[Marxism] NYT: "Iran Urges Obama to Change Approach"

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I just want to point out something about the trend of policy. Bolton now
insists that Iran will inevitably become nuclear-weapons-capable, and the US
cannot insist on preventing this. During the primary campaign against Obama,
Clinton declared that the US could "obliterate" Iran if it used nuclear
weapons against Israel. 

The brutality of the talk of mass murder on this scale struck me, but,
honestly, I was also struck by the assumption that the threat now, for
Clinton (now the future Secretary of State), against Iran was based on the
assumption that Iran had nuclear weapons, not on preventing this at all
costs. At that time, the official policy was virtually that Iran would be
obliterated if it gained even the capacity to create nuclear weapons, which
after years of defying bans of enriching uranium, it must have or be very
close to achieving.

This is not a prediction that war against Iran cannot take place under Obama
or any other future president. How to deal with the challenge that the
Iranian bourgeois national revolution, with all its weaknesses and
vulnerabilities, has posed to Washington is far from settled?

But policy is evolving.
Fred Feldman




New York Times  December 9, 2008
Iran Urges Obama to Change Approach 
By NAZILA FATHI
TEHRAN - Iran said Monday that it would not abandon its nuclear program and
urged President-elect Barack Obama to change America's "carrot-and-stick
policy" toward Iran, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Hassan Ghashghavi, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said that Iran, which has
repeatedly refused to suspend its enrichment of uranium, would not change
its nuclear policy. He added that Iran expected Mr. Obama to stick to his
campaign promise to change the previous administration's policy. 

The comments came a day after the television broadcast of an interview in
which Mr. Obama he said he would continue offering incentives to encourage
Iran to cease enriching uranium but would seek to tighten economic sanctions
on the country if it did not.


Enriched uranium is used as fuel in nuclear power plants; Iran maintains
that energy production is the goal of its nuclear program. But more
intensely enriched uranium can fuel a nuclear bomb; the West fears Iran is
surreptitiously working toward such a weapon. 

"What Mr. Obama said is the same old carrot-and-stick approach," Mr.
Ghashghavi said, speaking at a regular weekly news conference. "He must be
able to change this policy based on his slogan of 'change.' " Mr. Ghashghavi
said that the carrot-and-stick approach was "a failed policy" and that Iran
expected Mr. Obama to change the "confrontational policy to one based on
interaction."

"They have to recognize our legal rights, and we are willing to engage in an
interaction to resolve their concerns," he said. "We need to engage in
progress and development." 

In the interview broadcast Sunday, on the NBC News program "Meet the Press,"
Mr. Obama said: "In terms of carrots, we can provide the economic incentives
that would be helpful to a country that despite being a net oil producer is
under enormous strain, huge inflation, a lot of employment problems." 

Referring to the possibility of tightening economic sanctions, he said, "But
we also have to focus on the sticks." 



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