For the first time in eight years, an Iranian President other than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has addressed the U.N. General Assembly with high hopes for peace and diplomacy with the United States. With a new President in Iran, it’s time for Obama to have direct diplomacy on the nuclear issue and negotiate.
We have seen the controversial Ahmadinejad challenge the United States at every turn and even survive an attempted regime change against him in 2009. But now he’s history, and a new President has been elected — Hassan Rouhani.
Who is Rouhani? He was Iran’s top nuclear negotiator for two previous administrations before Ahmadinejad, from 1989-2005.
He was the negotiator when Iran volunteered to suspend nuclear enrichment. Although Iran complied with the EU-3 (United Kingdom, France and Germany), Europe could not guarantee Iran’s safety and they couldn’t get the United States to back off from their threats of war and regime change.
Because former President Mohammad Khatami and his negotiator Rouhani suspended the nuclear program and got nothing in return from the United States, the conservatives in Iran painted them as weak liberals who lacked strength to face the United States.
This led to Iran’s 2005 election of a hardline conservative. Ahmadinejad came to power and ended their suspension of enrichment to continue their development in nuclear power.
Eight years later, new Presidents for both countries could make peace become a viable option.
With Rouhani, a former top nuclear negotiator who was allowed on the ballot and elected in a landslide, this is a clear message to Washington from the Iranian elites and people — they want to negotiate.
The American people made it clear that we want peace. The voters made a bold decision by electing an inexperienced liberal idealist instead of an experienced war hero. Obama beat former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton in the primaries because she voted for the Iraq war and he didn’t. During the campaign, Obama made headlines when he said he would “sit down” with adversaries. Many on the right criticized him for being weak on foreign policy.
Obama spoke about negotiating and diplomacy with foes so often that he won the Nobel Peace Prize for “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
This was clearly a premature decision on the part of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. Since winning the peace prize, Obama has expanded Bush’s foreign policy to Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Pakistan and Afghanistan. He exponentially expanded secret wars with cyber warfare, drone warfare, bombing assassinations in Iran and financing of terrorist groups in Syria.
Obama has been more hawkish than Bush in regard to Iran. In 2011, Obama imposed major sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank which had sparked a currency crisis and has made the lives of the Iranian people worse off than before.
Where are we today? There are major factions in the U.S. which want war regardless of our views.
American Israel Public Affairs Office, the Neocons and the military industrial complex has always been on the side on war. They pushed us into the Iraq war and tried with Syria. For years they have been pushing for a war with Iran.
Now the President has to choose between the will of the American people or the preasures of Israel and the military industrial complex.
If Obama wants to earn the prestige of having the Nobel Peace Prize, then it’s time for action and not war.
Joshua Hajiakbarifini is a 24-year-old political science and economics senior from Baton Rouge.