Obama on Iran

President Obama is trying very hard to promote diplomacy as our primary, if not only, foreign policy. He is stretching out a hand to Iran, as well as North Korea and Russia. Attempts at diplomacy with Iran, if done correctly, can have no worse outcome than having no communication with them, as was the policy under the Bush administration. But the way in which President Obama is going about it is naïve and misguided. Iranian leaders do not expect to be dealt with diplomatically, they are an extremist group and they know it. Obama’s vow to pursuing diplomacy solely, at all costs, is being met with surprise and amusement by the Iranian government. They have no interest in diplomacy, because that would entail them making some concessions, which they have no plan of doing. This is the Obama administration’s way of dealing with all hostile countries. Though I think that attempts at diplomacy should be taken, as it would make us more favorable to both the countries we are dealing with and European countries, it can have no worse diplomacy at all costs is the wrong way to approach it. The leaders of these countries strong men, when they see the way in which Obama is going about his attempts at diplomacy they see one thing, weakness. Obama needs to take a harder stand with them, as force is the only thing they understand. He needs to tell them that we are the strongest and greatest country in the world, we want to sit down and talk with them, but there will be consequences for their actions, and that we are in no way afraid of them. President Obama is taking the greatest diplomacy incentive, the power of America, and throwing it away through limp-wristed attempts at appeasement. Though this might make the European countries happy, it is not an effective way to deal with these countries. I was talking to my Russian friend yesterday about this issue and his analysis of it was as follows, “Obama is *weak*, Putin is strong; Putin will crush Obama.” I think this pretty much sums up how these hostile nations view our new presidents attempts at diplomacy.

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