The administration, meanwhile, has been preparing for two opposite possibilities: One in which the Iranian leadership seeks to regain a measure of legitimacy by taking up Mr. Obama’s offer to talk — a situation that could put Washington in the uncomfortable position of giving credibility to a government whose actions Mr. Obama has deplored — or one in which Iran rejects negotiations.

Now, if you were Ahmadinejad and you had a crisis of legitimacy after stealing an election and you wanted to outfox your American adversary, why in the world wouldn’t you pick Sanger’s first option? By daring Obama to take him on at the General Assembly, Ahmadinejad invites Obama to dismiss him, since, in the words of White House spokesman Tommy Vietor, the Obama team thinks “now is the time to explore direct diplomatic options, as with the P5+1,” which is the U.N.-backed nuclear-diplomacy track, meaning he’ll rightly see the “debate” proposal as a ruse. And if Ahmadinejad is interested in pulling such ruses, then he’s more interested in getting the United States to implicitly bless his “re-election” by meeting with him than he is in substantive diplomacy. I suppose no one ever accused Ahmadinejad of diplomatic mastery, but it’s still surprising that he’s not forcing Obama to choose between diplomacy and human rights.

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As it happens, David’s at the Personal Democracy forum and worries that Twitter, so important to the Iranian oppositon, provides only a mere simulacrum of political organizing. Meanwhile, Tom Lee presents a more practical fear: the centralization of Twitter’s technical model makes it vulnerable to a (not-yet-manifested, to be sure) total shutdown if attacked by a threatened or hostile government.

Naturally, Ganji hailed the opposition movement, but was cautious about claiming that Iran was in a revolutionary situation, as some have contended. “So far, the people have stood their ground really well. I’m hopeful that with everyone’s support, they can actually keep this movement going forward,” Ganji said.

“It’s very difficult to predict where this is going to lead to right now. The main point is that the government is very powerful. The regime is very organized with its intelligence forces, and the entire military apparatus, including the Revolutionary Guard and the Basij are included in this. These guys are really well trained.

“[Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamanei is a massive dictator, whose first and foremost interest is to maintain power and stay in power. The other point is that the Iranian people 30 years ago had a major revolution, the 1979 revolution, and following that, were involved in an eight-year war [with Iraq] and after that was the reformist movement. In the past 10 years, we’ve had varying experiences. So in one way, they’re not really looking for a revolution because it’s very expensive and very costly at the end. But altogether, the people are extremely unhappy with the regime, and they have a lot of hate for the regime.

“So the current situation is dangerous. One outcome is the regime might use extreme violence, with all the powers at its means to suppress the movement. The other option is that the regime will not accept the people’s request and the people will continue demonstrating. And the people’s requests and their aspirations will get larger and larger, which will lead to a revolution, whose outcome is really unknown.

“But there is another solution, a middle ground where Khamanei will accept the people’s requests. Khamanei will not like to accept the people’s requests, and will feel that if he will give ground, that will leave to more requests from people, and having to give more ground.”

What does Ganji think of President Obama’s statements about Iran? “From my perspective, Obama has so far said he won’t meddle in Iran’s internal situation, and that’s a good, good approach,” Ganji said, but he added, “He cannot stay silent on human rights issues.” Clearly, Ganji thinks the Obama administration isn’t striking the right balance between non-intervention and humanitarian concerns. But that’s not to say that more active American support is welcome:

“Bush’s policies toward Iran and the Middle East were completely wrong. The result of Bush’s policy, it led to Iran gaining strength. Mr. Obama is trying to change the policy. If we can separate two points, we can actually drive to a good policy. First, Iran’s path to democracy and the people’s movement to democracy is for the people of Iran. No foreign country, either America or any other, should get involved in that process.

“Secondly, human rights is an international condition. When a country denies human rights for its own people, the entire world should punish that government. So the people of Iran will not want anyone to get involved in that. But what they expect from the world is to protest an Iranian regime from a human-rights perspective. This is a policy which I stand by.

“The Iranian people are saying the Ahmadinejad government is a coup d’etat government. They’re asking that no government accept the legitimacy of his government. This is what most people want, for no government to work with the Ahmadinejad government.”

Should the United States continue diplomatic outreach toward Iran, as the Obama administration is seeking?

“Not with the government of Ahmadinejad, a government that people consider a coup d’etat government.”

