Obama is faltering at Ahmadinejad's trapeze act
Iran is getting away with more and more as the U.S. president stumbles through his failed brand of politically correct diplomacy.

By Moshe Beker
May 10, 2010
Haaretz
Original Source: 
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/obama-is-faltering-at-ahmadinejad-s-trapeze-act-1.289504

 
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the only head of state who participated in the ongoing Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference at the United Nations headquarters in New York. He didn't arrive there with a newfound attitude toward Iran's responsibility toward the treaty, to which it is signed, but to deceive U.S. President Barack Obama and to continue his defiance of the United States' role as a global leader. Ahmadinejad filled that role well, and, true to form, gave a vehemently anti-American address, declaring that Iran was not alone in its struggle against the U.S. but that the nations of the world were united in rejecting its policy. Western media outlets showed the walk out by U.S. representatives and of a few other western countries, but could not hide the 170 states that remained in the assembly and listen to the Iranian leader's malicious comments. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's plea for a forceful international reaction for Iran's NPT transgressions had likely fallen on deaf ears.
The best proof of Tehran's position as a UN-leading state was given the next day, when Iran was voted to another term in the Commission on the Status of Women, the declared goal of which is "gender equality and advancement of women." While the U.S. and a handful of other western nations successfully cut off Iran's attempt to join the UN's Human Rights Council, by displaying the now famous images of the beating and killing of women during recent Tehran protests, the Iranians were able to lay a diplomatic ambush by infiltrating the reputable women's rights assembly. The Iranians, who cannot "oversee" human rights from within the UN, will instead focus their efforts on the advancement of women around the world from within the Commission on the Status of Women in Geneva and New York.
As the Iranian president rams U.S. policy and its leaders at the UN General Assembly, the New York Police Department, along with federal law enforcement officials, was scampering in an attempt to detain Pakistani-Muslim terrorist Faisal Shahzad, suspected of leading the failed car bombing at Times Square, a symbol of New York's nightlife and freedom. At the same time, Ahmadinejad defiantly asked the UN assembly if terror was down as a result of ten years of U.S. military presence. While president Obama, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs and two cabinet members, the attorney general and the secretary of homeland security, squirm for hours in an attempt to avoid, in line with the president's policy on political correctness, treating the booby-trapped car as a terror event, Ahmadinejad asked the UN floor: "Which one is more dangerous? Yesterday the United States announced that 'We have more than 5,000 atomic bombs.' Is 5,000 more dangerous or a country that might get the atomic bomb? Which is more dangerous for the world's security?"
The drama taking place in New York, part of which was happening on the corner of the Broadway musicals street, emphasized just how out of touch is Obama's foreign policy with the painful and bitter reality of the world we live in. Obama, who enlisted all of his talents and rhetorical abilities to ensure a safer and fairer world is forced to face the challenges many considered to be his predecessor's nightmare. He was successful, after an impressive campaign, to narrowly pass his health reform, but is finding it very difficult to cure the world's ailments. Rhetorical know-how, public relations and diplomatic slight of hand cannot deter the world's rogue states.
These are not just local failures, with only sheer luck preventing some of the bombing and hijacking attempts from turning into mass terror events. Obama's promise of a changed foreign policy is crashing more and more against the rocks of international threats. The American ineptitude in the face of Iran, the Taliban and Al-Qaida in Pakistan, along with the other hubs of Islamic terror, is putting Obama and Clinton's promise of a diplomacy of "soft power" or "smart power" in question.
The promise of a dialogue with the Muslim world did not bring about a change in the hate felt toward the United States or diminish the threats against it. The "active diplomacy" led in face of Iran is drawing contempt in the nuclear arena, and the campaign trail's two main promises of improving multilateral diplomacy in the UN and other international organizations are not reaching fruition: nuclear disarmament and the global advancement of human rights.
Middle East countries have already drawn their own conclusions, and not only in regards to the stalled peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. The Al-Jazeera network, a trusty barometer of the Persian Gulf and the entire region, had already taken on itself a strategic decision based on the recognition that the United States would not confront Iran head on. In its analysis of Ahmadinejad's UN address, Al-Jazeera presenters said that the Iranian president had been successful in conveying to the world that the aggressor was the United States, while the rest of the world was the victim. A pundit on the Qatar-based network warned of a day in which the UN and the NPT conference would become a circus where the entire international community sits paralyzed and watches on as the United States and Iran engage in an obsessive battle. That's all Ahmadinejad needs to continue his trapeze act in the UN.
Avi Beker, PhD, teaches at Tel Aviv University's MA diplomacy program.