by Evan Vucci / AP
George W. Bush and the Iranians are locked in a diplomatic game
of "Who's crazier?" With six months left in office, no political
capital at home or abroad, and a uniformed military ready to rebel at
the first talk of a new war, the Bush administration is left with
simply the threat of military strikes, kept eternally "on the table" in
hopes of bluffing Tehran into a compromise on its nuclear program.
Tehran's response
has been predictable enough: After Iran tested nine medium-range
missiles on Wednesday, the country's state news agency quoted a
representative of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, saying
that if the U.S. or Israel attacked Iran, "Tel Aviv and the U.S. fleet
in the Persian Gulf would be the first targets to burst into flames
receiving Iran's crushing response." Tehran's message was clear: If
Bush wants to play Crazy Cowboy, we're happy to play Mad Mullahs right
back at him.
The crazy talk, in fact, is mostly theater. U.S. and Iranian
flashpoints in Iraq and the Persian Gulf have been quiet recently, as
both sides have been careful to avoid a sustained clash that could
escalate into outright conflict. And Iran showed no new military
capabilities with the tests. At the same time, diplomacy is deadlocked
as Iran takes advantage of soaring oil prices to trump U.N sanctions,
while the U.S. sticks to its insistence that Iran suspend its uranium
enrichment program before Washington will hold negotiations. European
efforts to end the impasse have so far served largely as a convenient
stalling mechanism for the Iranians.
So, what does it matter that Iran test-fired nine missiles Wednesday?
"It's mostly relevant because of how it plays out in the campaign,"
says Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution.
After a week of bad news, campaign restructuring and silly television
spots, the missile tests are a boon for John McCain. Wednesday his
campaign made hay with them, saying they showed Barack Obama's
inexperience and the danger of his willingness to negotiate with
Tehran. For his part, Obama tried to spin the tests to his advantage,
saying they showed the administration's policies were failing and
needed to be changed.
Away from the din of campaign sound bites, there is not much
difference on the Iran issue between McCain and Obama. McCain's camp
tried to argue on Wednesday that Obama is soft on missile defense, but,
in fact, he supports it. Obama wants voters to believe McCain is as
much of a cowboy diplomat as Bush has been, but McCain's advisers
include people like Richard Armitage, erstwhile deputy Secretary of
State to Colin Powell, who has advocated for negotiations with Iran in
the past.
When asked whether McCain supports Bush's pre-condition for talks
with Iran — that it suspend uranium enrichment — the candidate's top
foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, fudged. "McCain does not
support unilateral concessions to Iran that would undermine
multilateral diplomacy," Scheunemann said. Mccain would drop the
condition and talk to Iran, Scheunemann seems to be saying, as long as
the allies agree. The allies, of course, are dying to be asked, so if
McCain wins in November, look for talks with Iran early in his
presidency. Likewise Obama, who says outright he'll drop the enrichment
condition. In fact, once past the posturing, there seems little
substantive difference between the two on talks.
On balance, McCain has the advantage in this news cycle. Obama's
inexperience on foreign affairs and previous slips on Iran are among
the few issues breaking the Republican Senator's way in voters' eyes
these days. But no matter which campaign reaps the most political
benefit from the Iranian tests, come January the next president find
that, talks or no talks, he has the same limited diplomatic, political
and military options that have forced Bush to bluff about the cards
he's holding.
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