Obama takes Hillary’s advice on Iran, then snubs her.
For days Barack Obama had been tip-toeing around the violence taking place in Iran, fearful that the Great Satan would once again be accused of meddling in Iranian affairs. His caution did not pay off as Iran’s government accused the U.S. of meddling anyway.
Behind the scenes, however, Hillary Clinton and the State Department were pressing Obama to take a more forceful stance against the Iranian crackdown. Several days after making their case, Obama did, indeed, use the language Hillary had been seeking: Obama finally said he was “appalled and outraged” by Iranian behavior and “strongly condemned” the violence against anti-government demonstrators.
A Washington Times story suggests that State Department employees were very familiar with Obama’s more forceful language because they had given it to him.
“It was a happy surprise,” one administration official said. “It was echoing the line the secretary had been pushing for a couple of days.”
Some in Washington are suggesting that Obama’s initial resistance to Hillary’s advice and then not acknowledging her assistance or at least informing her ahead of time that he had planned to communicate her perspective on the protests, is an indication of a strain between the two former Democratic primary adversaries.
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