Political journalist Robert Dreyfuss has a terrific survey piece on Iran's tumultous political scene in the aftermath of recent elections there. Dreyfuss was in Tehran and is now back in Washington.

Here is a clip from "Iran's Green Wave", cover story of The Nation this week (but do read the whole piece):

Several factors combined to make Moussavi a viable candidate. First, with organizational and financial support from the Rafsanjani family and wealthy mullahs and businessmen tired of Ahmadinejad's cronies running the economy, Moussavi built a formidable countrywide campaign machine. Second, the brilliant Green Wave strategy, designed by a 27-year-old whiz kid named Mostafa Hassani, caught fire, and soon green ribbons, armbands, headbands, scarves and flags festooned Iranian cities. "I wanted something simple, something that could be replicated even by poor people in remote villages," the long-haired, lanky Hassani told me, sitting in Moussavi's cluttered campaign headquarters during election week. And then, on June 3, Moussavi electrified Iran during an unprecedented televised debate with Ahmadinejad. With the president sitting across from him, Moussavi called Ahmadinejad a liar and accused him of pushing Iran toward "dictatorship." The next day, green-wearing crowds began chanting, "Death to the liar!" and "Death to the dictator!" Nothing like it had ever been seen in Iranian politics.

Moussavi had another not-so-secret weapon: his wife, Zahra Rahnavard. A noted intellectual and sculptor, Rahnavard campaigned alongside her husband, sometimes holding his hand. Clearly a liberated woman, she called for an end to the much-despised harassment of women by the cultural police and backed equal rights for women. At a vast rally in downtown Tehran, I watched her mesmerize the crowd. "We are going to make a revolution in the revolution!" she cried. "We are going to make it modern and up-to-date!" As one, tens of thousands of people chanted: "Moussavi! Rahnavard! Equal rights for men and women!" Women in pink lipstick and with blond highlights in partly uncovered hair shouted beside women in black chadors.

And then there was the Obama factor. Countless Iranians watched his June 4 Cairo speech, and its transcript was parsed word by word. By offering to respect Iran rather than locating it in the "axis of evil," Obama appealed to secular nationalists, activists seeking greater individual freedom and businessmen hungering for an end to the sanctions strangling Iran's economy. Nearly everyone I spoke with during the ten days I was in Iran brought up Obama, whether I asked or not. At a frenzied Moussavi rally in the city of Karaj, west of the capital, I met a campaign organizer, Hojatolislam Akbar Hamidi, 48, a distinguished cleric who's known Moussavi for more than twenty years. "I listened to Obama's speech, and it made me very happy," he told me. "But we're afraid that some Iranian authorities do not understand the positive message of Obama." In interviews at polling places on election day, dozens of voters praised Obama's opening to Iran. At a Tehran mosque where hundreds of people were lined up to vote, several dozen crowded around as I asked an older woman why she supported Moussavi. When I suggested, "Perhaps Moussavi and Obama might meet someday soon?" the crowd, translating for one another, erupted in cheers, laughter and thumbs-up signs.

More prosaically, many plugged-in Iranians told me that nearly the entirety of Iran's business class is fed up with Ahmadinejad's bellicose rhetoric, and they want to put an end to sanctions. Saeed Laylaz, an economist and former official at the Ministry of Industry, said that as a result of sanctions critical sectors of the economy--including computers and information technology, oil and natural gas, and civil aviation--are suffering badly. "Ahmadinejad's is the first right-wing government since the revolution, and it has been a catastrophe," he said. "You cannot run the government with populism. You need experts. You need technocrats. You need planners." (Laylaz was arrested days after the election; he's still in detention.) To get a sense of what the business community thinks, during election week I attended a forum packed with executives at the offices of Etelaat, a liberal newspaper, where eight former ministers of oil, industry and mining slammed the government over its incompetence. Later, at Moussavi's campaign office, one of them, Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh, who was minister of industry under Khatami, told me that he'd put his business on hold to travel across the country working for Moussavi. "I'm a businessman, and I've been reluctant to get into politics," he told me over several cups of tea. "It's the desire of most of us in the business community to rebuild relations with the United States," he said. "It doesn't mean that we have to give up our independence or our dignity."

