Iran’s leaders continue to display their contempt for Barack Obama, whom they evidently regard as weak. It isn’t just Ahmadinejad; Iran’s leadership is unified in treating Obama with the disdain that he invited by impugning his own country’s past policies in the region on Al-Arabiya television. Today it was the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Ali Larijani:
Iran sternly dismissed decades of U.S. policies targeting Tehran and declared Friday that the new American administration had to admit past wrongs before it could hope for reconciliation.
The comments by Iranian parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani at an international security conference in Munich appeared to be the most detailed outline yet of Tehran’s expectations from President Barack Obama’s administration.
“The old carrot and stick policy must be discarded,” he said, alluding to Western threats and offers of rewards to coax Iran to give up nuclear activities the West views as threatening. “This is a golden opportunity for the United States.” … He declared the U.S. had to own up to the past before it could hope for a better future with Iran.
“In the past years, the U.S. has burned many bridges but the new White House can rebuild them” if it “accepts its mistakes and changes its policies,” Larijani said.
If Obama ever does sit down with Ahmadinejad, it will be apparent who is bestowing the honor on whom.
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