Violence And Massive Demonstrations Erupt In Iran
There are massive demonstrations going on in Iran in the wake of Ahmadinejad’s
apparent theft of the presidential election there. Ha’aretz is reporting that
Ahmadinejad’s rival in the presidential election, Mir Hossein Mousavi, has
been arrested.
Here is a video of protestors chasing away Iran’s security thugs in the streets
of Tehran:
What is Obama’s reaction to this? Predictably, it is that no matter how brutal,
corrupt, anti-democratic or unpopular the regime in Tehran is, we must talk
to them.
“In the end, there’s an imperative to try to establish engagement,”
a senior American official said. “We would certainly give them time,”
he said, provided that Iran did not use the time to work toward a nuclear bomb.
“This is the worst result,” said Thomas R. Pickering, a former under
secretary of state. “The U.S. will have to worry about being perceived
as pandering to a president whose legitimacy is in question. It clearly makes
the notion of providing incentives quite unappetizing.”
Daniel Pipes suggests that Obama’s mollifying Cairo apology to the Muslim world
didn’t work on Iran, and may
have backfired:
"The key factor is that it’s Khamenei’s wishes, not the voter’s
wishes, that matter," said Middle East Forum director Daniel Pipes. "The
voters are window dressing, think of it as an advisory role."Pipes cast the office itself in a similar light, calling the president "more
like a press secretary, the outward face but not the decision maker… certainly
not on the issues that matter to us."The office does matter, he added, in terms of Iran’s domestic politics and
also its foreign policy symbolism, so that while Obama has reached out to Iran,
"Had Khameni wished to reciprocate, he would have had Mousavi become
the president."
Khameni indeed had the power to do so. Ahmadinejad would not have ‘won’ this
election unless Supreme Leader Khameni wanted it that way.
