Obama, McCain split on Iran’s missile tests

WASHINGTON  - Democrat Barack Obama Wednesday called for aggressive diplomacy with Iran while Republican John McCain warned against making any concessions, as Tehran’s missile tests jolted the White House race.

The presidential rivals used Iran’s test of a missile capable of reaching Israel to sketch sharply divergent approaches on foreign policy. Senator Obama said Iran “must suffer threats of economic sanctions with direct diplomacy opening up channels of communication so we avoid provocation, but we give strong incentives for the Iranians to change their behaviour.”

“We have to have a kind of aggressive diplomacy which unfortunately has been absent over the last several years,” Obama said in an interview with CNN.

“Part of the problem that we’ve got right now is that we’ve been basically farming out the diplomatic activity to the Europeans. We’ve got to be actively engaged,” Obama said.