It’s spring in Washington, so tourists from Norway, the Philippines, Singapore, Armenia, and so forth came to town. Their counterparts from North Korea and Iran were not immediately available for comment
President Barack Obama, center, poses for a group photo with the delegation heads attending the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, Tuesday, April 13, 2010. There are left to right from the bottom row to the top, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Finnish President Tarja Halonen, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, President Barack Obama, Jordanian King Abdullah II, Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Chinese President Hu Jintao, Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez, Armenian President Serge Sarkisian, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Nigeria acting President Goodluck Jonathan, Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych, South African President Jacob Zuma, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Swiss President Doris Leuthard, Chilean President Sebastian Pinera, Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European Union President Herman Van Rompuy, Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme, Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key, Pakistani Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani, Moroccan Prime Minister Abbas El Fassi, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, Poland’s Ambassador to the U.S. Robert Kupiecki, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, Saudi Intelligence Chief Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Algerian Foreign Affairs Minister Mourad Medelci, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, Sheik Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, crown prince of Abu Dhabi and deputy supreme commander of the UAE armed force
Mark Steyn on the fundamental lack of seriousness on display: “in 1933, the great powers were meeting in Geneva and holding utopian arms-control talks even as Hitler was taking office in Berlin. But it’s difficult to imagine Neville Chamberlain in 1938 hosting a conference on the dangers of rearmament, and inviting America, France, Brazil, Liberia and Thailand…but not even mentioning Germany. Yet that’s what Obama just did: He held a nuclear gabfest in 2010, the biggest meeting of world leaders on American soil since the founding of the United Nations 65 years ago -– and Iran wasn’t on the agenda.”
Oil is trading in the mid-80′s again, while the outlook for the US economy remains weak. Meanwhile, Iran is hoarding supertankers like it was 2008 again. Bloomberg:
Iran, OPEC’s second-biggest crude producer, expanded the number of supertankers being used to store surplus oil, echoing a program that contributed to a tripling of freight rates two years ago.
At least nine such vessels are idling in the Persian Gulf, Gulf of Oman and to the south of Egypt’s Suez Canal, according to data from the ships collected by AIS Live Ltd. Two months ago, there were three. Their depth in the water indicates they are loaded, with as many as 18 million barrels of oil being stored, almost enough to supply Europe for a day.
Refineries across Asia, accounting for almost two-thirds of global demand for supertankers, typically process less fuel in the second quarter to carry out maintenance. Two years ago, Iran used as many as 15 tankers for storage when demand from refiners fell, constricting vessel supply and helping to drive up freight rates more than 200 percent in less than three months.
Less than two years ago the price of oil spiked to $147 a barrel, largely to to out of control speculation. What are the chances this will happen again — or are the recent rise in crude prices and Iran’s supertanker gambit an indication of something else entirely?
According to news reports, “Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claims the United States is attempting to thwart the return of mankind’s savior”:
“We have documented proof that they believe that a descendant of the prophet of Islam will raise in these parts and he will dry the roots of all injustice in the world,” Ahmadinejad said…”They have devised all these plans to prevent the coming of the Hidden Imam because they know that the Iranian nation is the one that will prepare the grounds for his coming and will be the supporters of his rule.”
The Iranian regime isn’t too subtle, but it apparently has a sense of humor, however perverted. They came up with a gesture that seems not only to send a message to their own people, but to the US as well. AP:
Iranian authorities have confiscated Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi’s medal, the human rights lawyer said Thursday, in a sign of the increasingly drastic steps Tehran is taking against any dissent. In Norway, where the peace prize is awarded, the government said the confiscation of the gold medal was a shocking first in the history of the 108-year-old prize. Ebadi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her efforts in promoting democracy.
On the other hand, maybe the Supreme Leader doesn’t know about this.
Iran has acquired North Korean and other nuclear weapons design data through sources like the sales network once led by the former head of Pakistan’s nuclear program, A. Q. Khan. Iran has all of the technology and production and manufacturing capabilities needed for fission weapons.
It has acquired the technology to make the explosives needed for a gun or implosion device, the triggering components, and the neutron initiator and reflectors. It has experimented with machine uranium and plutonium processing.
It has put massive resources into a medium-range missile program that has the range payload to carry nuclear weapons and that makes no sense with conventional warheads. It has also worked on nuclear weapons designs for missile warheads. These capabilities are dispersed in many facilities in many cities and remote areas, and often into many buildings in each facility
We do not believe it is possible to successfully negotiate with this regime for reasons that we and others have stated periodically. The US’s continuing “offer of a serious, meaningful dialogue to resolve this issue” seems feckless — but what do you expect from an administration that repeatedly prefers tyrants to the people they oppress?
