The Republican primary debates have revealed what was long suspected: The foreign policy issue that will dominate the general elections will be Iran. This is not surprising. Iran is the one issue the Republicans (except Ron Paul) can unite on, that enables them to portray President Barack Obama as insensitive to Israeli concerns, and that gives them an opportunity to cast Obama as weak.
What is more surprising, perhaps, is that Obama is vulnerable on this issue. After all, no US president has come as close as Obama in reaching a diplomatic breakthrough with Tehran, no other US president has managed to create this degree of international mobilization against Iran, and no other US president has been able to impose so many crippling, indiscriminate sanctions on the Iranian economy.
Iran was fast expanding its influence in the region during the George W. Bush Presidency. “Iran was on a roll,” one Obama Administration official told me. But in the past three years, it has lost its regional momentum. Iran’s domestic political situation is much more unstable following the fraudulent 2009 elections, its source of soft power in the region has take a hit following the Arab uprisings, its economy is hurting under the crushing weight of government mismanagement and sanctions, and its ability to play the major powers against each other has been severely limited since Obama took office.
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