How Obama Can Reverse Iran’s Dangerous Course

Robert Kagan appeliert in der Washington Post an US-Präsident Obama, die historische Bedeutsamkeit der Lage im Iran zu erkennen und endlich offen einen Regime Change zu unterstützen:

President Obama has a once-in-a-generation opportunity over the next few months to help make the world a dramatically safer place. It’s not by negotiating an arms deal with Russia, or strengthening the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or by making that elusive climate-change deal with the Chinese, worthy though those initiatives may be. It is by helping the Iranian people achieve a new form of government. Given the role that the Islamic theocracy in Tehran has played in leading and sponsoring anti-democratic, anti-liberal and anti-Western fanaticism for the past three decades, the toppling or even substantial reform of that regime would be second only to the collapse of the Soviet Union in its ideological and geopolitical ramifications.

Allein die Aussicht, dass Obama die Situation a) erkennen und b) rechzeitig (!) entsprechend handeln wird, bleibt mau:

Does Obama recognize it? So far, the administration has been slow to shift in response to events in Iran. It has proceeded as if the political upheaval had only marginal significance, and the real prize remains some deal with Tehran. The president has been cautious to a fault. Even as Iranian opposition leaders ask him to take their side, and Iran experts such as Karim Sadjadpour and Ray Takeyh call for more active efforts on behalf of Iran’s reformists, Obama has said and done little.

The president needs to realize that this is his „tear down this wall“ moment. And that it is fleeting. Iran’s leaders are rushing to obtain a nuclear weapon in part because they believe that possessing the bomb will strengthen their hand domestically as well as internationally. They’re probably right. Moreover, Israel’s patience will not be infinite. If too much time passes without change in Iran, Israel may feel compelled to attack, no more how questionable the likelihood of success and how grave the fallout.

Were the Iranian regime to fall on Obama’s watch, however, and were he to play some visible role in helping, his place in history as a transformational world leader would be secure. Thirty years ago, the Iranian Revolution triumphed, aided by the incompetence of top Carter administration officials, some of whom, to this day, call for normalization with the Ayatollah Khomeini’s brutal successors. Obama has a chance to reverse their strategic and ideological debacle. But he cannot wait too long.