In a WaPo opinion piece entitled "A tricky two-step in the Middle East, Ignatius concludes:
"In a radically unstable Middle East, it’s worth remembering two positive developments: First, the United States and Iran are talking productively after 36 years of enmity. And second, the United States is engaging honestly and creatively with its often prickly Gulf allies. Good policy would make these two trends converge in a way that, over the next decade, gradually stabilizes the region.
Gulf Arab leaders get offended when they hear Obama say, as he did to Tom Friedman of the New York Times, that 'the biggest threats that they face may not be coming from Iran invading . . . [but from] inside their own countries.' They shouldn’t worry. Such straight talk is part of a real friendship, and a real alliance."
As Obama prepares to legitimize Iran as a nuclear threshold power and to free up some $50 billion as a signing bonus - to be used by Tehran to arm its terrorist proxies - Saudi Arabia and the UAE are seeking "straight talk" from an American president they perceive as a naif?
I don't think so, David.
"...First, the United States and Iran are talking productively after 36 years of enmity. ..."
ReplyDeleteand the Ignatius definition of 'talking productively' is ???
...that there are Americans and Iranians in the same room saying words out loud in a sequence that can be interpreted as being something maybe like a dialogue that leads to fairy dust motes of understanding? ? ?
and then the Iranians go back to their secret Map Room of the Persian Empires where they can ROFL about how no one told P5+1 that imperialism is still a Persian worldview.
Today, #44 clarified that the USS Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Group is now in the Gulf of Aden [paraphrasing]
' just in case American interest in freedom of navigation is threatened'
thereby muting the benefit of such a projection of power in support of the Saudi-led coalition, and maybe the UN
Who is the Jinn in these rooms?
k