Obama Warns Tehran

All the signs suggest that the procession with which Barack Obama tried to change the Iranian regime’s attitude toward its nuclear program is coming to an end. The recalcitrance of facts is responsible for ruining the relaxed stance the U.S. president displayed toward Tehran in order to break with the line drawn in the sand by his predecessor, George W. Bush.

The period given to Tehran by the U.S. and its European allies to definitively renounce the continuation of uranium enrichment is over; Washington is already preparing new sanctions against Iran and to accelerate the placement of defensive missiles in various emirates in the Gulf and in the waters of the Mediterranean. U.S. ships with systems capable of the destruction of Iranian mid-range missiles patrol these zones without interruption. The principal reason for this pressure, if one reads between the lines of the State of the Union address, is to protect U.S. allies from the increasing Iranian military threat. The secondary reason would be to calm the anxiety of Israel.

Obama’s receptive mood has not served to change the intransigence of the Islamic regime. In the years that have passed since the beginning of his presidency, despite successive series of sanctions imposed by the UN, Tehran, with the collaboration of Moscow and Beijing, its protectors in the Security Council, has merely to pass the time while it continues its suppression and lies to the International Atomic Organization. In order for there to be no doubt about the hardening of its policies, Washington recently openly criticized the Chinese attitude toward Iran the same day that arms sales to Taiwan were approved for $6 billion.

The profound fragmentation of Iranian politics due to fraudulent presidential elections in June and the brutal repressive effects, which continue with recent executions, did nothing but increase the nuclear program pursued by the regime. The mask of democracy has definitively fallen; the debilitated theocracy is showing itself to be more brazen than ever, to the point that influential voices in the U.S. are starting to weigh the options of a White House sanctioned regime change for the Islamic state. It would be a risky wager considering the Iraqi precedent.