One thing I feel I can say with a modicum of certainty regarding Iranian showdown aka meltdown is that it's wrong to say Obama is keeping quiet in order to secure viability of dialogue after shit is finished hitting fan: flexibility on the part of Iran before current problems was unlikely, if you're an optimist, pure fantasy if you're a cynic - now you might as well bet on the second coming to set things right because Iran is going to be in no mood for compromises after this upheaval. Obama is doing what he's doing because the soft line he took before the crisis leaves him no choice. If he had taken a hard line with Iran he'd now have the option of supporting the uprising because tactically he'd have nothing to lose and possibly much to gain - but because he chose conciliation and the soft selling of an ostensibly 'new American agenda' he essentially is constrained to play it safe which has the effect of making him look weak, irresolute - all talk.
Now, he could possibly change course and become a hardliner on Iran - events may evolve in a way as to make conditions for such a switch quite favourable - but he'd be moving outside of his comfort zone, outside of the comfort zone of his liberal base and so I don't know how that would play or if it would even play at all. One of my early concerns regarding Obama involved how he would respond when required to do something not in keeping with his natural sympathies and, more importantly, decidedly at odds with the sympathies of the left wing. Could he deal with falling out of favour with the progressives? Would he be tempted to foolish and possibly dangerous policy positions in order to remain the great hope of left wingers everywhere?
Then again, if there's a brutal crackdown and hundreds of Twittering, Facebooking students are left for dead on the streets of Tehran, watch my liberal friends go all George Bush on me and demand military intervention to preserve the youthful dreams of a new Persian democracy.
