“The demonstrations and the reaction of the government shows the aspirations of the Iranian people for fairness, human rights and democracy has not been crushed,” Trita Parsi, NIAC’s leader, told me after the panel. “It shows the opposition’s timeline is correct: this is not a hundred-meter sprint, but a marathon” to achieve Iranian democracy. “The western media may have lost interest, but the marathon continues.”

Similarly, one of NIAC’s kindred organizations, the International Committee for Human Rights in Iran, put out this statement:

Security forces and militia used brutal force to disperse thousands of protesters on the streets of Tehran and other cities today, resulting in a number of injuries and arrests, in violation of international standards regarding the proportionate use of force against peaceful demonstrations, according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. The protests occurred parallel to officially sanctioned demonstrations on the 30th anniversary of the takeover of the United States Embassy in 1979.

Protests also took place in other cities, including Shiraz, Rasht, and Tabriz. Many protesters were reportedly arrested in Tabriz after security forces attacked demonstrators using pepper spray and tear gas.

Eyewitnesses have told the Campaign that, despite an intense intimidation program aimed at stifling the demonstrations by SMS threats promising prosecutions for taking part, and the closure of metro stops to discourage gatherings, thousands of protesters appeared at Hafte-e-Tir Square, Kargar Shomali, and other locations, and were met by vast numbers of riot police backed up by quasi-official militiamen. The presence of huge numbers of security and anti-riot forces and brutal attacks were common in all reports by eyewitnesses.

Numerous demonstrators were arrested, including Ali Mashmouli, Vahideh Movahed and other prominent persons. According to a report by his son, security forces shot tear gas canisters directly at opposition politician Mehdi Karoubi, seriously injuring his bodyguard who was taken to a hospital. According to reports received by the Campaign, live ammunition was used in shots fired over the heads of demonstrators.

The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran expressed its deep concern about the continuing and excessive use of violence against peaceful demonstrators, and called for the immediate release of detainees.

MR. GIBBS:  Well, let me correct a little bit of what I said yesterday.  I denoted that Mr. Ahmadinejad was the elected leader of Iran.  I would say it’s not for me to pass judgment on.  He’s been inaugurated, that’s a fact.  Whether any election was fair, obviously the Iranian people still have questions about that and we’ll let them decide that.  But I would simply say he’s been inaugurated and we know that is simply a fact.

Forgive me for missing yesterday that Gibbs said even that. The blog of the National Iranian American Council called Gibbs’ initial remarks a “gaffe.”

I don’t really want to argue with this so much as I’d like to suggest broadening its focus. While we don’t know what exactly success would mean for the opposition, governing Iran, to some degree, is presumably part of the picture. And there the opposition would have to govern more than just the people who already support it. There are millions of Iranians who voted for Ahmadinejad. They’re not going anywhere. Same goes with the revolutionary generation. One of the biggest mistakes that revolutionaries make is failing to expand their constituent base once in power.  And there all I’d suggest is that it’s probably better not to say anything that could make the United States into an obstruction to the opposition’s attempts, once in power — and, yes, we’re a long way from there — to win over its opponents. There will already be enough internal problems for any successful opposition to contend with, as well as actual substantive disagreements with the United States and other countries, to add to the burden.

That said: Trita Parsi told me last week that the prudent course for anyone seeking solidarity with the Iranian opposition is to stay “two steps behind” the Iranians. It’s good advice. What it should mean, when followed rigorously, is that the American position changes as the Iranian opposition’s positions change. Jocelyn is happier with the administration’s later statements than its earlier ones. I take it from Trita’s op-ed the other day that he thinks it’s time for Obama to start condemning the regime as it continues its violent suppression of the opposition. We’ll hear from the president shortly, but all this should signal that the administration’s rhetoric has some room for maneuver.

Though of course everyone supports free and fair democracies, Iran is a country in flux at the moment. If US political figures come out in strong support for Mousavi, then what? Won’t Ahmadinejad just use that to declare Mousavi is a puppet of the West? That certainly won’t do much to help the cause for reform in Iran.

There’s a snap poll on the NIAC blog asking readers whether the House should introduce the resolution. It’s a small and non-scientific sample, but it’s running about 84 percent against to 15 percent in favor. The resolution is likely to pass.

