Former Vice President Dick Cheney says the only way for President Barack Obama’s diplomacy with Iran to work is if Obama threatens to bomb the country.
"We fail to recognize the fact that we're alone out there in terms of trying to achieve the objective of forcing the Iranians to give up their nuclear weapons," Politico quotes Cheney as saying, referring to the efforts of European nations to “restrain the U.S.” from military action.
“Everybody’s in a giant conspiracy to achieve a different objective than the one we want to achieve,” Cheney said, adding that negotiations to halt Iran’s nuclear program are “bound to fail unless we are perceived as very credible” in threatening military action.
"Most of the other nations out there are willing to live with a nuclear-armed Iran," he said, noting that negotiating with Iran to end its nuclear program is merely an attempt by that country to stall for time.
Cheney made his comments after watching daughter Liz debate American policy toward Iran Tuesday at Rockefeller University in New York. He echoed his daughter's contention that the threat of military strikes to halt Iran’s nuclear program must be left on the table.
“If they believe the threat of military force is on the table that’s frankly the only thing I’ve seen that convinces them they’d better get serious about sanctions,” Liz Cheney argued at the event, which the Rosenkranz Foundation sponsored.
Liz Cheney was joined by former Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman Dan Senor in the debate against Mideast scholar Ken Pollack and former Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, who told Cheney that her position would give the Obama administration just "one option — and that is war," Salon.com reported.
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