Libertarian Leanings

Of Course He Can't Be Trusted

I've been hearing the question on Fox News, should Obama try to negotiate with the new Iranian President Hasan Rouhani?  After all, we know we can't trust the Iranians.

Iran will demand in return that international sanctions be eased, focusing first on obtaining small reductions to signal Western "good faith." Mr. Obama and Europe already seem eager to comply. Western diplomats will assert defensively that these concessions are merely a matter of "sequencing," and that they expect substantive Iranian concessions. They will wait a long time. Mr. Rouhani fully understands that once sanctions start rolling back, restoring them will be hard, perhaps impossible, absent a major provocation.

Mr. Rouhani will not supply one. Instead, he will continue making on-again, off-again gestures seducing the West into protracted negotiations. Meanwhile, Iran's nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs will proceed unimpeded in unknown, undisclosed locations. This was his 2003-05 playbook.

Extended negotiations will enable Mr. Obama to argue that a "diplomatic process" is under way to resolve the Iranian nuclear threat.

It's a given that we can't trust the Iranian president.  So why is that a problem?  Well.  It's not.  The problem is that we can't trust Obama to refuse a deal with the Iranian president, even one that clearly sacrifices the interests of the American citizens.  The reality is that Obama will agree to just about anything, confident that his sycophants in the press will promote it as an historic achievement.

Do you wonder why Obama's foreign policy is so utterly incoherent?  It's because for Obama there is only domestic policy.  When global unrest strikes, the world outside of U.S. borders becomes a stage upon which Obama plays for domestic consumption.  It doesn't matter what happens over there as long as Obama is cast in an attractive light over here.  The role he plays to satisfy the politics of the moment dictates policy towards enemies and allies.  Oh, that wasn't your Red Line Mr. President?

Benghazi is another great example.  Libya was supposed to be the place where Obama would demonstrate how al Qaeda was on the run and how the world loved Obama.  In accordance with that narrative a policy was in place to "normalize operations" and reduce the number of security personnel at the consulate.  It would show how with Obama as president, Libya was as safe as Paris.  Don't they just love him over there.

During the hearing, the top regional security officer in Libya over the summer, Eric Nordstrom, and Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, a Utah National Guardsman who was leading a security team in Libya until August, placed the blame squarely on Lamb, the deputy assistant secretary of state for international programs, whom they said was the official who denied those requests.

"All of us at post were in sync that we wanted these resources," Nordstrom testified, adding that Lamb had directly told him over the phone not to make the requests, but that Cretz decided to do it anyway.

"In those conversations, I was specifically told [by Lamb] ‘You cannot request an SST extension.' I determined I was told that because there would be too much political cost. We went ahead and requested it anyway," Nordstrom said.

As we all know, Ambassador Stevens never got those additional security forces — forces that he requested on several occasions — and as a result he and three others did not survive the planned terrorist attacks on the Benghazi consulate on September 11, 2012. 

As to negotiating with the Iranians we should expect to hear how the brilliant Obama was able to forge an historic agreement, made possible through his bold phone call to the Iranian president.  The agreement will be meaningless since the iranians have no intention of halting their nuclear weapons program, and Obama knows they have no such intention.  But announcing an agreement that pretends they do will be such good PR for Obama.  And that's all the matters.

So... How's That Foreign Policy Working?

Charles Krauthammer weighs in:

The real news is that already notorious photo: the president of Brazil, our largest ally in Latin America, and the prime minister of Turkey, for more than half a century the Muslim anchor of NATO, raising hands together with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the most virulently anti-American leader in the world.

That picture -- a defiant, triumphant take-that-Uncle-Sam -- is a crushing verdict on the Obama foreign policy. It demonstrates how rising powers, traditional American allies, having watched this administration in action, have decided that there's no cost in lining up with America's enemies and no profit in lining up with a U.S. president given to apologies and appeasement.

They've watched President Obama's humiliating attempts to appease Iran, as every rejected overture is met with abjectly renewed U.S. negotiating offers.

Pathetic.

