Obama gave a new formulation of his Iran policy to Meet the Press December 7. “One of the main things that diplomacy can accomplish is to help knit together the kind of coalition with China and India and Russia and other countries that now do business with Iran to agree that, in order for us to change Iran’s behavior, we may have to heighten up those sanctions.” More:
Obama to Meet the Press, December 7, 2008:
“We need to ratchet up tough but direct diplomacy with Iran, making very clear to them that their development of nuclear weapons would be unacceptable; that their funding of terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, their threats against Israel are contrary to everything that we believe and what the international community should accept; and present a set of carrots and sticks in changing their calculus about how they want to operate. In terms of carrots, I think that we can provide economic incentives that would be helpful to a country that, despite being a net oil producer, is under enormous strain, huge inflation, a lot of unemployment problems there. They could benefit from a more open economy and being part of the international economic system. But we also have to focus on the sticks, and one of the main things that diplomacy can accomplish is to help knit together the kind of coalition with China and India and Russia and other countries that now do business with Iran to agree that, in order for us to change Iran’s behavior, we may have to heighten up those sanctions, but we are willing to talk to them directly and give them a clear choice, and ultimately let them make a determination in terms of whether they want to do this the hard way or the easy way.”
