McCain Foreign Policy Blunder

Boy, ya gotta love it when a guy running for President supposedly on the strength of his foreign policy bona fides can’t even keep simple facts straight about a nation that he would say is among the top threats to our nation right now, and in fact belittles those who try to correct him.

In specific, John McCain yesterday got into a back-and-forth with a reporter, after McCain asserted that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the leader in Iran. The reporter (Time Magazine’s Joe Klein) pointed out that in terms of foreign policy, the supreme leader of Iran is actually Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. According to the CIA that’s true. According to the Council on Foreign Relations that’s true.

But McCain said dismissively “I think of you asked any average American who the leader of Iran is, I think they’d know”, clearly implying that Klein was not even as up on Iran as the average American.

But the fact is that Ahmadinejad is the President, his decisions are subject to confirmation or veto by the Supreme Leader (Khamenei) and the “Council of Guardians”, made up of Islamic religious leaders.

So McCain is wrong. On one of his claimed areas of strength, relating to one of our top enemies, he’s wrong and happily casting aspersions on anyone who tries to give him correct information.

Nice.

Liam.