Obama’s Delicate Balancing Act with Iran

He wants to back up the Iranian opposition without alienating the dominant Islamists at the same time. The U.S. president needs diplomatic skills.

U.S. President Barack Obama is confronted with a difficult balancing act between opposition and government.

Iran will be President Obama’s litmus test, so they said right after his election on November 4, 2008. But then it was mainly Iran’s nuclear plans being discussed, and there was fear that the regime in Tehran could be “nuclear weapons ready” by the end of 2009, meaning they would soon have the ability to build bombs that could destroy the human race.

The litmus test has already begun with the presidential election in Iran and with the uprising of hundreds of thousands against the strange result – and also with the brute and nontransparent maneuvers of the multifaceted rulers.

A lot will depend on how Obama acts now, how he backs the greater freedoms of drooling Iranians without stabbing the still-powerful theocrats in the back at the same time, the careful freeing of Iran from a dictatorship, a nuclear policy with a sense of proportion, the drying out of lines of communication with Hamas and Hezbollah and overall peace in the Middle East.

Obama warned the government in Tehran to respect human rights, but he has not yet interfered with the power struggle. So his adversary in the 2008 election, Republican Sen. John McCain, accused him of completely screwing up the litmus test. Obama was apparently standing behind the Iranian opposition too timidly. And his comment that President Ahmadinejad and his opponent Mousavi would not be so different in their positions in the long run anyway – this comment was just too disastrous. Some are calling upon America’s president to fly into the Islamic world once more and to hold a speech about freedom on the border to Iran.

Indeed, Obama’s statement was inept, to say the least. That’s because, domestically, there is actually quite a lot separating both opponents. The hopes of all those people for a different economic policy are focused on Mousavi – those who are longing for freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly and for equality between men and women. The insurrections in the major cities are also revolts staged by many Iranian women.

Nonetheless, with regard to foreign affairs, Obama is probably right. Like Ahmadinejad, Mousavi would also likely stick to nuclear plans. The centrifuges are still rotating and Iran would soon be in possession of enough fissionable material for two, maybe even three, atomic bombs. And whether Mousavi would point them at Israel would remain to be seen. Considered in clear terms, it would probably be much more difficult to forge an international coalition against a popular Iranian reform president than it would be against a hated dictator.

Barack Obama has to walk a vicious tightrope now: The president who promised to strengthen human rights cannot abandon the demonstrators. But at the same time, he shouldn’t scare off all those people with whom he would soon like to discuss and negotiate nuclear energy, terrorism and peace in the Middle East. That’s because right now, only one thing is clear about the power struggle in Iran – everything is unclear.

No one knows to what extent the election results were falsified and whether Mousavi would have really won had it been conducted properly. But one does know how great the support still is for Ahmadinejad – and who pulls the strings in the background: the president and parliament, but primarily the revolutionary guards, the Guardian Council, the highest religious leader and the theocrats in the city of Ghom – they all have their fingers in the pie.

And after a presidential transition, a few of them will actually exercise their authority in Iran. Amidst this confusion, Obama doesn’t have any other choice but to carry out a delicate, diplomatic balancing act. He hasn’t crashed so far!