Amir Taheri reports the real story behind the Iran election protests and finds “worldwide Freemasonry” and the Bilderbergs at fault, in the mind of this crazy Iranian regime:
the official Islamic Republic News Agency tells us that this supposed international conspiracy (involving the United States, Great Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark and France) started eight years ago with the aim of toppling the Khomeinist regime…During the Bush administration, “the neocons” persuaded the president to “green light” efforts to topple the regime. Somehow, Washington enlisted the support of “world Freemasonry,” which, acting through the so-called Bilderburg Group, managed to persuade Iran’s then-President Muhammad Khatami to join secret efforts to “turn Iran into a secular state.”
Then, the tale goes, Soros and several US think tanks started sending their agents to Iran to recruit and train operatives for regime change. And the Bush administration created a special Iran center in Dubai, modeled on the Riga Center that Washington set up to subvert the Soviet Union in the 1930s. With Liz Cheney as the supposed coordinator, the plot supposedly soon won the support of several European countries…
The IRNA reports name scores of prominent Iranians, including many former senior regime officials, as “figures involved in the regime-change plot.” Many are already under arrest; others have fled into exile. Also accused are Mir Hussein Mousavi and Ayatollah Mehdi Karrubi, two of the defeated candidates in the June 12 presidential election — indicating the regime’s determination to move against them at some point. Indeed, the reports implicate almost all Iranian political groups and parties in the alleged plot, sparing only supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Obama is already over. In six short months the now-spattered bumper stickers with “Hope and Change” seem like pathetic remnants from the days of “23 Skidoo,” the echoes of “Yes, we can” more nauseating than ever in their cliché-ridden evasiveness.
Although they may pretend otherwise, even Obama’s choir in the mainstream media seems to know he’s finished, their defenses of his wildly over-priced medical and cap-and-trade schemes perfunctory at best. Everyone knows we can’t afford them. His stimulus plan – if you could call it his, maybe it’s Geithner’s, maybe it’s someone else’s, maybe it’s not a plan at all – has produced absolutely nothing. In fact, I have met not one person of any ideology who evinces genuine confidence in it.
On the foreign policy front, it’s more embarrassing. He switches positions every day, such as they are, while acting like a petit-bourgeois snob with our allies and then, when people with genuine passion for democracy emerge on the scene (the courageous Iranian protestors), behaves like a cringeworthy, equivocating creep. Enough of Obama. Only the Republicans are barely any better.
From the transcript of President Obama’s news conference:
The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, the beatings and imprisonments of the last few days. I strongly condemn these unjust actions, and I join with the American people in mourning each and every innocent life that is lost.
I’ve made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran and is not interfering with Iran’s affairs. But we must also bear witness to the courage and the dignity of the Iranian people and to a remarkable opening within Iranian society. And we deplore the violence against innocent civilians anywhere that it takes place…
The Iranian people can speak for themselves. That’s precisely what’s happened in the last few days. In 2009, no iron fist is strong enough to shut off the world from bearing witness to peaceful protests of justice. Despite the Iranian government’s efforts to expel journalists and isolate itself, powerful images and poignant words have made their way to us through cell phones and computers. And so we’ve watched what the Iranian people are doing.
This is what we’ve witnessed. We’ve seen the timeless dignity of tens of thousands of Iranians marching in silence. We’ve seen people of all ages risk everything to insist that their votes are counted and that their voices are heard.
Above all, we’ve seen courageous women stand up to the brutality and threats, and we’ve experienced the searing image of a woman bleeding to death on the streets. While this loss is raw and extraordinarily painful, we also know this: those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history.
As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people have a universal right to assembly and free speech. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect those rights and heed the will of its own people. It must govern through consent and not coercion.
President Obama’s comments on the atrocities of the Iranian regime seem quite a bit stronger than some critics, like Andrew McCarthy, anticipated (though he still doesn’t use the word “freedom” often). That’s a positive development. And good riddance to the “deeper wisdom” of Obama’s previous reticence on the outrages perpetrated by Khamenei on the Iranian people. Let’s see if these words are meaningful, or just an empty attempt at feel-good-ism; time will tell. (Here’s a candidate for test #1.)