A Meaningless Distinction

Hillary Clinton says the Iranian theocratic dictatorship is being supplanted by a military dictatorship.

She said the Obama administration believes that the Guard is supplanting the government of Iran. "That is how we see it. We see that the government of Iran, the Supreme leader, the president, the parliament is being supplanted and that Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship," said Clinton, who arrived Sunday in Qatar, where she spoke at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum.

Clinton expanded on her Iran remarks before the students as she flew to Saudi Arabia on Monday afternoon. She told reporters traveling with her that she believed the current civilian leadership was too "preoccupied" by the opposition protests to recognize the creeping coup by the guard, and it was unclear if the clerical and civilian leadership could "begin to reassert itself."

Among the signs of a military dictatorship that she saw, she said the current government "is a far cry from the Islamic Republic, which had elections and different points of view within the leadership circle. "

Right.  That's the same Iranian theocracy that called in the snipers when confronted with a differing point of view back in September.  What's really happened is that the Obama administration has finally awaken to the fact that trying to negotiate with Iran was always a useless exercise.  The "creeping coup" is a better explanation for Obama than admitting to the creeping realization that he was wrong from the start.

Behind The Democratic Curve

That describes President Barack Obama.  The death of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri presented him with another opportunity to stand for individual liberty and democracy or embarrass himself again, just as he did last time Iranians took to the streets.  Montazeri had been critical of the ruling mullahs, becoming a spiritual leader of the opposition.  News of his death "brought out tens to hundreds of thousands to Iran's religious capital of Qom."

Which brings us to President Obama. Throughout this turbulent year in Iran, the White House has been behind the democratic curve. When the demonstrations started, Mr. Obama abdicated his moral authority by refusing to take sides, while pushing ahead with plans to negotiate a grand diplomatic bargain with Mr. Ahmadinejad that trades recognition for suspending the nuclear program.

Mr. Obama has since moved at least to embrace "universal values," and in his Nobel address this month he mentioned the democracy protestors by name. The White House yesterday sent condolences to Montazeri's friends and family, which is what passes for democratic daring in this Administration.

Obama is not a champion of democracy, but a champion of power.  Every last thing he has done since inauguration has had the aim of increasing the reach and power of government, from bailouts that transferred ownership of auto companies to the government, to EPA's "endangerment finding" which confers administration power to regulate CO2 (what we exhale) as a pollutant, to health care reform which seeks to take control of one sixth of the US economy.

In Obama's view, it's the American people who stand in the way of progressive goals.  We are the ones who must be overcome.

Key Excerpts

In November 2007 the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a National Intelligence Estimate entitled, Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities.  Its most prominent Key Judgment was this:

A.  We judge with high confidence that in the fall of 2003 Iran halted its nuclear weapons program.

This set the liberals atwitter.  Lefty star blogger Matthew Yglesias quoted his favorite candidate:

Barack Obama says:

By reporting that Iran halted its nuclear weapon development program four years ago because of international pressure, the new National Intelligence Estimate makes a compelling case for less saber-rattling and more direct diplomacy.

On the other side John Bolton highlighted the NIE and warned:

That such a flawed product could emerge after a drawn-out bureaucratic struggle is extremely troubling. While the president and others argue that we need to maintain pressure on Iran, this "intelligence" torpedo has all but sunk those efforts, inadequate as they were. Ironically, the NIE opens the way for Iran to achieve its military nuclear ambitions in an essentially unmolested fashion, to the detriment of us all.

Candidate Obama is now President Obama, and we now get to see how his strategy of less saber-rattling and more direct diplomacy has worked out.  The Washington Post reports today:

The accumulating evidence of Iran's nuclear momentum emerges as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton conceded Monday that the White House has little to show for nearly a year of diplomatic engagement with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. "I don't think anyone can doubt that our outreach has produced very little in terms of any kind of a positive response from the Iranians," Clinton told reporters.

