Obama's Alliance with the Iranian Regime? Really?

Wednesday, 17th June 2009

Remember how in the months before the Iraq war, anyone who doubted the wisdom of military intervention was accused of being "objectively" on Saddam Hussein's side. I do, not least because I was quite happy to so label folk. Sad times. Anyway, I see Robert Kagan has returned to that theme in his column today. It's just like the good old days...

It would be surprising if Obama departed from this realist strategy now, and he hasn't. His extremely guarded response to the outburst of popular anger at the regime has been widely misinterpreted as reflecting concern that too overt an American embrace of the opposition will hurt it, or that he wants to avoid American "moralizing." (Obama himself claimed yesterday that he didn't want the United States to appear to be "meddling.")

But Obama's calculations are quite different. Whatever his personal sympathies may be, if he is intent on sticking to his original strategy, then he can have no interest in helping the opposition. His strategy toward Iran places him objectively on the side of the government's efforts to return to normalcy as quickly as possible, not in league with the opposition's efforts to prolong the crisis.

Well, maybe. It's true that the nature of the election and the subsequent behaviour of the government has, in some senses, complicated matters for the west. But, more than anything else, it seems to me that the best course of action, generally speaking, is to keep quiet and see what happens. That would certainly seem preferable to committing oneself to a given course, or speaking as though such a course were inevitable, before we know what is actually going to happen in Iran.

In any case, since there's nothing the United States can do (and no evidence that Iranian reformers would welcome american intervention anyway) doing very little and hoping for the best seems the wisest course. It may well be that the administration's Persian agenda will have to change but there's no sense speculating on how you're going to play your hand before the cards have even been dealt. Heck, at the moment they're still being shuffled...

Meanwhile, I can't help but feel that elements of Kagan's case are undermined by the fact that Jonah Goldberg seems to agree with it. Kagan's argument is at least semi-sophisiticated which is more than can be said for Goldberg's juvenile posturing.

In the end, regime change in Iran would be a splendid thing. Probably. But one ought not to assume that it would solve all the west's problems with Iran. And, most importantly, it's something that can only be achieved by the Iranians themselves. None of this seems tricky to understand...

UPDATE: Daniel Larison has more.

Filed under: Hackery (165 more articles) , Iran (68 more articles)

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Gil

June 17th, 2009 2:20pm Report this comment

Is that so Alex? I seem to recall that one of the complaints made against the 'West' was that we stood by when the Marsh Arabs rebelled against Saddam, after encouraging them to do so.

The problem is actually that if the West does show its hand, it has got to be prepared to go all the way and not repeat the Marsh Arabs betrayal. This is perhaps impossible to do.

And by the way, even if the 'West' doesn't show its hand, there will be enough villains to claim that Mossad or the CIA are somehow involved, with not a shred of evidence.

By the way, shouldn't the Left be organising some demonstrations now? Shouldn't Tony Benn or Annie Lennox be protesting about the brutality?

Silly me.

King Prawn

June 17th, 2009 2:44pm Report this comment

Quite a few of the left wingers who protested against the Iraq War did support Saddam.

For starters there was a certain Mr Galloway.

Who can forget Tony Benn sitting down and having a cup of tea with the lovely Saddam.

Then you had members of the Fire Brigade Unions going over to Iraq to show their solidarity.

Then what about the French and the Russians who were supporting Saddam like hell!

Redvers

June 17th, 2009 3:09pm Report this comment

Yes Alex

You will find a number of journalists and bloggers out there, who are determined to show that every event on any given day proves either that Obama is a crazed communist or that his policy in a related area has come apart.

It reminds me of the reactions among the unreconstructed left when Bush was elected. Everything he did, proposed, or said was morally wrong, criminally insane, and only making everything worse.

The same is happening again, except now Obama is on the receiving end, and it is the neocon/fundamentalist/zionist fringe who are doing the attacking.