Why Obama is right not to openly pick a side in the Iranian election conflict

Women protest Iranian election results - Photo by Farhad Rajabali. Creative Commons license. Source: Flickr.

When protests erupted across Iran over the weekend in response to disputed Presidential election results, the Obama administration issued some very delicate statements.

On Saturday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, "We obviously hope that the outcome reflects the genuine will and desire of the Iranian people."

On Sunday, Vice President Joe Biden said, "There's an awful lot of question about how this election was run. And we'll see. I mean, we're just waiting to see. We don't have, we don't have enough facts to note— to make a firm judgment."

And President Obama himself issued no official statement until today, when he said:

Obviously all of us have been watching the news from Iran.  And I want to start off by being very clear that it is up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran's leaders will be; that we respect Iranian sovereignty and want to avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran, which sometimes the United States can be a handy political football— or discussions with the United States.

Having said all that, I am deeply troubled by the violence that I've been seeing on television.  I think that the democratic process— free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent— all those are universal values and need to be respected.  And whenever I see violence perpetrated on people who are peacefully dissenting, and whenever the American people see that, I think they're, rightfully, troubled.

Iran's current president, conservative hardliner Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's claims to have won the election in a landslide— despite pre-election polls that showed him in a neck-and-neck race with his more moderate opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi; despite widespread reports of voting irregularities on election day, and despite anecdotal reports from several communities that their own records from election day do not match the officially released national results— beggars credibility.

And the current regime's iron-fisted reaction to the post-election protests— expelling international journalists from the country, blocking foreign television and radio broadcasts, blocking text messaging and access to certain websites across Iran to disrupt communications, and arresting and shooting at protesters— totally undermines whatever credibility the Iranian government had as a supposedly democratic state. 

Not to mention the fact that, given our country's recent history of turbulent and frustrating relations with Ahmedinejad, our own government leaders almost certainly expect U.S. interests would be better served if Mousavi were declared the true winner.

So why the careful wording? Why hasn't the administration denounced Ahmedinejad and come out in loud, open support of Mousavi's backers, who are currently battling fierce government opposition to demand their right to free and fair elections?

Because if Obama wants Mousavi's supporters to succeed, the last thing he should do is explicitly declare his support for them. 

In 1953, United States Central Intelligence Agency, with the blessing of President Dwight Eisenhower, helped stage a coup to overthrow the Iranian government. The Iranian Prime Minister at the time, Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, had angered the British government by defying the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company's monopoly on Iranian oil and nationalizing the Iranian oil industry in an attempt to return profits from Iran's own natural resources to the Iranian people. Britain had responded with economic sanctions that seriously harmed the Iranian economy.

Concerned that the Iranians might strike up an alliance with the Soviet Union to deflect the economic damage, the Cold War era United States government teamed up with the British government and religious conservatives in Iran to oust the Iranian Prime Minister and install a British-friendly leader in his place.

For decades, the U.S. government attempted to hide this major intervention in Iranian affairs from the American people; most CIA records of the coup were deliberately destroyed. It was not until the year 2000 that U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright issued a formal statement of regret to the people of Iran.

But Iranians have understood for decades that the United States was involved in the coup, and many, many Iranians of all political stripes— conservative Ahmedinejad supporters and moderate Mousavi supporters—still resent this infringement on their sovereignty.

Even as the protests of the last few days prove that many Iranians would likely prefer a more moderate foreign policy and a better relationship with Western countries like the United States than Ahmedinejad has provided, any overt support by the U.S. government of one faction or another in this debate would surely trigger memories of the previous coup, and undermine whatever group the United States openly supported.

If President Obama were to come out in open support of Mousavi, he would only give ammunition to anti-American Iranian conservatives.

Paridoxically, the best way Obama can support the democratic movement in Iran is to avoid specifically stating his support for it.

Comments

[coffeejitters (Judy Haley)]

Thanks for the reminder about Mossadegh - I try to tell people about Operation Ajax and his ouster whenever the topic of Iran comes up, and they are completely unaware. So many Americans think of Iranians as the enemy, with no understanding of the very legitimate reasons they have for not trusting us. We Americans know so little about our government's international meddling.

[lildb]

Jaelithe, this is highly informative as well as concise and smart. Thank you, from those of us who have been unable to get our heads around this issue (esp. due to time constraints, which are truly the most frustrating of limitations).

[Frank Schellenberg]

Indeed an excellent summary.

It's easy to watch the tweets and get carried away, believing we know what's going on. But we don't really have the background to put things in the right context.
And all we read are tweets in English - a select group, to say the least.

Although election fraud seems apparent, we really don't know who won - they'd need to count the votes to know that. And we certainly can't determine that from the other side of the world.

The most important thing is to make sure that the whole world is watching and that that message gets back to those taking the next steps in Iran.