May 24, 2008
BUOYED by their modest electoral success last month, critics of
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's provocative foreign policy were
preparing to launch a series of attacks on him in the Islamic Majlis,
Iran's ersatz parliament. But then Ahmadinejad got an unexpected boost
from Barack Obama.
Ali Larijani, Iran's former nuclear
negotiator and now a Majlis member, was arguing that the Islamic
Republic would pay a heavy price for Ahmadinejad's rejection of three
UN Security Council resolutions on nukes. Then the likely Democratic
presidential nominee stepped in.
Obama announced that, if
elected, he wouldn't ask Iran to comply with UN resolutions as a
precondition for direct talks with Ahmadinejad: "Preconditions, as it
applies to a country like Iran, for example, was a term of art. Because
this administration has been very clear that it will not have direct
negotiations with Iran until Iran has met preconditions that are
essentially what Iran views, and many other observers would view, as
the subject of the negotiations; for example, their nuclear program."
An Atomic Assist (to Ahmadinejad from Obama)
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