Geoff Bennett:
Ramesh, based on what you have seen, do you believe the administration has a coherent, comprehensive strategy for Iran, or is the policy, the approach right now being driven by politics?
Ramesh Ponnuru, Senior Editor, “The National Review”: Well, I think it’s being driven by events. I don’t know that it has a comprehensive strategy, so much as it is reacting to what it’s seeing.
And I do think, unlike the normal, well, two weeks from now we will have a health care plan, and that’s just a way of punting and you never actually have a health care plan, this is, I think, how far is Israel able to get on its own?
I think that one of the things that we need to think about, though, is what happens to the U.S.-Israel relationship if we have this intervention. Up until now, it has always been the charge of critics of Israel that Israel drags the United States into war. And it’s never been actually true, but, in this case, if we intervene here, that’s exactly what will have happened.
And I do wonder whether that sets back our relationship going forward.
