Analysis: Obama strikes a tough tone on Iran

But the diplomacy needed to get Iran to halt its nuclear program will require more than tone.

C.M. SennottSeptember 25, 2009 12:01Updated May 30, 2010 12:08

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, right, walks with U.S. President Barack Obama and France's President Nicolas Sarkozy from the stage after their press conference at the G20 Summit in the Pittsburgh Convention Center in Pittsburgh, Sept. 25, 2009. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

BOSTON — At the Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh, President Barack Obama locked arms with the leaders of France and the United Kingdom to warn Iran that it must immediately halt its nuclear program.

Obama accused Iran of building a secret nuclear fuel plant in violation of the U.N.-mandated oversight and said that Tehran had posed a “direct challenge” to the international community.

In the city of bridges, Obama essentially threatened Iran that it has just burned one too many with the international community.

But in choosing to do so on the public stage of Pittsburgh’s G20 summit with all the world’s media watching and looking for any story more interesting than a long-winded communique on the economy, Obama was essentially doing what he does best.

That is, public diplomacy. And, as always, his tone is pretty close to perfect. He sounded firm, convincing and respectfully multilateral, and that tone goes a long way to swooning the world. It gets people around the globe to believe that the real America is rational and a natural leader in a dangerous world. This is a decidedly different image from the unilateral and seemingly belligerent America put forward by President George W. Bush. But former diplomats and Middle East analysts believe Obama will need more than perfect pitch in the public diplomacy of Iran, which interlocks directly with the profound policy challenges on Afghanistan, Iraq and the wider goal of global nuclear non-proliferation.

This is chess on many levels, not pop music.

To succeed in bringing Iran to halt its nuclear program and conform with the U.N. watchdog on nuclear proliferation, he will have to do the much harder diplomatic work of bringing China and Russia fully on board.

That won’t be easy as China and Russia do not believe sanctions will work, and as closer neighbors to Iran they have practical economic interests in Iran.

If Obama does not accomplish that real diplomacy, the confrontation of words with Iran will turn into a stand-off. And, if history is a judge, Iran will ultimately wait that out.

In neighboring Iraq, Saddam Hussein did just that for many years at the turn of this decade.
In the mid- to late-1990s, Saddam played the cat-and-mouse game with the U.N. inspectors.

And it is sobering to remember that that game along with the events of Sept. 11 served as a triggering mechanism for Bush’s flawed and ill-fated invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The U.S.-led offensive toppled Saddam’s brutal regime and ended all questions — real or fabricated — of weapons of mass destruction there, yes, but it also dragged the U.S. into a conflict where it has paid heavily in “blood and treasure,” as they say in the military.