Fallout from the Iranian Presidential elections

Although the American television media was largely silent over the weekend, there has been a strong international reaction, as well as in the print media which were running non-stop stories this weekend about the unrest in Iran following the election.

One thing that may have been swallowed up by the elections' massive coverage was that the new/former Prime Minister of Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu, himself gave a foreign policy address yesterday aimed at Palestinians and is in many ways a rebuttal to the Cairo speech that Obama delivered a couple weeks ago. In the speech he called Iran the "greatest threat" in the middle east, but made no mention of the continuing violence there, or whether he sided with the opposition party in Iran, lead by former Prime Minister Hossein Nouravi.

Initial American response has been cautious, with the State Department and the White House offering only measured condemnation of the elections, with Vice President Biden saying on Meet the Press yesterday there were an awful lot of "questions" about how the election was won and said there was some "real doubt."

Republicans are going to pressure Obama to engage Iran more harshly now, pointing to dubious election results as a reason that they cannot be trusted and maybe seeing this, especially if the violence and unrest continues, as a possible embarrassment to the Iranian government that should be exploited.

Obama definitely has an opening now, but may be limited by his own pledges of persuing diplomacy, from making any forceful statements of condemnation or trying to fuel the fire of the opposition in hopes of destabilizing a hostile government.