On Monday, presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain called Iran the “world’s chief sponsor of terrorism” and advocated a South Africa-style world divestment program and increased sanctions aimed at pressuring Iran to abandon its nuclear program.
Speaking to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel lobby, the Arizona senator said, “It [Iran] remains the world’s chief sponsor of terrorism and threatens to destabilize the entire Middle East, from Basra to Beirut.” He called for the United States to launch a divestment campaign against firms that do business with the Islamic Republic and to impose financial penalties on the Central Bank of Iran. McCain also advocated a U.N. ban on gasoline sales to Iran and a more rigorous effort by worldwide financial institutions to freeze Iranian assets.
“We should privatize the sanctions against Iran by launching a worldwide divestment campaign,” McCain said, comparing such a move to similar efforts that helped bring an end to apartheid in South Africa. “As more people, businesses, pension funds and financial institutions across the world divest from companies doing business with Iran, the radical elite who run that country will become even more unpopular than they are already. Should the Security Council continue to delay in this responsibility, the United States must lead like-minded countries in imposing multilateral sanctions outside the U.N. framework,” he said.
In addition to blasting Iran during his Monday speech, the Arizona senator did not miss the opportunity to criticize the presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, for what McCain believes is a soft approach to Iran. “The idea that [the Iranians] now seek nuclear weapons because we refuse to engage in presidential-level talks is a serious misreading of history,” McCain said, citing unsuccessful efforts by President Bill Clinton’s administration to engage with Iran. “Even so, we hear talk of a meeting with the Iranian leadership offered up as if it were some sudden inspiration, a bold new idea that somehow nobody has ever thought of before.”
But a new Gallup Poll released Monday found that two-thirds of Americans think it’s a “good idea” for a U.S. president to meet leaders of enemy countries, and 59 percent backed talks with the Iranian president. Responding to McCain’s criticism, Obama campaign spokesman Hari Sevugan said, “John McCain promises to continue a war in Iraq that has emboldened Iran and strengthened its hand. He promises sanctions that the Bush administration has been unable to persuade the Security Council to deliver. He promises a divestment campaign, even though he refused to sign on to Barack Obama’s bi-partisan divestment bill, refused to get his colleagues to lift an anonymous hold on the bill, and willfully ignores the fact that trade and investment between Iran and Iraq continue to expand.” Sevugan said the Arizona senator “stubbornly refuses to engage in aggressive diplomacy, ruling it out unconditionally as a tool of American power.”
The Democratic National Committee then circulated a document saying that some of McCain’s own advisers have worked as lobbyists for clients who have done business with Iran.
The debate on whether or not the American president should speak with countries considered enemies began last year when Stephen Sixta, a video producer, submitted a
question for the CNN/YouTube Democratic debate asking, “Would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?” Obama’s affirmative answer garnered much criticism and prompted a reply from Democratic rival Hillary Clinton calling her opponent naïve. Since then, Obama has scrambled to refine his position while his opponents have piled on with criticism that has often mangled what Obama has actually said – although that is nothing new for political campaigns.
In an interview with The New York Times last week, Obama tried to clarify his position. “I didn’t say that I would meet unconditionally as John McCain maintained, because that would suggest whether it was useful or not, whether it was advancing our interests or not, I would not do it for the sake of doing it. That’s not a change in position, that’s simply responding to distortions of my position. I think if we lay out repeatedly and clearly my position, ultimately, I think I’ve got the majority of the American people on my side on this issue,” he said.
Susan E. Rice, a senior foreign policy adviser to Obama, pointed out that the Democratic presidential candidate had conveyed a similar position before the CNN/YouTube debate. She cited a May 2007 interview with the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz in which Obama said he believed talks with Iran should begin at low levels even if enrichment continued. But, he said, higher-level talks “will not be appropriate without some sense of progress,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.
