re: #71 Occasional Reader

I’m curious; what do you have in mind as a “foolish statement”?

Aren’t we a little past the whole “Obama can’t support the protesters, because the regime will use this as an excuse” stage? They’re using even his weak and late statements as an excuse anyway.

Anything bellicose, anything threatening, anything that announces the US will intervene to put in place the ruler THEY want to see in Iran, regardless of what the Iranian people want.

It’s a very fine line to walk. The regime *wants* to claim that there is no legitimate opposition, and that the protesters are all puppets of (or swayed by) outside forces. The regime wants to portray the protest and the opposition as something started by outsiders who seek to destabilise and undermine Iran.

This approach is the only hope the regime has of uniting Iranians under their banner: portray the civil unrest and the opposition as being about ‘outside forces’.

RealWest is getting it right, IMO. The best thing for Obama to do would be to privately lobby other countries— especially Islamic ones— to come out and condemn Ahmadi.

Then the US could weigh in publicly— and the regime in Iran wouldn’t be able to claim this is just the US dictating to Iranians how to live.

(I hope this lobbying is going on; I don’t know if it is)