A former U.S. Ambassador to numerous countries throughout the Middle East is concerned that the increase in sanctions on Iran being weighed in Congress may actually hurt the ongoing efforts to confront Tehran’s nuclear program.

Part of the current U.S. strategy in forcing Iran to divulge more about and rein in its nuclear program is the use of economic sanctions. Rather than forcing a new conciliatory posture from Iran, former U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker believes a new wave of U.S.-imposed unilateral sanctions could instead have a chilling effect on efforts to diplomatically solve the standoff.

“Sanctions are easy to do, and afterwards we can tell ourselves that, ‘By God, we’ve really stuck it to them,’” Crocker said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “But it seems to me that the more you press this regime, the more they dig in.”

In his role as a member of The Iran Project, a bipartisan expert panel examining the Iranian nuclear standoff, Crocker signed a report issued last month that stressed many of the same points as in his L.A. Times interview. “The United States should now dedicate as much energy and creativity to negotiating directly with Iran as it has to assembling a broad international coalition to pressure and isolate Iran,” the report suggested, noting that the current sanctions strategy has the potential to backfire.

Secretary of State John Kerry sought to stress a similar view to Congress in April, asking the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to delay any new sanctions push until at the very least after Iran’s upcoming presidential elections. “There’s an enormous amount of jockeying going on, with the obvious normal tension between hard-liners and people who want to make an agreement,” Kerry explained during a committee hearing. “We don’t need to spin this up at this point in time. … You need to leave us the window to try to work the diplomatic channel.”

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GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain may not be able to name the leaders of foreign countries, but that doesn’t mean leaders of foreign countries don’t know who Cain is.

The New York Times reports that in a meeting between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Karzai raised comments made by Cain proudly professing ignorance about Uzbekistan and mocking the country’s name. Cain said a few weeks ago he didn’t know the “president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan,” then categorized the Central Asian country — a crucial supply route in the U.S.-led war to support Karzai’s government in Afghanistan — as “small and insignificant.”

The Times reports that in Karzai’s meeting with Clinton:

Mr. Karzai was asking Mrs. Clinton about remarks Mr. Cain made recently in a television interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network. [...]

“He’s a former pizza company owner,” she said to Mr. Karzai.

“Is he that?” He replied, speaking in English.

“Oh, yes. He started something called Godfather’s pizza,” she said.

“Yes, I see, I see,” Mr. Karzai said.

Mrs. Clinton then turned to the American ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker, and went on, laughingly. “The president was saying he saw a news clip about how Mr. Cain had said I don’t even know the names of all these presidents of all these countries, you know, like whatever …”

“All the ’stans whatever,” Mr. Karzai interjected, referring to the countries of Central and Southern Asia, including his.

“All the ’stans places,” Mrs. Clinton repeated.

Mr. Karzai did not seem to take offense, displaying what appeared to be an astute understanding of campaigning in a democratic country. “That wasn’t right,” he said, “but anyway, that’s how politics are.”

Cain later laughed off his Uzbekistan comment, bizarrely blaming liberal African-American commenters Harry Belafonte and Cornel West for not “want(ing) a lot of people to wake up, especially black people.”

After a series of gaffes like the “Ubeki-beki-beki-stan-stan” comment, Cain’s faced scathing criticism about his foreign policy bona fides. But he still insists that he’s “not as foreign policy dumb as they think,” and that really he is just lying in wait to — at some undetermined time in the future — wow everyone with knowledge from his months of studying crucial international issues.

But if his statements are so outlandish that even foreign leaders are picking up on them and declaring, “That wasn’t right,” a potential future President Cain may already be causing relationships with U.S. allies to deteriorate.

In an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes, the U.S. military commander atop international forces in Afghanistan said U.S. forces would not be leaving the war-torn Central Asian country any time soon. The comments by Gen. John Allen, who took command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) when Gen. David Petraeus stepped down to take the helm of the C.I.A. in July, fall in line with other U.S. and international officials since President Obama announced in June that a complete transition to Afghan security responsibility would take place by the end of 2014.

CBS’s Scott Pelley asked Gen. Allen what his plan for Afghanistan was:

ALLEN: Well the plan is to – is to win. The plan is to be successful and the United States is gonna be here for some period of time.

PELLEY: …You’re talking about U.S. forces being here after 2014?

ALLEN: Yes, there will be.

PELLY: …Are we talking about fighting forces?

ALLEN: We’re talking about forces that will provide an advisory capacity. And we may even have some form of counter-terrorism force here to continue the process of developing the Afghan’s counter-terrorism capabilities. But, if necessary, respond ourselves.

PELLEY: But what you’re saying is that the United States isn’t leaving Afghanistan in the foreseeable future?

ALLEN: Well that’s an important message.

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As for specific numbers of U.S. forces that will remain, Allen said it was “too early to tell.”

Also in the 60 Minutes segment, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker, in response to a direct question form Pelley, offered a veiled acknoweldgement that the U.S. was talking to at least some factions of the Taliban-led insurgency: “[W]e talk to the whole range of people, anyone who will talk to us. You can draw your own conclusions.”

Allen recounted a recent episode where he’d gone to Pakistan to ask the top military commander there, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to help stop a truck bomb that U.S. intelligence indicated was travelling from Pakistan to Afghanistan to target U.S. troops. “We think it ultimately exploded against the outer wall of one of our combat outposts,” said Allen. “Seventy-seven [Americans] were wounded that day.”

In recent days, the White House has begun a public campaign to rally the American public around “a lengthy U.S. troop presence in Iraq like the one in South Korea,” where U.S. troops have been stationed for 50 years.

President Bush offered the Iraq-South Korea comparison late last month, and Press Secretary Tony Snow confirmed soon afterwards that the administration envisioned a long-term occupation of Iraq. Defense Secretary Robert Gates endorsed the Korea model last week, and Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, who oversees daily operations in Iraq, called it a “great idea.”

Comparing the Iraq war to a “five-reel movie,” U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker this morning announced his support for the concept of a long-term U.S. occupation. He told NPR that he doesn’t “see an end game in sight” in Iraq:

Sometimes I think that in the U.S. we’re looking at Iraq right now as though it were the last half of a three-reel movie. For Iraqis, it’s a five-reel movie and they’re still in the first half of it. I don’t see an end game, as it were, in sight.

When asked his estimate for how long the U.S. will remain in Iraq, Crocker answered, “I could not give that estimate.” As the September deadline approaches for Congress’ reevaluation of Bush’s course in Iraq, it appears the administration is consolidating behind a “no end game” strategy.

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