Is Team Clinton Campaigning Against President Obama on Iran Diplomacy?

[marmar]

Is Team Clinton Campaigning Against President Obama on Iran Diplomacy?

Thursday, 28 January 2016 11:27
By Robert Naiman, Truthout | Op-Ed


Watching the fourth Democratic debate in South Carolina on January 17, many people understandably got the impression that Hillary Clinton was campaigning for President Obama's third term. But in the aftermath of the debate, her team attacked Bernie Sanders for supporting President Obama's efforts to engage Iran.

The attack was dishonest. An honest attack would have been: "Look, Hillary Clinton has a difference of opinion with President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry about diplomacy with Iran. Obama and Kerry want to accomplish whatever can be accomplished through engagement with Iran. Yes, enforce the agreement on Iran's nuclear program, but don't stop there. See if we can work with Iran to help defeat ISIS in Iraq. See if we can work with Iran to end the civil war in Syria. See if we can work with Iran to end the war in Yemen. See if we can work with Iran to help end the war in Afghanistan."

Clinton, on the other hand, wants to jack up confrontation with Iran on every possible front. She wants to define the "Iran deal" to be as small as possible, limited exclusively to Iran's nuclear program, so she'll have a free hand to escalate against Iran on other fronts. And her problem with Bernie Sanders on Iran diplomacy is that he supports the Obama-Kerry view, that we should accomplish whatever we can by engaging with Iran, rather than the view that we should try to have as much confrontation with Iran as we can get away with without attacking the Iran deal directly.

That would have been an honest attack.

But such an honest attack, team Clinton might have feared, could provoke pro-diplomacy, antiwar sentiments among Democrats. So instead of the honest attack, team Clinton took the Obama policy, crossed out Obama's name and wrote in "Sanders," and launched the same attack they did on Obama in the 2008 campaign: Obama/Sanders is naïve on dealing with Iran. ..........(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/34604-is-team-clinton-campaigning-against-president-obama-on-iran-diplomacy

[Jefferson23]

1. Yes, she left that window open beginning from the first debate. No fly zone too

in Syria, which invites an incident.

Why is anyone voting for that kind of judgement?

[EndElectoral]

2. She's criticized any diplomacy with Iran openly. This is nothing new. Wants regime change.

[onecaliberal]

3. Yes. She's been doing it for a long time.

[MisterP]

4. can't be! John McCain was the one who sang "bomb Iran": McCain is a Republican:

they are the warmonger party! Clinton is not McCain and the Dems aren't the GOP: therefore they are for Iran