The internal documents and expert analysis point to a growing Iranian mastery of disciplines including uranium metallurgy, heavy-water production and the high-precision explosives used to trigger a nuclear detonation. Although U.S. spy agencies have thought that Iran's leaders halted research on nuclear warheads in 2003, European and Middle Eastern analysts point to evidence that Iran has continued to hone its skills, as recently as 2007.

Funny how it was the Bush administration that was always accused of cooking the intelligence.

Obama And The Iranian Nukes

So Iran has come forward to admit it has been working away on a second, heretofore undisclosed, nuclear enrichment plant.  The effect of that announcement, according to the Washington Post, was an immediate refocus of Obama administration foreign policy as regards Iran.

The disclosure of a second uranium enrichment site in Iran has led the Obama administration to shift the emphasis in its dealings with the Islamic republic -- away from engagement and toward building an international consensus for sterner action against Tehran.

The effort to directly engage Iran was a hallmark of the early months of the administration, with President Obama offering a televised greeting in honor of the Persian New Year and sending private letters to the country's supreme leader. But the gestures went largely unreciprocated.

It's time to be stern, even though stern wasn't such a good thing in the not too distant past.  It's a past Barack Obama can't stop himself from bringing up nearly every time he opens his mouth, and I wonder if that will ever get to be even mildly embarrassing for him. Hardly a day goes by that we are not reminded that our Messiah inherited a mess. 

Obama's election came at the conclusion of a campaign in which he promised a reversal of nearly every George W. Bush policy.  With regard to Iran, Obama's prescription could very well have been lifted straight from a 2008 Foreign Affairs article by Vali Nasr and Ray Takeyh entitled, The Costs of Containing Iran: Washington's Misguided New Middle East Policy.

Iran does present serious problems for the United States. Its quest for a nuclear capability, its mischievous interventions in Iraq, and its strident opposition to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process constitute a formidable list of grievances. But the bigger issue is the Bush administration's fundamental belief that Iran cannot be a constructive actor in a stable Middle East and that its unsavory behavior cannot be changed through creative diplomacy.

Therein lay the conventional wisdom.  The bigger issue was the Bush administration.  With creative diplomacy and engagement Barack Obama would surely succeed where George Bush had utterly failed.  According to conventional wisdom, anyway.

Shortly before taking the oath of office, then president-elect Obama explained to George Stephanopoulos his plan to ditch Bush administration policy and apply his diplomatic intensity directly upon Iran.

Speaking on the ABC News program “This Week,” Mr. Obama reiterated that he wanted to work directly with Iran — a country whose president has called for Israel’s destruction — to improve relations and halt a nuclear program that Tehran describes as peaceful, but that the West believes is not.

“We are going to have to take a new approach,” he told the program’s host, George Stephanopoulos. “My belief is that engagement is the place to start.”

Mr. Obama said he wanted to adopt “a new emphasis on respect and a new willingness on being willing to talk” to the Iranians, while making it clear “that we also have certain expectations.”

The remarks suggested a clear departure from the often pointed and deprecatory speech that has prevailed between Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and President Bush.

His plan of action had the added benefit of restoring America's reputation.  A twofer.  As Politico's Anderson reported in November, 2008, progressives were with Obama one hundred percent.  He brought hope and change they could believe in.

Still, in the Middle East particularly, "we have a lot to do to repair the U.S.'s reputation, credibility and effectiveness," said Dennis Ross, who was the top Middle East peace negotiator under President Clinton and is sometimes mentioned as a possible Obama Cabinet member.

"The fact is, being someone not named Bush will help," Ross said, "but the next president has to realize what he's going to face and fashion a policy that focuses on things that can be done," such as "being a leader on climate change. Being on the right side of issues with a broader imperative will affect American's image."

Although much goodwill has evaporated, these analysts said, Obama will find that when he goes to the well, there's still some left.

Progressives everywhere exhaled.  With George W. Bush was out of the White House, America could expect more allied support in its efforts to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.  Obama's skillful diplomacy would tap that well of good will, and a blessed gusher of peace would shower down.

Or not.  News of Iran's second uranium enrichment plant has taken the air right out of Obama's diplomatic initiative. Simon Tisdale of the Guardian could hardly be more incensed at the Iranians. 

