PRESIDENT Barack Obama’s hopes of halting Iran’s nuclear programme have been dealt a blow by the election result but the policy of the “outstretched hand” will continue.

“The Iran election seriously complicates Obama’s game plan in the region,” said Steven Clemons, of the New America Foundation, a left-of-centre Washington think tank. “But if Ahmadinejad is sworn in and the situation gets relatively stable, nothing at all has changed in the equation that Obama set out during the campaign: we have to deal with our enemies – we must engage.”

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said last night America hoped the outcome of the election reflected “the genuine will and desire of Iranian citizens”.

There had been high hopes of an “Obama effect” in Iran, similar to the victory for a pro-western coalition in Lebanese elections this month in which Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed “party of God”, was defeated. Obama had said that what had been true in Lebanon could be true in Iran as well – “you’re looking at people seeing new possibilities”.

Tehran drew a different lesson from Hezbollah’s defeat, according to Lawrence Korb, of the Center for American Progress, who was a foreign policy adviser to Obama during his election campaign. “The mullahs were afraid that if they went 2-0 down, the United States and Europe would have taken a tougher line with them on the nuclear issue,” he said.

Korb argued that the regime had rigged the vote in response to Obama’s success in reaching out to Muslims on a visit to the Middle East this month. “It shows how concerned the regime is about his popularity in the Muslim world. They didn’t have to fake the results of the previous election.”

In a speech in Cairo, Obama signalled that while he supported human rights, he was willing to deal with autocrats. Iran’s foreign policy remains under the control of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader.

Richard Perle, a neoconserva-tive and former Pentagon adviser, said Obama must share the blame for Ahmadinejad’s power grab. “Normally, when you unclench your fist it benefits the hardliners, because Obama appeared to be saying we can do business with you even with your present policies.”

Iran’s defiance comes after a string of foreign policy setbacks for Obama, including North Korea’s test-firing of a nuclear missile and the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netan-yahu, refusing to freeze the building of settlements on the West Bank.

“It underscores the folly of the president’s basic premise that the problem we have with bad actors around the world is that they don’t understand us,” said Frank Gaffney, of the Center for Security Policy, a conservative think tank. “These people are thugs and they have been emboldened by our weakness.”

Obama’s relations with Russia could also be affected. The US had hoped to drop its proposed missile shield in eastern Europe, ostensibly designed for defence against Iran, in exchange for Russian pressure on Iran to suspend its nuclear programme.

If negotiations on the nuclear issue fail, there is no appetite on Obama’s part for military action against Iran. American military chiefs remain adamantly opposed to taking on Iran while Iraq faces growing turmoil and US troops are surging into Afghanistan.

If the Iranians continue to defy the West, “they will have to live with the consequences”, Korb predicted. “Sanctions will really start to bite.”

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