Obama’s Iran Conundrum

By Jeffrey Brochstein

While President Obama’s partial analysis might be true that Iran’s opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi governing policies might not be much different than that of the current despotic President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, he is shortsighted and downright wrong to relegate America’s voice as “meddling” and “unhelpful” as he stated last week as Iran’s post-rigged election turmoil unfolds.

Why? As in the case of Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution in 2005, following the assassination of Lebanese moderate, businessman and former President Rafik Al-Hariri which drove Syrian forces out coupled with that country’s elections earlier this month which rendered the terrorist organization Hezbollah’s parliamentary majority into a minority faction, the lending of a powerful voice to despotic-weary masses can help plant the seeds of liberty and democratic rule in a region dominated by dictatorial, theocratic and autocratic regimes that promote the hateful ideologies of Islamic terror and the trampling of human rights.

While it is true that that Mr. Mousavi might not be the ‘Reformer’, as was the case with the election of former President Mohammed Katami in 1997, that the delusional West might envision. Moreover, the West’s bittersweet experience in recent years with so-called “Muslim Moderates” in Arab countries like Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq and the Palestinian Authority with their constant rejection of a Jewish State in the Middle East, corruption and the denial of human rights of their peoples accurately highlights many concerns of some analysts on the subject of potential change in Iran. In fact, many in the West and even many young Iranian supporters of Mr. Mousavi himself gloss over or were too young to know that the Iranian reformer was one of founding fathers of the catastrophic Islamic revolution of 1979 which led to such regional instability, terrorism and the advent of Islamofascism. Despite the fact that Mr. Mousavi has stated that nuclear power is Iran’s right, he has also made it clear that he does not subscribe to the despotic rhetoric of current Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and change in the Muslim world, as we’ve learned with Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon does not occur overnight, but in the form of incremental baby steps which is a lynchpin of the Bush Doctrine.

Moving forward, President Obama will have to consider that the negotiations for which he recklessly strives with the current Iranian government will lend it legitimacy at the expense of the Iranian people who seek true representative government and individual liberty. That would be exactly the kind of "meddling" in Iran's politics that Obama says he seeks to avoid. Again, Mr. Mousavi might not take any less a hard line on Iran's nuclear program than the current government, but he does now represent the aspirations of millions of Iranians. This coupled with a strong, supportive voice from the leader of the free world might lessen the chance that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Ayatollah Khamenei, and even Mr. Mousavi for that matter, will exploit and utilized nuclear weapons now that thuggish power, electoral corruption and strict theocracy are their main claims to legitimacy.