Obama Presses Iran for ‘Meaningful Steps’

Says Iranians Pay 'Unnecessary Price' for Failing to Submit

In a video on the occasion of Persian New Year, President Obama has demanded Iran take “meaningful steps” to satisfy the US, without giving any indication what those steps might conceivably be.

President Obama has been pushing sanctions on Iran, and insisted Iranian civilians are paying “an unnecessary price” for their leadership’s refusal to satisfy him in this entirely unspecified way.

In addition to the sanctions, President Obama has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran, and the Senate leadership is pushing a new resolution, dubbed the “backdoor to war” resolution, that declares Iran’s existence to be a threat to Israel and urges the Obama Administration to support whatever military action Israel wants.

That “what Israel wants” focus is one of the chief reasons that the US is unlikely to make any serious concessions in the near term, with President Obama looking to come to some sort of “common ground” agreement with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who by all indications is reluctant to consider anything short of war. President Obama is planning to visit Israel in the next few weeks, and is going to be pressed to draw some sort of line in the sand on when a war will be started, despite US officials conceding Iran isn’t attempting to make nuclear arms in the first place.

A recent round of negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 has made considerable progress, but in the end it remains unclear if the US government would ever accept any deal under any circumstances, or if they simply want to use the “failure” of the talks as another justification to push military action.

 

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.