How not to help Iranians

This is a reflex of solidarity that all enemies of injustice may share. But Obama has to wrestle with how best to help the Iranian people. Obama’s answer thus far has been a carefully balanced stance that reflects a shrewd grasp of the power struggle being waged today in Iran - and of the need for America to avoid the traps set by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his coterie of thuggish hard-liners.

Iranian human rights and democracy activists have long warned that their efforts to expand the sphere of freedom are harmed whenever the government can link their activities to American support for regime change in Iran.

Shirin Ebadi, the human rights lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize winner, told the Washington Post this week that it is up to the people of Iran to make their voices heard. Of Obama’s careful public comments on the confrontation, she said: “I respect his comments on all the events in Iran, but I think it is sufficient.’’

Ebadi knows that the last thing the protesters need is for a US president to indulge in emotionally satisfying declarations that play into the hands of Ahmadinejad’s faction. As it is, Iran’s foreign ministry summoned the Swiss ambassador Wednesday, complaining about “interventionist’’ comments from US officials. For some time now, reformist Iranians and foreign journalists interrogated by the regime’s intelligence services have reported being pressured to confess to involvement in US plots to foment “color revolutions’’ like those in Ukraine or Georgia in recent years.

It would be irresponsible for Obama to say anything that could enable Ahmadinejad to identify his opponents with the US meddlers who overthrew a democratically elected Iranian government in 1953 and supported Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 war that took a million lives. And Obama is right to say that America’s long-term interest is in preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, “and that would be true whoever came out on top in this election.’’

Obama has rightly acted on the realization that fine-sounding rhetoric from him at this dramatic moment could do great harm not only to Iranians yearning for freedom but also to the world’s interest in preventing nuclear proliferation to Iran.