Like riverboat gamblers casting loaded dice, Iran's leaders have played a double game of deceit, duplicity and Persian blind man's bluff in on-off talks with western countries since the existence of suspect nuclear facilities was first exposed. Now it seems the Iranian regime has been caught red-handed, and clean out of trumps, by the forced disclosure that it is building, if not already operating, a second, secret uranium processing plant.

The revelation will bring a triumphal roar of "told you so!" from Bush era neoconservatives in the US to hawkish rightwingers in Israel. The likes of former vice-president Dick Cheney and UN envoy John Bolton, and the current Israeli leader, Binyamin Netanyahu, have long insisted that Tehran's word could not be trusted.

Yet the argument about who was right and who was wrong about Iran is hardly important at this juncture.

He was aghast.  Iranian theocrats turned out to be untrustworthy.  Who could possibly have foreseen it?  Other than Bush and the neoconservatives, I mean.  A lucky guess that turned out right. 

Or maybe it wasn't so lucky.  Yesterday Thomas Joscelyn posed some questions about that 2007 National Intelligence Estimate.  You know.  The one that said Iran had shut down its nuclear weapons program in 2003?  That one? 

In November of 2007, the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) drafted a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran’s nuclear program. In its publicly released “Key Judgments,” the IC concluded: “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” A footnote at the end of that sentence made it clear just what the IC thought had been “halted” (emphasis added):

For the purposes of this Estimate, by “nuclear weapons program” we mean Iran’s nuclear weapon design and weaponization work and covert uranium conversion-related and uranium enrichment-related work; we do not mean Iran’s declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment.

As many noted at the time, the language and logic of the NIE were nonsensical. There were transparent flaws in its analysis, including the arbitrary decision to set aside concerns over Iran’s overt uranium enrichment and ballistic missile development efforts –- both of which continued apace.

Now, with the Obama administration’s revelation this morning that Iran has secretly built a covert uranium enrichment facility near the city of Qom, we know just how flat wrong –- and potentially willfully misleading –- that 2007 NIE was.

Though the Iranians were supposed to have shut down their weapons program back in 2003, the New York Times reported yesterday that the new uranium enrichment plant, which had been under construction and under surveillance for years, was better suited for making bombs than for commercial use.

The plant’s size, secrecy and location on a Revolutionary Guards base all point to a covert plant for making weapon fuel, analysts said Friday. They called it too small for any commercial use, but a good size for the much easier task of making bomb fuel.

Up to now progressives have been giddy over the perceived repudiation of our Texas cowboy's go-it-alone policies.  Cooperation and diplomacy have become the new watch words.  But we go back to the Washington Post to ponder, how is that creative diplomacy going to work out now?

Now the question is whether Russia -- which has long had close ties with Iran -- will be prepared to take even tougher action if Tehran resists full disclosure, such as canceling fuel shipments to the Bushehr reactor, which Moscow constructed.

"So much depends on the Russians," said George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He noted that sanctions to date have been used in an attempt to change Iran's behavior, without much success. Now, tougher sanctions may need to be used as punishment.

China probably remains the most difficult obstacle to broad new international sanctions. The Chinese reaction on Friday was much weaker than Kremlin's.

"We hope that the IAEA will deal with the matter according to its terms of reference and its mandate," Ma Zhaoxu, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said in a brief statement. "It is also our hope that Iran will cooperate with the IAEA on this matter."

Another official, He Yafei, the vice foreign minister, stressed the need for negotiations. "You talk about punishment, and personally I don't like the word 'punishment,' and I think all issues can only be solved through dialogue and negotiation," he told reporters.

So we're hoping the Russians will favor tough sanctions, and the Chinese are hoping the Iranians will cooperate, and by stressing that issues can only be solved through dialogue and negotiation, the Chinese vice foreign minister sounds a lot like Obama did last month, before his apparent epiphany. 

