A number of our inane right wing commenters last night decided to make the protests in Iran a partisan issue, and they began to attack President Obama for what they see is inaction regarding the events in Iran. I will have the President respond before I do:
Well, I think first of all, it’s important to understand that although there is amazing ferment taking place in Iran, that the difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as has been advertised. Either way, we were going to be dealing with an Iranian regime that has historically been hostile to the United States, that has caused some problems in the neighborhood and is pursuing nuclear weapons. And so we’ve got long-term interests in having them not weaponize nuclear power and stop funding organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas. And that would be true whoever came out on top in this election.
The second thing that I think’s important to recognize is that the easiest way for reactionary forces inside Iran to crush reformers is to say it’s the US that is encouraging those reformers. So what I’ve said is, `Look, it’s up to the Iranian people to make a decision. We are not meddling.’ And, you know, ultimately the question that the leadership in Iran has to answer is their own credibility in the eyes of the Iranian people. And when you’ve got 100,000 people who are out on the streets peacefully protesting, and they’re having to be scattered through violence and gunshots, what that tells me is the Iranian people are not convinced of the legitimacy of the election. And my hope is that the regime responds not with violence, but with a recognition that the universal principles of peaceful expression and democracy are ones that should be affirmed. Am I optimistic that that will happen? You know, I take a wait-and-see approach. Either way, it’s important for the United States to engage in the tough diplomacy around those permanent security concerns that we have–nuclear weapons, funding of terrorism. That’s not going to go away, and I think it’s important for us to make sure that we’ve reached out.
The President is not alone in thinking that US intervention or a declaration of explicit support for the protestors will do more harm than good. Ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Dick Lugar:
But the leading Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee thinks the Obama administration’s arms-length stance is just right.
“I think for the moment our position is to allow the Iranians to work out their situation,” said Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana. “When popular revolutions occur, they come right from the people.” He said he did not think it would be wise for the United States “to become heavily involved in the election at this point.”
Another GOP Illumnati, and permanent resident of the MSNBC Green Room, Pat Buchanan:
When your adversary is making a fool of himself, get out of the way. That is a rule of politics Lyndon Johnson once put into the most pungent of terms. U.S. fulminations will change nothing in Tehran. But they would enable the regime to divert attention to U.S. meddling in Iran’s affairs and portray the candidate robbed in this election, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, as a poodle of the Americans.
Finally, former Bush administration State Department spokesman Nick Burns:
“President Ahmadinejad would like nothing better than to see aggressive statements, a series of statements, from the United States which try to put the US at the center of this, and I think President Obama is avoiding that, quietly rightly.”
So when there is widespread, bipartisan agreement that if the US does get overtly involved in this Revolution, the only thing that will happen is that the Revolution will be crushed by Ahmadinejad and the radical conservatives in Iran, it begs the question:
Why does GRex, Rhymes with Right and others like them want President Ahmadinejad to win? Are their neocon wet dreams of war with Iran so important to them that they would crush a people powered rebellion just to see it happen?
But hey, you can oppose President Obama on his foreign policy all you want, and I will not call you anti-American. But I will call you anti-Iranian. A year ago, it was fashionable in neocon circles to sing about bombing Iran. Maybe these foreign policy idiots have not caught up to the new reality yet: that not all Iranians are evil. In fact, most of them aren’t.