A town hall meeting with teeth

The election of Barack Obama was accompanied by great hope that the damage wrought by the Bush administration's foreign policy could be mended. Obama's campaign team emphasized the fresh approach that would follow an Obama victory. Much has been made of the apparent failure of his efforts so far: coming face to face with the difficult realities of American foreign policy, the Obama administration has faltered.

The Arab-Israeli peace process remains deadlocked. After the early promise of the Cairo speech, in which the president indicated that pressure would be put on the Israeli government to halt settlement construction, his administration has fallen back on the easy answer that the Arabs must do more to ease Israeli worries. Thousands of miles away, one can hear Netanyahu's relieved sigh.

Despite a new strategy in Afghanistan, there has been little progress. On Saturday, the coalition's highly-anticipated Operation Moshtarak, intended to signal U.S. General Stanley McChrystal's emphasis on hearts and minds, was almost immediately clouded by the accidental killing of 12 Afghan civilians. And Guantanamo Bay, that persistent guilty conscience of American policy, remains open, despite promises to the contrary.

Then there is Iran. To use an Obama-esque metaphor, America's open hand has been met by a tightly closed fist, or at least a sulky shrug. On Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a student audience in Qatar that she feared a gradual military takeover in Iran by members of the Revolutionary Guards. This elite corps, according to U.S. intelligence, is responsible for a range of lamentable activities. Its commanders are at the vanguard of the nuclear program; it has provided support and encouragement to militant Islamist groups in Arab states; it has been behind the violent crackdown on street protestors since the sham election last June of President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

At the same time, like so many military forces in the Middle East, the corps has seen its interests expand into the economic sphere. It may seem puzzling that the United States should fear a coup against the current government, given its anti-American declarations and belligerent rhetoric toward Israel. This fact speaks volumes about the intense dislike felt by U.S. officials towards the Guards.

On the face of it, as with so much of Obama's foreign policy, the United States' response to the growth of this malign influence has been remarkably clear-headed, particularly in comparison with what came before. Certainly, it has become more hawkish than in previous months; we have seen a gradual shift from the policy proposals of Obama's presidential campaign to those of Clinton's. Emphasis has started to fall on sanctions rather than dialogue. Yet the sanction regime has been given a new subtlety. Rather than hitting all Iranians equally, the United States Treasury Department has tailored a number of sanctions specifically targeting the economic and military interests of the Revolutionary Guards. The Treasury last week froze the assets of four construction companies controlled by the Guards.

This attempt to single out the Corps' web of assets, including companies, banks and even the Tehran airport, signals an intention to damage this new "entitled class," to weaken its influence in relation to comparatively moderate state institutions and to curtail its damaging policies abroad and inside Iran.

Time to get tough on the Guards

Yet there is a niggling worry to this new emphasis, for the Obama administration may be pursuing a contradictory policy in Iran.

The new push for targeted sanctions against the Guards' economic and military interests, if properly controlled and intelligently designed, is likely to weaken their relative standing in the state structure. Insofar as Clinton's speech linked this sanction policy with fears of a military overthrow of the government, there is an implicit assumption that, by weakening the Guards' interests, America will lessen the likelihood of a harmful coup d'etat.

Accelerating a coup: Could sanctions backfire?

Yet surely this is far too glib. While it may be the case that the Guards will lose confidence if their interests are attacked, it is equally possible that by damaging their position, threatening their interests and potentially weakening their hold on the nuclear program, the administration could strengthen incentives for the Guards to stage a coup as soon as possible. Realizing that they have reached the zenith of their influence, high-level commanders may decide that only by seizing the reins of government could this influence be maintained. Sanctions may therefore make the possibility of a coup more likely.

It isn't clear whether this has been considered by the Obama administration. If such an outcome is possible, then Clinton faces a difficult choice: to push through targeted sanctions, increasing the risk of a Revolutionary Guards government, or to avoid targeted sanctions, leaving the Guards in a strong position but lessening the likelihood of an even more radical government than that which already holds power.

It's possible that Clinton believes that the process of usurpation is already so far-gone that it is a risk worth taking. Certainly, there are indications in her speech that she is speaking not of some future possibility, but a process that is already well underway (particularly since the June election). The shift towards a "military" (by which she means IRGC) government is portrayed not as a traditional armed revolt, with tanks surrounding government offices and the president up against the wall; it is a gradual infiltration of state institutions that has been going on for months, perhaps years.

This doesn't nullify the potential flaws in the new sanction regime. It does suggest that the administration is desperate for some solution; a desperation perhaps reflected in Clinton's call for other supplanted Iranian establishment figures to rise up and "take back the authority which they should be exercising on behalf of the people" (an odd request, given that among those "supplanted" are the supreme leader and the president) and her bleary-eyed nostalgia for the early days of the Islamic Republic, with its "elections and different points of view within the leadership circle." Regardless of the increasingly hawkish stance of the administration, this willingness to distinguish between the various cliques and factions within the inner circle and appeal to the (comparative) moderates, signals the distance that U.S. policy has travelled since the Democratic victory. Whatever the potential flaws in the new sanction plan, the administration should be applauded for its new thinking. Whether it works is another matter entirely.