The standoff in Iran

The Iranian government ratcheted up its rhetoric against the opposition this week, accusing its leaders of plotting with foreigners and hinting that defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi could be arrested. In his first televised address since last month’s disputed election, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the vote “the freest and healthiest” in the world, and said Iran would have remained peaceful if not for the meddling of “our arrogant enemies.” The Islamic Republic News Agency published allegations that Mousavi and other reformists were part of a U.S. plot to “turn Iran into a secular state,” and an advisor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused Mousavi of being a “foreign agent”—prompting concerns that the stage was being set for his arrest.

Mousavi, fellow losing candidate Mehdi Karroubi, and former President Mohammad Khatami called for an end to the “savage and shocking attacks” on their supporters and said the protests would continue. They also released documents they said prove that the election was fraudulent. In a sign of spreading discontent, a group of moderate clerics declared the presidential vote “invalid,” a rare defiance of the supreme leader.

Why is President Obama still refusing to take a strong stance? asked Michael Rubin in National Review. At first, he claimed he couldn’t openly support the opposition because the regime would portray them as puppets. But his restraint “neither kept the Iranian government from calling the demonstrators foreign agents nor spared them a harsh crackdown.” The protests have died down now, but “the larger battle over the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy is just beginning.”

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The moderates may yet prevail, said USA Today in an editorial. “Bullets trump tweets in the short run,” but the complaints that young Iranians have about their government won’t go away. Iran can’t cut off its educated populace from access to information, and Iranians already know their votes were stolen. They no longer have faith in their theocratic government; eventually, the theocracy will fall.

But we are at an exceedingly dangerous crossroads, said Trudy Rubin in The Philadelphia Inquirer. Iran is on track to get nuclear weapons and Israel has been threatening to not let that happen. But Obama’s plan to negotiate with Iranian leaders must now be scrapped, because talking with Ahmadinejad would amount to condoning his bloody crackdown. Obama will have to start thinking of “a Plan B.”