability and global security in our history,” he has repeatedly argued against preemptive war and strongly criticized Netanyahu’s behavior towards President Obama in a private policy forum.
]]>]]>First, the winner of November’s election should do what every president since Jimmy Carter has failed to do — create a direct channel between Washington and Tehran and begin an extended one-on-one negotiation with all issues on the table. The United States should aim for the sustained and substantive talks it has not had in the three decades since American diplomats were taken hostage in Tehran. Once elected, either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney could ask his secretary of state to lead talks with Iran or choose a distinguished former cabinet official such as James A. Baker, one of America’s most accomplished negotiators. We should exhaust diplomacy before we consider war. To attack a country before we have had our first meaningful discussions since 1979 would be shortsighted, to say the least.
Second, the United States must for the first time put far-reaching proposals on the table if diplomacy and negotiations are to succeed. Obama has rightly followed essentially the same policy on Iran as George W. Bush. Both offered to negotiate but also placed increasingly tough sanctions on Iran and threatened force if necessary. But the negotiating channel we have tried for six years now — a multilateral forum with the United States as one of six countries under European Union leadership — has produced no results and tied the hands of American negotiators. A new US-Iran channel would reinforce those talks. To be successful, however, the United States must be ready to compromise by offering imaginative proposals that would permit Iran civil nuclear power but deny it a nuclear weapon.
Third, the United States needs to take the reins of this crisis from Israel to give us more independence and protect Israel’s core interests at the same time. Israel’s concern that an Iranian nuclear weapon would pose an unacceptable risk is completely understandable. We should reaffirm our determination to protect Israel’s security. But the United States, not Israel, must lead on Iran during the next year. It is not in America’s interest to remain hostage to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s increasingly swift timetable for action. We need the freedom to explore negotiations with Iran on our own slower timeline before we consider force.