He appeared ignorant of the fact that Romney is trying to center his campaign on what the campaign calls President Obama’s mismanagement of the economy. Vahidi did not attempt to explain why a challenger in a presidential contest would want to divert the public from economic misery.
But Vahidi’s remarks were in keeping with the Islamic Republic’s conventional wisdom that the Iranian issue dominates politics inside the United States, which is taken as proof of the importance of Iran in global politics.
A few decades ago, Ayatollah Khomeini commented that President Ronald Reagan was kept awake at night worrying about what the Islamic Republic would do. At that time Democrats were complaining that nothing kept Reagan from getting a good night’s sleep since his aides admitted they did not awaken him during emergencies.
Vahidi said the saber-rattling of the US Republican presidential candidate against Iran was aimed at diverting US public opinion from the “grave” domestic issues they face.
“The economic issue is one of the important factors in the American people’s decisions to vote,” he said accurately, “while none of the US presidential candidates, neither Democratic nor Republican, have presented a solution yet to break the economic stalemate they have reached.”
In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz shortly before Vahidi gave his trenchant analysis, Romney said, “We will employ every means short of military power [to confront Iran]. We recognize that if all means are exhausted and fail, a military option will have to be considered.”
However, the Fars news agency, in reporting Vahidi’s remarks, said, “The United States has always stressed that military action is a main option for the White House to deter Iran’s progress in the field of nuclear technology.”