America’s most bitter adversaries

Source: The Augusta Chronicle, Editorial

He certainly has shown himself more as a sheep among wolves. First there was the Russian “reset,” then the

Cuban détente. Now – coming soon to a foreign-policy playhouse near you – the Iranian appeasement.

President Obama indicated his intent to mollify the nuclear-bomb-building rogue state, during a recent NPR interview. He expressed hope the terrorist-supporting nation will play by the rules and become a “very successful regional power.”

Obama even said he would not rule out re-opening the U.S. embassy in Tehran – the same embassy overrun more than 30 years ago by the Islamist radicals who now rule the country with an iron fist.

These are the people Obama expects to abide by modern international laws?

“They have a path to break through that isolation and they should seize it,” he told NPR host Steve Inskeep. “Because if they do, there’s incredible talent and resources and sophistication ... inside of Iran, and it would be a very successful regional power that was also abiding by international norms and international rules, and that would be good for everybody. That would be good for the United States, that would be good for the region, and most of all, it would be good for the Iranian people.”

It’s more of what we’ve come to expect from our conciliator-in-chief: bending over backward to accommodate and placate those who hate America.

Does becoming a “regional power” mean Iran will continue destabilizing the Middle East through terrorist groups such as Hezbollah? Can it continue assisting a brutal civil war in Syria that has claimed more than 200,000 lives and turned half the country into refugees?

Of course, Obama’s peace-in-our-times fantasy hinges on the delusion that Iran will stop building an atomic bomb – a project it masquerades as a nuclear power program.

Stopping appears unlikely. Iran has been intent on building weapons of mass destruction for years. Iran’s Russian-built nuclear power reactor comes with ready-made fuel, so there appears to be no reason for the country to operate 10,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges other than to create weapons-grade material.

Iran will have the bomb. It’s just a matter of when.

Obama gives no outward indication he considers Iran a rogue nation. It’s as though he equates the country’s technological prowess with diplomatic sophistication. And it appears he actually believes Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is the “moderate” that some Western media have made him out to be.

Make no mistake, Rouhani would not have risen through the Islamic republic’s ranks unless he was a fervid supporter of its fundamentalist ideology, including the notion that Western ideals are evil and that Israel must be destroyed.

Rouhani is, after all, the same man who endorsed Palestinian suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, and said the 9/11 attacks were brought on by America’s foreign policy “wrongs and mistakes.” Some moderate.

Further legitimizing Iran’s fundamentalist regime – let alone allowing them to become a “regional power” – would retard any hope of reform and further imperil stability throughout the Middle East.

The extremists running Iran are not our friends, and they don’t want to be our friends. What makes Obama think he can change that through a policy of appeasement?