Obama’s Alliance with the Iranian Regime? Really?

Remember how in the months before the Iraq war, anyone who doubted the wisdom of military intervention was accused of being “objectively” on Saddam Hussein’s side. I do, not least because I was quite happy to so label folk. Sad times. Anyway, I see Robert Kagan has returned to that theme in his column today. It’s just like the good old days…

It would be surprising if Obama departed from this realist strategy now, and he hasn’t. His extremely guarded response to the outburst of popular anger at the regime has been widely misinterpreted as reflecting concern that too overt an American embrace of the opposition will hurt it, or that he wants to avoid American “moralizing.” (Obama himself claimed yesterday that he didn’t want the United States to appear to be “meddling.”) But Obama’s calculations are quite different. Whatever his personal sympathies may be, if he is intent on sticking to his original strategy, then he can have no interest in helping the opposition.