As noted here, Barack Obama seemed to discount any real concern about Iran in remarks in Oregon last night. Today, at the beginning of an economic speech, John McCain responded to Obama’s conclusion that compared to the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the threat now posed by Iran is “tiny:”
Obviously, Iran isn’t a superpower and doesn’t possess the military power the Soviet Union had. But that does not mean that the threat posed by Iran is insignificant. On the contrary, right now Iran provides some of the deadliest explosive devices used in Iraq to kill our soldiers. They are the chief sponsor of Shia extremists in Iraq, and terrorist organizations in the Middle East. And their President, who has called Israel a “stinking corpse,” has repeatedly made clear his government’s commitment to Israel’s destruction. Most worrying, Iran is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons. The biggest national security challenge the United States currently faces is keeping nuclear material out of the hands of terrorists. Should Iran acquire nuclear weapons, that danger would become very dire, indeed. They might not be a superpower, but the threat the Government of Iran poses is anything but “tiny.”
McCain went on to argue that Obama’s comparison of a presidential meeting to a Soviet summit “betrays the depth of Senator Obama’s inexperience and reckless judgment” and would only give Iran “massive world media coverage” without hope of any change in the country’s behavior. Could it be that someone over in the McCain camp read Ambassador John Bolton’s column? If so, we can look forward to a much-needed starting point for an informed discussion of why and when we should be talking to our adversaries and who should be doing the talking.