Meanwhile, last night Berman’s office emailed me this statement on the resolution from the congressman:

“It is not for us to decide who should run Iran, much less determine the real winner of the June 12 election. But we must reaffirm our strong belief that the Iranian people have a fundamental right to express their views about the future of their country freely, and without intimidation.”

Now, irony is when someone who helped broker the sale of American weapons to the Iranian government calls someone else “a leading apologist for the regime,” but if you read my colleague David Weigel’s piece today about conservative advice for Obama on Iran, you noticed that Michael Ledeen said exactly that about Parsi. Dismissing Parsi’s argument that external rhetorical support for the opposition could be used against it by Ahmadinejad, Ledeen told Weigel, “Why would a statement supporting the freedom of the Iranian people undermine the movement?”

Parsi said he wouldn’t reply to personal attacks. But he said, “no serious human rights actvist has gone out and supported making the U.S. the issue in the election,” since real human rights activists support “condemning the use of violence” by the regime. “What these conservatives are saying — they’ve got no track record of supporting real human rights in Iran, and are only seeking to advance their own agenda” by making “the U.S. part of the issue,” Parsi said. “They pretend to speak in favor of the protesters without ever considering what the Iranian people want. And the people who brought us the Iraq war don’t have a leg to stand on on this issue.”

–

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Protesters in Tehran on Monday (Flickr: .faramarz)

Before voters went to the polls in Friday’s elections in Iran, critics of President Obama’s Iran policy — and of his outreach to the Middle East in general — attempted to pre-empt the possible defeat of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by pronouncing it meaningless. John Bolton, the former United Nations Ambassador for George W. Bush, warned that a victory for the president’s chief opponent Mir Hossein Moussavi would “not change the fundamental direction of Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs or its support for terrorism.” Daniel Pipes, the president of the Middle East Forum, wrote that he was “rooting for Ahmadinejad” because it would be “better to have a bellicose, apocalyptic, in-your-face Ahmadinejad who scares the world than a sweet-talking Mousavi who again lulls it to sleep.”

Image by: Matt Mahurin

But in the wake of the contested election and the surging rallies against Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs who rule Iran, the president’s more hawkish critics are changing the tune. The president, they argue, has an opening — if not a responsibility — to make a statement on the elections that aligns the United States with reformist elements inside of Iran. Monday began with a few disconnected critiques of the president’s silence, and ended with calls for a bold Obama statement from leading neoconservatives and one of the Republican Party’s most prominent leaders in the House.

“The president should be questioning the legitimacy of the elections,” said Kim Holmes, former assistant secretary of state in the Bush administration who is now vice president of foreign policy and defense studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “He doesn’t need to go into any great detail. He needs to show that, in the long run, the United States is on the side of the Iranian people.”

Critics of the Obama White House are very much aware of the fears that have, up to now, forestalled a statement from the president. As one official told TWI over the weekend, there is great caution about appearing to favor one side over another. On Monday, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs would only say that there was “concern” about the election results and that “Iranians are looking into this.” After news that one man had been killed at a massive Tehran rally, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly would only say that the administration was “deeply troubled” by events. At the end of the day, the president responded to events with a four minute-long statement that recognized the nation’s “sovereignty,” credited the nation with “looking into” the election results, and pleased few critics of Iran.

“Why would a statement supporting the freedom of the Iranian people undermine the movement?” asked Michael Ledeen, the freedom scholar at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies whose books about Iran include “The Iranian Time Bomb” and “Accomplice to Evil: Iran and the War Against the West.” Ledeen, like many critics of the official stance, framed the choice as a moral one. “Would a statement supporting the mullahs strengthen the opposition? Ridiculous. If America stands for anything it stands for freedom. We should have supported the Iranian people a long time ago. The current silence from the White House is shameful.”

Some pro-Iranian activists have disagreed with this sentiment and portrayed the administration’s silence as unfortunate but politically necessary. Over the weekend, Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council told TWI that an Obama statement might allow Iran’s leaders to portray the unrest as a Western conspiracy. But Ledeen dismissed the spokesman and the argument. “Trita Parsi is not a human rights activist,” Ledeen said. “He’s a leading apologist for the regime.”

