Joel Gehrke
The Washington Examiner
9/6/2013
Iran is enduring economic sanctions designed to slow the country’s nuclear weapons program, but President Obama’s team thought the regime might abandon dictator Bashar Assad over his use of chemical weapons in Syria’s civil war.
Samantha Power, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, hoped that a team of UN investigators — many of whom, presumably, have a longstanding relationship with Iranian leaders — could write a report that would convince Iran to abandon its ally at the behest of the United States.
“We worked with the UN to create a group of inspectors and then worked for more than six months to get them access to the country on the logic that perhaps the presence of an investigative team in the country might deter future attacks,” Power said at the Center for American Progress as she made the case for intervening in Syria…
The article continues at The Washington Examiner.
Related: At HotAir.com, Moronic U.S. ambassador: We thought maybe Iran would dump Assad after he used WMD “Samantha Power does understand that Iran has huge sectarian and strategic interests in Syria, right?”
Twitchy: Smart power? Obama’s team thought US might win Iran’s support against Syria
…Surprising absolutely no one except Power and her U.N. team, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei sternly warned the U.S. against launching an attack. “The Americans try to play with words and pretend that they’ve become involved in this case for humanitarian aims,” he said. “The Americans are making mistakes in Syria and they have felt the impact and will certainly suffer loss.”
Maybe Power’s speech was some sort of attempt at reverse psychology…
These are the people Ambassador Power and the rest of our Ivy League brainiacs thought they were dealing with:
Iran threatens brutal attacks on Americans, Obama family if US hits Syria
…in an unprecedented statement, a former Iranian official has warned of mass abductions and brutal killings of American citizens around the world and the rape and killing of one of Obama’s daughters should the United States attack Syria…
…“Hopefully Obama will be pigheaded enough to attack Syria, and then we will see the … loss of U.S. interests [through terrorist attacks],” he threatened. “In just 21 hours [after the attack on Syria], a family member of every U.S. minister [department secretary], U.S. ambassadors, U.S. military commanders around the world will be abducted. And then 18 hours later, videos of their amputation will be spread [around the world].”…
…Forghani warned, “We should remind Obama that if you are a bastard, there are other bastards all around the world who can assault Sasha.” The statement is written in both English and Farsi, but in the Farsi version, Forghani clearly stated that Sasha will be raped by someone who has been able to get close to the Obama family…
Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was unavailable for comment.
Update: A reminder of this old 2006 story: Iraq’s WMD Secreted in Syria, Sada Says
The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein’s air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed…
Update 2: Tom Maguire, “Samantha Power agrees she is naive.”
…The timing of her conversion is unclear – was it naive to think Russia might change its policies six months ago, or does she think the naivete only became obvious with recent developments?
It must be tough being that brilliant.
The comments are enlightening, too: Does the United States have a ‘responsibility to protect’ the Syrian people?
…The “responsibility to protect” — known in international-relations circles as R2P — is a straightforward, if often misunderstood, notion: Nations must protect their citizens from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, and must take action to help other nations whose governments can’t or won’t protect their peoples…
…Although the U.S. government has endorsed R2P — most recently in the president’s 2010 National Security Strategy — U.S. officials appear unenthusiastic about invoking it as a rationale for combating mass murder and atrocities. While the Syrian conflict has grown in scale and intensity, Obama and his aides have not used “responsibility to protect” to rally the international community to help civilians…
Updated
