The U.S. State Department began sending Twitter messages in Farsi on Sunday in the hopes of reaching social media users in Iran.
On the Twitter account, USA darFarsi, the department told Iranians, "We want to join in your conversation."
No more worrying about whether our signs of support "taint" an opposition. Good call:
A small, controversial effort launched under President George W. Bush to fund and train election monitors in Egypt played a key role in the movement to topple President Hosni Mubarak’s regime.
It was halved under the Obama administration, but it worked well enough, if it is possible to connect disillusioned election monitors to the successful unseating of Mubarak.
The mullahs in Iran aren't too keen on tolerating what they celebrate in their Arab competitors:
Eyewitnesses report that sporadic clashes have erupted in central Tehran's Enghelab or Revolution square between security forces and opposition protesters.
The demonstrators were chanting "death to the dictator," referring to the country's hardline president that the opposition beleives was reelected through fraud in 2009.
Iran's opposition called for a demonstration Monday in sympathy with a popular uprising in Egypt that forced the president there to resign.
Tear gas was used to disperse the protesters, but witnesses report that many have still gathered in nearby Enghelab Avenue.
We've already heard calls from the administration in support of protesters in Iran, amazingly enough.
What will we see from our administration if the protesters hit the streets again in great numbers?
UPDATE: No worries of "taint" now, eh?
Mrs Clinton told reporters that the US administration "very clearly and directly" supports the protesters.
"What we see happening in Iran today is a testament to the courage of the Iranian people, and an indictment of the hypocrisy of the Iranian regime - a regime which over the last three weeks has constantly hailed what went on in Egypt," she said.
Mrs Clinton said the US had the same message for the Iranian authorities as it did for those in Egypt, where President Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down after 29 years in power by nationwide mass protests.
"We are against violence and we would call to account the Iranian government that is once again using its security forces and resorting to violence to prevent the free expression of ideas from their own people," she said.
My worry is the same one we displayed in southern Iraq in 1991 when we stated our support for Iraq's Shias who were promptly assaulted by Saddam's forces and bloodily put down as we stood aside; and which we displayed in 1956 as we watched Soviet-led forces crush Hungary after years of supporting Hungary's right to be free of the Soviet Union.
Has the administration thought out how our verbal support translates into action if the Iranian regime is faced with protesters who will not go home under low-level rates of killing by government forces and unleashes the Pasdaran and Basij to really slaughter demonstrators?
