Obama's New Rules of Engagement for Iran

Barack Obama campaigned on a policy of engagement with America’s adversaries, and in his inauguration address offered an “open hand” to countries such as Iran. After his election, he had a certain degree of support in Washington for starting on a new course of diplomacy. But then came the June 12 Iranian election that returned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power under heavy suspicion of fraud. With a crackdown on massive street protests that left at least 17 dead, Obama’s running room for engagement has shrunk. The turmoil in Iran raised the question of whether Obama would only bolster Ahmadinejad’s authority by sitting down with a leader whose legitimacy has been so tarnished. Not to mention how the U.S. government could trust any agreement reached with a regime that its own people accuse of deception, and whether the exercise would only serve to betray the reformers whose struggle for freedom stirred passions around the world.