Washington: US Vice President Joe Biden connected the America’s unfruitful negotiations with Iran on the Bush administration and said that the world realised Iran was a problem only after the incumbent President Barack Obama came to power and made ‘good faith’ efforts toward dealing with the oil-rich nation.
“By going the extra diplomatic mile, presenting Iran with a clear choice, we demonstrated to the region and the world that Iran is the problem, not the United States,” Biden said at the Rabbinical Assembly’s annual convention in Atlanta.
“When we took office, let me remind you, there was virtually no international pressure on Iran,” Biden continued. “We were the problem, we were diplomatically isolated in the world, in the region, in Europe. We were neither fully respected by our friends nor feared by our opponents. Today it is starkly, starkly different.”
The comments immediately drew rebuke from conservatives.
He said Obama’s efforts also have created international support for the America’s recent get-tough decisions regarding apparently to Iran nuke’s programme.
“That’s why China, that’s why Russia, that’s why Europe, that’s why the rest of the world have joined us in these sanctions, and the president deserves the credit,” the vice president said, painting with a broad brush what actually has been a rather contentious dialogue between the U.S. and those other countries.
GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s campaign called Biden’s comments “reckless” and criticized the Obama administration for “all too often” trying to first blame America, apparently suggesting that Biden’s criticisms of Bush were really aimed at the country as a whole.
“Biden’s reckless statement today blaming America for – of all things – the progress of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, has reached a new low,” said Romney policy director Lanhee Chen. “The problem is not America. It is the ayatollahs who oppress their people.”
Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said Biden comments were “outrageous.”
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