Besides reformists, students, women and businessmen, Khamenei and Ahmadinejad are losing their core constituency: the clergy. And given that Iran is a state run by the priestly class, that might prove their undoing. I spoke to a dozen or so clerics, from low- to mid-ranking mullahs to a few who'd attained the rank of hojatolislam, just below ayatollah. There are hundreds of thousands of mullahs in Iran, perhaps a hundred or more who have attained the rank of ayatollah, and just two dozen or so who have developed sufficient reputation and following to be called grand ayatollah. And more and more of them, including many grand ayatollahs, have joined the opposition. "After the television debates with Ahmadinejad, a large number of mullahs who'd been undecided went over to Moussavi," one hojatolislam told me. They were offended, he said, by Ahmadinejad's insulting attitude toward Moussavi--particularly his rhetorical assault on his wife, Rahnavard, whom he accused of falsifying her academic credentials--and his accusations against Rafsanjani and Khatami. "A president should be polite," the cleric told me. "Impolite behavior and ugliness cannot be accepted."

Another cleric, who campaigned for Moussavi in dozens of Iranian towns and cities, said that the majority of mullahs had abandoned the president. "There is a big gap between Ahmadinejad and the clergy," he told me. "Many of the grand ayatollahs are angry, because the president has taken many actions without consulting with them. They are especially unhappy because he has shown an aggressive face of Islam to the world, and Islam is not aggressive. It is a religion of peace." Some three-quarters of the grand ayatollahs in Iran support Moussavi, he told me. Ten of them sent a joint letter to Ahmadinejad, but he ignored them, he said. Several others have openly castigated the regime for its treatment of protesters.

A very well-connected mullah I talked with said that he is a friend and follower of Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri. Back in the late 1980s, Montazeri was the designated successor to Khomeini as Iran's Leader, but hardliners--including Khomeini's son and a circle around Khamenei--ousted him, he told me, because of his liberal views and installed Khamenei. Through this mullah and several other intermediaries, both Moussavi and former president Khatami keep in close contact with Montazeri, as well as with many in the clerical establishment in Qom. In the wake of the election Moussavi and his supporters began organizing what they hoped would be a broad consensus among senior ayatollahs to force Ahmadinejad out or, if it comes to that, to replace Khamenei himself. "Khamenei does not deserve the position that he has," the mullah told me. "He has become a politician, and as a politician he has been corrupted." Describing Khamenei in these terms is extremely unusual, and indicates how much the Ahmadinejad-Khamenei axis has lost its legitimacy. "Khamenei has lost the support of many high-ranking clergy in Qom," declared Ibrahim Yazdi in my interview with him.

Trying to pull together this opposition is Rafsanjani, who so far has stayed behind the scenes but according to numerous reports from Iran is playing a critical role in efforts to counter both Ahmadinejad and Khamenei. The former president is chair of the Assembly of Experts, a group of more than eighty clerics who have the power, under Iran's Constitution, to appoint or dismiss the Leader. "Rafsanjani has convinced the majority of the Assembly of Experts and several dozen clerics in Qom to support an effort to overturn the election results," a well-connected Iranian told me. According to Yazdi and several other Iranian activists and analysts, at least some of the clergy want to replace Khamenei with a far more moderate, less political council of ayatollahs as a way of restoring consensus in the leadership [see Sarfaraz, "Iran's New Revolutionaries," in last week's issue]. It would in effect be the end of the Khomeini doctrine of velayat-e-faqih ("rule of the jurisprudent"), which is the underpinning of the notion of a Supreme Leader, a concept invented by Khomeini that is far outside mainstream Muslim, and even Shiite, thinking.

And I very much agree with Dreyfuss' kicker on engaging Iran and ignoring the John Bolton types who want to launch a new war. Drefuss, in fact, includes a quote from Richard Dalton who I interview in the blog post below:

If Ahmadinejad and Khamenei retain their iron grip on power, both Iran and the United States will face inevitable pressure to resume diplomacy. "On both sides, the interest in pursuing a dialogue will emerge intact," says Sir Richard Dalton, who served as Britain's ambassador in Tehran until 2006. The start of such talks might be "slightly delayed" in the aftermath of the crisis, he says, but that's hardly a tragedy.

