Last week IPS Washington Bureau Chief Jim Lobe discussed how Barak Obama and Mitt Romney might differ with respect to Iran based on Obama’s record and Romney’s campaign thus far.

Q: How might the approach to Iran differ depending on who does end up in power at the end of the [...]]]> via Lobe Log

Last week IPS Washington Bureau Chief Jim Lobe discussed how Barak Obama and Mitt Romney might differ with respect to Iran based on Obama’s record and Romney’s campaign thus far.

Q: How might the approach to Iran differ depending on who does end up in power at the end of the day?

Jim Lobe: I think that’s very difficult to predict. On the one hand the Obama team is quite determined to avoid any military action if at all possible and indeed we have what are described as “leaks” out of the White House this weekend covered by the New York Times indicating that Obama is for one-on-one talks with Iran. Although the White House denied that report, there seems to be a lot of buzz around it. So presumably something is going on and it seems also the Europeans are encouraging such an approach at this point and it’s something that Obama himself had promised when he ran for president 4 years ago — that he wanted to engage the Iranians directly.

Romney, on the other hand, is unlikely to do so. In fact, his campaign has strongly denounced these leaks, as has, for example, the Wall Street Journal, which is a strong supporter of Romney. As to what Romney would actually do, again, I think it’s very difficult to predict. He has a range of advisers from kind of traditional realists like Robert Zoellick, who is a former president of the World Bank, to a group of thinkers who are described best as neoconservatives, who are extremely hawkish on Iran and whose views are very close to those of Bibi Netanyahu, who would like nothing better than to somehow get the United States to attack Iran or Iran’c nuclear facilities at the very least.

Politically the administration has to care a lot [about what happens in Afghanistan] because since he came into office Obama [...]]]> IPS News’s Washington Bureau Chief Jim Lobe discusses the Obama administration’s Afghanistan strategy and its effects ahead of the U.S. 2012 presidential campaign and the expected withdrawal of U.S.-led combat forces by 2014. Notes Jim:

Politically the administration has to care a lot [about what happens in Afghanistan] because since he came into office Obama has tried to depict the Afghanistan war as the “good war” as opposed to the not so good war in Iraq and he’s invested quite a lot in what might be called success but it doesn’t appear to be turning out that way. He’s sent over 60,000 additional troops during his term to Afghanistan and if things go south too quickly, it will be highly embarrassing to him and it will be a major point of weakness during his election campaign that Republicans are sure to exploit.