I was never one of those who believed that President Obama?s ?open hand? policy and his masterful speech in Cairo would have an immediate effect on domestic politics in most Middle Eastern societies. I certainly don?t think it played a meaningful role in the recent Lebanese elections, heartening though they were. And, as I said on numerous radio and television programs in the run up to the Iranian election, I don?t think they were a factor in the Iranian vote either. However, as we witness extraordinary events unfolding on the streets of Iranian cities over the past couple of days, one has to wonder whether or not the new American approach to the Middle East is really as irrelevant as a sophisticated understanding of the domestic political dynamics in these countries suggested at first blush.

I would certainly agree that the American diplomatic stance was not a major factor in deciding who voted for or against Ahmadinejad, Mousavi or any of the other candidates. If it is true, as it certainly appears, that the results have been heavily doctored, it is very hard to imagine that there was a strong consideration of Obama?s policies in that decision either. However, in the general outpouring of dissent and outrage on the Iranian streets, it becomes increasingly harder to dismiss the idea that the presence on the global political scene and the iconography of Obama are completely irrelevant.

Obama, first and foremost, and whether one likes it or not, is at present the global symbol of political transformation. His election in the United States represented an extraordinary political step that most people not only around the world, but also here in our own country, scarcely believed possible. Second, the open hand approach embarrasses extremists and those like Ahmadinejad who nurture their own clenched fists like hothouse orchids and revel in the politics of confrontation. Third, Obama is not only a product of the universal aspiration for change, his election was also to a very large extent a function of the political mobilization of new media technology, which is also driving the push back against the extremely dubious (to say the least) official Iranian election returns. It is hard to gauge the effect that Obama?s policies or his status as a global icon of unexpected and positive political transformation is having on current developments in Iran, but I?m no longer prepared to say, as I have over the past few weeks, that it is obviously not a factor.

Mousavi is hardly the standardbearer of progressive politics in Iran, but he did confront Ahmadinejad on Holocaust denial as an affront to the Iranian national dignity and reputation and rather forthrightly accused his rival of dragging Iran further down the road towards dictatorship. He appears to have been more acute in this second observation that he may have suspected during the debates. Ahmadinejad?s lowest-common-denominator political style, rank demagoguery and now, apparently, willingness to rig the already highly restricted Iranian political system all smack of nothing more or less than fascism. Insofar as President Obama represents, at the present moment, a new spirit of openness and constructive change in the world that stands in marked contrast to what we are presently seeing from the Iranian regime and to the politics of its appalling figurehead, we may, in fact, be witnessing something of an Obama effect in Iran after all.