Andrew McCarthy in NRO has a very harsh verdict in the matter of President Obama and Iran:
as a man of the hard Left, Obama is more comfortable with a totalitarian Islamic regime than he would be with a free Iranian society. In this he is no different from his allies like the Congressional Black Caucus and Bill Ayers, who have shown themselves perfectly comfortable with Castro and Chàvez. Indeed, he is the product of a hard-Left tradition that apologized for Stalin and was more comfortable with the Soviets than the anti-Communists (and that, in Soros parlance, saw George Bush as a bigger terrorist than bin Laden).
Because of obvious divergences (inequality for women and non-Muslims, hatred of homosexuals) radical Islam and radical Leftism are commonly mistaken to be incompatible. In fact, they have much more in common than not, especially when it comes to suppression of freedom, intrusiveness in all aspects of life, notions of “social justice,” and their economic programs. (On this, as in so many other things, Anthony Daniels should be required reading — see his incisive New English Review essay, “There Is No God but Politics“, comparing Marx and Muslim Brotherhood theorist Sayyid Qutb.) The divergences between radical Islam and radical Leftism are much overrated — “equal rights” and “social justice” are always more rally-cry propaganda than real goals for totalitarians, and hatred of certain groups is always a feature of their societies.
The key to understanding Obama, on Iran as on other matters, is that he is a power-politician of the hard Left: He is steeped in Leftist ideology, fueled in anger and resentment over what he chooses to see in America’s history, but a “pragmatist” in the sense that where ideology and power collide (as they are apt to do when your ideology becomes less popular the more people understand it), Obama will always give ground on ideology (as little as circumstances allow) in order to maintain his grip on power.
It would have been political suicide to issue a statement supportive of the mullahs, so Obama’s instinct was to do the next best thing: to say nothing supportive of the freedom fighters. As this position became increasingly untenable politically, and as Democrats became nervous that his silence would become a winning political round for Republicans, he was moved grudgingly to burble a mild censure of the mullah’s “unjust” repression — on the order of describing a maiming as a regrettable “assault,” though enough for the Obamedia to give him cover. But expect him to remain restrained…
That will change only if, unexpectedly, it appears that the freedom-fighters may win, at which point he’ll scoot over to the right side of history and take all conceivable credit.
McCarthy seems unduly harsh to us, even though we have been quite critical of the President’s to-date reticence on Iran. We’ll just have to see if that last bit about the President’s taking credit comes to pass. HT: Ace
Andrew Sullivan, who has done a very good job of linking the various internet postings in the Iranian civil strife, said this amusing and absurd video was “why Obama was watching his words” on Iran. If that is valid, and this crude anti-American propaganda is effective, then it hardly matters what an American government says, the people are so paranoid and gullible. (There is evidence to support this contention.)
We see the government video quite differently. The video shows that the Iranian government is very concerned about “secret messages” coming in over satellite TV, and about the use of the internet for subversive purposes. The video makes the point that if you plot against the government you will get caught because the government has spies everywhere.
The creepiest element is that the bad guy (pro-American) in the film gets caught because his sister rats him out by calling 113, the national hotline to the secret police. Question: if a government is that paranoid and its security apparatus is deployed against the people in such a gross and obvious way, why should we be concerned that pointing out the truth offends them?
Mark Steyn discusses the problems of appearing neutral in the matter of Iran:
For great powers, studied neutrality isn’t an option. Even if you’re genuinely neutral. In the early nineties, the attitude of much of the west to the disintegrating Yugoslavia was summed up in the brute dismissal of James Baker that America didn’t have a dog in this fight…
great-power “even-handedness” will invariably be received as a form of one-handedness by the time its effects are felt on the other side of the world. Western “even-handedness” on Bosnia was the biggest single factor in the radicalization of European Muslims…You always have a dog in the fight, whether you know it or not.
For the Obama administration, this presents a particular challenge — because the president’s preferred rhetorical tic is to stake out the two sides and present himself as a dispassionate, disinterested soul of moderation: “There are those who would argue…” on the one hand, whereas “there are those who insist…” on the other, whereas he is beyond such petty dogmatic positions…
in his recent speech in Cairo he applied the same technique. Among his many unique qualities, the 44th president is the first to give the impression that the job is beneath him — that he is too big and too gifted to be confined to the humdrum interests of one nation state. As my former National Review colleague David Frum put it, the Obama address offered “the amazing spectacle of an American president taking an equidistant position between the country he leads and its detractors and enemies.”…
What would you make of that “equidistance” if you were back in the palace watching it on CNN International?…they would have concluded that the meta-message of his “equidistance” was a prostration before “stability” — an acceptance of the region’s worst pathologies as a permanent feature of life.
