McCain slams Obama on Iran, Iraq

Presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), speaking to a powerful pro-Israel group Monday, blasted Democratic front-runner Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) for his comments about meeting with Iranian leaders and his opposition to the Iraq war.

{mosads}In front of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), McCain criticized Obama’s statements that he would meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, saying “such a spectacle would harm Iranian moderates and dissidents, as the radicals and hardliners strengthen their position and suddenly acquire the appearance of respectability.

“Even so, we hear talk of a meeting with the Iranian leadership offered up as if it were some sudden inspiration, a bold new idea that somehow nobody has ever thought of before,” McCain said. “Yet it's hard to see what such a summit with President Ahmadinejad would actually gain, except an earful of anti-Semitic rants, and a worldwide audience for a man who denies one Holocaust and talks before frenzied crowds about starting another.”

McCain also seized on Obama’s vote against a measure earlier this year designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, saying Obama was “mistaken.”

“Holding Iran's influence in check, and holding a terrorist organization accountable, sends exactly the right message — to Iran, to the region and to the world,” McCain said.

On Iraq, McCain said Obama and other Democrats are ignoring successes in Iraq because they are “still caught up in angry arguments over yesterday’s options.”

“But our troops in Iraq have made hard-won progress under Gen. [David] Petraeus's new strategy,” McCain said. “It's worth recalling that America's progress in Iraq is the direct result of the new strategy that Sen. Obama opposed. It was the strategy he predicted would fail, when he voted to cut off funds for our forces in Iraq.”

Obama’s campaign quickly hit back, arguing that McCain is embracing President Bush’s foreign policy, and that he “stubbornly insists on continuing a dangerous and failed foreign policy that has clearly made the United States and Israel less secure.

“Instead of recognizing reality, John McCain continues to run on a platform of doubling down on George Bush's failed policies, while carrying on his divisive brand of politics,” Hari Sevugan, an Obama spokesman, said. “The United States and Israel cannot afford four more years of an unwillingness to change course.”