The essence of Obama's message, original not just in style but in substance, was its explicit embrace of a new day. Things go forward from here on. Enough looking back. Setting that out as a founding principle of future talks, Obama appears to be grasping the most important truth about the Middle East: history is the quagmire. Get past it, and you might get somewhere. Obama made that leap in his Nowruz message. Iran's response fell short.
Not the First New Day
It's not the first time an American or Iranian leader rustled the leaves of an olive branch (if not quite extending the olive branch itself). Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton's secretary of state, twice in two years used almost the same language as Obama regarding Iran. "Spring is the season of hope and renewal, of planting the seeds for new crops," she said in a March 2000 speech to the American-Iranian Council, "and my hope is that in both Iran and the United States, we can plant the seeds now for a new and better relationship in years to come." Two years earlier, remarking on the reformist presidency of Mohammed Khatami in a speech to the Asia Society, Albright had spoken of viewing "these developments with interest, both with regard to the possibility of Iran assuming its rightful place in the world community, and the chance for better bilateral ties."
Khatami himself that same year, in a long interview on CNN, spoke hopefully of establishing cultural ties with the United States as a step toward resuming fuller relations. Khatami made good on his desire for closer ties when he aided the Bush administration with intelligence and logistic support in the 2001 assault on the Taliban in Afghanistan (the Taliban's extremist-Sunni doctrines being anathema to Iran's extremist-Shiite doctrines). For that, Khatami was rewarded with Iran's inclusion in the "Axis of Evil" by Bush in his 2002 State of the Union message, wrecking chances of further improvements and severely damaging Khatami's credibility at home.
Still, none of those overture come close to Obama's in tone, directness, or drama: here is an American president not even waiting for lower-level table-setters to prepare the way to address Iranians directly. Nor did Obama play coy regarding whom he was addressing. Previous leaders often used "the Iranian people" as a hedge against the appearance of speaking directly to the Iranian leadership. Obama didn't bother. He spoke to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran's spiritual leader, Ali Khamenei, albeit without naming them (there are limits after all).
And he referred to Iran by its existing name: the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is no small distinction, especially to the ears of Iran's leadership. In eight years, the Bush White House referred to Iran countless times, but only as "Iran." Not once--not once--did anyone in the Bush White House refer to the Islamic Republic of Iran. On a single occasion, the phrase did appear, but only as a shirt-tail reference to the origin of a quote by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ("on Islamic Republic Of Iran News Network Television"), and in a briefing on "What the Terrorists Believe."
A Three-Headed Speech
Obama's speech sounded like a graceful note of conciliation. A closer look reveals three elements.
The warm and fuzzies.
That takes up almost half the speech, a necessary rhetorical thawing of the silence and derision that preceded it while creating connections between Iranian and American civilization, to say nothing of the more than 1 million Iranians living in the United States. That's the "promise of a new day" section of the speech.The agenda-setting in a direct appeal.
About half-way through the speech, Obama ditches the Iranian people "to speak clearly to Iran's leaders." He doesn't whitewash the "serious differences that have grown over time," but the key line in this section is this: "My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us." In other words, nothing is off the table. I read that as opening the way not only for an explicit role for Iranian influence in Iraq and Afghanistan, but as a suggestion that a compromise may be explored in Iran's quest for nuclear weapons.The caveat.
This is the paragraph written not for Iran's mullahs, but for America's--for red-meat Republicans. It's where Obama turns patronizing to the point of imperiousness, setting out the United States as the arbiter of Iran's choices: "You, too, have a choice. The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations. You have that right." Iranians will understandably reply that it isn't the place of the United States or any other nation to lecture it about its rights. But this is all a set-up for what comes next: That right, Obama went on, "comes with real responsibilities, and that place cannot be reached through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization." Those are less specific echoes from Albright's 1998 speech, when she said that "hopes must be balanced against the reality that Iran's support for terrorism has not yet ceased; serious violations of human rights persist; and its efforts to develop long range missiles and to acquire nuclear weapons continue."
Next Page:Hedging and Balancing
