Bush and his Iran dilemma

It's a dilemma he's has made for himself and his neo-con friends aren't helping him in fixing it. In fact, they are just as much to blame as he is. It began with Afghan President Hamid Karzai who stated in a CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer that Iran is helping his government fix the problems of Afghanistan, notably terrorism and drugs. You can read that here:

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0708/05/le.01.html

Bush was not very happy with Karzai's assessment and said as much in a statement at the White House.

PRESIDENT BUSH: It's up to Iran to prove to the world that they're a stabilizing force as opposed to a destabilizing force. After all, this is a government that has proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon. This is a government that is in defiance of international accord, a government that seems to be willing to thumb its nose at the international community and, at the same time, a government that denies its people a rightful place in the world and denies its people the ability to realize their full potential.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/08/20070806.html

Now of course most of that is NOT true and Bush supposedly backed down from the nuclear weapon claim, but this Administration has rarely dealt with truth and there's no reason to expect it will start doing so now. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad for Bush if that was the only reference to Iran and its neighbors he had to whitewash or change, but there's another incident he had to gloss over as well.

In a meeting in Iran, Iraqi leader Noor Maliki told Iranian leaders that he appreciates Iran's "positive and constructive" role in helping the Iraqi government improve security. In other words, Maliki doesn't feel threatened by Iran's help with his country's problems. That didn't go over too well with the CiC, who said bluntly, “If the signal is that Iran is constructive, I will have to have a heart to heart with my friend, the prime minister, because I don't believe they are constructive. My message to him is, when we catch you playing a non-constructive role, there will be a price to pay." Some commentators have gone on to say, that price to pay will be by Iran, but I'm not altogether too sure of that. However, it's extraordinary that two governments which the US has recognized and is directly responsible for their existence have such positive remarks to say about a country the President is thinking of attacking. It's clear such an attack would not be in the best interest of those two borderline states and certainly not in the best interests of the US either.