Walking Softly On Iran
Writing at CNN, Fareed Zakaria supports the argument I have been making regarding President Obama's approach toward Iran:
CNN: What should the United States do?
Zakaria: I would say continue what we have been doing. By reaching out to Iran, publicly and repeatedly, President Obama has made it extremely difficult for the Iranian regime to claim that they are battling an aggressive America bent on attacking Iran. In his inaugural address, his New Year greetings, and his Cairo speech, there is a consistent effort to convey respect and friendship for Iranians. That is why Khamenei reacted so angrily to the New Year greeting. It undermined the image of the Great Satan that he routinely paints in his sermons. In his Friday sermon, Khamenei said that the United States, Israel, and especially the United Kingdom were behind the street protests, an accusation that will surely sound ridiculous to most Iranians. The fact that Obama has been cautious in his reaction makes it all the harder for Khamenei and Ahmadinejad to wrap themselves in a nationalist flag.
CNN: But shouldn't the U.S. be more vocal in support for the Iranian protesters?
Zakaria: I think a good historic analogy is President George H.W. Bush's cautious response to the cracks in the Soviet empire in 1989. Then, many neo-conservatives were livid with Bush for not loudly supporting those trying to topple the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. But Bush's concern was that the situation was fragile. Those regimes could easily crack down on the protestors and the Soviet Union could send in tanks. Handing the communists reasons to react forcefully would help no one, least of all the protesters. Bush's basic approach was correct and has been vindicated by history.
The parallel to the last days of the Cold War is valid. Both Iran now and Eastern Europe then were cases of regimes that maintained their legitimacy in part by pointing to the threat of meddling by an outside power. In Iran's case, the CIA sponsorship of the 1953 coup in Iran provides a particularly compelling societal narrative that the Iranian government has habitually exploited for 30 years. By refusing to provide evidence in support of such claims, President Obama is stripping the Iranian regime of one of their most powerful tools of control. As a result, they are flailing about with increasingly blatant acts of repression that sacrifice long-term legitimacy in the name of short-term control. Sooner or later, history always shows such bets to be losing.
Critics of Obama's careful approach proclaim that this telegraphs "weakness" and threatens to undermine U.S. influence. But they consistently refuse to respond to requests that they detail exactly how and where it does so. The standard conservative critique is, in this particular area, thus revealed as fundamentally empty -- they aren't making an argument, just a recycled assertion that appears to derive from nothing more sophisticated than a vague sense of offended machismo. And strategic theorists going all the way back to Clausewitz and Sun Tzu have diagnosed this kind of thinking as dysfunctional and self-defeating. Conservative critics should refresh themselves on their own intellectual tradition.
President Obama has it right on Iran.
