"The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.
"As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.
"Martin Luther King once said - "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples' belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness."
Cairo?
The cut and paste style of the Potus remark --- "As I said in Cairo..." -- suggests an unsettled policy. What POTUS said in Cairo was soft power. What Martin Luther King said more than forty years ago does not translate to a state police apparatus in full riot gear to secure a rogue regime with nukes and ballistic missiles. This is hard power time. Try Churchill. One of those missiles is prepped for launch from North Korea in the general direction of Pearl Harbor. The White House rewrite desk is slow, foot-dragging. stubborn, defiant, and it will remain fixed on the fiction that Tehran's internal affairs are not for Washington to comment upon.
Who Worries the White House More?
I have an incomplete list of who or what the White House thinks about when it rewrites and repositions and refashions the Twelver apologies. First must be the TV audience: very dangerous lot, since it doesn't listen to words, it looks into the eyes and studies the body movement and can smell clumsiness and false witnessing. Secondly is the print media, leading with NYT but also including the hard working WaPo and the dutiful EU papers like the Financial Times and the Guardian. Then there is the Democratic left, the Republican right, the so-called independent bloggers, and also Maureen Down hearts Karl Rove. Way down on the list is the Iranian ex-pats and the Tehran demonstrators. Am unsure where the Twelvers are on this list. Or the Twelver factotums such as Hamas, Hizballah, Damascus, or the Twelver adversaries such as the House of Saud and the creaky Cairo lot. You can see why rewrite is maddening at the NSC.
Sunday Talk Shows Scrambling Chairs.
Big losers are the big ticket healthcare food fight, the John Ensign tackiness, and the not minor matter of a skyrocketing unemployment rate in eight states and a certainty of a nation 10% by fall (and youth unemployment may be unprintable). Big winners are the tough talking flag wavers on the Hill from both parties who crammed in a toothless condemnation of the lunatic Twelver regime that has been on a collision course with reason for about thirty years and has eaten nuke fuel for lunch since the 2002 Axis of Evil meetings. Mike Pence is a winner. State will be creative. Let the hand-wringing apologia begin.
Don't look to Washington. Words is just words. Whatever he says, Obama still hopes to do a deal with Iran. "The world is watching," is about all he can force out of his mouth. BFD Too bad it means nothing. The world watched Hungary, Tianamen, Rwanda, and Darfur too.
JB - You've scored so many truisms, it's hard to keep track. It speaks to your sense of outrage at what's presently happening in Iran. It's equally apparent that you view what's been going on in Washington as a kind of parlor game - with detached amusement. Where do we draw the line before speaking out decisively? When the people are beggared by their government? When the wealth of future generations is stolen? When liberties are usurped? When the law is arbitrarily turned against the electorate? Or will we withhold our condemnation until blood starts flowing in the streets; when an abused and castrated populous finally wakes up and decides to fight back?
Do we speak out early; or do we wait? Do we hasten to savor the very last dregs of freedom? Do we ignore the trends? Do we pretend we are immortal even with death staring us in the face? At what point will the sand be insufficient for us to bury our heads? At what point do we say, “Enough is enough!”?
huh?
IRI, in recent weeks, had been progressing in negotiating oil and gas deals that understandably been years in the making. Countries hungry for sources of energy have negotiated with Iran in good faith to develop and bring on line their reserves. A massive gas play, with liquefied natural gas for export as the end product, was negotiated with new contractors to pick up the half completed construction (put on hold due to "negotiations" by the original contractors) for eventual phase in. A high volume natural gas pipeline to the East had been agreed upon with Pakistan in the last few weeks with an invitation for India to join in an extension.
Politics is local. Business is business.
JB-
Hope your contacts tomorrow will confirm or deny:
1) The police, basijis, and Revolutionary Guard are fracturing, with some cadres refusing to persecute the demonstrators and others following orders;
2) The government is using poisonous gas to disrupt the demonstrations;
3) The demonstrations are in other cities like Tabriz, Shiraz, Isfahan;
4) The power centers in the government are fracturing;
5) The crowds are not growing substantially smaller with each passing day.
It's to laugh: Reported on Fox Saturday night: members of Washington DC foreign policy establishment admit (not for attribution of course), "We missed the boat entirely on what was happening in Iran." Must all have worked at State at one point in their careers!