Biden warns on Iran, sees opening for candidacy

(George Rizer/Globe Staff)

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden speaks to the Globe editorial board.

Joe Biden sees mindless saber-rattling on Iran that could lead to chaos in the Middle East and risk for the United States.

And as voters focus on foreign policy in a dangerous world, he sees the opening that could still bring him the Democratic nomination.

The Delaware senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee told Globe editors today that a military strike would only set back Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program by a year or 18 months -- and would backfire by weakening US allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, radicalizing the Muslim world, and causing international chaos.

"It just makes no sense," he said. "None."

He said the growing drumbeat of war talk only serves to increase the price of oil -- and put more money in the pockets of the Iranian regime. And he said he can't understand the recent change of tone in the Bush administration, since the policy of getting European allies, China, and Russia to help pressure Iran seemed to be working.

Biden said the resolution passed by the US Senate last month declaring Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group was a "big mistake" -- he voted against it, while rival Hillary Clinton supported it -- because it encouraged Bush's tougher tack and gave the president too much authority.

"I do not trust his judgment at all," Biden said of the president. "I have zero faith in him."

But Biden does hold quite a bit of faith in his own foreign policy expertise and experience, and says it plays to that strength that voters seem much more concerned with international relations than domestic policy.

Banking on that, he can see a scenario where he becomes the alternative to Clinton. While she has widened her lead in national polls to the point that pundits and some Republicans are talking about her as the presumptive nominee, the race is much closer in the first caucus state of Iowa.

Biden is fifth in recent polls, behind Clinton, John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson. But he says he's moving up and could pass other competitors because Obama's support might have plateaued and that the sheen is off Edwards.

"There is a little bit of sunlight coming through the fog," he said, acknowledging that the fate of his candidacy depends on how he does in Iowa.

"If I come out one, two, or three, I think I win the nomination," he said.

But later in the 90-minute question-and-answer session, he allowed that he has thought a lot more about what he would do as president -- restore American moral authority in the world, push a new energy policy to combat global warming, extend healthcare coverage -- than how to get elected.

"I'm trying," he said, "to rectify that."