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Iran turmoil puts Obama in tight spot

He stays committed to diplomacy as vote results are questioned

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: June 15, 2009

WASHINGTON

The crackdown on dissent after the disputed elections in Iran puts the Obama administration in a tougher spot, as it sticks with diplomacy as the best way to end that country's nuclear-weapons program.

Vice President Joe Biden said yesterday that efforts to engage Tehran, with the central goal of halting its pursuit of nuclear weapons, will continue. But the charges of vote fraud and the battles between police and opposition protesters appear to be major setbacks for the new U.S. administration's policy.

President Obama is already under renewed political pressure at home to get tough with Iran.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said yesterday that the Iranian rulers had stolen the election and made a mockery of democracy. He urged Obama to speak out in defense of silenced Iranian demonstrators, but he offered no concrete steps to strengthen the U.S. case.

Biden made clear that the administration has no intention of abandoning its Iran policy, though it is uncertain about the implications of the announced electoral victory of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over his reformist opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi. Obama has put Iran at the center of his policy of extending an open hand to adversaries; the Iranians so far have responded mainly with silence.

The administration is trying to understand whether Friday's vote accurately reflected Iranians' response to Obama's effort to end the nearly 30-year diplomatic estrangement from the Islamic Republic, Biden said during an interview on NBC's Meet the Press.

"That's the question," Biden said, adding: "Is this the result of the Iranian people's wishes? The hope is that the Iranian people, all their votes have been counted, they've been counted fairly. But look, we just don't know enough" since the voting.

Though Ahmadinejad insisted the results showing his landslide victory were fair and legitimate, Biden said, "You know I have doubts."

For the time being, Biden said, the U.S. accepts the election's announced outcome, although questions about its legitimacy were raised by many other governments.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said that France is "very worried" about the situation in Iran and he criticized the Iranian authorities' "somewhat brutal reaction" to the street protests in Tehran.

Germany's foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said that the "course of the election in Iran raises many questions." He called on Iranian authorities to explain what happened.

Two important U.S. allies -- Afghanistan and Pakistan, both neighbors of Iran -- offered official congratulations to Ahmadinejad for his re-election. Pakistan's president, Asif Ali Zardari, told him the victory was "an acknowledgment of your outstanding services."

Ahmadinejad dismissed the street protests -- the worst unrest in 10 years in Tehran -- as "not important." He said that Friday's vote was "real and free" and insisted the results showing his landslide victory were fair and legitimate.

The election was widely seen as an important event, but it held out little prospect of bringing substantial change in Iranian foreign policy.

Ahmadinejad is Iran's political face to the world, but the clerics and their military wing, known as the Revolutionary Guard, are the real masters of the country's destiny. They dictate every important policy and decide who is allowed to run for elective office.

"We should be very careful about overreacting to the Iranian election," said Anthony Cordesman, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who has been a close observer of the Iranian scene for decades.

He said he believes that Obama's advisers know the limits of change in Tehran as long as the country is ruled by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his supporting cast of theocrats.

"They realize that it is the supreme leader and those around him who shape any movement in terms of U.S.-Iranian relations," Cordesman said.