By the time you read this article, you might have already heard who the actual VP is on the Senator Obama’s ticket. And I’ll bet a dollar to a doughnut tonight that there is a good chance that my phone will ring early morning on Wednesday, like two million other phones to say that Joe Biden is the presumptive Democratic nominee for the Vice Presidency of the United States of America. As an American with Iranian ethnicity, who like many others has followed the US’s foreign policy toward Iran in the past decades I can say Joe is the best choice.
This judgment is not only based on the fact that Senator Biden has foreign policy experience as the chair of the Senate’s Foreign Affairs Committee, but also because of his unmatched actions and interest in opening up with Iran. During the past many years and all the way from the Clinton era, Joe Biden with Chuck Hagel were the only senators who were open to discuss foreign policy issues about Iran without chewing on what was given to them by AIPAC and later the Bush’s numerous neoconservative think tanks.
To know about Joe Biden’s record when dealing with Iran, nothing is better than to go right into the heart of neoconservatives and war mongers. For example Jerome Corsi, in his 2005 book “Atomic Iran,” contends that Biden should be assessed in the context of his “long track record of appeasement and double talk on the Iran nuclear risk.” “The mullahs have known that Biden is their No. 1 go-to guy in the Senate whenever they want their bidding done to fool the American people,” Corsi charges. He continues to say that “He’s being played for a fool and doesn’t recognize that conciliatory strategy failed in North Korea, and it’s going to fail here again.”
Three years later, it is a well known fact that Bush’s reborn administration negotiated with North Koreans in order to resolve their issues. Today North Korea is off the terrorist list and all the nine yards. Jerome Corsi however is the person now being interviewed on every FOX show and every conservative radio program promoting his swift boating book about Senator Obama.
In a speech before an event sponsored by American Iranian Council in March 2002, Biden gave his prescription for U.S.-Iran relations. The address, later entered into the Congressional Record, offered a five-step program for U.S. policy to improve relations with Iran. Biden said the United States should allow non-governmental organizations to support a range of civil society and democracy building activities in Iran; continue to work with Tehran on matters of mutual interest; should go along with Iran’s bid to join the World Trade Organization; should work to “indirectly assist” the Tehran regime in the fields of refugees and anti-narcotics efforts; and should encourage citizen exchanges with Iran.
Back in 2004, Biden held a high-level, 90-minute meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, which took place during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The U.S. has had no official meeting with Iran at that level since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Of that unprecedented meeting IRNA, the state Iranian news agency, reported Biden “stressed the importance of Iran and the role which it can play in the sensitive and volatile region” and said “he hoped the existing problems between the Islamic Republic of Iran and America would be removed someday.” After expressing concern about Tehran’s nuclear intentions, Biden reportedly told Kharrazi he also is urging his own government to rethink its positions. “You have to grow up, and my administration has to grow up, with all due respect, and find out if there is any common ground,” the senator said. “We are on the course of unintended consequences.” Biden criticized Bush’s unwillingness to rule out an armed response, according to the report.
Today these words seem very reasonable and not too controversial, but back in 2004 it required a whole lot more guts.
Early in 2005, Biden was cited by Boston Globe columnist Greenway, who wrote that President Bush’s rhetoric about freedom and specific references to Iran is making people wonder if Tehran will be the next target, after Iraq. Iran’s historical nightmare is foreign intervention he asserted, whether it be by the Soviets and British in the past, or the American coup against a democratically elected government in the 1950s. With American armies on their borders in Afghanistan and Iraq, and with Bush calling them part of an ”axis of evil,” some believe that nuclear weapons have become an emotional necessity for Iranians. “Senator Joseph Biden said that even if Iran was a full democracy like India, it would want nuclear capability, like India. What the world needed to address was Iran’s emotional needs, he said, with a nonaggression pact.”
The columnist added that the U.S. and Europe might not succeed in preventing an Iranian nuclear bomb “unless they are willing to address Iran’s nightmares and guarantee its safety. But that runs contrary to the reigning theology in Washington that divides the world into good and evil, and believes in the benefits of using force.”
In February of 2005 right when the Iran-EU negotiations had reached a stalemate, Biden said the Bush administration, which says it does not rule out any option to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, had to be willing to sign on to a “genuine nonaggression pact.” “This is a case where we’re remaining to sit on the sidelines,” Biden said. “The three European countries that are negotiating with the Iranians are saying, ‘Look, we’ve got to get in the deal with them. We can’t just sit on the sidelines.”‘
He criticized Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for saying the U.S. might not sign on to a deal even if Iran promised to eschew missiles and nuclear weapons in a verifiable way. Shortly after those comments Iran and EU stopped the negotiations and few months later when Khatami was ready to transfer the office to Ahmadinejad, Iranian party started the Uranium Enrichment activities.
Later in December of last year, in a blog on Huffington Post Joe Biden wrote: “War with Iran is not just a bad option. It would be a disaster. We’re talking about a country with nearly three times the population of Iraq – 70 million people – and infinitely more problems waiting for us if we attack. The regime is unpopular, but it has millions of fervent supporters it will mobilize for war. If you thought going to war with Iraq would be a “cakewalk” maybe that wouldn’t deter you. But if you are a part of the reality-based community, it should – “
He continued eloquently to say: “It is precisely because the consequences of war – intended or otherwise – can be so profound and complicated that our Founding Fathers vested in Congress, not the President, the power to initiate war, except to repel an imminent attack on the United States or its citizens. They reasoned that requiring the President to come to Congress first would slow things down… allow for more careful decision making before sending Americans to fight and die… and ensure broader public support.”
Senator added “The Founding Fathers were, as in most things, profoundly right. That’s why I want to be very clear: if the President takes us to war with Iran without Congressional approval, I will call for his impeachment. I do not say this lightly or to be provocative. I am dead serious. I have chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee. I still teach constitutional law. I’ve consulted with some of our leading constitutional scholars. The Constitution is clear. And so am I.”
Biden concluded: “I’m saying this now to put the administration on notice and hopefully to deter the President from taking unilateral action in the last year of his administration. If war is warranted with a nation of 70 million people, it warrants coming to Congress and the American people first.“
I really hope that tomorrow I wake up with that text message!
