Washington, February 08: Palin said that “it would be absurd” for her to rule out running for president in 2012.
US conservative darling Sarah Palin says she thinks President Barack Obama should declare war on Iran.
The one-time Republican vice presidential candidate said in an interview with Fox News that Obama should play the war card if he wants to get re-elected in 2012.
“Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decided really to come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do,” she said on Sunday.
The military attack “changes the dynamics in what we can assume is going to happen between now and three years,” Palin added.
The former Alaskan governor also noted that she does not think the US president would be re-elected if he ran today.
She made the remarks as the US and its allies have been flexing their muscles to impose a new round of sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday ordered the country’s atomic chief to boost uranium enrichment up to 20 percent while adding that talks were still possible on a nuclear deal.
Tehran says it needs the enrichment as thousands of patients will suffer if domestic production comes to an end when a research reactor in Tehran runs out of fuel.
Iran has requested the International Atomic Energy Agency to arrange for supplying of the fuel to the country. The West has been pressuring Iran to accept a UN-backed draft deal which requires Iran to send most of its domestically-produced low enriched uranium (LEU) abroad for conversion into the more refined fuel that the Tehran reactor requires to produce medical isotopes.
Iran says its concerns over the proposal, which was first floated by the US, should be heeded. The development comes as Tehran has been trying to find a middle ground with the West over the nuclear swap.
Washington, however, has insisted on the imposition of fresh sanctions on the country.
Three sets of sanctions had already been imposed on Iran. Despite other countries which have veto power in the UN Security Council, China has insisted on continued dialogue to resolve the issue.
The US, which has accused Iran of developing nuclear weapons, has also threatened the Islamic Republic with war to force Tehran into halting its nuclear activities.
The war drums are being beaten as new reports have revealed that the Israeli navy has dispatched two ships armed with missiles into the Persian Gulf.
Tehran which has been under various US sanctions since the Islamic Revolution toppled a US-backed monarch in 1979 rejects the accusations as politically motivated.
Iran’s nuclear program was launched in the 1950’s with the help of the US as part of the ‘Atoms for Peace’ program. After the 1979 Revolution, Western companies working on Iran’s program refused to fulfill their obligations even though they had been paid in full.
Iran is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and, unlike some of its regional neighbors, has opened its enrichment plants to UN inspection.
——Agencies