Romney Aide: ‘There’ll Be New Sheriff in Town’
“When Mitt Romney is president, Iran will understand that there is a new sheriff in town and that his position is that the only thing worse than the U.S. using force would be for Iran to have nuclear weapons”, according to Richard Williamson, a senior foreign policy adviser to the Republican presidential candidate.
In a wide-ranging foreign policy interview with Haaretz, Williamson blasted U.S. President Barack Obama’s “feckless and ineffective leadership” on both Iran and Syria, adding that “Iran knows there is no credible military threat from Barack Obama.”
“As Bismarck said: Diplomacy without a credible use of force is like music without instruments. And when Israel has talked about the range of options they may have to consider to protect their own interest, the Obama administration has done its best to make it difficult if not impossible for Israel to do what it must,” he added.
Williamson, a former U.S. Ambassador to the UN for Political Affairs, Assistant Secretary of State and most recently former U.S. President George Bush’s Special Envoy to Darfur, also said that Romney favors arming “the moderate elements” in the Syrian opposition and stopping the Obama Administration’s “mother, may I” approach in seeking to coordinate moves on Syria with Russia and China.
Echoing Romney’s controversial assertion that Russia is America’s “number one geopolitical foe,” Williamson said that in Romney’s view, the U.S. interest in Syria is “strategic” and that Moscow “not only has a domestic authoritarian drift” but is “working against American interests” in both Iran and Syria.
For more, go to Haaretz.com
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