Dubai Think-tank Tells US to Tend to Iraq and Israel Before Messing with Iran

Here is a good example of the credibility gap the world has with the Bush Administration. U.S. undersecretary of State Burns makes a get tough speech about Iran and he gets publically lectured on how the US needs to clean up it's messes before starting another war with Iran.
Los Angeles Times

R. Nicholas Burns, U.S. undersecretary of State for political affairs, ruled out direct negotiations with Tehran and said rapprochement was "not possible" until Iran halted its uranium enrichment program.


"The Middle East isn't a region to be dominated by Iran," Burns said in an address to the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, a think tank. "The [Persian] Gulf isn't a body of water to be controlled by Iran. That's why we've seen the United States station two carrier battle groups in the region."


[..]The aircraft carrier John C. Stennis and accompanying ships are headed toward the Persian Gulf to join the carrier group already in the region, the Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Stennis is expected to arrive in late February.


Some members of the audience in Dubai complained that American wars in the Middle East were threatening the region's stability and asked Burns and the U.S. to sort out Iraq and the Israel-Palestinian conflict before focusing on Iran.


"What we are not interested in is another war in the region," Mohammed Naqbi, who heads the Gulf Negotiations Center, told Burns. "Iraq is your problem, not the problem of the Arabs. You destroyed a country that had institutions. You handed that country to Iran. Now you are crying to Europe and the Arabs to help you out of this mess."