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Obama on Iran
Jun. 19th, 2009 10:23 amOne thing that President Obama has failed to do is to adequately explain his approach to Iran. I believe this to be due to two reasons: A) anyone who needs to know his strategy should be able to figure it out, and B) stating it in public invalidates it.
So let me give it a shot.
The hardliners in Iran hate the US. The reformists may not hate the US, but they really don't like us. Neither of them wants to take the "Islamic" part out of the government. And all of them have long enough memories that they remember that we replaced their last popular government with the Shah. Any side that the US supports will be undermined, and discredited, in the eyes of the Iranian people.
The logical approach is to do nothing other then to offer the usual platitudes about the "will of the people", and sit this one out as long as the situation remains mostly peaceful. It's tempting to support the hardliners (and make them look really bad), but the reputation damage will be too great. Better to sit this out and hope for the best result then to completely discredit the reformists in the process. Which is what we're doing; waiting for the Iranian regime to make a huge, and fatal mistake that we can pounce on. You might think that the neo-cons would be smart enough to figure that out.
There is a time and a place for actively supporting the right side, but Iran with its complicated history and confused relationship with the US, is probably not it. Wolfowitz and Krauthammer will just have to live with it.
So let me give it a shot.
The hardliners in Iran hate the US. The reformists may not hate the US, but they really don't like us. Neither of them wants to take the "Islamic" part out of the government. And all of them have long enough memories that they remember that we replaced their last popular government with the Shah. Any side that the US supports will be undermined, and discredited, in the eyes of the Iranian people.
The logical approach is to do nothing other then to offer the usual platitudes about the "will of the people", and sit this one out as long as the situation remains mostly peaceful. It's tempting to support the hardliners (and make them look really bad), but the reputation damage will be too great. Better to sit this out and hope for the best result then to completely discredit the reformists in the process. Which is what we're doing; waiting for the Iranian regime to make a huge, and fatal mistake that we can pounce on. You might think that the neo-cons would be smart enough to figure that out.
There is a time and a place for actively supporting the right side, but Iran with its complicated history and confused relationship with the US, is probably not it. Wolfowitz and Krauthammer will just have to live with it.