But the big question remains.  Will American national security interests ever become as important to Barack Obama as they were to George W. Bush?  Or will the preferences of the Russians, or the Chinese, or any other leftist regime always weigh into his decisions?

Meanwhile the Iranians have given no sign that they intend to slow the uranium production, nor do they seem care to if they never sit face to face with Obama.  So, how is that creative diplomacy supposed to work now?

On The Side of Dictators

When Neda Agha-Soltan bled to death on the street in Tehran, having been shot by a Iranian theocracy sniper, Barack Obama finally stirred himself to speak out in support of human rights for the people of Iran.  That was June 23, 2009.

On Tuesday, President Obama called the images of Miss Agha-Soltan's death "heartbreaking."

"We have experienced the searing image of a woman bleeding to death on the streets. While this loss is raw and painful, we also know this: Those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history," he said at a press conference.

Neda's gone, and in Washington her death is a forgotten affair.  Protests are over, the theocrats in Tehran are firmly in control.  Obama has moved on.  He did his bit for human rights in Iran.  Today he preens for the UN, showing off his diplomatic genius.

But one thing is certain.  Obama's diplomatic genius will not be brought to bear to help the Iranian people, no matter how hard we might wish for it.  Writing in the Weekly Standard, John P. Hannah points out that Obama has a unique opportunity to stand up for human rights by standing up to Iran.

This month's gathering of world leaders at the United Nations offers President Obama a critical opportunity to reset America's posture toward Iran's post-June 12 turmoil, and to demonstrate that negotiations over Iran's nuclear program will not come at the Iranian people's expense. With his extraordinary political skills and international popularity, President Obama is uniquely positioned to challenge the global body to make clear, at long last, the civilized world's profound concern with Iran's elections and their bloody aftermath. He should call not only for the release of all those detained in the recent protests, but for an international inquiry of this summer's large-scale human rights abuses, including the use of officially-sanctioned rape, torture and lethal violence.

President Obama entered office promising to pursue a policy of engagement with Iran that would be tough and principled. We are about to find out if he really meant it.

Unfortunately, we already know he didn't mean it.  Tough talk to Iran is for benefit of us rubes.  When the Iranian people took to the streets, Barack Obama, the quintessential community organizer and rabble rouser, was nowhere to be found.  Contrast this with Obama administration dealings democratic regimes, Honduras for instance. 

On Monday Manuel Zelaya sneaked back into Tegucigalpa and hid himself in the Brazilian embassy, from which he has been trying to instigate street violence ever since.  He has the tacit approval of the Obama administration in this. 

It brings up the noticeable difference between Iran and Honduras.  Iran is run by a murderous theocracy.  When thousands of Iranians took to the streets to peacefully protest a stolen election they were met with violence, murder, torture, rape, and imprisonment.  Obama has not been on side of the Iranian people with anything more than a few spoken words, more for the support of his image than their rights. 

But let's look to Honduras.  It's a functioning democracy in which a tiny leftist minority has taken to the streets in support of violent overthrow.  Obama is on the side of those people, the side of the aspiring leftist dictator.  

Mr. Zelaya was deposed and deported this summer after he agitated street protests to support a rewrite of the Honduran constitution so he could serve a second term. The constitution strictly prohibits a change in the term-limits provision. On multiple occasions he was warned to desist, and on June 28 the Supreme Court ordered his arrest.

Every major Honduran institution supported the move, even members in Congress of his own political party, the Catholic Church and the country's human rights ombudsman. To avoid violence the Honduran military escorted Mr. Zelaya out of the country. In other words, his removal from office was legal and constitutional, though his ejection from the country gave the false appearance of an old-fashioned Latin American coup.

The U.S. has since come down solidly on the side of—Mr. Zelaya. While it has supported negotiations and called for calm, President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have both insisted that Honduras must ignore Mr. Zelaya's transgressions and their own legal processes and restore him as president. The U.S. has gone so far as to cut off aid, threaten Honduran assets in the U.S. and pull visas to enter the U.S. from the independent judiciary. The U.S. has even threatened not to recognize presidential elections previously scheduled for November unless Mr. Zelaya is first brought back to power—even though he couldn't run again.

