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Maynard has a slightly different take…

I don’t want Obama to fail just because I didn’t vote for him. I only want him to fail where his success would harm America and the world. I hold him to exactly the same standard I held George Bush to: Please get stuff right, and I’m with you.

As reported in the Jerusalem Post:

US President Barack Obama said Tuesday that there was not much difference between the policies of incumbent Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and reformist presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, who supporters have led nation-wide protests against Friday’s election results.

“It’s important to understand that although there is amazing ferment taking place in Iran, the difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as has been advertised,” Obama told CNBC news.

“Either way we were going to be dealing with an Iranian regime that has historically been hostile to the United States, that has caused some problems in the neighborhood and has been pursuing nuclear weapons,” he said.

It’s for this reason that I’m not sure it’s useful for the West to jump on the “Mousavi was robbed!” bandwagon. It’s been noted that the race for the bomb began with Mousavi in power, and there’s no reason to believe he’d do other than continue its pursuit. The rise of Mousavi might merely put a softer face on a bomb-wielding Iran, thus weakening the political resolve to stand in opposition. (There’s also the question of how much it matters what a president thinks in a nation that’s run by a “Supreme Leader”.)

Something changed. Some of Obama’s earlier quotes, in contrast, had made him appear dangerously naïve. A pre-election report from Reuters:

“We are excited to see what appears to be a robust debate taking place in Iran,” Obama told reporters when asked about the Iranian election during an event at the White House. “Whoever ends up winning the election in Iran, the fact there has been a robust debate hopefully will advance our ability to engage them in new ways,” he said.

And AP had reported:

There’s a growing sense that Ahmadinejad may be vulnerable and Iran’s highest elected office could shift back to more moderate hands with enormous stakes ahead. Among them: How Iran deals with Western fears about its nuclear program and responds to President Barack Obama’s offer to ease a nearly 30-year diplomatic estrangement.

If nothing else, the rising challenge from Ahmadinejad’s main pro-reform rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi, has revitalized Iran’s liberal voices

The JP article also notes that:

On Tuesday two protesters told The Jerusalem Post that Palestinian Hamas members are helping the Iranian authorities crush street protests in support of Mousavi. …”The most important thing that I believe people outside of Iran should be aware of,” [one of the protesters] went on, “is the participation of Palestinian forces in these riots.”

Another protester, who spoke as he carried a kitchen knife in one hand and a stone in the other, also cited the presence of Hamas in Teheran. On Monday, he said, “my brother had his ribs beaten in by those Palestinian animals. Taking our people’s money is not enough, they are thirsty for our blood too.”

If this is true and the word is spread on the street, it will make Iranian support for the Palestinians more awkward from the point of view of internal politics. Remember that much of the Iranian emphasis on the external “enemy” is to take people’s minds off domestic hardship and failure.

It’s for this reason I’m thinking that, at least for the moment, there’s some wisdom in Obama’s subdued approach. Let the focus remain on Iran itself, not on Iran versus the West. Pat Buchanan (not a person I regularly cite) makes the same point:

No U.S. denunciation of what took place in Iran is as credible as the reports and pictures coming out of Iran. Those reports, those pictures are stripping the mullahs of the only asset they seemed to possess — that, even if fanatics, they were principled, honest men.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will never recapture that revolutionary purity he once seemed to possess as the man of the people who was elected president in the upset of 2005. Today, he appears, as The New York Times puts it, “as the shrewd and ruthless front man for a clerical military and political elite that is more unified and emboldened than at any time since the 1979 revolution.” …When your adversary is making a fool of himself, get out of the way.