Speak softly and carry no stick

In Obama’s message to Iran, David Ignatius writes:

The stormy Iranian elections are one more sign of how the world has been shaken up in the age of Barack Obama. The ruling mullahs are nervous about a threat to the regime; the opposition is in the streets protesting what they assert is a rigged election. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is claiming a new mandate, but what the world sees is the regime’s vulnerability.

And what should Obama say about this ferment in Iran, a process that he has subtly encouraged? I’d argue that he should continue with the line he took in his Cairo speech two weeks ago — speaking directly to Muslim publics even as he proposes dialogue with the repressive regimes that govern Iran and many other nations.

Obama would make a mistake if he seemed to meddle in Iranian politics. That would give the mullahs the foreign enemy they need to discredit the reformers. Obama struck the right tone when he said late Monday: “The world is watching and inspired by their participation, regardless of what the ultimate outcome of the election was.” The basic message is: We support the Iranian people and their democracy. Any change in how Iran is governed is their decision, not America’s.

Is that what happened? I’d read the situation differently. It looks to me that after President Obama addressed the leadership of Iran both specifically in his New Year message and generally in his Cairo speech, the Iranian leadership saw it had little to fear from President Obama. When its preferred candidate seemed in danger of losing the carefully controlled election, the country’s leadership acted to save his political career.

In a nutshell, Ignatius claims (using anonymous “intelligence officials” to buttress his argument:) claims that by taking a non-confrontational approach to the Arab and Muslim worlds, President Obama has encouraged the reform movement in Iran.

Not everyone views the President’s reticence in facing up to tyranny as a good thing. Michael Totten who eschews self-interested “intelligence officials” in favor of his own observations, writes:

The “March 14” activists were, in fact, denounced as stooges of the Americans by Hezbollah and other pro-Syrian parties in Lebanon, but it didn’t matter. I met anti-Americans among the demonstrators, but none were mad that the Bush Administration supported them. His support actually eased their anti-American sentiment somewhat. “You are new friends of ours here in Lebanon,” one conservative Sunni Lebanese told me.

Nor did the president’s support make the Syrian military any more likely to beat civilians into submission. Nobody was killed, and the “March 14” movement won. “I am not Saddam Hussein,” Syria’s tyrant Bashar Assad said. “I want to cooperate.” The Syrian military left Lebanon shortly thereafter.

Whether or not President Bush’s support for the “March 14” revolution helped very much, it certainly didn’t hurt.

Bret Stephens,after criticizing the President for taking a harder line against an ally – PM Netanyahu – than against America’s enemies, argues (and notes some presidential hypocrisy):

This is a strange turn of events. In Cairo two weeks ago, Mr. Obama trumpeted “my commitment . . . to governments that reflect the will of the people.” He also lamented that “the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.” Yet here is his administration disavowing the first of these commitments while acquiescing in the overthrow — before it can even be installed — of another democratically elected Iranian government.

Now a presidency that’s supposed to be all about hope is suddenly in cynical realpolitik mode — the only “hope” it means to keep alive being a “grand bargain” over Iran’s nuclear program. This never had much chance of success, but at least until Friday’s sham poll it wasn’t flatly at odds with the interests of ordinary Iranians. Not anymore.

Here’s a recent comment from one Iranian demonstrator posted on the Web site of the National Iranian American Council. “WE NEED HELP, WE NEED SUPPORT,” this demonstrator wrote. “Time is not on our side. . . . The most essential need of young Iranians is to be recognized by US government. They need them not to accept the results and do not talk to government as an official, approved one.”

Barry Rubin writes in 48 hours of reality overthrows Obama’s Middle East policy:

President Barack Obama based his policy of engaging with Iran on the idea that while President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a wild man, Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei was a closet moderate, or at least a pragmatist.
Now all can see that Ahmadinejad and Khamenei are wedded, together at last. Khamenei is so set on Ahmadinejad’s character and policy that he risked the regime’s internal and external credibility and stability in order to reassure his reelection.

Prof Rubin ties this together with another area where President Obama’s outreach has failed to achieve the desired results:

Now if Obama was right, the Palestinians should be eager for a state. So if Netanyahu calls on them to recognize Israel as a Jewish state—what do they care if they are accepting to live alongside it permanently?—and have their own state. Yes, that state would be “demilitarized,” I prefer the word “unmilitarized,” but all that means is that they would have the same security forces that they do now. And in proportional terms, the Palestinian Authority (PA) already has more men in uniform compared to the overall population, than any state on the planet.

So here’s Obama’s solution: an independent Palestinian state, Muslim and Arab, according to the PA’s constitution for that country, next to a Jewish state.

But how does the PA’s leader—who is always referred to as “moderate” in the Western media and is more moderate than any other Palestinian leader (it’s all relative)—react?

Nabil Abu Rdainah, spokesman for PA leader Abbas, said Netanyahu’s speech “torpedoes all peace initiatives in the region.” Another top PA leader, Yasser Abed Rabbo, said that recognizing Israel’s Jewish character would force Palestinians “to become part of the global Zionist movement”.

David Ignatius, neatly tailors his column to prove that President Obama’s “speak softly and carry no stick” approach to extremists works. Recent events suggest that he’s wrong. The President has been encouraging the extremists at the expense of the moderates.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.