By Robert Laurie ——Bio and Archives--August 25, 2016
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Back in 2009, just after the election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, you may recall the "Green Uprising." For a brief moment, it looked like the young people of Iran were finally doing what we've all hoped they would do. The regime wobbled, the streets flooded with protesters, and (with just a modicum of support) it appeared they were about to take back their once forward-thinking nation from the stone-age barbarians currently in charge. We all watched, waited, and clamored for President Obama to do something - anything - to help.
...And that help never came.
Now, Wall Street Journal reporter Jay Solomon, we know why. Obama refused to support the uprising, ordered his CIA operatives to stand down, and let the movement, often literally, die.It's well known he was slow to react. Obama publicly downplayed the prospect of real change at first, saying the candidates whom hundreds of thousands of Iranians were risking their lives to support did not represent fundamental change. When he finally did speak out, he couldn't bring himself to say the election was stolen: "The world is watching and inspired by their participation, regardless of what the ultimate outcome of the election was." But Obama wasn't just reluctant to show solidarity in 2009, he feared the demonstrations would sabotage his secret outreach to Iran. In his new book, "The Iran Wars," Wall Street Journal reporter Jay Solomon uncovers new details on how far Obama went to avoid helping Iran's green movement. Behind the scenes, Obama overruled advisers who wanted to do what America had done at similar transitions from dictatorship to democracy, and signal America's support. Solomon reports that Obama ordered the CIA to sever contacts it had with the green movement's supporters. "The Agency has contingency plans for supporting democratic uprisings anywhere in the world. This includes providing dissidents with communications, money, and in extreme cases even arms," Solomon writes. "But in this case the White House ordered it to stand down."
Obama from the beginning of his presidency tried to turn the country's ruling clerics from foes to friends. It was an obsession. And even though the president would impose severe sanctions on the country's economy at the end of his first term and beginning of his second, from the start of his presidency, Obama made it clear the U.S. did not seek regime change for Iran. ...As Solomon reports, Obama ended U.S. programs to document Iranian human rights abuses. He wrote personal letters to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei assuring him the U.S. was not trying to overthrow him. Obama repeatedly stressed his respect for the regime in his statements marking Iran's annual Nowruz celebration.
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