On Barack Obama’s (mis)handling of Iran

The president is to be commended for giving HuffPo’s Nico Pitney the high sign before yesterday’s press conference so that Pitney would be primed to pass along this question from an Iranian dissident:

Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad? And if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn’t that a betrayal of—of what the demonstrators there are working to achieve?

As Paul Mirengoff points out, Pitney is also to be commended for hitting the president with that question:

What a terrific question—a query that not one in a thousand American journalists could be expected to match—and kudos to Pitney for selecting it. The question elegantly but pointedly (1) refutes the suggestion of Obama’s apologists that the president helps the protesters by remaining above the fray while (2) reminding Obama that he cannot really remain above the fray in any event because he must eventually accept the election of Ahmadinejad by dealing with him as planned or reject that fraudulently reached outcome by changing his course.

However, as Mirengoff continues, the president is not to be commended for his response to that question:

The president could only bob and weave. He responded that the U.S. did not have observers on the ground and therefore could not know whether the election was legitimate. But the U.S. knows that the candidates were pre-screened by the regime, making the election inherently illegitimate.

He responded further that it is up to the Iranian people, not the U.S., to view the election as legitimate or not. But a portion, and probably very large portion, of the Iranian people has already decided that the election is not legitimate; yet the “result” will stand and Ahmadinejad will serve another term. Thus, the ball is now in the Obama administration’s court to treat the election as legitimate, by dealing with Ahmadinejad even as he represses his own people, or to demur.

The question thus stands unanswered by Obama, though it answers itself: if Obama treats Ahmadinejad as the legitimate leader of Iran in the absence of significant changes in conditions there, that would indeed constitute a betrayal of what the demonstrators are working to achieve.

It doesn’t help that even as he finally offered a strong statement against the mullahs’ treatment of Iranian protestors, he still wanted to have them over for hot dogs (and negotiate with their terrorists).

This is the most unrealistic sort of political “realism” imaginable. Michael Rubin lays out the reasons why:

1. The command and control over any military nuclear program would be in the hands of the Office of the Supreme Leader and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the same groups who are now facing down the Iranian people. In other words, we share a common adversary with the Iranian people. We need to recognize that. The problem has never been the Iranian people—they indeed are far more moderate than their government. We should do nothing to antagonize them (which is why all the talk among some realists of outreach to the Mujahedin a-Khalq or playing an ethnic strategy is wrong, hamfisted, and counterproductive). We need to focus on how to counter and neutralize our common adversary.

2. Realism is about maximizing U.S. interests. Preserving an enemy regime is not realism. It is simply stupid. We should not be throwing a lifeline to the Islamic Republic, the fall of which would enable Iran to emerge as a force for moderation in the region, and allow the Iranian people to take their rightful place among nations.