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Charm offensive - -

By Laura Secor

The New Republic
Charm Offensive by
Bush fundamentally misunderstood the Iranian regime--will Obama fall into the same trap?
Post Date April 1, 2009

You could almost hear the international sigh of relief that greeted President Obama's videotaped message to Iran last week. After eight years of bluster and threats, an American president civilly addressed both Iran's people and its leaders; he spoke of mutual respect, of Iran's role in making the world "a better and more beautiful place," of "shared hopes" and "common dreams." The buzz among ordinary Iranians inside and outside Iran was overwhelmingly positive. But I couldn't help but think of an instant message I received from a young journalist in Iran the day Obama was elected. "When is your olive branch coming," he wrote sardonically, "so we can reject it?"

Sure enough, the response to Obama's remarks from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the head of the Iranian state and the commander of its armed forces, was swift and negative. Khamenei told a crowd in Mashhad on March 21 that America's extended hand looked like an iron fist encased in a velvet glove. Recalling American support for Iraq in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, and the United States's accidental shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane in 1988, Khamenei wondered aloud if Obama was changing America's policy or only its rhetoric:

Did you release Iran's frozen assets? Did you lift the sanctions against us? Did you give up slandering and broadcasting negative propaganda against our nation? Did you give up your unconditional support for the Zionist regime? ... In any case, all the American officials as well as other people must know that the Iranian nation will not be deceived or intimidated.

With that, Khamenei laid dead the notion that the problem between the United States and Iran could be resolved simply through outreach, however gracious, on the part of an American president. There was a dignity to the leader's message: He would not be flattered by superficial niceties, like the show of familiarity with Persian tradition. He would believe change when he saw it.

But there was also a desperate anachronism in his return to grievances from the 1980s, as though he were trying to coax a flame from a blackening ember at a time when the populations of both countries have long since moved on. In Iran, ordinary people and even much of the political elite would welcome renewed ties with the United States. But the regime is controlled by a core of hardliners whose raison d'etre is threatened by such a prospect. This part of the Iranian political establishment draws its authority from revolutionary ideology and the armed militias it spawned. Anti-Americanism is not merely an incidental, easily dispensable part of its foreign policy. It is a fundamental first principle that justifies the existence of the revolutionary regime.

President Obama is no fool. Surely his message was calculated to produce the image of Iran's leadership standing athwart its people, harkening them to the past. Many Iranians associate their government's 30-year stand-off with the United States with the country's deepening woes. The economy is a shambles; even the most moderate opposition has been closed out of the political system, while many of its supporters have been intimidated into silence or exile; and the paramilitary forces and police have stepped up control of the streets. Now an appealing new American president, one whose middle name is Hussein and whose last name sounds like the phrase "he is with us&



    
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