Obama's halo effect in Iran

Ralph Peters:

IT must have been the viewing angle: The despots who run Iran somehow missed the halo gracing President Obama during his recent sermon to the Muslim world.

The ruling mullahs' contemptuous handling of Iran's presidential election was their response to "the Cairo effect" announced a tad prematurely by the White House.

Our president's public flagellation of America only emboldened the junta in Tehran -- leaving Iran's power brokers more defiant, determined and dismissive than they've been in years.

And the strongest response Obama can muster to the blood in Tehran's streets is: "I am deeply troubled by the violence that I've been seeing on television." How bold, how manly, how inspiring . . .

Our president's speechwriters made the same mistake no end of diplomats and pundits made before them: They didn't pause to consider the enemy's viewpoint. Like Obama himself, they didn't bother trying to understand the mullahs' logic for acting as they do.

Obama believed that his rhetoric would change the strategic environment -- and his White House apostles wasted no time before declaring that his Cairo speech was responsible for Hezbollah's electoral setback in Lebanon a few days later.

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Now we have the cynical charade of a "review" of the election results by the Iranian authorities. (The Persian cat really enjoys toying with the mice.)

But the point really isn't whom the voters chose. It's that Iran's entrenched interests read Obama's meant-to-be-conciliatory remarks as a confession of weakness, a signal that the United States is at the end of its strategic rope.

The result was that the mullahs and state corporatists no longer saw a need to play pretend. Bush worried them. Obama doesn't. They judged, correctly, that Washington wouldn't so much as issue a tough-minded statement in response to this mockery of an election. And they were right.

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The message reminds me of The Rolling Stone's hit Hey you, Get Off of My Cloud.

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I said, Hey! You! Get off of my cloud
Hey! You! Get off of my cloud
Hey! You! Get off of my cloud
Don't hang around 'cause two's a crowd
On my cloud, baby

The telephone is ringing
I say, "Hi, it's me. Who is it there on the line?"
A voice says, "Hi, hello, how are you
Well, I guess I'm doin' fine"
He says, "It's three a.m., there's too much noise
Don't you people ever wanna go to bed?
Just 'cause you feel so good, do you have
To drive me out of my head?"

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Ahh, that three a.m. phone call again. Clearly the Ayatollahs do not want to share their cloud. Our enemies have a point of view they are unlikely to be talked out of, Obama needs to be getting ready to deal with that point of view with something besides rhetoric.