Obama's Iran policy is moot?

Jonah Goldberg:

HERE is the one immutable fact of President Obama's foreign-policy agenda as it relates to Iran: It's over. The rule book he came in with is as irrelevant as a tourist guide to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

If the forces of reform and democracy win, Obama's plan to negotiate with the regime is moot, for the regime will be gone. And if the forces of reform are crushed into submission by the regime, Obama's plan is moot, because the regime will still be there.

Politics and decency will simply demand that the world condemn or shun the regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei if they come out on top. Even the most soulless realists will be repulsed by the blood on the regime's collective hands.

Before June 12, Obama's eagerness to negotiate with Ahmadinejad -- ridiculed by his conservative critics -- was hailed by the establishment and the left as proof of his high-minded faith in diplomacy, a healthy antidote to President George W. Bush's allegedly close-minded approach.

But now, if the clerical junta prevails, anyone who shakes hands with Ahmadinejad will have a hard time washing the blood off his own hands.

For some reason, Obama can't fully accept this. In his press conference Tuesday, the president finally condemned the outrages in Iran in terms he should have used a week ago. But he also kept alive the idea that the current Iranian regime could be a fruitful negotiation partner, despite what has happened in that country.

"It's not too late," Obama explained, for the regime to negotiate with the international community. He wouldn't even cancel plans to invite Iranian officials to Fourth of July barbecues at US embassies.

That amounts to tacit approval of the bloodshed and fraud that we've already seen and acceptance of the ultimate triumph of the regime. And it won't work.

...

So why is Obama bitterly clinging to a failed policy? Goldberg says it is part of Obama's grand strategy for the Middle East. If he can cut a deal with Iran, he can force Israel into a deal with the Palestinians. I think the chances of either of those things happening was remote even before the Iranian regime revealed its election fraud.

It has now gone from a remote chance to and obviously impossible chance for success. The brutality of the Iranian regime has forced Obama into a hectoring scold. With each condemnation his chances of achieving his objectives are reduced further. What that really shows is how unrealistic his "realism" was to begin with.