Mitt Romney’s stance on Iran is nothing new, but his embracement of neo-imperialist foreign policy is worrying.
It would be easy to dismiss Mitt Romney’s Washington Post op-ed of this past week regarding US policy towards Iran as yet more self-serving blather in a political season already rife with it. No doubt, many who read the Republican presidential candidate’s harsh criticism of President Obama’s Iran policy were inclined to think so, and there were many obvious reasons why they should.
First was the former Massachusetts governor’s somewhat imaginative account of the reasons for the Iranians’ release of the US embassy hostages some 30 years ago, on the day of President Reagan’s inauguration. In Romney’s telling, the Iranian government, having toyed with the “feckless” Jimmy Carter for 444 days, was so impressed with the transparently steely resolve of the incoming former state governor and movie actor that it preemptively capitulated, rather than incur his wrath. Precisely how the Iranians were so prescient, given that Reagan had uttered not a word of public criticism of his predecessor’s policy on the hostages, is unexplained.
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