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With riot police and armed militiamen beating and, in a few reported cases, killing unarmed demonstrators in the streets of Iran’s cities, for the Obama Administration to continue parsing equivocal phrases serves no purpose other than to make it look feckless. Part of realism is showing that you have a clear grasp of reality—that you know the difference between decency and barbarism when both are on display for the whole world to see. A stronger American stand—taken, as much as possible, in concert with European countries and through multilateral organizations—would do more to improve America’s negotiating position than weaken it. Acknowledging the compelling voices of the desperate young Iranians who, after all, only want their votes counted, would not deep-six the possibility of American-Iranian talks. Ahmadinejad and his partners in the clerical-military establishment will talk to us exactly when and if they think it’s in their interest. Right now, they don’t appear to. And the tens of millions of Iranians who voted for change and are the long-term future of that country will always remember what America said and did when they put their lives on the line for their values.

What’s missing here is an effort at determining what the Iranian dissenters want from the Obama administration. The fact that it’s not clear what the answer to that question is itself serves as a powerful indicator that the protest movement is first and foremost concerned about handling this on its own. As best I can tell from NIAC and from Twitter and from talking with Iranian human rights advocates in the United States, the dissenters want the Obama administration to refuse to recognize Ahmadinejad’s claims of victory; to express concern for the safety of the protesters; and then to get out of the way. The Obama administration can be fairly criticized for not saying enough on the second point, though if, as Michael Scherer believes, Obama’s going to say something at 5 p.m., maybe that will change. But it doesn’t follow from Obama’s muted discussion of the dissenters that he’s indifferent to their plight. From talking to administration officials, I am convinced that they are very concerned that American rhetorical support will immediately become a cudgel in the hands of Ahmadinejad. Would that outcome advance human rights?

It’s emotionally unsatisfying not to proclaim unequivocal support for the protesters. But the truer measure of support, as Trita Parsi told me, is to follow their lead. Moussavi, for instance, has not issued any statement about what he wants the international community to do. If the protesters begin calling for a more direct American response, then that really will have to compel the administration to reconsider its position. But until then, with so many lives at stake, the administration can’t afford to take a stance just because it makes Americans feel just and righteous.

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There have been very good grounds to criticize President Obama’s foreign policy so far. There will be much more to criticize over the next three and a half years.

But he is our president. We could be at an historical inflection point in Iran. The United States may be able to play an important role. The task now is to explain what the Obama administration (and Congress) should be saying and doing, and to urge them to do what they should be doing. Presuming ahead of time that Obama will fail to exercise leadership, and cataloguing this episode pre-emptively as another in a list of Obama failures, would be a mistake. The U.S. has a huge stake in the possible transformation, or at least reformation, of the Iranian regime. If there’s some chance of that happening, and some chance of U.S. policy contributing to that outcome, we should hope Obama does the right thing, and urge and pressure him to do so–because then the United States will be doing the right thing, and the United States, and the world, will benefit.

On the face of it, a gracious and patriotic statement. But will Kristol take his own advice? I don’t mean his advice about constructive engagement with Obama, I mean about ensuring “U.S. policy contributing to … the possible transformation, or at least reformation, of the Iranian regime.” Because on Fox News yesterday, Kristol pressed Obama to “work with the Europeans to say, ‘Let’s bring in international observers to review whether this was a fair election. If it wasn’t, let’s think about having another election.’”

I don’t presume that the Iranian opposition speaks with one voice. But what’s been very, very striking about following the #iranelection hashtag on Twitter is how few tweets from Iran are calling for U.S. involvement. In my piece today, I report that U.S.-based Iranian human rights activists believe that Obama should speak up for human rights in Iran and say little else, out of fear that greater U.S. involvement will risk delegitmizing the Iranian opposition. Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council told me that every non-Iranian needs to be “two steps behind the opposition and not two steps ahead,” as the Iranians “have tremendous pride in doing this themselves.” One of the accounts from Iran on the Council’s new blog urges the United States to “not to accept the [electoral] results and do not talk to [Ahmadinejad] government as an official, approved” body. (To Kristol’s credit, he notes this.) On the other hand, Twitter user StopAhmadi, whom I believe is an Iranian protester, wrote an hour ago that Obama is being “TOO neutral.” So, again, not a single voice.

But an American voice is more likely to be counterproductive than helpful. The cardinal rule ought to be to follow the lead of the Iranian opposition. As I reported, the Obama administration isn’t considering endorsing Ahmadinejad’s bogus victory, and everyone from Vice President Joe Biden on down says that the United States is going to highlight electoral discrepancies. For the United States to weigh in on what Iran ought to do can’t possibly help. It’s time to treat Iran in terms of what aids the opposition, not what makes us feel good about ourselves. “We should not have the U.S. lead,” Hadi Ghaemi of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran told me over the weekend. That’s prime-directive stuff.

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