Iran Is Key to Obama’s Case for Syria Strikes - East Idaho News
News

Iran Is Key to Obama’s Case for Syria Strikes

  Published at

the%20note?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1378245937215Chip Somodevilla/Getty Image(WASHINGTON) — Iran has increasingly become one of the Obama administration’s top talking points in the case for military action against Syria.

“Iran is hoping you look the other way,” Secretary of State John Kerry told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Tuesday. “Our inaction would surely give them a permission slip for them to at least misinterpret our intention, if not to put it to the test.”

In his Rose Garden remarks on Saturday, President Obama did not mention Iran a single time in announcing his decision to take action, only indirectly referencing the message that will be sent to “governments who would choose to build nuclear arms.”

Tuesday, however, Kerry mentioned Iran four times in his brief opening statement before the committee, repeatedly tying U.S. action in Syria to deterrence of Iran’s nuclear threat.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel also invoked Iran. “Our refusal to act would undermine the credibility of America’s other security commitments, including the president’s commitment to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon,” Hagel said.

Several members of the committee, on both sides of the aisle, appeared to share the administration’s recognition that inaction in Syria would embolden Iran.

“Iran will view us as a paper tiger” if we don’t act, warned Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.

Doing nothing “would guarantee…an emboldened Iran,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.  “It will also send a message to the world that there is no red line that they should fear crossing. So Iran will move forward toward nuclear weapons.”

A White House official told ABC News that all individual and conference calls to members of Congress in the coming days will focus on the “fundamental case that failure to take action…risks emboldening Assad and his key allies — Hezbollah and Iran — who will see that there are no consequences for such a flagrant violation of an international norm.”

“Anyone who is concerned about Iran and its efforts in the region should support this action,” the official said.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

SUBMIT A CORRECTION