The President's Statement on Iran

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release June 20, 2009


Statement from the President on Iran

The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

Martin Luther King once said - "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.

Excerpt from a reader comment on Sullivan's blog:

These citizens are done with their leadership. The trust has completely and irretrievably dissipated, and the fear, although present, is not sufficient, especially as it becomes more clear the army will remain on the sidelines. And the mullahs have opened all the playbooks on repression and crowd control simultaneously; it's a smorgasboard attempt at blocking the rising tide of resentment; if you'll recall, that's called the mullah's-ass-on-a-pressure-cooker-lid-to-retard-fulmination rule. If things look bad with the pressure cooker, piling more mullahs on the lid will only result in a more spectacular finish.

If the Warsaw Ghetto uprising had been broadcast to the entire world, Hitler's demise most surely would have come several years sooner. The mullahs have no way out. They are, essentially, fucked. It's now only a matter of time. And Iran's negotiations on their nuclear program? Suspended indefinitely due to lack of credibility; nobody will believe anything they say now.

TICK, TOCK, MOTHERFUCKERS...


[Sullivan:] From his mouth to Allah's ears.