Election 2008: What’s At Stake?

Senator Barack Obama pledged Wednesday to put America’s “unbreakable” bond with Israel at the heart of his foreign policy. He also said he would work to “eliminate” the threat posed by Iran to security in the Middle East and around the world, AFP reports. “There’s no greater threat to Israel or to the peace and stability of the region than Iran,” Obama told the powerful pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in his almost first act since clinching the Democratic nomination Tuesday.

Obama did reiterate his willingness to meet with “the appropriate Iranian leader at a time and place of my choosing — if, and only if it can advance the interests of the United States.” But he took a harder stance than ever before. “I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon — everything,” he said to a standing ovation, in an apparent effort to counteract Senator John McCain’s criticism over his foreign policy platform.

But how does Iran feel about a possible Obama presidency? Many in the Islamic Republic believe Obama will bring a fresh start and a clean slate to the problem of Iran-U.S. relations, according to Ali Ansari, a leading Iran expert at Britain’s St Andrews University and the author of “Confronting Iran: the Failure of American Foreign Policy and the Next Great Crisis in the Middle East” (2006). “There is little doubt that (Obama) offers the real possibility of a more nuanced and imaginative approach, but I don’t think Iranians should expect him to be a soft touch,” Ansari said late Tuesday after Obama claimed the nomination. “If anything, he is more likely to a be able to forge a new international consensus which will considerably strengthen the position of the international community as far as the nuclear impasse is concerned,” Ansari said.