{"id":1770,"date":"2009-05-08T08:04:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-08T12:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stonescryout.org\/?p=1770"},"modified":"2009-05-08T08:04:00","modified_gmt":"2009-05-08T12:04:00","slug":"do-they-love-us-for-our-diplomacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/?p=1770","title":{"rendered":"Do They Love Us For Our Diplomacy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

First off, Robert Gates says that the extended hand of friendship is being rebuffed by the Iranians<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

He said Tuesday that so far, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s response to the US outreach has been "not very encouraging." <\/p>\n

"We’re not willing to pull the hand back yet because we think there’s still some opportunity," Gates said. "But I think concerns out there of some kind of a grand bargain developed in secret are completely unrealistic." <\/p>\n

He was referring to speculation in the Middle East that the Obama administration was trying to forge a grand Middle East peace settlement with Iran whereby the US would press Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians, perhaps a Palestinian state, in exchange for Teheran rolling back its nuclear program. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

"Not encouraging."  Who’d have thought?  (Well, lots of people, actually.)  We attempt to give them what we think they want, and they turn it down.  Perhaps what we think they want isn’t what they really want.  Maybe wiping Israel "off the map" really is part of their foreign policy.  <\/p>\n

OK, but we’re trying, aren’t we?  I mean, that must count for something in the Middle East, where Obama is trying to repair our standing among the Arabs, right?<\/p>\n

\n

Washington’s efforts to start a dialogue with Iran have sent ripples of alarm through the capitals of America’s closest Arab allies, who accuse Teheran of playing a destabilizing role in the Middle East. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The concerns being raised by Arab leaders sound strikingly like those coming from the mouths of Israeli officials. <\/p>\n

"We hope that any dialogue between countries will not come at our expense," said a statement Tuesday by the six oil-rich nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council, who have long relied on US protection in the region. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Oh, well, so much for that.  Extend a hand to an enemy, alarm our allies.  Perhaps they just need to get used to the idea that making Iran a friend is in their best interest.<\/p>\n

Or perhaps they know something we don’t know about Iranian foreign policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First off, Robert Gates says that the extended hand of friendship is being rebuffed by the Iranians. He said Tuesday that so far, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s response to the US outreach has been "not very encouraging." "We’re not willing to pull the hand back yet because we think there’s still some opportunity," Gates said. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,50,53,52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doug","category-iran","category-israel","category-middle-east"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}