Obama on Iran: Don’t Blame Me

Helle Dale / June 23, 2009

President Obama provided some much-anticipated guidance on his policy towards Iran today in the fourth news conference of his presidency. But even without teleprompters, Mr. Obama proved a master at sticking to his talking points, which were as follows:

1. Violence is bad. At the very least, Mr. Obama is finally finding the political courage to say, as he did in his opening statement, that “we deplore violence anywhere.” Regarding the shooting of the 26 year old Iranian girl, who bled to death and whose picture is now being beamed around the world, Mr. Obama called it “problematic.”
2. Don’t blame me. More than anything, Mr. Obama did not want to be used as a tool by the Iranian government. Looking, as he often does at world events, through the lens of his own presidency, Mr. Obama took great affront at the charges leveled by Iran’s supreme (more…)