Fox News draws on Peter Baker’s New York Times story to focus on an illuminating moment in former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair’s meeting with then President Obama in the White House. Neither Blair (speaking here) nor Baker provides the date of the meeting, but I infer that it must have taken place in the first year of the Obama administration:
Former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair once angered then-President Barack Obama during a White House meeting on Iran, after he pressed Obama on whether he could tolerate the nation obtaining a nuclear weapon, according to newly released oral history interviews.
“When it came my turn to speak at this meeting,” Blair said, “I said, ‘Mr. President, you really just have one decision to make…Are you going to tolerate Iran having a nuclear weapon or not?’” He added that rejecting a nuclear Iran would require espionage and military options, while acceptance would mean a strategy to contain and deter Iran.
The exchange, documented in interviews conducted by the University of Virginia’s Miller Center and reported by The New York Times, offers a window into internal divisions within the Obama administration as officials debated how to respond to Iran’s nuclear program.
Blair said the moment prompted a sharp warning from Obama.
“The president took me aside after that meeting and said, ‘Denny, don’t ever put me on the spot like that again,’” he recalled. “I said…‘Yes, sir, Mr. President. I certainly won’t.’” He added, “I was kept out of meetings from that time forward.”
A reasonable man might think Obama could just have said in good humor, “Hey, Dennis, skip to the easy questions.” But no, he’s not that kind of guy.
In retrospect, Blair believed he had misunderstood. He took Obama at face value, thinking the meeting was to elicit thoughts on Iran policy for Obama’s benefit. “I had been told that it was an ideas meeting—the president was looking for fresh insights. I made the mistake of believing that guidance.” Blair was given the opportunity to rethink his mistake when he was pushed out of the administration in May 2010.
Now we know Obama would not only tolerate the Iranian regime’s development of a nuclear weapon, he would help the regime finance it. The ballistic missile program was okay too. He just didn’t want to be forthright about it.
