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WORLD VIEW:IF IRAN was at the centre of George Bush’s axis of evil it is also pivotal for Barack Obama’s policy-making in the Middle East, central and south Asia. Hence the democratic rebellion there following last week’s election proclaimed victory for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad poses a critical test for the new administration. Obama favours engaging Iran in a grand bargain concerning the whole region, but will have greater difficulty doing that if the rebellion is suppressed.
Cannily anticipating this difficulty Obama explained why it is counter-productive for the US to be seen as meddling in Iranian affairs. That would simply give Ahmadinejad an excuse to label Mir Hussein Mousavi’s supporters as American stooges. And he was not sure that there is such a great policy difference between the two men to merit preferring one. His pragmatic realism came out in his wish for “tough hard-headed diplomacy” to engage with whoever rules Iran to protect “a core set of our national security interests”. He needs to do that on Israel-Palestine, Middle East politics, nuclear weapons and, crucially, on Afghanistan and Pakistan, which border Iran and where there is a common interest in combating terrorism, drug-trafficking and creating political stability. The likelihood of continuing tension between the Afghan-Pakistani and Israel-Palestinian elements of his foreign policy agenda is now complicated further by the political turmoil in Iran itself.