The mullahs stole this election on a grander scale than ever before primarily for reasons of internal security and regional strategy. But Obama’s speech told them that, in the “post-American world,” they could do so with impunity.
Steyn observes that Obama’s use of opposing straw men is a rhetorical feint: “That was pretty much his shtick on abortion at Notre Dame…such studied moderation is usually a crock: Obama is an abortion absolutist, supporting partial-birth infanticide, and even laws that prevent any baby so inconsiderate as to survive the abortion from receiving medical treatment.” The appearance of being above it all conceals a rather clear agenda that can only be seen clearly in the actions or the inactions of Obama.
It seems apparent to us that, based on the administration’s inaction and feeble responses to the unbelievable events in Iran, it is reasonable to conclude that the administration is more or less siding with the Khamenei/Ahmadinejad faction. Certainly that is the conclusion that the Mousavi camp appears to have drawn.
…………………………………………….THE WHITE HOUSE………………………………………….
………………………………………..Office of the Press Secretary……………………………………
________________________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release…………………………………………………………………….June 20, 2009
The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.
As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.
Martin Luther King once said — “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.
The President underscored the outrage expressed in the statement by going out for ice cream. You be the judge of the seriousness of the message that President Obama means to convey to the Supreme Leader.
VDH sums up the rather narcissistic and strange journey that President Obama has put America on for the past six months:
in the Middle East, in the case of Israel, with Turkey, on the recent Iranian upheaval, and during the South America visit, Obama is clearly to the left of Europe. He sees himself more as multicultural prophet born out of the Third World, foe of colonialism, angry at past imperialism, skeptical of capitalism, eager to showcase his non-traditional ancestry and tripartite nomenclature. By coming from the West, but separating himself from the history of his own country, Obama has become a citizen of the world, who polls far higher, as intended, in the Middle East, than does his own country…
almost all Obama’s historical references were wrong or distorted: Berlin airlift, death camps, Inquisition, Muslim contribution to the European Renaissance and Enlightenment, Muslim discoveries of breakthroughs in science, math, printing, etc., suggesting that as a postmodernist he (and/or his speechwriters) does not really believe in absolute truth, but rather relative competing narratives predicated on race/class/gender. And the means of magnifying the accomplishments of those “without power” justifies the ends of diminishing those “with power.” The list of other inaccuracies in his Cairo speech could be expanded from the contemporary Middle East to his references to John Adams and Islam…
Here at home — We know the boilerplate: The President outlines the problem, punctuated with those awful “them” and “they” and “some” and “others” who as extremists stand in the way of all good things and present “false choices”, but remain unnamed. (Sort of like the tropes in 1984)…These are the prefaces to his reluctance to … (fill in the blanks: run the private sector, spend massive amounts of money, take over health care, raise taxes, etc.).
Then he pauses, takes a deep breath, and in fact outlines ways to take over GM, regulate compensation, run up massive deficits, nationalize health care, and plan record tax hikes…he finishes with variations on the old campaign formula “this is the moment”, “hope and change”, “yes, we can”, “we will not be deterred.” No one can quite believe that one has just heard Obama deny that he’s going to do exactly what he then outlines he is going to do.
Obama himself gave us ample warning of his reckless grandiosity during the 2008 campaign. So we can’t say we weren’t warned. The situation has only gotten worse in the months since his inauguration. And there’s 3.5 years to go. Help!
Obama talks tough, at long last, in his Saturday radio address. But it’s not about the poor people being killed or beaten senseless in Iran, as in this graphic scene — it’s about credit card companies. AP:
this crisis may have started on Wall Street. But its impacts have been felt by ordinary Americans who rely on credit cards, home loans and other financial instruments…Those ridiculous contracts — pages of fine print that no one can figure out — will be a thing of the past. You’ll be able to compare products, with descriptions in plain language, to see what is best for you…
I welcome a debate about how we can make sure our regulations work for businesses and consumers…what I will not accept — what I will vigorously oppose — are those who do not argue in good faith…While I’m not spoiling for a fight, I’m ready for one
The most interesting aspect of Obama’s muted response to Iran is that it is a truly revelatory moment. After all, as Roger Simon notes, Iran is an issue that, at the moment at least, “clearly unites the left and right emotionally.” The easiest choice for a politician would be to go with popular opinion; but Obama does not. Therefore, there is either deep strategy at work, or some deeply held belief. We would hope for strategy, but that’s not what we think is really going on.
