On Iranian rebellion, President Obama is missing in action

The popular uprising unfolding on the streets in Iran may prove to be one of the most significant upheavals of recent history, and could have a substantial impact for bringing about stability to a tumultuous Middle East region. Yet our president, the ostensible leader of the free world, has for three days been silent. When he finally spoke, his basic message seemed to be that the U.S. must not be seen to be meddling in the internal affairs of Iran.

Obama's response to the political maelstrom in Iran is hamstrung by his obstinate refusal to acknowledge any foreign policy successes resulting from the War in Iraq, most notably, the destabilizing influence the establishment of a nascent democracy on the doorsteps of Iran has had on its stifling and oppressive regime. Undoubtedly, it has not gone unnoticed by the people of Iran that the Iraqis no longer suffer under the tyrannical rule of a despotic Sadam Hussein.

Yet, Obama is precluded from capitalizing on this ineluctable fact. Having relentlessly acted as a demagogue on the Iraq War during the campaign, Obama is wedded to the notion that any foreign policy response to the thuggish theocracy in Iran must be premised on his role as the anti-Bush. The establishment of an incipient democracy in Iraq, by the despised cowboy unilateralist George Bush, is in no small measure one of the reasons prompting the protests in the streets of Iran on the part of its citizens who wish to be free from the repressive policies of the ascetic mullahs. Obama is too enamored with self-regard to appreciate the enormous geo-political and strategic significance of planting democratic seeds in an area of the world where despotism has long been the natural ruling order.

The fact of the matter is that a show of solidarity with the protesters would upend a central, albeit delusional, narrative of the Obama presidency: that he, as a self-proclaimed unique world historical figure, alone can bring a recalcitrant and hostile Ahmadinejad to the negotiating table, and successfully thwart, by captivating him with his soothing words, Iran's ambitions for nuclear weapons.

Using the historical backdrop of U.S. involvement in a coup in 1953, that installed the Shah, Obama's argument that the U.S. can't be seen meddling in the internal affairs of Iran is preposterous. It is not the CIA that is fomenting dissent in the streets of Iran, it is the Iranian people themselves, weary from the oppressive rule of theocratic mullahs and eager to avail themselves of the full fruits of modernity.

Obama should do all he can to hasten the demise of the tyrannical regime of the fanatical mullahs. He has everything to gain and nothing to lose. In 1981, Ronald Reagan, stood resolutely behind the Polish workers who fought for freedom from the suffocating oppression of their puppet Soviet masters. This courageous act did not preclude Regan from continuing to negotiate with the Soviets on arms control reduction talks. In the end, it was clear that Regan was on the right side of history.

Yet, were Obama to express support for the rebellion, he might inadvertently upend an important narrative of his presidency: the desire to meet with despots without preconditions. Accordingly, the best that Obama can muster in response to the beleaguered entreaties of those in Iran who want to rid themselves of the jackboots of the mullahs, is to issue dispassionate, lawyerly equivocations.

Hardly the stuff of which New Messiahs are made…