Some time ago President Roberto Micheletti had offered to allow Zelaya's return, pledging that he would not seek re-election in November and asking Zelaya to do the same.  But with the weight of the U.S. State Department on his side Zelaya has felt no need to compromise.  His supporters are at the gates of the Brazilian embassy with Molotov cocktails. 

So far this hasn't worked out so well for Zelaya.  He sits alone in the Brazilian embassy.

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) - Diplomats and activists streamed out of the increasingly isolated Brazilian Embassy in Honduras where ousted President Manuel Zelaya holed up with a shrinking core of supporters and relatives, prompting Brazil to urge the U.N. Security Council to guarantee the compound's safety.

Zelaya's backers ventured out at several points in Honduras' capital to skirmish with police, after hundreds of their colleagues were routed by baton-wielding soldiers from the street in front of the embassy and police roadblocks sealed off the mission building Tuesday. Authorities denied local media reports that three people died in the confrontation.

The entire country was largely shut down, with almost no cars or pedestrians in the streets and few businesses open under a nearly round-the-clock curfew decreed by the interim government that ousted Zelaya in June. It accused Zelaya of sneaking back into the country Monday to create disturbances and disrupt the Nov. 29 election scheduled to pick his successor.

Foreign Minister Carlos Lopez said the government would not try to enter the embassy to arrest Zelaya, but he also said Honduras' interim leaders had no intention of yielding on the central point demanded by the international community: the reinstatement of Zelaya to serve out the remaining four months of his term.

Obama is first and foremost on the side of leftists, but when a lefty dictator is no where to be found his next choice is any other kind of dictator.  Dictators can get things done, like spreading the wealth, nationalizing health care and other industries.  It's harder to do those things in a democracy.  People get in the way.  It would be so much easier for Obama to bring about hope and change if he could just have the style of government that he hopes to nurture in Honduras.

Legitimizing The Abuse of Power

Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina has asked the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to postpone votes to confirm Arturo Valenzuela as assistant secretary of state, and Thomas Shannon as U.S. ambassador to Brazil.  DeMint is unhappy with U.S. policy on Honduras.  He and 16 other Republican senators wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to ask that the administration to reassess its stance on Honduras.

The group said it worried that Washington's pro-Zelaya stance would legitimize "abuses of power" and "violations of the Honduran constitution" by Zelaya before he was ousted by the army on June 28.

Efforts to broker an end to the Honduran power struggle collapsed on Sunday, after interim leader Roberto Micheletti rejected a proposal to reinstate the overthrown president.

Clinton spoke to Micheletti by phone after the talks fell apart and warned him he could face cuts in economic aid unless he strikes a deal with his rival.

DeMint and other Republicans have said they believe Hondurans were acting lawfully when they ousted Zelaya after he had sought to hold a referendum on overhauling the constitution to allow his re-election.

A spokesman for DeMint said on Tuesday the senator was also displeased at Valenzuela's refusal to discuss Honduras at length during his nomination hearing.

At the hearing, DeMint asked why Washington would want to be on the same side as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Fidel Castro, in the Honduran crisis.

"President Obama rushed to side with Chavez and Castro before getting the facts. Now it's clear that the people of Honduras were defending the rule of law," DeMint said on Tuesday, through his spokesman.

I can't help but notice that Obama invariably sides with leftists, or any other totalitarians for that matter, while they assert control by whatever means possible.  Look how he refused to stand up for the people of Iran.  And now Honduras.

Administration acceptance of Iranian nukes?

A Jerusalem Post report hints that there is a sense of acceptance within the Obama administration of nuclear armed Iran. 

'The United States will call for "even stricter sanctions on Iran to try to change the behavior of the regime," US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a TV interview broadcast late Tuesday.

Washington remained concerned about what Clinton called Iran's "pursuit of nuclear weapons," which could "be very destabilizing in the Middle East and beyond," Clinton told the private Venezuelan television network Globovision.

