Getting tough on Iran
It’s not the US that is getting tough on the “Supreme Leader” of Iran and his cohorts, it is the UAE, in remarks at the Aspen Ideas Festival, where Obama is getting a drubbing on issue after issue:
The United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United States said Tuesday that the benefits of bombing Iran’s nuclear program outweigh the short-term costs such an attack would impose. In unusually blunt remarks, Ambassador Yousef al-Otaiba publicly endorsed the use of the military option for countering Iran’s nuclear program, if sanctions fail to stop the country’s quest for nuclear weapons.
“I think it’s a cost-benefit analysis,” Mr. al-Otaiba said. “I think despite the large amount of trade we do with Iran, which is close to $12 billion … there will be consequences, there will be a backlash and there will be problems with people protesting and rioting and very unhappy that there is an outside force attacking a Muslim country; that is going to happen no matter what.”
“If you are asking me, ‘Am I willing to live with that versus living with a nuclear Iran?,’ my answer is still the same: ‘We cannot live with a nuclear Iran.’ I am willing to absorb what takes place at the expense of the security of the U.A.E.”…
The ambassador in the end stressed that his country would not tolerate a nuclear Iran. “The United States may be able to live with it,” he said. “We can’t.”
“The United States may be able to live with it” — that’s the UAE’s real concern and probably the reason for the unusually blunt public remarks. Sadly, the US seems more concerned that our own Voice of America not offend the mullahs.