Election Disadvantage


Ext – Romney Will Strike Iran



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Ext – Romney Will Strike Iran

Romney is unilateralist – he’ll attack Iran without consent.


Berman, contributing writer for The Nation, ’12 [Ari. Investigative Journalism Fellow at The Nation Institute. “Romney: Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran” The Nation. June 19. http://www.thenation.com/blog/168478/romney-bomb-bomb-bomb-bomb-bomb-iran#/accessed:7/19/12]

Romney was asked about the Fly/Kristol article on Face the Nation on Sunday. He responded:¶ I can assure you if I'm President, the Iranians will have no question but that I would be willing to take military action, if necessary, to prevent them from becoming a nuclear threat to the world. I don't believe at this stage, therefore, if I'm President, that we need to have war powers approval or a special authorization for military force. The President has that capacity now.¶ It’s worth pausing a moment to consider the magnitude of this statement. Romney is saying that he doesn’t need Congressional approval for a US attack on Iran. Notes Andrew Sullivan: “Remember that this was Cheney's position vis-a-vis Iraq. Bush over-ruled him. Romney is to the neocon right of George W. Bush in foreign affairs.” He’s also to the right of Bill Kristol, which is no small feat.¶ Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising, considering that Romney has chosen a team of neoconservative advisers hellbent on resurrecting the hawkish unilateralism of the early Bush years. As I reported in The Nation in May, nearly a dozen Romney advisers have urged the US to consider a military strike against Iran.¶ Top Romney adviser John Bolton, who many neocons hope will be secretary of state in a Romney administration, has been advocating war with Iran since 2008 and recently wrote that he wanted diplomatic talks between Iran and the international community to fail. “John’s wisdom, clarity and courage are qualities that should typify our foreign policy,” Romney said when Bolton endorsed him last January. (Less hawkish members of Romney’s foreign policy team have urged a negotiated settlement with Iran along the lines the Obama administration is currently pursuing.)¶ One could argue that the Obama administration’s refusal to seek Congressional approval for the NATO incursion in Libya set a precedent for Romney to sidestep Congress on Iran. But the Libya mission had the support of the Arab League and the United Nations Security Council, which wouldn’t be the case with an Iran attack. And a military strike against Iran would be far more dangerous and risky than taking out the Qaddafi regime. That’s why the administration and its diplomatic partners are trying to peacefully resolve what has unnecessarily become a brewing conflict.¶ On Saturday, Romney once again ridiculed Obama’s Middle East policy. “I think, by and large, you can just look at the things the president has done and do the opposite," Romney told the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a Christian right group run by Ralph Reed. If Obama seeks peace with Iran, then Romney and his ilk want yet another war.


Iran Strikes – AT: Campaign Rhetoric

GOP advisers mean that Iran strikes talk is not just rhetoric


Maloney, 3/5/2012 (Suzanne – senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, How to Contain a Nuclear Iran, The American Prospect, p. http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2012/0305_nuclear_iran_maloney.aspx)

The Republican determination to blunt Iran’s ambitions through military strikes or regime change should not be dismissed merely as campaign rhetoric, though. Over the past four years, the context for military action against Iran has been transformed, thanks to Tehran’s progress toward nuclear capability and its revived adventurism across a Middle East in flux. Most of the Republican advisers, including some who hesitated to endorse direct strikes on Iran during their time in the Bush administration, have now concluded that an attack is essential. For that reason, the Republican support for military strikes and regime change deserves consideration. Most of the candidates have been vague on the mechanics of implementing what they advocate. When asked for specifics in the interview with The Wall Street Journal editorial board, Romney ruled out the use of ground troops but added that “the range includes something of a blockade nature, to something of a surgical strike nature, to something of a decapitate the regime nature, to eliminate the military threat of Iran altogether.”

Strikes Bad – Economy

Strikes destroy the economy and cause oil shocks


Poor 2010 (Jeff. Staffer for the Business and Media Institute. “Dr. Doom Roubini to Synagogue Audience: Israeli Air Strike on Iran Would Lead to Another Global Recession” Business and Media Institute, 5/14/10, lexis)
With European economies on the brink and other emerging markets slowing down, is there any possible way things could get worse? As if the public needed any more evidence we’re living in perilous times, Dr. Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at New York University's Stern School of Business and co-author of “Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance,” warned that there is one single event that could push the global economy down even further. Roubini, who was the economist that predicted the current economic crisis, spoke to an audience at the Sixth & I Synagogue in Washington, D.C. on May 13. He said that, should Israel or the United States initiate an attack on Iran, as it is attempting to procure nuclear weapons, the price of oil would skyrocket. “And you know, on the issue of if there is a strike on Iran, the point I was making in the article was, if that were to occur, oil prices would double literally overnight and we would have another global recession.” Roubini cited other historical events that impacted a fragile global economy. “Oil spiked sharply in ’73 after the Yom Kippur War,” Roubini explained. “It doubled in ’79 after the Iranian Revolution, it spiked again in 1990 after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.” He also explained the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon was a spark for the current global financial crisis, a point he had made earlier for Forbes back on April 22. He advised policy makers to keep this in mind when it comes to dealing with the rogue power. “So if an air strike were to occur, and I’m not making a statement whether Israel and/or the United States would be right – so I’m just pointing out that if that were to occur, the financial consequences would be a spike in the price of oil and that would lead to another global recession. So when it comes to some pros and cons that should be something we keep in mind.”




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