Obama, Rouhani and the Challenging Handshake

To explain the missed meeting yesterday between Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani, the American president’s advisers have focused on the confines of Iranian domestic politics. “It was too complicated” for them, explained a top administrative official in commiseration. “The Iranians have an internal dynamic that they have to manage.”

One could also say the same in regard to the American government. The great problem of the eventual détente between the two countries has always been the presence on both sides of neoconservatives and those who are uber-determined to prevent any compromise, which would forcibly exist in a grey area.

Following the missed handshake between the two leaders, the tone of The Wall Street Journal and its poor man’s alter-ego, The New York Post, illustrates to what point the White House itself is on a tightrope in regards to Iran. The Journal’s editorial saw “diplomatic humiliation” in the fact that the Iranians have evaded a handshake (the Journal didn’t remark that the Iranians would like a true meeting and that America has only proposed a brief chat).

The New York Post even proposed that Barack Obama has been “snubbed three times” by Iran: Rouhani refused the symbolic handshake, he boycotted lunch at the United Nations and he didn’t attend the American president’s speech.

Under a typical tabloid pun (Persian mug, a play on “Persian rug”) the Post shows Obama with a glass of water in his hand, which the president held aloft while traditionally toasting the United Nations. Perhaps it was a show of consideration for the Iranians who regularly decry the fact that alcohol is served at the Secretary General’s annual dinner.

Among the Americans, the gesture of a handshake has been complex. After having initially dismissed a meeting without a strong indication on the part of the Iranians, American officials tried, several hours before the meeting, to organize a photo-op to avoid the impression that they closed the door. As the Iranians refused, Barack Obama gave an open but firm speech. Hassan Rouhani didn’t appear at the lunch. During the afternoon his speech was typical: conciliatory but argumentative. And it was only during his interview with CNN that he turned the page on Ahmadinejad and recognized the Holocaust, instead of supporting [his country’s] generally strongly anti-Israeli presence at the United Nations General Assembly.

It remains to be seen why America made it known that it had requested the meeting and that they had up until then proposed direct contact with the Iranians, at the risk of being reproached for being “embarrassed” …

But, as a senior official assured, probably anticipating neoconservative critiques, the White House’s attitude of being open to negotiations in fact built up “a show of force” so that the Iranians — those weaklings — proved that they were “ill at ease” and could not manage “their domestic issues”… *

*Editor’s Note: This quote, accurately translated, could not be verified.