WASHINGTON - As United States President Barack Obama attempts to navigate the treacherous currents of the ongoing political crisis in Iran, he faces a heated attack from neo-conservatives and other right-wing hawks who are urging him both to offer unequivocal support to the protesters supporting defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi and to scuttle his planned diplomatic engagement with Tehran.
So far, Obama's cautious stance has earned praise from Iranian activists, area experts and much of the Washington foreign-policy establishment, who warn that an enthusiastic US embrace of the protesters would threaten to delegitimize them.
"What happens in Iran regards the people themselves, and it is up to them to make their voices heard," Nobel Peace Prize-winning Iranian human-rights activist Shirin Ebadi told the Washington Post on Thursday. "I respect [Obama's] comments on all the events in Iran, but I think it is sufficient."
Still, the right-wing attacks have put a great deal of political pressure on the president to take a more activist stance, and may pave the way for a domestic political backlash against him if the Iranian government ultimately represses the protesters and keeps hardline President Mahmud Ahmadinejad in place after he won a disputed term for another four years.
Leading the charge have been prominent congressional Republicans, such as Senator John McCain and Representative Eric Cantor, as well as neo-conservative pundits such as Robert Kagan, whose Washington Post column on Wednesday argued that Obama's "strategy toward Iran places him objectively on the side of the government's efforts to return to normalcy as quickly as possible, not in league with the opposition's efforts".
Similarly, influential neo-conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer called the administration's rhetoric "disgraceful" and claimed that Obama was offering "implicit support for this repressive, tyrannical regime".
Those calling for a firm pro-Mousavi stance "are playing with dynamite", according to Patrick Disney of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a group that has been supportive of the protesters.
"At best, such grandstanding would give the hardliners in Iran a reason to paint the reformist camp as a stooge of the West; at worst, it could incite the crowds even more and risk blowing the top off an already tumultuous situation," Disney wrote in the Huffington Post.
Perhaps more significantly, many hawks in the US are already looking beyond the current political crisis - which some argue will inevitably end in defeat for the protesters - to argue against any diplomatic outreach to Tehran. ...
Barring a drastic reversal resulting in outright regime change - which few experts believe is likely to occur - the US would be likely to face a similar strategic calculus on the nuclear issue whether Mousavi or Ahmadinejad were president.
It is because of this that some neo-conservatives have suggested that an Ahmadinejad victory is preferable, since his confrontational stance makes it easier to rally popular support for harsher measures - such as sanctions or ultimately military force - against Tehran.
If I were enfranchised in this election ... I would vote for Ahmadinejad," Middle East Forum president Daniel Pipes said this month.
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