Iran Targets Dissenters, Links Them to the United States

Thankfully John McCain is not president. In observing the internal collision in Iran between "reformists" and hardliners, McCain argued that President Obama was not vocal enough in showing his support for those Iranians out in the streets protesting a possibly corrupted electoral process.

Obama has taken a lesson from past overly verbose American policy statements, deciding to low key it, albeit succumbing to some pressure as time has passed. But his intent was about maintaining the purity of those in Iran who were most inclined to embrace the United States should they ever get into power. He knew that the minute we started making strong statements in support of the reformers and dissenters and their candidate Mousavi, that it would empower the other side. It would allow Ahmadinejad, the disputed winner of the election, and his powerful backers, to paint the opposition as tools of America.

McCain is ever blind to these types of nuances, and now we have the result of our slightly more vocal criticism of the regime:

"Hossein Shariatmadari, editor-in-chief of the influential Kayhan newspaper, said Mousavi had committed "terrible crimes", including "murdering innocent people, holding riots, co-operating with foreigners and acting as America's fifth column", in pursuing his claims that last month's re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was rigged.

The accusations - in a newspaper editorial - were the most ferocious yet from regime insiders and may serve notice that preparations are under way to arrest Mousavi and his main allies. Several hundred known reformists and pro-Mousavi supporters have already been detained since the election. The editorial also singled out the reformist former president, Mohammad Khatami, who last week compared Ahmadinejad's re-election to a coup."

(UK Guardian)

This artificial tethering of Iranian protest to American and western manipulation is what Obama hoped to avoid. So long as he kept his language neutral while at the same time encouraging respectful treatment of protesters, we were good. Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei were not likely to let the "evil America" card go un-played, and yet, it would be much harder for that card to have any domestic actionability to the extent we kept closed mouthed.

Sometimes we have to recognize the limits of verbalization and keep silent. Silence can be a powerful weapon. That is not something Senator McCain would fully comprehend.