But Obama will have to ignore calls to set a short deadline on such talks. They could easily drag on, well into the middle of next year and beyond. If talks fail to produce immediate results, the president will have to resist arguments from Israeli hardliners and their US allies to take harsh measures against Iran--including military action. Obama's earlier outreach undercut the hardliners and gave a psychological boost to Iran's reformists and to millions of Iranians who saw Moussavi as a vehicle through which to improve US-Iranian relations.

If Obama wants to support the opposition, the best thing he can do is to continue to extend his open hand to Iran.

-- Steve Clemons

Here is a several minute long clip of a short discussion I had with Sir Richard Dalton, former UK Ambassador to Iran from 2002-2006 and editor of a new Chatham House report, Iran: Breaking the Nuclear Deadlock.

Despite Dalton's clear concerns about the unprecedented eruption we have seen recently in Iran, he believes that engagement with Iran's regime should be a top priority.

-- Steve Clemons

(Credit: Jonathan Guyer)

Jonathan Guyer is a Program Associate for the New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force.

-- Jonathan Guyer

Caroline Esser is a Research Intern at the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program.

The unfolding political crisis in Hondruas reminds me of a statement that Imran Khan, world-class cricket player and current member of the Pakistani Parliament, gave at a recent New America Foundation event: the United States can best promote American ideals and positively influence other countries by supporting the democratic process rather than sponsoring one "chosen" leader (or American puppet), as the Bush administration did for years in supporting former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

It seems that Obama has surprised many by doing as Imran Khan advised in Honduras - he has demanded the reinstatement of President Manuel Zelaya in the name of democracy.

Daniel Larison, a blogger for the American Conservative, attempts to show a contradiction between the Obama administration's criticism of the coup in Honduras and its support for the protesters in Iran.

Larison claims that in both cases the dissenters rightfully objected to the violation of their countries' democratic institutions. He asks, "Isn't it the case that the response of Honduran political and military institutions to presidential illegalities is exactly the one that most of the Western world has been openly desiring in Iran?"

But what were previously legitimate and progressive efforts to challenge Zelaya's referendum became regressive and anti-democratic when the opposition used military force to expel their democratically elected president from the country. Larison is correct that the people of Honduras had every right to protest their president's violation of the constitution; however, U.S. support cannot and should not extend to military violence.

And there is another distinction between Hondruas and Iran. Honduras has a genuinely democratic system worth supporting, whereas the Islamic Republic of Iran's democracy is largely a facade.

A review of past U.S. policy in Latin America demonstrates the wisdom of Obama's policy. It cannot be forgotten how many times in our recent past we have supported this sort of military coup, covertly facilitating the replacement of a leftist Latin American president in the hopes of expanding our sphere of influence.

The most well known example of this type of thoughtless American foreign policy is the 1973 American-backed coup d'état that removed Salvador Allende from power in Chile and replaced him with General Augusto Pinochet, a military dictator who committed countless human rights violations and played a large role in Operation Condor - a brutal effort to eliminate socialist dissenters from the Southern Cone.

Though democratically elected, Allende was ousted because the United States feared his allegiance to the Marxist party. Of course there are less extreme and more recent examples of this sort of American meddling, including President Bush's support of a Venezuelan coup to displace Chavez in 2002.

As Faith Smith has pointed out on this blog (here and here), choosing the side of democracy was no simple matter in the Honduran case because although Zelaya was democratically elected he has recently attempted to alter the Honduran constitution and reform the presidential term limit (never an indicator of a democratically inclined leader).

But Obama is correct to support the democratic process rather than any individual or political party.

On June 28th, Obama made the following statement:

I am deeply concerned by reports coming out of Honduras regarding the detention and expulsion of President Mel Zelaya. As the Organization of American States did on Friday, I call on all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter.

Thus President Obama has simply and wisely stressed the unconditional importance of constitutional law and democratic elections.

Along with the Senate's unanimous decision to pass the Kerry-Lugar Bill which declares "the consolidation of democracy, good governance, and rule of law" as the United States' number one policy commitment Pakistan - President Obama's response to the situation in Honduras indicates that the United States may be carving out a refreshingly modest, principled approach to democracy promotion.

