Obama Offered Deal to Russia in Secret Letter

WASHINGTON — President Obama sent a secret letter to Russia’s president last month suggesting that he would back off deploying a new missile defense system in Eastern Europe if Moscow would help stop Iran from developing long-range weapons, American officials said Monday.

The letter to President Dmitri A. Medvedev was hand-delivered in Moscow by top administration officials three weeks ago. It said the United States would not need to proceed with the interceptor system, which has been vehemently opposed by Russia since it was proposed by the Bush administration, if Iran halted any efforts to build nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles.

The officials who described the contents of the message requested anonymity because it has not been made public. While they said it did not offer a direct quid pro quo, the letter was intended to give Moscow incentive to join the United States in a common front against Iran. Russia’s military, diplomatic and commercial ties to Tehran give it some influence there, but it has often resisted Washington’s hard line against Iran.

What a dumb-*ss.

First off, Iran has put far too much effort (resources) into their missile program to be dissuaded now. Second, their "leadership" has far too much political capital at home invested in it to give it up and appear weak to the masses. Finally, Obama is niave in the extreme to think we're the only focus of Iran's aggression.

Does Iran want to threaten the US with missiles? Certainly. Why else would they bother going to the expense of developing missiles of sufficient range to hit us? But they also want and need short and medium range missiles to threaten their neighbors and other countries they'd like to influence. Therefore, to Iran, a missile defense system in Eastern Europe is only part of the equation. Yes they'd like it to go away, yes they'd still like to be able to threaten us, but there are other people on their list too. In short, they are not going to trade away their missile program for so many targets over just one.

However, this won't stop Russia from taking advantage of Obama. They'll sell him a bill of goods, make a back-channel deal with Iran to not only help them (to our detriment), but also make a hard currency profit at it too. Going to the Russians to act as a proxy to stop Iran's missile program is even dumber than trying to appoint a tax cheat to head up the Treasury Dept. What's next, spring someone from Gitmo and put them in charge of Homeland Security?

In the spirit of global bipartisanship, Obama offered Putin Eastern Europe in exchange for asking Iran to be nice.

Is this sort of like Neville Chamberlain selling out Czechoslovakia to Hitler for "peace in our time"???

“officials who described the contents of the message requested anonymity”

ah c’mon and stand up Chuck- or Boris- or whoever you are. We really appreciate your leaking the contents of secret hand delivered letters. It keeps hillary clinton in touch with bamsters real foreign policy.

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