Stratfor reports a bomb blast, a suicide bomber according to state media, in Iran the day after Khamenei warned that “terrorist plots” are associated with protests against his regime:
A bomb blast near the mausoleum of Islamic Republic of Iran founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, located in southern Tehran, has left one person dead and at least two others wounded June 20. It is not clear who was behind the blast but the authorities will use this incident to engage in a wider crackdown…
the blast comes a day after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gave a rare Friday prayer sermon, in which he said, “Street demonstrations are a target for terrorist plots. Who would be responsible if something happened?” This statement and the fact that the original reports of the blast came from state media make the explosion a suspicious development which may have been engineered by the security establishment
Meanwhile, only 3000 people gathered to get clobbered or killed by the police and Basij at a demonstration. Police beat people trying to get to the protest. Kristallnacht seems more disciplined than this: “”From Iran: I am home since 10 minute and Basij forces and police were killing young people like animals”…
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivered a rare but critical Friday sermon prayer June 19 in which he addressed the continuing public unrest in the wake of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s victory in the June 12 presidential election, as well as the schism among the country’s political leadership. As expected, he took a clear position in favor of the president, rejecting accusations of electoral fraud…
Khamenei has clearly opted for the forcible suppression of the uprising…the country’s elite ideological military force, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has taken command of domestic law enforcement in Tehran. Consequently, from today forward, we can expect to see security forces crush protests…
Khamenei…said, “Differences of opinion do exist between officials which is natural. But it does not mean there is a rift in the system. Ever since the last presidential election there existed differences of opinion between Ahmadinejad and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (the second most powerful cleric in the state). Of course my outlook is closer to that of Ahmadinejad in domestic and foreign policy.”…
The stage is now set for a major confrontation, but it is unclear who will emerge victorious. Regardless of which political faction wins, Khamenei has decided that it is worth the risk to bring in the IRGC. Though the Iranian state security apparatus is adept at extinguishing protests, it is still a risky gamble that will further fuel the fire of discontent.
Here’s some reaction to Khamenei’s speech. Who knows where things go from here?
Sad to say, it appears clear at this point in the Obama administration that President Obama seems to identify with authoritarian dictators over democrats. It seems that Obama has an inverted moral compass.
As an experiement, name two countries or leaders that Barack Obama dislikes or disfavors, and two more countries or leaders that he likes or shows deference to. It was easy, wasn’t it, even after five short months of Obama’s Presidency? Here are some potential candidates as answers in case you were stumped: (a) England, (b) Israel, (c) Saudi Arabia, (d) Honduras, and (e) Iran.
Obama’s reticent posture towards the uprising in Iran and his condemnation of the court-ordered, Congress approved dismissal of Zelaya in Honduras stand in stark contrast to his critique of Israel and his dissing of other traditional American allies like England.
It appears to us to be more than strategy and tactics that President Obama shows disrespect to, or bullies, America’s traditional allies, while appearing inappropriately obsequent to certain countries, including outright enemies.
You may think that President Obama’s vision is correct, and that the “re-branding” of America is a good thing, or you may think that the President’s policies are foolish, even dangerous. For us, Obama’s reticence at the atrocities in Iran have finally made it very clear whom his gut reactions favor and disfavor, and we find that the conclusions we have drawn are pretty disturbing.
As they note over at Powerline, you don’t have to be much of an American to side with besieged democracy protesters over authoritarian anti-American dictators who are comfortable in their thuggish ways. And then there’s Obama…..
The WSJ has some quotes from the President on Iran:
The President yesterday denounced the “extent of the fraud” and the “shocking” and “brutal” response of the Iranian regime to public demonstrations in Tehran these past four days. “These elections are an atrocity,” he said. “If Ahmadinejad had made such progress since the last elections, if he won two-thirds of the vote, why such violence?” The statement named the regime as the cause of the outrage in Iran and, without meddling or picking favorites, stood up for Iranian democracy.
Great stuff! Taranto adds: “Speaking very broadly, there are two possible outcomes in Iran now. The regime may succeed in crushing the opposition, enhancing its own power at the expense of whatever pretense of legitimacy it might have had a week ago. Or it may fail to do so and be weakened or overthrown. The free world has every interest in encouraging the latter outcome.” Indeed it does.
