The Iranian Elections and the Loser-in-Chief

posted at 12:29 pm on June 13, 2009 by CK MacLeod
[ Diplomacy ]    printer-friendly

The Iranian pseudo-elections came to an at first confusing end on Friday, with high turnout and participation, and early announcements of overwhelming victory – by each of the top two contenders.

As the vote counting started, the “reform” candidate Mir-Hossein Moussavi made confident statements, asking his supporters to prepare for a national celebration to take place on Sunday. Soon, however, the state-controlled media (theirs, not ours) had taken the side of the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, claiming a 65% popular vote mandate for him – against widespread disbelief in the honesty of the result, and amidst preparations by security forces for their own version of a victory party.

Abe Greenwald over at Contentions declared the Mullahs to be the real victors, in what others have referred to as an “electoral coup.”  Greenwald may be right, though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – whose reply to Mr. Obama’s address to the Muslim world will be taking place on Sunday against a background conspicuously missing those Moussavi celebrations – might also deserve a place in the winner’s circle.  What seems at least as clear is the identity of the losers:  The Iranian people, and us - beginning with our Loser-in-Chief.

Despite a lack of convincing evidence, testimony, or logic, the President’s supporters have been eager to claim credit for the victory of anti-Iranian democratic forces in Lebanon last weekend.  In recent weeks Obamanauts could also be found around the blogosphere predicting a “reform” victory in Iran, eagerly anticipating and pre-advertising further proof of concept for the Kow-Tow Doctrine, happily overlooking the long history suggesting that Moussavi would at most offer a softer appearance for essentially unchanged hardline positions.

At the Rose Garden Friday, speaking to reporters before the returns were in, the President himself seemed entirely caught up in this hope-and-change narrative:

We are excited to see what appears to be a robust debate taking place in Iran and obviously, after the speech that I made in Cairo, we tried to send a clear message that we think there’s the possibility of change. Ultimately the election is for the Iranians to decide, but just as has been true in Lebanon, what can be true in Iran as well is that you’re seeing people looking at new possibilities, and whoever ends up winning the election in Iran, the fact that there’s been a robust debate hopefully will help advance our ability to engage them in new ways.

Though somewhere some Obama apologist has probably already explained how the above statement didn’t really amount to an endorsement of the electoral process, the President is now in the position of either standing by his words or admitting, clearly and succinctly, that he hasn’t actually been getting anywhere with the Iranian Mullahocracy at all, and that the election has instead, as Radio Free Europe reporter Abbas Djavadi put it, “formalized the exclusion of still moderate clerics, founding fathers and technocrats of the Islamic Republic, and consolidated the rule of a new elite led by Revolutionary Guards, intelligence offices, and radical Islamists who feel to be well-represented by the Ahmadinejad leadership of the last four years.”

As the Iranian polls closed yesterday amidst those reports of high voter enthusiasm, the estimable Allah Pundit argued that the White House could spin an Ahmadinejad landslide as “a meaningless exercise in faux democracy,” but that was when observers were generally expecting an honest result. If that was and remains the White House plan, the President will have to, shall we say, refine his seeming endorsement of the process.  Yet it’s the role of Ahmadinejad’s effective legitimizer that actually seems to fit within a Peter Pan foreign policy built around the audience applauding and believing as hard as it can until Tinkerbell springs to life.  For Obama to reverse himself dramatically and condemn the results as fraudulent and illegitimate would amount to intervention in an unsettled, potentially explosive situation – on the side of a pseudo-reformer who was likely never worth supporting, and against a sitting government with whose representatives the US is supposed to be negotiating a Grand Bargain any day now.

Initial indications are of muted US criticism and hopeful muttering about increased pressure on the Iranians to make progress down the line.  Greenwald summarizes the new predicament, entirely the result of Mr. Obama’s audaciously hopeful posturing, as follows:

Obama has handicapped our ability to get on the right side of what seems to be palpable protest in Iran. For Moussavi is also claiming victory. More than that, he’s openly alleging widespread voter fraud and election rigging — and he has an army of supporters. Yet, the most free and powerful democracy on the planet has indicated its support for the legitimacy of Friday’s electoral process… If there was ever a chance for organic change to find purchase in Iran, this is it. With record voter turnout and disgust over Tehran’s incompetent leadership at an all-time high, the Iranian public is poised for something truly startling. And here we are, stuck on the wrong side — in the interest of “mutual respect.”

Was the President just winging it on Friday, Biden-like, with little or no basis for his naive optimism beyond his overweening self-regard? Does he have concrete reason to believe that the Mullahs and Ahmadinejad are people we can and must do business with, even at the cost of all moral credibility?  Or have the Mullahs been sensing this opportunity all along?  Did they sucker the President into a trap – his Rose Garden statement merely an unexpected bonus? (In a novel, the villain of this chapter might have been a vengeful intelligence analyst setting up the President or some intermediate superior…)

The Iranian presidential election of 2009 and related American missteps may be forgotten quickly, at least in the United States.  The events may make little difference in future Iranian-US relations and negotiations, and the hopes of non-Iranian observers pulling for the “Iranian Obama,” Moussavi, may always have been illusory.  Alternatively, for all we know, we could be seeing the beginning of the end of the Iranian regime, or at least a turning point in the Obama Administration’s approach.  If the latter is a possibility, the President and his advisers might want to look back on the last few months, and in particular the empty post-Cairo afterglow of the last couple of weeks, and think about the reasons why “guest of honor” is not a sought-after role at the Middle Eastern cannibals banquet.

Blowback

You must be logged in to post a comment.