-- Caroline Esser

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's discussion of President Obama's upcoming visit to Russia strikes a cooperative, friendly tone.

But toward the end he quotes John F. Kennedy, who said during the Cuba Missile Crisis that "If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity."

I think this statement captures the difficulty of getting U.S.-Russian relations on a better footing. It is not easy to have an honest, respectful dialogue when the two sides have opposing national interests on many of the substantive issues that define the relationship.

As I noted yesterday, Robert Legvold provides one of the best explanations I've seen of how we might be able to get there.

-- Ben Katcher

I have the privilege of chatting with many political, economic and foreign policy journalists from around the world. I generally like almost all of them and appreciate their interest, but some stand out above the others on occasion -- and Hoda Husseini of Asharq Al-Awsat was one of these.

My interview with her ran in Arabic, and I can't read it (yet) -- but some of you may be able to handle it.

Now, back to Rome -- where I was just blocked from visiting Octavian's home (Augustus Caesar) on Palatine Hill by some uncreative and unresponsive bureaucrats running an otherwise great archaeological site of one of the world's key ancient power sites.

-- Steve Clemons

Each month, I receive from Leo Hindery an update on "America's effective unemployment rate" which includes not only the official unemployment figures but other data points showing off-the-books unemployed or underemployed people.

The numbers are staggering and are aggregates of official data. They matter because various Obama administration officials including the President himself started off calling for huge stimulus packages to help generate "jobs, jobs, jobs!"

But now, I have been hearing more and more from senior Obama economic team members about the jobs they hoped for coming at the very tail end of an economic recovery. Others are talking about a GDP recovery -- but not a jobs recovery. They are admitting as well that they underestimated the severity of this recession and its impact on unemployment levels.

And all this while Goldman Sachs and other financial houses have seen their balance sheets get cleaned up and bonuses surge.

Hindery writes:

Here is a June 2009 version of the summary that calculates the Effective Unemployment Rate, which is now 18.70%, and the Effective Number of Unemployed, which is now 30,172,000.

There are currently 14,729,000 officially unemployed workers, as just announced. However, this figure does not include the combined 15,443,000 workers either (1) in the "labor force reserve" because they have abandoned their job searches (i.e., 4,278,000) or (2) underemployed because they are "part-time of necessity" (i.e., 8,989,000) or "otherwise marginally attached" (i.e., 2,176,000).

The effective unemployment rate is therefore 18.70%, instead of the official 9.51%.

Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of workers who are officially unemployed has increased by 7,188,000, while almost twice as many workers - 13,290,000 - have become effectively unemployed. And all the while, we should have been creating around 2,250,000 new jobs (i.e., 18 months times 125,000 jobs per month) just to keep up with population growth.

In June, the number of workers officially unemployed increased 218,000, while the number of workers effectively unemployed actually decreased 35,000.

It's important to see the entire picture of America's jobs profile -- no matter how unpleasant.

I recognize that credit bubble related recoveries are hard to work out and are usually quite slow -- with job growth at the back end. This all makes sense -- but with Christina Romer out raising expectations again with giddy talk predicting a V-shaped recovery and given the "jobs, jobs, jobs" mantra of President Obama himself -- the gap between the job figures expected and the disappointing economic realities generated may be politically consequential.

-- Steve Clemons

Recently ousted President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras has vowed to return to his country this weekend to reclaim his position as President of the Republic. Zelaya will be escorted by an unrivaled posse of regional leaders, including Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina and Jose Miguel Insulza of the Organization of American States (OAS), to ensure he is peacefully reinstated. Zelaya and his supporters are in for quite a showdown as hardened resolve awaits them in Tegucigalpa.

Roberto Micheletti, the new, temporary, or illegal (take your pick) president of Honduras was interviewed on Univision last night and calmly, but firmly defended the actions of his nation's military which he insists was under the direction of the Supreme Court. With hardened resolve Micheletti vowed to arrest Zelaya upon his return for his flagrant crimes against the constitution.

