Opposition memo to Obama from Iran ignored?

Sara Carter:

The crisis with Iran may prove to be the critical foreign policy issue of the upcoming U.S. presidential election, and GOP candidates are already targeting President Obama for failing to back pro-democracy oppostion groups that could help destabilize a regime bent on acquiring nuclear weapons.

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum recently blasted Obama for failing to intervene during the 2009 uprising when it briefly appeared the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in trouble. "We had no connection, no correlation and we did absolutely nothing to help them," Santorum said during a recent debate.

Documents obtained by The Washington Examiner suggest the Obama administration missed at least one major opportunity to help opposition groups in Iran that has not previously been reported. In November 2009, leaders of the Green party, which had staged a revolt on the streets of Tehran in June of that year, sent a long memo through channels to the Obama administration that some analysts said was a clear call for help.

"So now, at this pivotal point in time, it is up to the countries of the free world to make up their mind," states the opposition memo dated Nov. 30, 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."

The eight-page memo describes the current regime under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as a "brutal, apocalyptic theocratic dictatorship."

The memo warns that Iran "with its apocalyptic constitution will never give up the atomic bomb, nor will it give up its terror network, because it needs these instruments to maintain its power and enhance its own economic and financial wealth."

The administration claimed in 2009 that the Green party in Iran did not want American help. And the State Department repeated that this week. "Most leaders in the Green movement made clear they did not desire financial or other support from the United States," a State Department senior official said. "As an organic movement, it was concerned that taking outside support would discredit it in the eyes of the Iranian people. We respect that and do not provide financial assistance to any political movement, party or faction in Iran."

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The opposition in Iran continues to pay a high price for Obama's "engagement" strategy that did not work.  Both the opposition and the US are worse off for his refusal to respond positively to the opposition in Iran.  It is an issue the Republican candidate should raise in a debate over Obama's mismanagement of foreign policy.  We should be on the side of the people and not on the side of the despots in Iran.

CNN reports that suppression is worse in Iran today than in Arab countries going through their own uprising.