There’s a chorus on the right, including some GOP leaders, complaining that President Obama ought to be saying more or doing more to support the Iranian protesters. It is unclear what, exactly, they wish him to do about Iran. Now, perhaps, is not the time for bombing, although that was, until recently, considered a dandy option by many; to offer loose words about support for protests risks repeating past American leaders’ errors in such situations, who have sometimes made perceived promises of help to uprisings and then failed to follow through — or even betrayed the protesters.
I think Obama is playing a careful hand: he knows that if he embraces Moussavi too closely he is, perversely, helping Ahmadinejad, whose chief recruiting tool has always been the anti-American banner.
But I also think that few Americans, and sadly even too few in the American media, have a full understanding of the arc of history here and the twisted record of American involvement in Iranian “regime change.”
The formative, primal event in the history of modern Iranian politics took place in 1953, when the U.S. government, working clandestinely through the CIA, helped overthrow an elected Iranian government and install the Shah as a friendly dictator. (Read more on this beginning here and following up here.) Everything that has happened since in Iran has happened under that shadow. Most Americans simply don’t remember this, but you can bet that Iranians do.
So a U.S. president has a particularly poor platform to stand on and lecture Iranians about violations of the electoral process. Obama — who in his Cairo speech publicly admitted the American role in the 1953 Iran coup for the first time — seems to understand this reality and to be working from that understanding, rather than denying it. It’s time for his critics to learn a little of that history, too.
The modern history of Iran has experienced three major issues: 1953 coup, 1980 islamic revolution, and the Iran-Iraq war (which killed about half a million Iranians).
>Everything that has happened since in Iran has happened under that shadow
“Everything” has happened under many shadows and many agendas both local and global. The larger shadow is the explosion in democracy in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. The Middle East is badly behind the times, and they feel it — hence the outrage at the apparent fraudulent election.
Obama’s careful approach seems correct. Few Americans also remember Hungary in 56 when an American-supported democracy movement was severly crushed.
People all over the world remember what the US did during the Cold War. The “explosion in democracy” in a lot of places, especially Latin America, has been recovery from the US supported dictatorships. Add to that our own less than credible performance in elections recently and any grand pronouncements from the US would be greeted by a McEnroe style “you cannot be serious.”
Canadian Journalst in iran complains of abuse by iranian officials done to him as he reports of other beatings to others detained by police!