While most of Obama's domestic critics opposed his pursuit of diplo­macy on the grounds that talking with Iran was useless and morally questionable, a few voices also disapproved of his engagement policy as being insincere and aimed only at paving the way for sanctions. Neither criticism is well grounded. Diplomacy was not only a strate­gic necessity, but also the least costly avenue to address the tensions with Iran. And rather than being a well-designed conspiracy, the president's vision for diplomacy was genuine, as was his initial out­reach. But faced with overwhelming resistance from Israel, Congress, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab allies, skeptics within his own admin­istration and, most importantly, the actions of the Iranian government itself, the president's vision and political space were continually com­promised. In the end, the diplomacy Obama pursued was only a shadow of the engagement he had envisioned.

Obama's vision for engagement met stiff resistance from the outset. The Iranians themselves, however, dealt the biggest blow to Obama. The election fraud and ensuing human rights violations strengthened the arguments of Obama's domestic critics and made the administration all the more reluctant to defend its engagement policy. These events also bolstered the critics of engagement within the administration who viewed the elec­tion fallout as vindication of their skepticism.

"You have the rigged elections of June 2009. Then the protests. And then, in a way, the moment was lost," David Miliband, then-foreign secretary of the United Kingdom, told me. The elections had a deep psychological impact on the administration. Though it stuck to its engagement policy and refused to come out in favor of the Green movement, its willingness to take bold steps on Iran essentially ended. Engagement started to become too risky and, with no immediate political beneﬁts for the president domestically, the inclination was to revert to one's comfort zone. "When you don't know what's going on, and you don't feel like you have somebody you can communicate with on the other side of the table, you are going to revert back to what's safe," a State Department official explained. "And what's safe in the Iran context is demonization and just general negativity." By the time engagement ﬁnally could begin, in October 2009, Obama's room for maneuverability -- and his political will to ﬁght for greater ﬂexibility -- were almost nonexistent. He desperately needed a quick victory to create more time and space for diplomacy. But precisely because of his loss of maneuverability, he had little ﬂexibility in negotiations and the discussions quickly turned into a "take-it-or-leave-it" proposi­tion -- the very approach that was doomed to fail.

In Vienna, the Iranians dealt a second blow to Obama by refus­ing to accept the Russian-American swap proposal without any revi­sions. Though administration officials recognized that the primary reason for Iran's refusal was paralysis caused by political inﬁghting at home, the impact was the same: Obama had nothing to show for his outreach. His own party was revolting against him in Congress on this issue; many in his administration felt uneasy about the portrayal of the White House as insensitive to the plight of Iranian pro-democ­racy protesters defying the Islamic Republic's repression; and the Israeli government was reportedly turning to high-level Democratic donors to exert additional pressure on Obama to forsake diplomacy in order to save the Democratic Party in the upcoming midterm elections. Moreover, Iran's continued political paralysis made the potential for additional diplomacy unclear at best. Once the decision was made to activate the sanctions track, diplomacy had disappeared in all but name. That ﬁrst became evident when Washington in­formed Tokyo that its efforts to mediate a solution were no longer welcome, and occurred again when Brazil and Turkey's successful bid to convince Tehran to agree to the Obama administration's terms for the fuel swap was brusquely rejected. Obama's open hand had turned into a clenched ﬁst.