Why doesn’t Obama support the Iranian demonstrators?

There are plenty of issues for which I have lukewarm support or object to Obama’s handling, but Iran isn’t one of them. Obama has been doing exactly what he should be doing: as little as possible. He’s spoken out against the violence and in favor of rights, but hasn’t made clear statements about being on a specific side of the conflict. Charles Krauthammer’s Op-Ed on Friday argues that Obama should “pick a side” in the conflict, and make it known. The first question anyone should ask with a proposed policy like this is: “To what end?” Would Obama’s full, public support of the demonstrators help the demonstrators? Of course not. If Obama made a statement clearly supporting the demonstrators, that statement would be played on Iranian TV for days on end. In fact, there are reports that it’s already happened, in a sense:

This morning a friend of NIAC who gets Iranian Satellite TV here said that state-run media showed President Obama speaking about Iran this morning. However, instead of translating what he actually said, the translator reportedly quoted Obama as saying he “supports the protesters against the government and they should keep protesting.”

(source)

The Iranian government would love nothing more than to paint the demonstrators as a US-fueled movement. If such a thing were successful, it’s reasonable to expect that it would end the movement. Not surprisingly, Krauthammer doesn’t address this aspect at all in his article. To him, foreign relations is just a Ronald Reagan impersonation contest, it seems.