I'd like to offer a quick recap of the crimes Zelaya is charged with committing against the Honduran Constitution. The current version of the Honduran Constitution was written just as the country emerged from twenty years of dictators and military rule and it includes an article (374) specifically prohibiting any attempt to alter presidential term limits. Zelaya's referendum was an attempt to gain popular support for constitutional alteration of term limits. Article 373 of the Honduran constitution lays out the way in which the constitution can be altered and that is through the National Congress, not through referendums. When Zelaya's referendum was declared unconstitutional by the Congress and the Supreme Court he ordered the head of the army to assist him in carrying out this election. The head of the army refused and was immediately fired by Zelaya; unfortunately for Zelaya the head of the army can only be removed from office by Congress (article 279).

Despite these charges Zelaya is encouraged to reclaim his presidential position by a unanimous UN resolution condemning the coup d'état and demanding Honduras unconditionally reinstate him as president. The OAS issued a similar statement this morning in which they threatened to suspend Honduras' membership if Zelaya wasn't reinstated in 72 hours.

And so the showdown begins. On one side we have Zelaya backed by the international community and on the other is the government of Honduras backed by the majority of its 7.5 million citizens; an unfair fight for sure. According to Honduras' new president, the country will not reinstate Zelaya unless pressured by military force. The only party to have threatened said force is Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez who has happily injected himself into the center of the Honduran crisis playing the role of champion for democracy. Would Latin America allow a Venezuelan military invasion to re-seat an unpopular lame duck president? Doubtful.

That leaves economic and political pressure as the strongest negotiating tools. The resolve of the Honduran government may be able to withstand temporarily losing its membership in the OAS, but their economy is in no condition to withstand harsh economic sanctions. The Obama administration has condemned the coup, but they have yet to impose economic sanctions or withdraw U.S. ambassadors from Honduras as other regional leaders have. Latin America waits to see if President Obama will apply the added pressure to Honduras and I'm sure Obama wishes he didn't have to take a stand for a leader such as Zelaya.

I'll be following the situation in Honduras as it unfolds.

-- Faith Smith

As President Obama prepares to visit Russia next week, Columbia University's Robert Legvold has a thought-provoking article on the state of U.S.-Russia relations in the current issue of Foreign Affairs.

Legvold helpfully identifies current U.S. policy as "selective engagement and selective containment," while advocating a new framework for the relationship that includes ambitious goals on nuclear non-proliferation, regional security, and energy security.

Legvold explicitly places himself alongside Anders Aslund, Andrew Kuchins, Thomas Graham, and Steven Pifer within what I would call the "realist" camp of Russia analysts, who believe that a new strategic relationship with Moscow based on mutual interests is possible. (I would include Dimitri Simes, Dmitri Trenin and Nikolas Gvosdev in this group as well.)

Legvold offers two reasons why the time is ripe for a renewed effort to improve relations: new leadership in Washington and the onset of the economic crisis, which he suggests is likely to lead to more restrained Russian behavior.

The idea that a sustained economic slowdown will limit Russia's foreign policy options certainly makes sense, but I would be curious to know what Legvold thinks of arguments made by Stephen Sestanovich and others that Moscow's aggressive posture toward Washington is such an essential part of the Putin-Medvedev-led oligarchy's legitimacy that it cannot be abandoned.

On the issues at the heart of the U.S.-Russia relationship, Legvold's argument in favor of collaboration is most persuasive when he addresses the issue of nuclear non-proliferation. This is an area in which both sides have a real and stated interest in working together both to reduce their own arsenals and to prevent proliferation.

On Iran's nuclear program, he suggests that Washington should seek a deal that either allows Tehran to have a nuclear-cycle capability under strict IAEA inspections or an arrangement by which Iran joins an international fuel-service center. Either way, Legvold makes a good point that Russian cooperation is vital and depends on Washington proposing a deal that Tehran can accept. Russia is not going to help Washington coerce Tehran, but may use its leverage as Iran's primary supplier of nuclear equipment to help Tehran get to "yes" on a broader deal.

His calls for a dialogue on the future of Afghanistan and cooperation on transnational threats such as terrorism, drug trafficking, and cyberattacks also make sense.

