More cake than is good for them

Obama is a gambler and he bets on the likelihood that Iran, the quintessential leopard in the Middle East, will change its spots just because other animals treat it as if it were NOT a capable beast of prey. And anyway, if his gambit fails (as it's most likely to happen), it's other people's headache to deal with its detritus. Living in a vast continent flanked by two oceans and neighbors as belligerent as Canada, Obama can certainly afford to live with the consequences of his gambler's optimism.

What is Obama's thinking behind his strategy? Either he thinks that a better life for Iranians will induce the people to get rid of the ayatollah regime or that keeping the ayatollahs lubricated with candy will somehow keep them in check. Either way, he's mistaken, of course. People are unlikely to rebel when  the regime can tell them with some justification, how well it serves them. And as for the second conjecture, its premise is based on the indulgent-lazy-parent tactic so well captured in Jane Austen's novel "Persuasion":

Mrs. Musgrove took the first opportunity of being alone with Anne, to say, "Oh! Miss Anne, I cannot help wishing Mrs. Charles had a little of your method with those children. They are quite different creatures with you! But to be sure, in general they are so spoilt! It is a pity you cannot put your sister in the way of managing them. They are as fine healthy children as ever were seen, poor little dears, without partiality; but Mrs. Charles knows no more how they should be treated -- ! Bless me! how troublesome they are sometimes. I assure you, Miss Anne, it prevents my wishing to see them at our house so often as I otherwise should. I believe Mrs. Charles is not quite pleased with my not inviting them oftener; but you know it is very bad to have children with one, that one is obliged to be checking every moment, "don't do this, and don't do that;"; or that one can only keep in tolerable order by more cake than is good for them."