Post-American Presidency by Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller Page A

This was directed straight at Obama, who had abandoned them in their marches for freedom and free elections. Instead of talking about the need to confront international jihad terrorism and the thuggish intimidation increasingly practiced by rogue states, Obama again kissed the fists of the mullahs: “This event helped set the United States and Iran on a path of sustained suspicion, mistrust and confrontation. I have made it clear that the United States of America wants to move beyond this past, and seeks a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interests and mutual respect.” 8
    The mullahs laughed. And they set about building their nuclear weapons program. And slaughtering their people. It was one of history’s terrible ironies, that the people of Iran rose in a desperate plea for freedom and there should be a U.S. president who had effectively discarded the very idea of democracy—at least for the Iranians—as some ancient relic of a past age.
    Instead of helping those Iranians who loved freedom, Obama reached out personally to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah AliKhamenei—several times. Khamenei described the messages he was getting from the president: “The new U.S. president has said nice things,” Khamenei recounted amid celebrations in Tehran of the embassy takeover. “He has given us many spoken and written messages and said: ‘Let’s turn the page and create a new situation. Let’s cooperate with each other in resolving world problems.’”
    Khamenei, however, thought Obama was being duplicitous. “On the face of things, they say, ‘Let’s negotiate.’ But alongside this, they threaten us and say that if these negotiations do not achieve a desirable result, they will do this and that.… Whenever they smile at the officials of the Islamic revolution, when we carefully look at the situation, we notice that they are hiding a dagger behind their back. They have not changed their intentions.” 9
    However, long before Khamenei batted away Obama’s outstretched hand, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, saw through the ruse. He observed that “Tehran welcomes direct negotiations with Washington. Why not, given the enormous benefits its nuclear programs have accrued during five and a half years of negotiations with Europe? Why not, with America at the table, buy even more time to marry its impending nuclear weapons with its satellite-launching ballistic missile capability?”
    Bolton pointed out that the negotiations that Obama so dearly longed to begin could actually hurt the United States rather than help it. “First,” he said, “diplomacy has not and will not reduce Iran’s nuclear program.” European leaders, according to Bolton, were “belatedly feeling hollow in the pits of their diplomatic stomachs, now that their failed diplomacy has left us with almost no alternatives to a nuclear Iran.” Bolton said that they were dismayed that Obama was trying to reopen the negotiations that they had been trying tentatively to bring to a close before it was too late and too much was lost.
    Meanwhile, the West’s supine and confused response to the Iranian nuclear threat, Bolton noted, only emboldened the Iranians in other areas also. 10
    Certainly they showed themselves ever bolder toward Obama and the United States as 2009 wore on. During the celebrations of the takeover of the embassy in November, the head of security forces in Tehran announced: “Only anti-American rallies in front of the former American Embassy in Tehran are legal. Other gatherings or rallies on Wednesday are illegal and will be strongly confronted by the police.” 11
    “Only anti-American rallies” were legal. And this after Barack Hussein Obama wrote letters, and sent spoken messages, and smiled, and entreated. “Only anti-American rallies” are legal.
    The mullahs had never made any secret of their anti-Americanism and hostility to Washington, but Barack Obama was