This Is What Soft Power Looks Like

Aziz Poonawalla makes a few interesting points:

[T]he [Obama] State Department asked Twitter to delay their network upgrades, so as not to interfere with the social-media-driven organizing of the reform movement and rallies. This is in stark contrast to the short-sighted closure of Radio Amadi in 2002 by the Bush Administration, which effectively neutered the widespread popular uprisings in the streets of Tehran after the sentencing of popular reformist academic Hashem Aghajari. Of course, the Bush Administration routinely engaged in empty rhetoric against the Iranian regime ("axis of evil"), which only made the regime less willing to tolerate reform. It's no accident that Tehran ramped up its nuclear program shortly afterwards.

Let's not forget that Obama has spoken directly to the Iranian people before the election - Obama's Nowruz greeting to the Iranian people was an end-run around the regime and a tangible encouragement for the Iranians to seek change, as this anecdote from an Iranian-American girl visiting family in Tehran illustrates:

Arguably, it was Barack Obama who brought down the virtual wall between Iran and the West with his conciliatory and hopeful Nowruz (Iran's New Year) message on YouTube. I looked on as my friends and family watched his message with adoration in Tehran. "Why can't he be our president", one aunt gushed. It hit a chord, mainly because it made Ahmadinejad look foolish.