Other critics of the Obama administration have called for a statement in a more subtle manner. Early on Monday morning, Bill Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, urged fellow conservatives to temper their criticism and try to make their case to the president. “We should hope Obama does the right thing,” he wrote at his magazine’s website, “and urge and pressure him to do so.” Hours later, in The Washington Post, Kristol drew comparisons between the situation in Iran and the run-up to World War II and argued that dissidents could be helped by a speech “for liberty” coming from “the popular and credible speaker-to-the-Muslim-world, Barack Obama.”

Pipes, the controversial scholar who had rooted for an outright Ahmadinejad victory until the votes came in, called the uncertain result “the best result possible” and said that the apparent win represented “a slap in the face of the American president’s pro-Islamist policies.” Reached on Monday by TWI, he, too, suggested that the president could further American interests by taking a side. “This is the moment for the outside world to let the Iranian people know they are not alone by manifesting its rejection of Khamene’i's despotic rule,” said Pipes. “The U.S. government should side with the Iranian people and the opposition forces.”

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) (WDCpix)

All of this — and a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll that found 66 percent of Americans calling the administration “not tough enough” on Iran — have loosened the tongues of Hill Republicans. Early on Monday, the most prominent congressional statement on Iran and the American response came from Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who called the election a “mockery of democracy” and expressed “hope that President Obama and members of both parties in Congress will speak out.” Republican comments were somewhat muted until a mid-day appearance by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in which the 2008 presidential candidate suggested that the president “speak out strongly in opposition” to Ahmadinejad. At 5 p.m. Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the House Republican whip who has frequently criticized candidate and then President Obama over his policies toward Israel and Iran, released a statement attacking “the Administration’s silence in the face of Iran’s brutal suppression of democratic rights” and labeling it “a step backwards for homegrown democracy in the Mideast.”

“President Obama must take a strong public position in the face of violence and human rights abuses,” said Cantor. “We have a moral responsibility to lead in opposition to Iran’s extreme response to peaceful protests.”

All of this has given the president’s critics some optimism, the hope that the president could be drawn into making a clear statement on Iran, edging away from what Republicans had termed an “apology tour” to hostile nations. Watching the surge of liberal and left-leaning activism in support of Iran’s protesters, some of the long-time opponents of the Mullahs are starting to see the possibility of a breakthrough, of an issue that had been partisan becoming more mainstream.

“I’m delighted if people on the left call for supporting the Iranian people,” said Ledeen. “They should have been doing it all these years. Ahem.”

A friend called who with a shaking voice asked me for an explanation on what is happening in Iran, in our country.

I said, the Supreme Leader has decided to replace the Islamic Republic with an Islamic government and that we all have to participate in this “great celebration” and be “deeply happy…”

These young people who are being beaten in the streets of Tehran and other provinces, whose faces look stunned, Mr. Mousavi and fighting clergies who issue statements, think it is possible to protect the Republic and the people’s votes.  It is very clear to me that 22 Khordad 1388, four months after the revolution turned 30, the time of Republic has come to an end in our country.  Ahmadinejad, with confirmation of the Supreme Leader, has obtained the necessary votes and won.  Congratulations on this victory…Although no celebration happens without victims and the bigger the celebration, the larger the number of casualties…

22 Bahman was the beginning of the Islamic Revolution and 22 Khordad is the beginning of the Islamic Government.

My friend started crying louder; bitterly crying.

Notice what’s happening here. The opposition to Ahmadinejad is portraying him and his supporters as a corrupting figure, eating the Islamic Revolution at its core. They’re portraying themselves as somewhere on the spectrum of reformists and restorationists. I wish I remembered my Crane Brinton better for a more precise taxonomy. But this is what Iranian human rights activists in the United States mean when they point out that a crucial weapon in the protesters’ arsenal is their claim of authenticity.  If they’re supplying a reformist definition for the mantle of the true Islamic Revolution, with a demagogue like Ahmadinejad as a usurper, that won’t solve all of the U.S.’s problems with Iran by a long shot. But it does open up the prospect of real, substantive dialogue if they win.

I have no real information here, so take everything that follows with an ocean of salt. But I wonder if the fear of losing control of the Islamic Revolution itself is what drove Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to reverse his initial endorsement of Ahmadinejad’s election and order an inquiry into voter fraud.