OBAMA'S IRAN FAILURE, BY FLYNT LEVERETT & HILLARY MANN LEVERETT: IOW: "WE'RE SORRY!"

FLYNT LEVERETT IN THE NYTIMES VIA IBA:

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S Iran policy has, in all likelihood, already failed.

On its present course, the White House’s approach will not stop Tehran’s development of a nuclear fuel program — or, as Iran’s successful test of a medium-range, solid-fuel missile last week underscored, military capacities of other sorts. It will also not provide an alternative to continued antagonism between the United States and Iran — a posture that for 30 years has proved increasingly damaging to the interests of the United States and its allies in the Middle East.

This judgment may seem both premature and overly severe. We do not make it happily. We voted for Barack Obama in 2008, and we still want him to succeed in reversing the deterioration in America’s strategic position.

But we also believe that successful diplomacy with Iran is essential to that end.

Unless President Obama and his national security team take a fundamentally different approach to Tehran, they will not achieve a breakthrough.

... It was not easy for President Richard Nixon to discard a quarter-century of failed policy toward the People’s Republic of China and to reorient America’s posture toward Beijing in ways that have served America’s interests extremely well for more than 30 years. That took strategic vision, political ruthlessness and personal determination. We hope that President Obama — contrary to his record so far — will soon begin to demonstrate those same qualities in forging a new approach toward Iran.

IOW: WE'RE SORRY!