“Those who are merciful to those with whom they should be cruel will end up being cruel to those with whom they should be merciful ” Chazal tell us (Midrash Tanchuma Parshas Metzorah 1). From this we learn that it is possible to act in diametrically opposite ways and be totally wrong both times. We may be witnessing a modern demonstration of this principle.
In mid-2009 massive street protests erupted in Iran over the stolen presidential elections. The protesters begged for some show of American support. But President Barack Obama responded in the most tepid fashion possible to the protests. “It’s not productive [for the president of the United States] to be seen as meddling in Iranian elections” he declared.
An internal revolution by Iran’s discontented population had long seemed the best possible solution to the Iranian nuclear menace. The nuclear weapons themselves are not what make a nuclear Iran so terrifying but the prospect of their possession by a theocratic regime determined to spread the Islamic Revolution around the globe and unconstrained by calculations based on mutual assured destruction that preserved nuclear peace during the Cold War. As Bernard Lewis the greatest living Middle East scholar puts it nuclear conflagration for Ahmadinejad and his clerical sponsors may be an “incentive not a deterrent” — an E-Z Pass to paradise for the Muslim victims and a means of bringing about the appearance of the so-called “Hidden Imam.”
The absence of any supportive American response signaled to the Iranian demonstrators that they were all alone and could count on no international support and thereby made it easier for the brutal Revolutionary Guards to restore order and suppress the protests.
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