September 10, 2014 | Quote
Dick Cheney: How Obama and the isolationists got it wrong
Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies reminds us that this is the latest example of Russian duplicity. “Russia continues to play a very dangerous role with regard to Iran. Elements of Iran’s nuclear program [have] been supplied by the Russians. Russia also continues to provide advanced weaponry to the Iranians, including surface-to-air defense missiles, anti-tank, and radar,” he says via e-mail. “Of course, Russia also provides diplomatic protection to the Iranian axis — Syria in particular — at the United Nations.” In other words, he says, “The notion that we might get help from Russia on the Iranian front is wishful thinking.” And it surely counts among the most grievous miscalculations of the Obama-Clinton foreign policy.
…
Mark Dubowitz of FDD cautions, “We should never delude ourselves into thinking that these are men who want to see a buoyant Iranian economy with strong trading links to the West and thousands of Westerners flooding into Iran to take away their markets and corrupt their people. What they want to avoid is economic collapse that threatens the survival of their regime.” He adds, “Russia and China provide an economic escape hatch from the full power of Western sanctions without the dangers to the regime from trade and political liberalization while also allowing Iran’s hard men to retain the essential elements of their military-nuclear program.”
…