Obama's cunning intersection of Iran and Afghanistan

President Obama would seem to have no better friend on the foreign-policy front than Iran's President Ahmadinejad, whose excitable eccentricities are the perfect foil to what Gordon Goldstein, an international-relations scholar, outlined to the Times' Frank Rich as Obama's "greatest qualities as president": "his quality of mind and his quality of judgment -- his dispassionate ability to analyze a situation."

Although Goldstein made his remarks within the context of a shifting Afghanistan strategy, they applied equally well last week to Iran. There, the pertinent "situation" was Obama's deftly dispassionate handling of what in many respects was merely a 36-hour news story -- but timed and then staged, it would seem, to politically enhance Obama's freedom of action in Afghanistan.

Ahmadinejad walked, or rather scurried, right into it; he was the mouse to Obama's cat. And when the latter pounced, he did so in a way that scored immense public-relations points for a young and untested president.

Iran's top official for all things nuclear addressed Iranian citizens on state television Saturday, asserting, according to the Times, "that Mr. Obama’s dramatic release of the information about the site at a global economic summit meeting was a 'plot' meant to 'unite the whole world against us.' " Clinically paranoid or not, the statement was accurate: that was precisely the intended effect.

And for a change -- a very pleasant change from the previous eight years of neoconservative cowboyism -- the effect may surpass mere intent. The Russians seem to be on board with serious sanctions -- the apparent direct result of Obama's having removed George W. Bush's offending chess piece in Eastern Europe -- and even "the Chinese take this pretty seriously," said Defense Secretary Robert Gates yesterday on CNN's "State of the Union."

Much remains to be seen, obviously, especially since the consensus among foreign-policy experts is that Iran's medieval regime is less interested in its population's economic welfare than its own strategic objectives. The larger short-term point for longer-term benefit, however, is that Obama, in a quite visible way, demonstrated presidential strength -- and that could go a long way in reducing the effect of right-wing opposition to any military pullback in Afghanistan.

As Bob Woodward wrote in yesterday's Post, "despite an urgent request from his top commander" -- whose seeming bellicosity has already elevated him to saintly, best-and-brightest status by Republican pols -- Obama "has not set a deadline for determining a new strategy or for committing more troops to the war in Afghanistan." And with each passing day, the determination of that new strategy increasingly appears prefigured.

I admired the understatement here: Obama's national security adviser, James Jones, "noted" to Woodward in a telephone interview "that although the administration has seen some progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan, it remains uncertain about the outcome of President Hamid Karzai's contentious bid for reelection."

And that seems to be Obama's "out" -- not only from having to make an immediate decision, which would be especially politically dicey at the moment, but from his campaign pledges and his announced March strategy of escalation as well. In short, God bless Karzai's corruption.

"Jones," wrote Woodward, "said the Aug. 20 Afghan election, rife with allegations of ballot stuffing and other fraud, caused the administration to pause"; but, after all, Jones added, Obama had always "planned to review the effectiveness of the [March] strategy after the Afghan election."

And yesterday, on "State of the Union" and ABC's "This Week," DefSec Gates was also selling just that message: that at this point a wait-and-see attitude is merely prudent -- with the thundering implication being that reservations about Gen. McChrystal's request for up to 40,000 more troops are but a seamless continuation of March's strategy.

The weekend timing of this shifting stance -- so overtly away from McChrystal -- seemed more than coincidental to Obama's Friday announcement regarding Iran. The latter's inherent presidential "strength" provided cover for the former, which is exactly what the president needed.

What intrigued me even more, however, was Obama's press-conference response to a journalist's not atypical score-keeping question about having achieved a victory over Iran. "It’s not a football game," Obama lectured, with no little disgruntlement at the questioner's superficiality. "It’s not about claiming victory; it’s about solving a problem."

A "dispassionate ability," indeed. Lord what a refreshing change.