Obama said yesterday to CNBC:
I think that’s probably true — or at least it was last week. At this point, the uprising sparked by last week’s stolen election may well have fundamentally changed how Mousavi views himself and his movement (and I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt to anyone leading anti-regime protests in the streets of Tehran). In that sense, to offer this statement now only serves to undermine bipartisan enthusiasm for the events unfolding in Iran. But there is one obvious reason why Obama couldn’t say this last week. Obama’s Cairo speech was generally credited, at least in part, for the election result in Lebanon. A second favorable result in Iran would have given the press free rein to declare the “Obama Effect” an undeniable reality (usually it takes three incidents to establish a pattern, but the rules are different for Obama). Suggesting an equivalence between A’jad and Mousavi last week would have prevented Obama from taking credit for a Mousavi victory if things had worked out differently.