Earlier Tuesday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen said Iran was "very focused on developing [nuclear weapons] capability, and I think when they get it, or should they get it, it will be very destabilizing."'

Oops.  I guess that just slipped out. 

US President Barack Obama told CNN US has "absolutely not" given Israel a green light for a possible attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, saying diplomacy is his preferred course of action.'

No worries.  Israel can rely on Obama's massive charisma to shield it from destruction.

Behind The Curve

Edward N. Luttwak, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says the writing is on the wall for Iran's hardline Islamic regime.

'At this point, only the short-term future of Iran's clerical regime remains in doubt. The current protests could be repressed, but the unelected institutions of priestly rule have been fatally undermined. Though each aspect of the Islamic Republic has its own dynamic, this is not a regime that can last many more years.'

Although somewhat late to the party, Obama has finally come around to putting his oratorical support behind the Iranian people instead of continuing his disgraceful suck up to the Ayatollahs in the futile hope that he will persuade them to swear off nuclear weapons.

'WASHINGTON – Dramatically hardening the U.S. reaction to Iran's disputed elections and bloody aftermath, President Barack Obama condemned the violence against protesters Tuesday and lent his strongest support yet to their accusations the hardline victory was a fraud.

Obama, who has been accused by some Republicans of being too timid in his response to events in Iran, declared himself "appalled and outraged" by the deaths and intimidation in Tehran's streets — and scoffed at suggestions he was toughening his rhetoric in response to the criticism.

He suggested Iran's leaders will face consequences if they continue "the threats, the beatings and imprisonments" against protesters. But he repeatedly declined to say what actions the U.S. might take, retaining — for now — the option of pursuing diplomatic engagement with Iran's leaders over its suspected nuclear weapons program.'

Obama is clearly not in the driver's seat.  Sure, he talks tough about consequences, but it's nearly impossible to imagine what consequences he would be willing to impose upon Iran's Islamic regime, so doggedly he pursues engagement with the hardliners.  But Neda Agha-Soltan's death on the street in Tehran has forced Obama to change his message.

'On Tuesday, President Obama called the images of Miss Agha-Soltan's death "heartbreaking."

"We have experienced the searing image of a woman bleeding to death on the streets. While this loss is raw and painful, we also know this: Those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history," he said at a press conference.'

As Mr. Luttwak's Wall Street Journal column points out, the Iranian people are driving events in Tehran.  Obama tries to figure out where.

'What's clear is that after years of humiliating social repression and gross economic mismanagement, the more educated and the more productive citizens of Iran have mostly turned their backs on the regime. Even if personally religious, they now reject the entire post-1979 structure of politicized Shiite Islam with its powerful ayatollahs, officious priests, strutting Revolutionary Guards and low-life Basij militiamen. Many Iranians once inclined to respect clerics now view them as generally corrupt -- including the Ahmadinejad supporters who applauded his attacks on Mr. Rafsanjani.

[...]

Therefore, even if he remains in office, Ahmadinejad cannot really function as president. For one thing, the parliament is unlikely to confirm his ministerial appointments, and he cannot govern without them. If Khamenei is not removed by the Assembly of Experts and Ahmadinejad is not removed by Khamenei, the government will continue to be paralyzed.'

A paralyzed Iranian government would leave Obama with no one to talk to.  Once again Obama is behind the curve.  At the start of the Iranian protests he moved cautiously, working to stay positioned for the big breakthrough negotiation, the foreign policy coup.  Events are getting in the way, though. 

It's not as if he has no idea about where he wants to take the country.  He's just wrong almost all of the time.  So he constantly backtracks, "refining" his positions until he is polar opposite of what he originally promised.  It comes as no surprise that his stimulus hasn't stimulated a damned thing except the lobbyists, so that now he's forced to concede that unemployment will go above 10%.  Close Guantanamo, "end" the war in Iraq, shut down those military tribunals.  The list goes on.

And so it goes with Iran.  Now that he's sure which way the parade is headed, he's belatedly running around to the front.  Meanwhile his adoring media gush about how well he's leading it.