Reading Jonah’s piece today, it seems to me the president’s problem is that he chose as a matter of policy to legitimize the Iranian regime at the very moment they chose to delegitimize themselves — first, by stealing the election to an unprecedented degree and, then, by killing people who objected to them doing so.

That’s awfully bad timing, and one sympathizes, as one would if Nixon had gone to China a week before Tiananmen Square. But the fact is it’s happened and adjusting to that reality makes more sense than banking on being able to re-legitimize Khamenei and Ahmadinejad.