US, Iran: Obama Steps Lightly
By Shaun Waterman for ISN
When he faces the press today, US President Barack Obama’s priorities will be the economy, healthcare reform and energy legislation, his White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs external pagetold reporters. “And I anticipate he'll also have comments on what we're seeing in Iran,” he added.
No doubt. The White House seems to have spent the weekend trying hard to highlight the president’s warning to Tehran that, as he said in an external pageinterview Friday, “The world is watching. And we stand behind those who are seeking justice in a peaceful way.
“We believe that the voices of people have to be heard, that that's a universal value that the American people stand for and this administration stands for,” he added.
But Gibbs denied that Obama was rhetorically ratcheting up his language about Tehran in response to criticism from Republicans that he has been silent or soft on the issue. “I think anybody would say events on the ground have changed over the course of the last week,” Gibbs said.
“I think he has been moved by what we've seen on television” over the weekend, he added.
Senator: Obama stance a ‘betrayal’
Gibbs was of course referring to pictures of the protests in Tehran, not the talk shows on which Republicans took to the airwaves to assail a policy their former presidential candidate external pagecalled a “betrayal” of America’s founding values.
“Frankly, it's a betrayal of what was declared [in the US Declaration of Independence] that all of us are endowed with certain inalienable rights,” Senator John McCain told Fox News.
From a familiar, and perhaps now rather dated, GOP playbook, McCain sought to portray Obama’s efforts to stress respect for Iran’s sovereignty as part of a tradition of liberal appeasement going back to the 1950s.
“All during the Cold War, there was the liberal elites who said we should not do anything to upset the Russians, whether it be the Prague Spring or the workers in Poland,” said McCain. “And there was Ronald Reagan who, said, ‘Take down this wall,’ (and) called them an evil empire […] And to say we don't want to quote ‘meddle,’ of course, is […] not in keeping with that tradition in any way. In fact, it's a direct contradiction of it.”
For his part, Obama’s position remains what it has been from the beginning: The US shouldn’t be the story.
“The last thing that I want to do is to have the United States be a foil for those forces inside Iran who would love nothing better than to make this an argument about the United States. […] There should be no distractions from the fact that the Iranian people are seeking to let their voices be heard,” he external pagetold US broadcaster CBS.
Instead, he called on Americans to “bear witness” in the tradition of US civil rights leader Martin Luther King, noting that King had observed “the arc of the moral universe [is] long but it bends towards justice.”
The president’s supporters are highlighting the fact that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei used his external pagespeech at Friday Prayers in Tehran to denounce the UK - not the US - as “the most evil” of Iran’s enemies.
“I was very interested that the supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, actually last Friday, made Britain the enemy, not the United States,” external pagesaid Democratic pundit Robert Reich on the ABC network program “This Week.”
Experts quoted by the New York Times said Khamenei’s choice of target was trying to strike “a chord with a deep resonance in the psyche of Iranians, the legacy of a long history of British imperial intrusions into their country’s affairs.”
But, the Times added, it “might also reflect a concern not to slam the door opened by President Obama, who is offering a new dialogue in his search for a diplomatic solution to the impasse over Iran’s nuclear program.”
Republicans split on Obama response
Whatever the significance of Khamenei’s choice of target, there is some evidence to suggest that Gibbs was right when he external pageclaimed “many Republicans have […] noted that the President has struck the right response here.”
“The GOP establishment on this issue is more divided than the coverage is suggesting,” external pageblogged Chuck Todd, NBC’s political director Monday.
external pagePeggy Noonan, the speechwriter for Republican icons presidents Ronald Reagan and the elder George Bush, who now holds an influential seat at the high table of conservative commentary, the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, accused McCain of going “quite crazy” in his criticism of the president.
“This was Aggressive Political Solipsism at work,” she wrote. “Always exploit events to show you love freedom more than the other guy, always make someone else's delicate drama your excuse for a thumping curtain speech.”
She praised Obama for being “restrained, balanced and helpful in the crucial first days.”
The president’s fierce Republican critics argue that the government in Tehran will accuse the US of interfering, funding the opposition and fomenting sedition no matter what.
“I think that we've seen [how] the Iranian authorities view President Obama's attempt to keep hands off,” Bush administration foreign policy official and hawkish neo-con John Bolton external pagetold Fox News last week. “They're going to blame us anyway. […] That will be one of the justifications for the use of force when it comes, that the people in the streets don't reflect the real opinions in Iran, that they're agitators supplied by foreign money, foreign governments.”
But the real issue for Bolton - and for many in the Republican Party - is that Obama has abandoned their policy of ‘regime change’ with respect to Iran, opting instead for a policy of engagement.
“My view is this regime [in Tehran] is fundamentally illegitimate and that we ought to be trying to help out in some way to bring it down,” said Bolton. “And I must say, I don't think President Obama himself is willing to carry through on the hard tasks that need to be done.”