Some interesting analysis from the NYT, which suggests Obama’s efforts in the middle east, including the big speeches but also other policy shifts since he took office, may already be paying off:
“There were many domestic reasons voters handed an American-backed coalition a victory in Lebanese parliamentary elections on Sunday — but political analysts also attribute it in part to President Obama’s campaign of outreach to the Arab and Muslim world.”
Call me a cynic, but I am pretty skeptical of the Lebanese elections as a reflection of a decline in anti-Americanism or that all of a sudden the region is becoming moderate. What I see is that Western countries allied with regimes such as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia are locked in a constant struggle against the more extreme Muslim regimes in Iran and Syria, and there is always some push and pull back and forth. For the time being, Obama’s less hostile stance seems to have shifted the fulcrum an inch, just enough to slightly alter the balance of ideological power enough for our allies in the region to get the benefit of the doubt.
What I don’t really like about this article, and others like it, however, is that they lump the Iranian elections (today) into this extremist vs. moderate paradigm, which seems to me dangerously off the mark.
Mir-Hossein Moussavi, the leading opponent to Ahmadinejad, and the one the NYT likes to call a moderate, has been part of the revolutionary vanguard since 1979 and is a strong supporter of the overall regime led by the clerics. He speaks down to any potential conflict with them and he has spoken about supporting the revolutionary “principles” that the fundamentalists so support.
I dare you to read interviews with Moussavi such as this one with the Financial Times and conclude he’s a moderate in any meaningful way. All the NYT can offer, really, is that he’s appeared in campaign posters with his wife holding hands.
It’s clear that if Moussavi wins it’s because he manages to appeal to older conservatives who remember him as a hard-liner from back in the day and to youth who are disillusioned with the current management. It’s about corruption and competence, about the “marriage crisis” and epidemic unemployment, not about moderation of religious extremism or increased human rights.
As far as the West is concerned, none of the candidates are really pro-West, as all are determined to continue the “peaceful” nuclear program and none favor improved relations with Israel. Even Moussavi’s wife recently referred to Israel as Iran’s “main and everlasting enemy.”
Since the only candidates allowed to run were approved by the deeply conservative clerics, it’s better to think of the Iranian election as a warped version of a GOP primary than a true battle of ideas. Indeed, if you want to think of Moussavi as anyone, he is McCain, not Obama. McCain after Bush may indeed have been a change, but on so many fundamental questions, it wouldn’t have meant much difference.
The biggest difference between Moussavi and Ahmadinejad seems to be that Moussavi wants to return to a state-managed economy and wants to reduce cronyism in the government. That’s the reform agenda: it’s the economy, stupid. And has been reported everywhere, the economy is terrible.
So it’s hard for me to see the Iranian election as a referendum on moderation so much as a referendum on loudmouthed incompetence. It’s not the narrative that the press wants to tell, but it seems to me to be much closer to the truth.
