John Edwards Gets Hawkish on Iran? Posted by Shadi Hamid

There is a question mark there because I'm a bit confused. Last week, Edwards said: ""Let me be clear: Under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons...to ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep all options on the table, Let me reiterate – all options must remain on the table." Whatever the merits of this position, it doesn't seem to gel too well with his efforts to be the "anti-war" candidate in the Democratic primaries. I tried to look online for more Edwards statements on Iran, but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot. I did find this, however, from a Post article during the 2004 elections:

A John F. Kerry administration would propose to Iran that the Islamic state be allowed to keep its nuclear power plants in exchange for giving up the right to retain the nuclear fuel that could be used for bomb-making, Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards said in an interview yesterday.

Edwards's notion of proposing such a bargain with Iran, combined with Kerry's statement in December that he was prepared to explore "areas of mutual interest" with Iran, suggests that Kerry would take a sharply different approach with Iran than has President Bush.

With that said, it is tough sometimes to interpret Iran quotes, as we found out yesterday. Let's say, for example, if someone says: "any type of military action against Iran should be an absolute last resort and every effort should be made to avoid confrontation," or "we have no intention of attacking Iran" and then they say something like "all options should be left on the table," then those two statements, while different in tone, are not necessarily contradictory. The argument could be made that its possible to believe both things simultaneously.

Comments

[Don Bacon]

The official Edwards for President website contains NO rundown of issues as is usual on political sites. He does have a photogenic family though. That's important.

Clinton, Edwards, Obama, Pelosi and Reid ("only with a congressional resolution")--they're all on board the whack-Iran bandwagon, which gives Bush strength. These people may differ on Iraq, but they've all drunk the Iran Koolaid. Given the current government/media propaganda campaign full of untruths and innuendos a congressional resolution would pass easily "to protect the troops"--the new credo of the American Empire.

Unfortunately Iran is not Iraq--they can whack back and the big ships of the US navy in the confines of the Persian Gulf make big fat targets for Iranian cruise missiles and torpedoes. Remember Hezbollah's crippling of an Israeli warship in the Med and multiply it by ten. Or twenty. I hope the new Middle East master strategist Admiral Fallon understands this.

[jayinbmore]

Allow me to say that I am not an Edwards supporter. But be that as it may, I don't think Edwards is trying to be the general "anti-war" candidate, and I don't think such categorizations are at all useful anyway. Edwards, like a lot of people, is anti the current mess in Iraq.

[DJG]

I want a candidate who is for getting the US out of the Middle East as much as possible.

I want a candidate who will say "Stop the needless US deaths. Bring the soldiers home. Let's try something else, because this war-in-the-Middle-East is an expensive fiasco. It's not working, and it's not helping. We don't need to send more young people to die, blown up by roadside bombs planted by people who do not want them there or who want to make a horrendous statement using the dead bodies of young Americans. We do not have the support for any more soldiers--we do not even have adequate equipment for those weary soldiers we have. Bring them home!"

If Edwards (or Clinton or any other candidate) is going to support an attack on Iran, then they have lost my support. It's the Iraq boondoggle all over again-- except the Iran leader does not begin to compare to Saddam on the heinous-dictator front.

The Dem politicians need to stop getting hoodwinked by the Bush propoganda machine. This is not a bandwagon, it's a deathtrap.

At this point, admittedly, if Bush wants something, I figure it's probably a bad plan. His credibility is completely shot.

We spent, what?, 20 years with Russian nukes aimed at us; we had no sense that the Russians were reasonable folk. This is now a world-shaking threat? At this point, most semi-developed countries in the world have some sort of WMD. But who does Bush want us to go after? Only those with oil. So drum up some more inflated facts, hit us with more scaredy-cat rhetoric, let's sink more non-existent resources into yet another unimaginable mess.

Individual terrorists may/are capable of suicide. I doubt that Iran is going to go there, any more than Russia did, or China has. Negotiation is the answer. They already know we have a big stick.