Obama and Iran: How Amazingly Little has Changed in a Year!

Please be subscriber 10,090. Just put your email address in the box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.


We depend on your tax-deductible contributions. To make one, please send a check to: American Friends of IDC, 116 East 16th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10003. The check should be made out to “American Friends of IDC,” with “for GLORIA Center” in the memo line.

By Barry Rubin

I just came across something I wrote almost precisely a year ago today on the importance of President Barack Obama putting sanctions on Iran.

Then I quoted Ari Shavit of Haaretz who wrote back then, projecting forward to what might happen in 2012:

"If Obama had decided…to impose a political-economic siege on Tehran, he would have changed the course of history [and]…prevented regional chaos, a worldwide nuclear arms race and an American decline.”

If you had told me a year ago that one year later Obama wouldn't have imposed  any new sanctions on Iran and failed to get allies to do so, I wouldn't have believed it. Not doing enough, very likely. Not doing anything? Impossible.

Yet the foreign policy establishment is only just beginning to get horrified at this mismanagement.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.