Less than 24 hours after Barack Obama’s strongest statement on Iran, three new stories underscore his administration’s fundamentally weak approach to the terrorist regime and offer hints as to why he has been so eager to engage the mullahs. First, a Washington Times article by former USA Today reporter Barbara Slavin reveals that the Obama administration sent a letter directly to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in early May. According to the report, the letter laid out the administration’s desire for “cooperation and bilateral relations.” In a related piece of news, NBC’s “First Read” contacted the White House seeking comment on the report. “We have indicated a willingness to talk for a long time and have sought to communicate with the Iranians in a variety of ways. We have made it clear that any real dialogue — multilateral or bilateral — needed to be authoritative. Not gonna get into the specifics of our different ways of communicating, but there is an outstanding direct request from the Perm 5 plus 1 that was made on April 8th. The Iranians have yet to respond to that.” That means that the White House, having had its multilateral request ignored, decided to have President Obama open a direct line of communication seeking negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program and “cooperation in regional and bilateral relations.” In his sermon at Friday prayers last week, Khamenei accused Obama of fomenting unrest in Iran — something Obama went out of his way to avoid — and then used the letter to accuse Obama of double-talk. “On the one hand, they [the Obama administration] write a letter to us to express their respect for the Islamic Republic and for re-establishment of ties, and on the other hand they make these remarks,” he said, according to the Times. So what did Obama write? There are many reasons not to believe Khamenei’s characterization of the letter. Did Obama actually “express his respect for the Islamic Republic?” If so, how did he do this? And, better question, why? As we’ve noted before, former CIA Director Michael Hayden said this during a Q&A session after a speech he gave last May at Kansas State University. “It is the policy of the Iranian government, approved to the highest levels of that government, to facilitate the killing of Americans in Iraq.” Did Obama seek to convey his respect for a government that has chosen, as a matter of policy, to facilitate the killing of Americans in Iraq? Now comes a blockbuster story from National Review’s Andy McCarthy. He writes:
Here’s what happened:
Surely the most transparent administration in history will release the letter sent to Khamenei, no? And surely they will explain the release of terrorists responsible for killing American soldiers, right? If they don’t, their silence will go a long way toward explaining Obama’s week-long reluctance to offer anything that could have been interpreted as a criticism of the current regime.