But while Legvold's argument is dispassionate and cautious in tone, I find his analysis a bit optimistic at times. For instance, he says that

There is no logical reason why the two countries with the lion's share of the world's nuclear weapons cannot create a tighter regime to shrink their own arsenals and pave the way toward arrangements that render safer the programs of other nuclear powers, why the world's largest energy producer and its largest energy consumer cannot fashion a genuine energy partnership, why they cannot work together to mitigate the instability in and around the vast territory of the former Soviet Union, or why they cannot collaborate to ease the integration of rising powers such as China and India into a revamped international order.

This is an ambitious agenda indeed - and to be fair, Legvold cautions that "these goals may not be imminently attainable." Still, some level of cooperation in these areas is necessary if these issues are to form the basis of a strategic partnership, as Legvold proposes.

On the energy issue, it is true that both Russia and the United States benefit from a predictable flow of energy at stable prices, but Legvold fails to tell us what a bilateral strategic energy partnership could accomplish. Energy security is an issue that cuts across many of both Washington's and Moscow's strategic relationships and seems like an area where Moises Naim's concept of "minilateralism" applies.

And while both Washington and Moscow certainly have an interest in a stable post-Soviet space, I am curious whether Legvold would recognize (implicitly) a Russian sphere of influence in that space. If he would not, then it seems that competition rather than cooperation is likely to characterize this aspect of the relationship for the foreseeable future.

Similarly, the issue of how to incorporate China and India into the international system deserves to be addressed between Moscow and Washington at the highest levels, but this seems like an issue where the two sides' interests might diverge at least as much as they converge.

Finally, it would be interesting to know how Mr. Legvold views Russia's likely trajectory over the medium to long-term. Whether Russia's dysfunctional political and economic systems can evolve to meet the needs of the Russian people and provide the resources necessary for an active international security role remain questions to be answered - and surely the answers have profound implications for what Washington's policy toward Moscow should be.

(For a fascinating Russian perspective on Russia's medium-term outlook, reference "The World Around Russia: 2017.")

Overall, Legvold's analysis is refreshingly even-handed and his suggestion that dialogue on these difficult issues can lead to trust and incremental progress over time is persuasive - but he is most certainly correct when he says that achieving real substantive progress will be difficult.

-- Ben Katcher

Center for a New American Security Co-Founder and CEO Kurt Campbell has finally been sworn in today as Barack Obama's Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs, the position most recently held by the newly appointed US Ambassador to Iraq Christopher Hill.

Senator Sam Brownback had a hold on Campbell for a very long time -- and I was working on a blog post preparing to blast the Kansas Senator for his irresponsibility in holding up this nomination and for allowing a simmering cauldron on the Korean Peninsula to near dangerous levels without an Asst Secretary of State in place to focus attention on what was going on there.

Fortunately, I no longer need to do this -- and Campbell, whose spouse is the Under Secretary of Treasury for International Affairs nominee Lael Brainard, can now give the misbehaving North Korea leadership some of the American attention it craves so much.

North Korea will continue to be a mess -- but it is vital to have someone focused on what is really happening there. I have been a fan of some of our Korea handlers in the past -- like Evans Revere who now heads the Korea Society in New York, Ambassador Stephen Bosworth who heads the Fletcher School at Tufts and is now a part time North Korea envoy, Christopher Hill who is now in Baghdad, and now Kurt Campbell.

This is a vital region that more than anything else needs high level American attention and involvement -- and until this swearing in ceremony today of Kurt Campbell, the Obama administration was not giving enough of either.

-- Steve Clemons

Former Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman has just given short, but gracious, concession remarks issuing greetings to Minnesota's next US Senator, Al Franken.

Congratulations Al! This is a nice bit of news to get before flying off to Rome.

-- Steve Clemons

A good friend and neighbor in Colorado just sent this in to me. I happen to own the hill and ridge pictured -- and plan someday to have a house there, just about where the rainbow hits land.

Congrats to Al Franken who is nearly there! And like everyone else, I'm pretty darn impressed with Jenny Sanford on her life perspective.

Now off to Rome, where Cicero more than anyone else laid out what checks and balances rule really involves. Today, the American government has helped promulgate the notion that mobocracies and ballotocracies are democracy -- and that's just wrong.