President Obama reacts to the news of the day in a way that sounds bizarre to us, given the level of violence and oppression currently underway in Iran. WaPo:
“I do believe that something has happened in Iran where there is a questioning of the kinds of antagonistic postures towards the international community that have taken place in the past…When I see violence directed at peaceful protesters, when I see peaceful dissent being suppressed, wherever that takes place, it is of concern to me, and it’s of concern to the American people…That is not how governments should interact with their people.”
What’s the deal with this? Why is the first sentence so contorted and unclear? Why is it so false — the Iranian people are demanding some freedom, not “questioning Iran’s antagonistic postures towards the international community”? Why are the next sentences so at pains not to single out Iran and its government? Why is the murdering of protesters reduced to the banality of “that is not how governments should interact with their people”? This is bizarre. Taking a “wait-and-see” approach, as Andrew Sullivan counsels, to Iran might seem practical, but exactly what sort of enduring, enforceable agreements are possible with governments that do not hesitate to kill large numbers of their own people when they decide it is in their interests to do so? Obama’s strange reaction to the yearning for freedom — “the easiest way for reactionary forces inside Iran to crush reformers is to say it’s the US that is encouraging those reformers” — is a cop-out at best and a suck-up to the regime at worst.
By contrast, this reaction by a President to a somewhat similar situation seems a lot clearer: “I want emphatically to state tonight that if the outrages in Poland do not cease, we cannot and will not conduct ‘business as usual’ with the perpetrators and those who aid and abet them. Make no mistake, their crime will cost them dearly in their future dealings with America and free peoples everywhere. I do not make this statement lightly or without serious reflection.”
Maybe it’s just us, but we get the feeling from the way that Obama talks that he is desperate to do a deal, some kind of deal, any deal at all, with Khamenei — the man he calls even now “supreme leader“. Obama so appears to want not to offend him, or to say a clear, good word about some real “community organizers“. Perhaps it goes too far to say that Obama seems to identify with the authoritarians around the world, but the question is not unreasonable, given his taking over vast parts of American industry.
Given how far things have gone in Iran, it is a total cop-out to say “the easiest way for reactionary forces inside Iran to crush reformers is to say it’s the US that is encouraging those reformers.” (Even the man once the designated successor to Ayatollah Khomeini has a good word for the protesters.) Furthermore, even if the US is not causing any provocation, the Iranian regime still declares that we are behind the protests, so what’s the point?
It’s a sad day in America when we shouldn’t express our fundamental beliefs about freedom and liberty because some dictator somewhere might try to use them against his own people. If Obama believes the statement he made above, he has poor judgment. If he doesn’t believe it, but is using it as an excuse, the explanations are not pretty to contemplate.
Final thought: Roger Simon’s reflections on this matter seem pretty similar to ours, and even David Ignatius thinks Obama should be speaking out clearly and in favor of the protesters.
The Boston Globe has a collection of pictures of Iran that give a sense of the scale of the protests. Images 39-41 are pretty disturbing. Question: does this comment from President Obama seem appropriate given what is going on: “You’ve seen in Iran some initial reaction from the supreme leader that indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election.” Huh?
UPDATE — Charles Krauthammer has had some similar thoughts on this matter of the “supreme leader” and his concerns:
after treating this popular revolution as an inconvenience to the real business of Obama-Khamenei negotiations, the president speaks favorably of “some initial reaction from the Supreme Leader that indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election.”
Where to begin? “Supreme Leader”? Note the abject solicitousness with which the American president confers this honorific on a clerical dictator who, even as his minions attack demonstrators, offers to examine some returns in some electoral districts — a farcical fix that will do nothing to alter the fraudulence of the election.
Moreover, this incipient revolution is no longer about the election. Obama totally misses the point. The election allowed the political space and provided the spark for the eruption of anti-regime fervor that has been simmering for years and awaiting its moment. But people aren’t dying in the street because they want a recount of hanging chads in suburban Isfahan. They want to bring down the tyrannical, misogynist, corrupt theocracy that has imposed itself with the very baton-wielding goons that today attack the demonstrators.
Krauthammer says: “Obama totally misses the point.” No, that’s not it. Some see a “deeper wisdom” in Obama’s reticence, and we wish that were true, but this is a serious enough situation that you ought to be on one side or the other. Obama’s relative silence chooses sides for him.
