22 June 2009

Obama Says Iranians Taking Risks to Have Their Voices Be Heard

Protests in Iran have continued despite warnings from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei on June 19.

By Stephen Kaufman
Staff Writer

Washington — President Obama says the world is watching the Iranian government’s response to peaceful demonstrations, and its response will send the international community “a pretty clear signal … about what Iran is and is not.”

Obama spoke to CBS News June 19 and his remarks were broadcast on CBS’ The Early Show June 22. He said Iranians are peacefully trying to get their leaders to listen to them.

“This is not an issue of the United States or the West versus Iran. This is an issue of the Iranian people. The fact that they are on the streets, under pretty severe duress, at great risk to themselves, is a sign that there's something in that society that wants to open up,” he said.

The demonstrations began in response to popular beliefs that there were voting irregularities in the June 12 presidential election. Official results declared incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner with 63 percent of the vote. His nearest challenger, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, received 34 percent. Mousavi and fellow presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi have challenged the official results.

Despite a June 19 warning from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, that protest leaders would be held “directly responsible” for any bloodshed, demonstrations and clashes with police and paramilitary forces have continued. According to Iran’s state media, 10 people were killed June 20–21.

In his remarks, Khamenei also blamed “foreign powers” for interfering in Iran by questioning the election outcome.

Obama told CBS there are forces within Iran that “would love nothing better than to make this an argument about the United States,” and said his administration is not playing into those efforts.

“There should be no distractions from the fact that the Iranian people are seeking to let their voices be heard,” the president said.

At the State Department, spokesman Ian Kelly said June 22 that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is “following the situation with great concern,” and remains in contact with her colleagues in the diplomatic community. “Right now, we’re not really focused on the bilateral relationship,” Kelly said, in reference to long-standing U.S. concerns over Iran’s nuclear program and its support for terrorist organizations. “What we’re focused on is what is going on inside Iran,” he said.

The spokesman said U.S. officials are seeing “very dramatic and very distressing images” of clashes between demonstrators and security personnel. “Most distressing of all, the images of this young woman covered in blood,” he said, referring to the video of a woman identified as Neda who was shot on a street in Tehran. The video of her killing has been seen all over the world thanks to YouTube.

The United States is monitoring developments inside Iran, but Kelly said it is “frankly, very difficult … to get good, hard, confirmable information about what’s going on” because the media has been unable to “really cover” the situation, and diplomats in Iran have also had difficulty because of danger on the streets.

President Obama said he was not in a position to say if the June 12 presidential vote was fair or unfair because Iran did not allow international election observers. “But beyond the election, what’s clear is that the Iranian people are wanting to express themselves,” he told the Pakistani newspaper Dawn in remarks that were published June 21.

“We respect Iran’s sovereignty, but we also are witnessing peaceful demonstrations, people expressing themselves, and I stand for that universal principle that people should have a voice in their own lives and their own destiny.” The president added that he hopes others in the international community recognize the “need to stand behind peaceful protests and be opposed to violence or repression.”

The president also released a statement on Iran June 20 in which he said the United States mourns “each and every innocent life that is lost” and said that if the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, “it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.”

Obama quoted American civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin Luther King Jr., who said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

“I believe that; the international community believes that,” Obama said. “And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.”

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