Cairo Speech Comes as Iran Race Ignites
04 June 2009 5:29 pm by Taylor Marsh
Juxtaposed against Obama’s speech today (my thoughts are here) are reports coming out of Iran that all hell broke loose in a presidential debate, when Mousavi, Ahmadinejad’s strongest opponent, didn’t like his adversary targeting his wife, who’s being touted as Iran’s Michelle Obama.
Iran’s president waved an apparent intelligence file on his challenger’s wife in the air Wednesday night, accusing her of violating government rules in an explosive televised debate that laid bare the rifts within the country’s establishment. …
[...] Mousavi was calm and quiet throughout much of the debate, but his body language showed contempt for the president. He rarely looked him in the eye except while delivering a searing, 12-minute final segment that sounded like a prosecutor’s closing argument.
He took Ahmadinejad to task for harassing students, shuttering newspapers and banning books and accused him of cronyism for appointing an interior minister who had a fake university degree, the gambit that probably prompted Ahmadinejad to raise the issue of Mousavi’s wife. …
Another nugget:
“Ahmadinejad started very well and Mousavi was indeed struggling to find the right words at the outset but I think, as the debate continued, Mousavi became more composed and assured in his remarks. I think the biggest mistake was to pour scorn on Mousavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard. Women will not like the president for this and it only served to enrage Mousavi who delivered a very forceful counterattack, preventing Ahmadinejad from interrupting him, and effectively ending the debate on a winning note.”
Mousavi rising at the moment Obama gives his Cairo speech, which had the American President revealing a definite difference on how he intends to deal with Iran. If Mousavi could pull an upset, still a long shot, what history Obama would have an opportunity to make.
Daniel Levy has a breakdown of ten things Obama accomplished in his speech today, which includes Iran.
4. Finally a President Who Can Talk to Palestinians
[...] Instead Obama spoke a language that actual Palestinians could relate to, recalling the 60-year “pain of dislocation,” the “wait in refugee camps” (without in the same breath emasculating the refugees of any rights). He spoke of humiliation, occupation, and an intolerable situation – in other words, Palestinian daily reality. Only after recognizing the Palestinian experience did he chart the course for achieving “the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity,” namely, via a Palestinian state. This shift in discourse may be lost on most American ears, not so for Palestinians and in the Arab and Muslim world, and it begins to give Obama a moral authority that will allow him to address this issue in speaking directly to the Palestinian people above the heads of their divided leadership.
5. Shimon Peres Could Not Have Done a Better Job
In what is becoming classical Obama, he at the same time presented perhaps the most compelling justification and explanation of Israel’s rights and its existence ever spoken in an Arab and Muslim capital. No Israeli has ever done a better job, he is a true friend. In the most unequivocal of terms and in a speech that so captured Muslim world attention, Obama placed the notions of threatening Israel’s destruction, stereotypes of Jews, and Holocaust denial, as being irredeemably beyond the pale and unacceptable. And he reaffirmed America’s “unbreakable bond with Israel.”
8. More Hand Less Fist on Iran
[...] However, I think this was more important, if not entirely new: “any nation- including Iran – should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the NPT.”
The president also had this intriguing chestnut to share on nuclear nonproliferation: “I understand those who protest that some countries have weapons that others do not.” Now I may be a bit Israelocentric in how I look at the world but this sounds like a not too subtle hint to me. Might this be a kind of “yes – we acknowledge there is a double standard here regarding the Israeli nuclear issue, and eventually we will get to that too.” It won’t be a headline, Israel will officially ignore it, and when asked Obama’s spokespeople will obfuscate but in more than a few capitals, including Jerusalem, a parsing industry will grow up around those few words.
