Middle East Research and Information Project:

Wasn’t Barack Obama’s Friday fulmination against “extremists” in the Republican Party an attempt, perhaps by osmosis, to copy Hassan Rouhani’s refashioning of Iran’s domestic politics into a clash of “extremists” and “moderates”? Both presidents are faced with a divided and embattled conservative opposition. Both urgently need markers of progress -- symbolic and real -- to legitimate and push forward their agendas. Both men’s reputations are now linked together, for better or worse. Yet Rouhani, who clearly knows how to bend both the US and Iranian news cycles in his favor, seems to be more adept at handling his antagonists.

Neither Obama or Rouhani know for sure how far they can secure their domestic clout. Yet, if I may lazily go Orientalist for a moment, both sides pushed against a wall and realized it was a beaded curtain. The politics, in sum, have just begun, and the bedfellows may get stranger.

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