BIDEN'S IRAN PROBLEM

Posted at 7:38 a.m. ET

Joe Biden has been presented to us as the great sage on foreign policy.  Well, like the guy who gets the gold watch, he's put in the years.  But people who've actually taken the time to look at his record are finding disturbing issues of judgment.  Iran stands out.

Ed Lasky of The American Thinker alerts us to a devastating piece in today's Washington Post by Michael Rubin, dissecting Biden's bizarre record on Iran.  If the McCain people play this right, it can become a major issue, and discredit Obama's selection of Biden as his vice-presidential candidate:

Biden is well versed in policy debates and carefully choreographed trips. But his record on the Islamic Republic of Iran -- perhaps the chief national security threat facing the next president -- suggests a persistent and dangerous judgment deficit. Biden's unyielding pursuit of "engagement" with Iran for more than a decade has made it easier for Tehran to pursue its nuclear program, while his partisan obsession with thwarting the Bush administration has led him to oppose tough sanctions against hard-liners in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Nice to see that someone has noticed. 

Not long after President Bush declared Iran part of an "axis of evil," Biden headlined a March 13, 2002, dinner at the American Iranian Council, an organization underwritten at the time by a dozen oil companies and dedicated to ending sanctions on Iran.

Not good, not good. But it gets worse:

An August 2007 National Intelligence Estimate found that "Iran has been intensifying aspects of its lethal support for select groups of Iraqi Shia militants" and that "Explosively formed penetrator (EFP) attacks have risen dramatically." The next month, the Senate considered a bipartisan amendment to designate the Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, an important step to aid nonviolent efforts to deny it funds and financing. Biden was one of only 22 senators to vote against it. "I voted against the amendment to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization because I don't trust this administration," he said. Distrust of the U.S. president is the nature of politics, but skepticism about foreign dictators and their Brown Shirts is the backbone of judgment.

Are you getting a sense of anxiety about Joe Biden?  If not, read the next sentence:

Biden's political games have made him Tehran's favorite senator.

Smart McCain staffers should package that sentence and send it flying in a political artillery shell.

Biden's attack-dog statements about U.S. policy failures emboldened Iranian hard-liners to defy diplomacy. In the Dec. 7, 2007, official sermon, Ayatollah Mohammad Kashani speaking on behalf of Iran's supreme leader, declared, "This Senator [Biden] correctly says Israel could not suppress Hizbullah in Lebanon, so how can the U.S. stand face-to-face with a nation of 70 million? This is the blessing of the Guardianship of the Jurists [the theocracy] . . . which plants such thoughts in the hearts of U.S. senators and forces them to make such confessions." The crowd met his statement with refrains of "Death to America."

Finally...

Obama picked Biden for experience, but he might also have considered judgment. When it comes to Iran, Biden could stare down dictators; too bad he blinks.

Well, I guess Michael Rubin won't be wearing an Obama/Biden pin anytime soon. 

I haven't seen much about Biden's Iran problem in the writings of the usual journalistic suspects.  The New York Times has expressed no anguish.  But Biden's record is disturbing, and questioning it - very loudly - is entirely appropriate.  Let's see some ads with a couple of choice Biden quotes.

August 26, 2008.