Hillary has taken every conceivable position on Iraq, but she has sheepishly admitted that she can’t commit to withdrawal, ever. As a practical matter her view of Iraq doesn’t vary a bit from Giuliani’s. She understands full well that we can’t leave Iraq to Iran, it just isn’t in her interest to stress that point.
Like Hillary, Giuliani has given no hint how he would deal with Iran, other than to continue the Bush administration’s ineffectual diplomatic waltz. If you truly believe that Giuliani’s foreign policy would look any different from Hillary’s, or for that matter Obama’s, you don’t understand the first thing about the American foreign policy establishment.
That establishment has a Democrat face and a Republican face. Whichever is showing at any given time, business proceeds as usual. Hillary and Rudy are both establishment candidates, which means that they are equally incapable of meeting the challenges we face, even rhetorically.
What has Giuliani ever said to show that he understands we are engaged with a deadly enemy in an existential struggle and that the enemy has its center of gravity in Tehran? Nada. If we are destined to have a clueless President far better a clueless Democrat than a clueless Republican.
As for Giuliani, he has indeed stated how he would deal with Iran. In the September/October edition of Foreign Affairs, he wrote:
"The next U.S. president should take inspiration from Ronald Reagan's actions during his summit with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavík in 1986: he was open to the possibility of negotiations but ready to walk away if talking went nowhere. The lesson is never talk for the sake of talking and never accept a bad deal for the sake of making a deal. Those with whom we negotiate -- whether ally or adversary -- must know that America has other options. The theocrats ruling Iran need to understand that we can wield the stick as well as the carrot, by undermining popular support for their regime, damaging the Iranian economy, weakening Iran's military, and, should all else fail, destroying its nuclear infrastructure."
There are limits to how we can deal with Iran due to the necessity of keeping the Saudi royal family in power, yet Giuliani has shown that he will take a more direct approach. Hillary's approach is far to naive and rests on Iran simply agreeing to play nice, which goes against the very nature of how nation states act. Hillary is the one that is clueless, not Giuliani.