Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Obama To Iran Green Revolution Dissidents: Drop Dead

Posted 02/28/2012 06:54 PM ET
Mideast: During their brutally suppressed protests in 2009, Iranian freedom fighters sent the White House an urgent memo calling for help. Under Obama, America ignored it.
'So now, at this pivotal point in time, it is up to the countries of the free world to make up their mind," Iranian opposition leaders told the Obama administration in an eight-page memo in 2009. "Will they continue on the track of wishful thinking and push every decision to the future until it is too late, or will they reward the brave people of Iran and simultaneously advance the Western interests and world peace."
President Obama made his choice, and like so often before it was to vote "present."
The memo, written by leaders of Iran's Green Party after the summer 2009 anti-government demonstrations, was obtained by the Washington Examiner.
The document confirms GOP candidate Rick Santorum's charge that the U.S. squandered an opportunity to undermine the government established by the Ayatollah Khomeini three decades ago.
In the Arizona GOP debate last week, Santorum noted that "we did absolutely nothing to help" the Green Revolution. But "when the radicals in Egypt and the radicals in Libya, the Muslim Brotherhood ... rise against either a feckless leader or a friend of ours in Egypt, the president is more than happy to help them out."
The memo refutes claims still being made by the State Department that the Green Party "did not desire financial or other support," because it "would discredit it in the eyes of the Iranian people."
The secret memo's warning that the Islamist regime "with its apocalyptic constitution will never give up the atomic bomb" also contradicts conventional wisdom that the Green movement wants a nuclear Iran.
The Obama administration is oddly proud that it does "not provide financial assistance to any political movement, party or faction in Iran." But Foundation for the Defense of Democracies scholar Michael Ledeen has argued for years that supporting Iran's real opposition can keep it from becoming the first jihadist nuclear power.
In his 2007 book "The Iranian Time Bomb," Ledeen insists there must be "an explicit declaration that the United States wants regime change in Iran." The Voice of America Persian Service could help.
As Ledeen notes, "Several Iraqi ayatollahs, including some who lived in Iran for many years, would love to do this, as would Khomeini's grandson Hossein Khomeini, who has openly criticized his grandfather's creation."
The U.S. can also provide satellite phones and laptops to students, religious leaders and others, and fund large-scale strikes and mass demonstrations to bring Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei's regime down.
With Iran close to a nuclear weapon, military action may be the only option. But the Green memo is a shameful blemish for a president who could have prevented a threat to the free world of nuclear terror, but didn't.

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