WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama on Saturday challenged Iran’s government to halt a “violent and unjust” crackdown on dissenters, using his bluntest language yet to condemn Tehran’s post-election response.

Obama has sought a measured reaction to avoid being drawn in as a meddler in Iranian affairs. Yet his comments have grown more pointed as the clashes intensified, and his latest remarks took direct aim at Iranian leaders.

“We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people,” Obama said in a written statement. “The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.”

Obama has searched for the right tone in light of political pressures on all sides. On Capitol Hill, Congress pressed him to condemn the Iranian government’s response. In Iran, the leadership was poised to blame the U.S. for interference and draw Obama in more directly.

Obama met with advisers at the White House as developments in Iran grew more ominous, with police seen beating protesters.

“Suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away,” the president said, recalling a theme from the speech he gave in Cairo, Egypt, this month.

“The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government,” Obama said. “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.”

Protests at White House
Obama’s comments came as protesters outside the White House waved Iranian flags and denounced Iranian government efforts to suppress the protesters.

Protesters in Iran have demanded that government cancel and rerun the June 12 elections that ended with a declaration of overwhelming victory for hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Reformist presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi says he won and claimed widespread fraud.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said there was no ballot rigging. He warned of a crackdown if protesters continued their massive street rallies.

Then on Saturday, police in Iran beat protesters and fired tear gas and water cannons at thousands who rallied in open defiance of Iran’s clerical government. Witnesses described fierce clashes after some 3,000 protesters chanted “Death to the dictator!” and “Death to dictatorship!” in downtown Tehran.

Obama’s criticism came one day after both houses of Congress voted overwhelmingly to condemn the actions by the Iranian government against demonstrators and moves to interfere with Internet and cell phone communications. That was seen in part as a veiled criticism of Obama’s response, too.

Responding to critics
The president already was on record as saying the United States stood behind those who were seeking justice in a peaceful way. He responded to critics that he hadn’t been forceful enough in support of protesters, telling CBS News: “The last thing that I want to do is to have the United States be a foil for those forces inside Iran who would love nothing better than to make this an argument about the United States. That’s what they do.”

That was Friday, before the conflict in Iran appeared to deepen.

Obama has refrained from passing final judgment on the underlying question of the legitimacy of the election itself, although he has expressed “deep concerns” about it.

The president returned Saturday to his theme that the world is watching the way the Iranian government responds.

Obama cited Martin Luther King’s statement that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Source (article): MSNBC

Source (picture): UPI

Minutes after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration as the 40th president of the United States, the 52 U.S. captives held at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran, are released, ending the 444-day Iran Hostage Crisis.

On November 4, 1979, the crisis began when militant Iranian students, outraged that the U.S. government had allowed the ousted shah of Iran to travel to New York City for medical treatment, seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran. The Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s political and religious leader, took over the hostage situation, refusing all appeals to release the hostages, even after the U.N. Security Council demanded an end to the crisis in an unanimous vote. However, two weeks after the storming of the embassy, the Ayatollah began to release all non-U.S. captives, and all female and minority Americans, citing these groups as among the people oppressed by the government of the United States. The remaining 52 captives remained at the mercy of the Ayatollah for the next 14 months.

President Jimmy Carter was unable to diplomatically resolve the crisis, and on April 24, 1980, he ordered a disastrous rescue mission in which eight U.S. military personnel were killed and no hostages rescued. Three months later, the former shah died of cancer in Egypt, but the crisis continued. In November 1980, Carter lost the presidential election to Republican Ronald Reagan. Soon after, with the assistance of Algerian intermediaries, successful negotiations began between the United States and Iran. On the day of Reagan’s inauguration, the United States freed almost $8 billion in frozen Iranian assets, and the hostages were released after 444 days. The next day, Jimmy Carter flew to West Germany to greet the Americans on their way home.

HISTORY.COM
Date: 2009-01-20

On this day in 1980, in a strong reaction to the December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter asks the Senate to postpone action on the SALT II nuclear weapons treaty and recalls the U.S. ambassador to Moscow. These actions sent a message that the age of detente and the friendlier diplomatic and economic relations that were established between the United States and Soviet Union during President Richard Nixon’s administration (1969-74) had ended.

Carter feared that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, in which an estimated 30,000 combat troops entered that nation and established a puppet government, would threaten the stability of strategic neighboring countries such as Iran and Pakistan and could lead to the USSR gaining control over much of the world’s oil supplies. The Soviet actions were labeled “a serious threat to peace” by the White House. Carter asked the Senate to shelve ratification talks on SALT II, the nuclear arms treaty that he and Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev had already signed, and the president called U.S. ambassador to Moscow Thomas J. Watson back to Washington for “consultation,” in an effort to let the Kremlin know that military intervention in Afghanistan was unacceptable.

When the Soviets refused to withdraw from Afghanistan, America halted certain key exports to the USSR, including grain and high technology, and boycotted the 1980 summer Olympics, which were held in Moscow. The United States also began to covertly subsidize anti-Soviet fighters in Afghanistan. During Ronald Reagan’s presidency in the 1980s, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars to Afghanistan to arm and train the mujahedeen rebel forces that were battling the Soviets. This tactic was successful in helping to drive out the Soviets, but it also gave rise to the oppressive Taliban regime and Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terrorist organization.

In 1980, Jimmy Carter lost the presidency to Ronald Reagan, who favored a more aggressive anti-Communist foreign policy. Reagan dubbed the USSR the “evil empire” and believed it was America’s responsibility to save the world from Soviet repression. He dramatically increased U.S. defense spending and ramped up the nuclear arms race with the Soviets, whose faltering economy ultimately prevented them from keeping pace. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

HISTORY.COM
Date: 2009-01-02

On this day in 1991, Islamic militants in Lebanon release kidnapped American journalist Terry Anderson after 2,454 days in captivity.

As chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, Anderson covered the long-running civil war in Lebanon (1975-1990). On March 16, 1985, he was kidnapped on a west Beirut street while leaving a tennis court. His captors took him to the southern suburbs of the city, where he was held prisoner in an underground dungeon for the next six-and-a-half years.

Anderson was one of 92 foreigners (including 17 Americans) abducted during Lebanon’s bitter civil war. The kidnappings were linked to Hezbollah, or the Party of God, a militant Shiite Muslim organization formed in 1982 in reaction to Israel’s military presence in Lebanon. They seized several Americans, including Anderson, soon after Kuwaiti courts jailed 17 Shiites found guilty of bombing the American and French embassies there in 1983. Hezbollah in Lebanon received financial and spiritual support from Iran, where prominent leaders praised the bombers and kidnappers for performing their duty to Islam.

U.S. relations with Iran–and with Syria, the other major foreign influence in Lebanon–showed signs of improving by 1990, when the civil war drew to a close, aided by Syria’s intervention on behalf of the Lebanese army. Eager to win favor from the U.S. in order to promote its own economic goals, Iran used its influence in Lebanon to engineer the release of nearly all the hostages over the course of 1991.

Anderson returned to the U.S. and was reunited with his family, including his daughter Suleme, born three months after his capture. In 1999, he sued the Iranian government for $100 million, accusing it of sponsoring his kidnappers; he received a multi-million dollar settlement.

HISTORY.COM
Date: 2008-12-04

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