Looks Like Biden, Clinton and Repubs All Want Firmer Stance From Obama on Iran

As Iran holds another mass opposition protest, according to the NY Times, Obama is Under Pressure by from several camps to Strike Firmer Tone re the election in Iran:

WASHINGTON — As tens of thousands of Iranian protesters take to the streets in defiance of the government in Tehran, officials in Washington are debating whether President Obama’s response to Iran’s disputed election has been too muted. Mr. Obama is coming under increased pressure from Republicans and other conservatives who say he should take a more visible stance in support of the protesters.

Even while supporting the president’s approach, senior members of the administration, including Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, would like to strike a stronger tone in support of the protesters, administration officials said.

Other White House officials have counseled a more cautious approach, saying harsh criticism of the government or endorsement of the protests could have the paradoxical effect of discrediting the protesters and making them seem as if they were led by Americans. So far, Mr. Obama has largely followed that script, criticizing violence against the protesters, but saying that he does not want to be seen as meddling in Iranian domestic politics.

Even so, the Iranian government on Wednesday accused American officials of “interventionist” statements.

But several administration officials acknowledged that Mr. Obama might run the risk of coming across on the wrong side of history at a potentially transformative moment in Iran.

Clearly, if the President is taking a weak stand on this issue and the Iranian government is still criticizing us, President Obama’s laissez faire posture is not buying us much. I am curious why the objections of the VP and SoS would be voiced in this article? Political cover for the president should he say something and if it doesn’t go his way, he has someone to blame. Or do Clinton and Biden want to get their opposition on the record somehow…

Last night, Bret Baier’s FOX news panel, Juan Williams, Charles Krauthammer and Fred Barnes weighed in with a most interesting discussion. Certainly, President Obama’s comments at the top of this video sound tepid to the point of being clueless. Update to FOX’s discussion: Moussavi has not asked the protest to disband but has called for another day of protests with participants dressing in black to declare a day of mourning for those killed:

More from the Times:

The administration’s concern over how to calibrate the response to the protests in Iran reflects the competing goals Mr. Obama is trying to balance: keeping faith with democracy advocates in Iran while not staking out a position that is so tough that it kills any chance of engagement with the Iranian government on America’s national security interests, including the Iranian nuclear program and Iran’s support for militant Islamist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Some criticism of the Obama administration’s cautious posture may be politically opportunistic, coming from rivals who are eager to draw distinctions between Republicans and Democrats, to portray the administration as generally weak when it comes to international confrontation.

But Mr. Obama also drew criticism from politically neutral observers when he said in an interview on Tuesday with The New York Times and CNBC that from an American national security perspective, there was not much difference between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir Hussein Moussavi, his closest competitor in the election.
(snip)
Many Iran experts lauded Mr. Obama’s measured stance just after the election. But some of that support evaporated on Tuesday when he said there was not much difference between Mr. Ahmadinejad and Mr. Moussavi.

Obviously, Iranian protesters don’t agree, otherwise they would not have taken to the streets.

“For Barack Obama, this was a serious misstep,” said Steven Clemons, director of the American strategy program at the New America Foundation. “It’s right for the administration to be cautious, but it’s extremely bad for him to narrow the peephole into an area in which we’re looking at what’s happening just through the lens of the nuclear program.”

Mr. Obama’s comments deflated Mr. Moussavi, who is rapidly becoming a political icon in Iran, even supporters of Mr. Obama’s Iran policy say.

“Up until now, the president had very thoughtfully calibrated his remarks on Iran, but this was an uncharacteristic and egregious error,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “People are risking their lives and being slaughtered in the streets because they want fundamental change in the way Iran is governed. Our message to them shouldn’t be that it doesn’t make much difference to the United States.”

Certainly we do have to exercise caution when remarking about the electoral process of other countries. It just strikes me that if we are proclaiming to be the beacon of democracy and tout free and fair elections, at the very least, it would be a good idea to speak out against slaughter.

What say you?