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January 27, 2010Is Obama Doing Iran Right?
CAP's Matt Duss thinks President Obama's policy on Iran is unsettling the leadership:
Looking over President Obama’s evolving Iran policy over the last year, I don’t think the president and his team have gotten nearly enough credit for how they’ve calibrated an approach, especially in the wake of the June 12 elections, designed to undercut both the Iranian regime’s international and domestic propaganda, by insisting on the possibility of a deal, and the effect that his has had of exacerbating divisions among Iran’s ruling elite.
One of the reasons I think the administration is not getting credit is that the stated goal of its Iran policy is not to produce divisions among the leadership but to convince them to abandon their nuclear weapons program. Perhaps these divisions are a necessary precondition to that end, although they don't appear at the moment to have measurably improved our chances of a negotiated settlement.
If the Obama administration had set its sights lower, it would likely be able to claim some credit for unnerving Iran's senior leadership. But since they themselves set the benchmark, it's against that standard that they will have to be judged.
(AP Photo)
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