“The four candidates whose names made it on the presidential ballot this year were pre-screened by an unelected Guardian Council composed mostly of Islamic clerics, which also disqualified more than 400 others,” reminds the Wall Street Journal. So, yeah, the Iranian “election” was a predetermined sham long before the final votes were (or rather were not) tallied. That same Guardian Council, headed by the Ayatollah, determines every aspect of society, from its religious and social laws, to its lack of freedoms and liberty, to its economy and terrorism activities.
Even so, the West looks especially weak. It’s not just the reaction — again or lack thereof — by the Obama camp, but the entire Western world’s lack of condemnation of Iran’s brazen tyranny, that risks alienating and subverting all those Iranian citizens begging for support. There are literally hundreds of diplomatic postures that the West, and especially the United States, could take to vocally condemn Iran’s fraud and stomping of liberty. So far, silence, or at best, bland statements “of concern.”
Having shown such courage, the demonstrators deserve Western support, not least from the media that have recently trumpeted the Mousavi candidacy as evidence of Iran’s openness and potential for reform, conciliation and so on. Whatever happens in the days ahead, the world has now seen the tyranny raw. The least we owe the protestors is not to look away.
That moral obligation goes especially for the Obama Administration. President Obama came to office promising the world’s dictators an open hand in exchange for an unclenched fist. But as with Kim Jong Il’s nuclear advances and the sham trial of two Americans in North Korea, Mr. Khamenei has repudiated the President’s diplomacy of friendly overture. It turns out that the “axis of evil” really is evil — and not, as liberal sages would have it, merely misunderstood.
The vote should prompt Mr. Obama to rethink his pursuit of a grand nuclear bargain with Iran, though early indications suggest he plans to try anyway. On Saturday, the New York Times quoted one unnamed senior Administration official to the effect that the election uproar would cause Mr. Ahmadinejad to be more receptive to Mr. Obama’s overtures as a sop to disgruntled public opinion. If the Administration really believes this, then Mr. Obama is the second coming of Jimmy Carter and the mullahs will play him for time to get their bomb.
However, Mr. Obama has also stressed the importance of democracy, rule of law and transparency, most recently in the June 4 Cairo speech in which he addressed himself directly to the world’s Muslims, Iranian-Muslims included. Now the stand-off in Tehran will test — more quickly than Mr. Obama probably imagined — whether he was serious when he said “we will welcome all elected, peaceful governments — provided they govern with respect for all their people.”