"President Obama’s speech accepting this year’s Nobel Peace Prize has elicited an extraordinary amount of commentary already. Neoconservatives (e.g., Michael Gerson, John Hannah, and Robert Kagan), in particular, seem delighted. The speech seemed calculated to justify Obama’s recent decision to deploy an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. But his address also has potentially profound implications for American policy toward the Islamic Republic of Iran.
We have warned for some time that Obama’s selection of his key national security and foreign policy advisers meant that his pursuit of “engagement” with the Islamic Republic would be severely hedged and that there would be, in all probability, a decisive turn at some point away from engagement and toward more coercive options. (These advisers include Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who vowed during the 2008 presidential campaign to “totally obliterate” Iran if it attacked Israel.) Obama’s speech in Oslo appears to mark that turn.
As Michael Gerson—one of George W. Bush’s most talented speechwriters—observed, substantial parts of Obama’s Nobel Prize speech could have been delivered by Obama’s predecessor. Certainly, the parts of Obama’s speech dealing with Iran were thoroughly reminiscent of Bush’s rhetoric during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In particular, Obama linked the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program with the human rights situation in Iran, implicitly recalling Bush’s rhetorical trifecta condemning regimes that pursue weapons of mass destruction, support terror, and repress their own people.
Those regimes that break the rules must be held accountable. Sanctions must exact a real price. Intransigence must be met with increased pressure – and such pressure exists only when the world stands together as one.
One urgent example is the effort to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, and to seek a world without them. In the middle of the last century, nations agreed to be bound by a treaty whose bargain is clear: all will have access to peaceful nuclear power; those without nuclear weapons will forsake them; and those with nuclear weapons will work toward disarmament. I am committed to upholding this treaty. It is a centerpiece of my foreign policy… But it is also incumbent upon all of us to insist that nations like Iran and North Korea do not game the system. Those who claim to respect international law cannot avert their eyes when those laws are flouted. Those who care for their own security cannot ignore the danger of an arms race in the Middle East or East Asia. Those who seek peace cannot stand idly by as nations arm themselves for nuclear war.
The same principle applies to those who violate international law by brutalizing their own people.
Elsewhere in his address, Obama explicitly pledged that the United States would “bear witness” to “the hundreds of thousands who have marched silently (sic) through the streets of Iran”.
In the wake of Obama’s Nobel speech, National Security Advisor Jones, Secretary of State Clinton, and Secretary of Defense Gates have all affirmed an end-of-the-year deadline for Iran to make substantial concessions on the nuclear issue or face severe international sanctions. What will the Obama Administration do when the international community is not prepared to support truly severe sanctions, and the sanctions that might be endorsed by the Security Council or adopted by a “coalition of the like-minded” do not sway Tehran to accept American terms for Iran’s nuclear program? President Obama’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech lays the rhetorical foundations for an eventual military confrontation with the Islamic Republic.
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