I don’t often find myself rushing to quote NY Times columnist David Brooks. He’s conservative, he supported McCain in the election, and he’s a regular critic of President Obama.
All of which makes it even more noteworthy that in his column this morning, he applauded Obama for the administration’s response to the uprising in Iran.
Yes, Obama has been legalistic, supporting the protestors while recognizing Iran’s sovereignty, and therefore short on sincerity and heart.
But as Brooks writes: “When you don’t know what’s happening, it’s sensible to do as little as possible because anything you do might cause more harm than good.”
What’s important is that the Obama administration understands the scope of what is happening. And on the big issue, my understanding is that the administration has it exactly right.
The core lesson of these events is that the Iranian regime is fragile at the core … From now on, the central issue of Iran-Western relations won’t be the nuclear program. The regime is more fragile than the program. The regime is more likely to go away than the program.
As the AP notes, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who warned ominously today that his regime will crack down on protestors, has already sought to use Obama’s words to paint this as an American-fomented uprising.
“Khamenei reacted strongly,” The AP writes, ”saying Obama’s statements contradicted the president’s stated goal of opening dialogue with Iran and the conciliatory tone of other recent American messages.”
“The U.S. president said ‘We were waiting for a day like this to see people on the street,’” Khamenei said. “They write to us and say they respect the Islamic Republic and then they make comments like this. … Which one should we believe?”
There are things Obama can do, Brooks writes, to help hasten the fall of the regime, including economic and cultural sanctions, presidential visits to the United States for key dissidents, and “the unapologetic condemnation of the regime’s barbarities.”
Unfortunately, it looks like our president may have ample opportunity to employ the latter in the days to come.