Daniel Pipes gives dubious advice

What should be done to salvage Obama’s presidency? Well-known American politologist and Director of the Middle East Forum Daniel Pipes is trying to answer this question. He made public his considerations in the article, which was published in the magazine “National Review”.

First of all, Daniel Pipes gives a very negative assessment of Obama’s work as the President of the United States. He is of the opinion that Barack Obama failed to honour his pledges concerning unemployment and health-care and that he suffered a number of serious foreign-policy set-backs. All this, as Daniel Pipes says, has led to an unprecedented drop in the popularity of the current President. Therefore, Daniel Pipes says, “he needs a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a light-weight, bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations. Such an opportunity does exist: Obama can give orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran’s nuclear-weapon capacity.”

Circumstances for this are allegedly favourable enough.  None, except the Iranian rulers and their agents, denies today that Tehran is speedily moving towards the creation of a nuclear potential, writes Pipes. As soon as the Iranian authorities take possession of nuclear arms, they will make the Middle East far more unstable and dangerous. And in time Iran may attack the USA too. In such a situation, destroying Iran’s nuclear threat, Barack Obama will protect his country and will send a correct signal to both America’s friends and enemies, Daniel Pipes says with absolute certainty.

Of interest here is also the fact that in his interview for “The Real News Network” TV channel, another prominent politician, Zbigniew Brzezinski, made an absolutely different analysis of the emerging situation. He is categorically against the use of force against Iran. From the point of view of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the USA should be more patient. The policy of deterrence by means of political and diplomatic steps may work. And therefore, we should not increase the scale of conflict in the region, Brzezinski says. A clash with the Iranians, he believes, will make the U.S. mission in Afghanistan extremely difficult to implement. The Persian Gulf area will find itself blocked as a result. Oil prices will grow by many times. And as regards Israel, for it an armed conflict in the Middle East will prove catastrophic, Brzezinski says.