Analyst: Obama's Iran Rhetoric Should Be Stronger
President Obama is trying to pull off a "very delicate tight-wire act" in his rhetoric about Iran, CBS News' Chip Reid told John Dickerson on Monday's edition of "Washington Unplugged."
The president, who has said he doesn't want to be seen as meddling in Iranian affairs, has been criticized by Republicans, among them Sen. John McCain, who feel his response to the crackdown on protesters has been insufficiently forceful.
Arnaud de Borchgrave, a longtime journalist and senior adviser for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, suggested to Dickerson Monday that he agrees with that assessment."U.S. fingerprints are going to be on the situation regardless of who is doing what to whom," he said. "And it seems to me he could have thought to tweak, to have tweaked his message a little stronger without jeopardizing anything."
"After all, there is a correlation between what the president had to say in his speech on June 4th to the Muslim world and what happened over the last few days in Iran," continued de Borchgrave. "The young people obviously were listening to what President Obama had to say – the entire Muslim world was listening. Therefore, my conclusion, he could have been a little stronger."
He added: "When President Reagan was at the Berlin wall, he didn't say, 'Mr. Gorbachev, this wall is none of our business.' He said, 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.' So, he wasn't jeopardizing anything, he didn't take us over the brink."
Watch the entire episode, which touches on Iran, Twitter, health care, and the president's upcoming press conference on Tuesday, at left.