DOHA --- When the Islamist Ennahda Party won 40 percent of the vote in Tunisia’s first free election since the overthrow of Zine Abidine Ben Ali, the party’s leader, Rachid Ghannouchi said, “We will continue this revolution to realize its aims of a free Tunisia, independent, developing, and prosperous in which the rights of God, the Prophet, women, men, the religious, and the non-religious are assured because Tunisia is for everyone.”

APDS Blogger: Mona El Hamdani

Perhaps it arrived too early for Turkey, which was following a soft power strategy of "zero problems with neighbors", accompanied by a restless army of exporters. Visa restrictions were lifted, trade boomed, and millions of tourists including the citizens of Iran and Syria poured into Turkey to see the places where popular Turkish TV series were shot.

Aljazeera, the government-funded satellite TV channel, has also stirred opinion in many of the Arab revolutions of the past year, especially Egypt, extending the tiny peninsula’s “soft power” across the region.

Conditions within Iran, from rising inflation to widespread unemployment to economic stagnation, suggest that Tehran could still go the way of Tunis, Cairo and Tripoli. Against that backdrop, renewed “engagement” with the Iranian regime wouldn’t just be futile; it would be fatal to prospects for real grassroots change within Iran.

As part of our new relationship with Iraq, for the first time in more than 20 years the United States has returned to Iraq’s largest annual trade fair. Over 80 American corporations, universities, and travel and tourism organizations will showcase their products and services to Iraqi businesses and people for the purpose of building greater trade ties.

America's objections to the Palestinian move ring hollow across much of the world, and especially the strategically vital Middle East region. Its withholding of UN payments in response is nothing short of a combination of the absurd and the vindictive. As former Senator Tim Wirth has pointed out this will be sapping to America's soft power capacity.

Obama should return to his original approach and test the Iranians to see if there is any room for dialogue and agreement. Engaging with Iran, putting its nuclear program under some kind of supervision and finding areas of common interest (such as Afghanistan) would all be important goals.