Obama's advisor on Iran is confused

Today, Gateway Pundit reports that Obama's chief advisor on Iran, Trita Parsi is about to brief Congress on Obama's prospective new Iran policy. Parsi is Iranian by birth, but without evidence to the contrary, I wouldn't necessarily hold that against him. What I would hold against him is his almost naive approach to the root of the Iran-Israel problem. I wrote two rather lengthy posts about Parsi back in June at my other place This Ain't Hell that can be found with their accompanying references here and here.

Parsi has written only one book in his short life on the subject of Iran-Israel policy. In that book, he makes the point that Iran doesn't particularly like Israel because of politics, not religious differences. Iran doesn't like democracies. I included some of the more bizarre suppositions of Parsi's theories last Summer;

In this interview for the CFR, Parsi actually argues that the Iranians don’t have nuclear ambitions, they just want to look like they do…then stop developing the nukes just short of the actual warheads;

Well, I think they definitely are looking for a nuclear option, being — as you mentioned — like Japan or Sweden or Belgium — having the capability to be able to go for a nuclear weapon, but stopping short of that. And that is exactly the same approach that the Shah took during the 1970s. He wanted to have the option, but he also recognized the strategic disadvantage for Iran to actually go for a weapon.

[...]

So the Iranians do have strong incentives not going for a nuclear weapon, but because of them living in a very tough neighborhood, they definitely want to have the option. And I think that’s what they’re aiming for now. I don’t think they have made a strategic decision to go for a weapon, but if tensions between the United States and Iran were to increase further, then that decision would probably be reassessed.

So I guess we just cross our fingers and hope that even though they go through all of the motions, they stop short of the goal. I guess that’s part of that “Hope” mantra from the Obama campaign.

In this interview on CNN, Parsi waves away Ahmadinejad’s letter to the UN last year condemning liberal western democracies in an attempt to bully the West to delay sanctions. Parsi says it’s a plea for negotiations with the US, when it’s clearly not. He goes on to blame the US for Iran’s nuclear ambitions, when there are a 160 other nations in the UN - why does the US have to talk with everyone?

To get the full dose of delusion from this young scholar, you have to read both of my posts on TAH. It's no wonder that Obama has been half-assed on his proposals to talk with Iran without preconditions if this is the kind of advice he's getting.