UnbelievableWASHINGTON (AP) ? The Bush administration has shelved plans to set up a diplomatic outpost in Iran, in part over fears it could affect the U.S. presidential race or be interpreted as political meddling, The Associated Press has learned.
The proposal to send U.S. diplomats to Tehran for the first time in three decades attracted great attention when it was first floated seriously over the summer but has now been placed on indefinite hold as November's election nears and Iran continues to defy demands to halt suspect nuclear activities, officials told the AP.
Two administration officials familiar with the matter spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations on the sensitive subject.
The officials said a decision had been made to leave the decision to the next U.S. president because it could be seen as a reward for Iran's nuclear intransigence, especially when Iran policy has become a key part of the heated campaign between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain.
Obama has called for unconditional direct talks with the leaders of so-called rogue regimes like Iran and North Korea, assuming that groundwork laid by lower-level officials indicated that the top-level talks would be fruitful.
McCain has ridiculed the suggestion as naive.
Thus, opening an interest section, or de facto embassy, in Tehran could be interpreted as a Republican president helping a Republican nominee by neutralizing a distinction that might make the Democrat appealing. Or, it could be seen as hurting McCain by leaving him to defend a more hard-line position than the current Republican president's.
Either way, the administration concluded that now was not the time.
"There is no desire to inject this into the campaign," the second official said.
It's ridiculous the lengths that Chimpus Maximus and his G.O.P. assbuddies will go through to maintain their parasitic monopoly on power, even controverting beneficial foreign policy programmes just to harm their opponent. These people don't govern; they're in the
business of government. There is no consistency here. Bush does one thing, McCain says another, Bush capitulates to help his erstwhile successor secure the keys to the economic kingdom to raid it for the next four years and drain the treasury dry. Even more egregious is the fact that Bush was
initially in the right here - we
need official diplomatic ties with all nations, as sovereign entities tend to respond less well to being bossed around from a television set five thousand miles away than they do intimate talks between mutuals. To see him shrug his shoulders like this to aid his own Party at the national expense is an outrage.
Especially appalling is the fact that this will in fact
increase the odds of an Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons that the Republicans love to feign so much outrage over. Without an embassy in Iran there is less of a reason for the Iranians to accept American diplomatic requests, even if this isn't interpreted as an international outrage. Nations tend not to take kindly what they perceive to be a slap in the face, such as one nation throwing a bone and reeling it in on a string before the other can get to it.
Ridiculous. I hope the fucking ape presently inhabiting the White House gets tossed out on his uneducated redneck ass when Obama's moving his things in.