America has gone so off the rails, to paraphrase George Soros, and is not yet back on the right rails that it needs to get its own democracy in order before pontificating as my colleague Andres Martinez does about promulgating and trying to compel democratic practices elsewhere.

-- Steve Clemons

For a few days, I have been doing some exploratory work on a book and needed to take a few days break from TWN to clear my mind.

I am off to Rome, Italy today. I will be blogging over the next couple of weeks -- but so will a number of other of my colleagues who are going to pick up some of the slack while I'm traveling and on a partial vacation.

If you are in Rome during the next few days, I'll be over walking up and down Palatine Hill -- exploring all of the cool stuff that Anthony Everitt writes about.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

On Sunday the Honduran military ousted President Manuel Zelaya hours before the country was to vote on his referendum to extend presidential term limits. President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton were quick to speak, but slow to draw conclusions.

Clinton's carefully chosen words condemn the coup, but offer no specific support for President Zelaya, "As we move forward, all parties have a responsibility to address the underlying problems that led to yesterday's events in a way that enhances democracy and the rule of law in Honduras. To that end, we will continue working with the OAS and other partners to construct a process of dialogue and engagement that will promote the restoration of democratic order, address the serious problems of political polarization in Honduras, restore confidence in their institutions of government, and ensure that Honduras moves successfully towards its scheduled presidential elections in November of this year."

I always side with democracy. But in the immediate aftermath of this coup it's difficult to say exactly which side is democratic. President Zelaya's would be referendum was explicitly against the Honduran constitution, yet he insisted on moving ahead with the vote against the wishes of the nation's Supreme Court, Congress, and military. Perhaps his power grab was buoyed by the success of his friend Hugo Chavez' February referendum to end presidential term limits in Venezuela. Zelaya was certainly acting undemocratic, but there's a right way and a wrong way to contain an overreaching leader; forcing him out of the country at gunpoint is certainly the wrong way. This is a tough call to make; one illegal act countered by another. The Obama administration must walk a fine line, their democracy agenda could be prematurely formed by their reaction to Honduras' coup. For now they are taking the collaborative (and perhaps safest) route by vowing to work with the Organization of American States rather than take the lead.

The concern for Latin America, expressed by Obama and Chavez alike, is that this coup signals a return to military influenced politics which the region has worked so hard to free itself of. As President Lula de Silva of Brazil stated in a radio address this afternoon, "We in Latin America can no longer accept someone trying to resolve his problem through the means of a coup."

-- Faith Smith

Atlantic Council Senior Fellow David L. Phillips has an excellent post at the New Atlanticist blog explaining the emerging strategic partnership between Turkey and the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Erbil, Iraq.

Phillips explains:

Turkey's military strikes against the PKK in northern Iraq were a tactical and political success. Applying military pressure catalyzed Ankara's decision to offer Iraqi Kurdistan political and economic rewards in exchange for cooperation against the PKK, a U.S.-listed terrorist organization that Turkey holds responsible for 30,000 deaths since 1984. As a result, Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan are fast becoming indispensible strategic partners collaborating commercially, working together on energy development, and strengthening security cooperation.

But both Ankara and Erbil are engaged in delicate balancing acts. The Turkish government is trying to reap the economic benefits of a prosperous, energy-exporting Iraqi Kurdistan without providing the basis for Kurdish independence or threatening its friendly relations with Prime Minister Maliki's government in Baghdad, which believes that it should govern the oil-rich province.

At the same time, the KRG wants to consolidate its control of northern Iraq without risking an armed confrontation with Maliki's security forces.

For the past several years, the United States has persuaded the KRG to refrain from making any aggressive moves that would compel Baghdad to respond with force - but the U.S. is losing leverage as it withdraws its combat troops.

The KRG recently adopted a new constitution that officially lays claim to the oil-rich province, an indication that the KRG is prepared to assume a bolder posture. The new constitution has already raised fears among Kirkuk's Arab and Turkmen populations and earned harsh rebukes from Baghdad.

How the Ankara-Erbil-Baghdad triangle evolves will be one of the developments to follow closely as U.S. combat troops withdraw from Iraqi cities this week.

For background on the relationship between Turkey and Iraqi Kurds, check out this excellent International Crisis Group report.

-- Ben Katcher