Recently, Charles Krauthammer wrote about the profound lack of not getting it that seems to pervade the current U.S. administration where it comes to Iran. In a recent speech before the Party Parliamentary Group on Transatlantic and International Security, Clinton-era Defense Secretary William Perry outlined what he believed to be a good Iran strategy. Perry, as you might imagine, is not part of the alleged Bush cabal of interventionists in that sense; however, he still makes good sense by realizing the importance of some sort of regime change in Iran as the most effective way of stopping the state from becoming a literal nuclear terror.

The Obama administration seems to have been caught horribly flat-footed and, as Krauthammer points out, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs' description of the uprisings as nothing more than a “vigorous debate” goes beyond pedestrian. But it also signals that the Obama administration says it wants to prevent Iran from getting nukes, but that it is unwilling to “meddle” in its internal affairs so that process can continue. The administration’s ability to think strategically (at least in foreign policy matters) seems almost non-existent; that is unless, you really believe that talking nice and “understanding” the humanity of militant blood-soaked tyrants is really your best bet as your forego even the prospect of replacing them.

I’m sure some will say the calculus is really simply understanding that regime change won’t happen, so Iran, as Perry also said, should be treated as the one that it is rather than the one we wish it to be. The problem with that, however, as Krauthammer points out, is that we know from the Cold War that condemning human rights abuses and using other economic and political pressures (as Perry also suggests) do have an impact, and here certainly more so that the country is reeling from a popular uprising that only for moral support from a world that claims to have such moral clarity. Iran could, as Krauthammer points out, be the pivot point around which repressive Middle Eastern states and their support for terrorism begin their death throes. Not a minute too soon by any stretch. Yet Obama seems now fully uninterested in all of that talk of building a good reputation around the world, which is most unfortunate.