So Obama’s generally unimpressive press secretary called Ahmadinejad the “elected leader” of Iran. John has tartly mocked Andrew for calling this “unforgivable,” and for the most part I agree with John. One stray comment from the press secretary can hardly be such an appalling offense. It is not at all clear that waxing indignant about Ahmadinejad on the day of his latest inauguration would be anything other than counterproductive for American interests. Suppose that the administration treats Ahmadinejad as the de facto head of government in Iran and continues to pursue a diplomatic track with Tehran–will that be some super-unforgivable error or will it be the unemotional pursuit of national interest that ought to characterize U.S. foreign policy?

It is the word elected that really bothers so many people, isn’t it? Andrew complains, “He was selected.” Oh, well, that’s different. As if the finalists for the first round of voting on June 12 were anything other than selected, screened and pre-approved by the real powers in Iran. It seems clear that the government never had any intention of counting the votes, but we will also probably never know whether Ahmadinejad would have lost had they bothered to count them. As a matter of U.S. policy towards Iran, what difference does it make whether the head of Iran’s government is selected twice without any concern for public opinion or whether he is selected once and then endorsed by a plebiscite? What American and Iranian interests have changed since June 12 because of these protests and the government response to them?

Andrew continues to maintain that “the revolution” is not over, but as Kevin Sullivan correctly observed about the Iranian protests: “there was little evidence of any such revolution.” Sullivan elaborated:

Unlike the Shah and his father before him, the current Iranian regime — bloated, corrupt and incompetent as it most assuredly is — still enjoys the capital of perhaps the 20th Century’s most popular revolution. At its height, the revolution of 1978 and 1979 accounted for nearly 10% of the Iranian population. Dozens of cities were consumed by riots, marches and demonstrations on an almost daily basis. The Shah could read the writing on the wall, and more importantly, knew how to count. The people no longer required his services.

The Mousavites simply don’t have those numbers — yet. This doesn’t make them wrong, it simply makes them the minority. Any genuine revolution, so as not to be confused as counter-revolutionary, will require the support of the country’s mostly silent majority. Ayatollah Khomeini didn’t emerge at random as the figurehead of national revolt in 1979. His name was not drawn from a hat, nor was he nominated for his intimidating scowl. Much like the demonstrators and dissidents of today, he and his fellow travelers cut their teeth over a decade prior resisting the Shah’s efforts to secularize the country. Today’s reformists are green in more than color alone, and a great deal of work remains to be done.

But that work will only be more arduous and daunting with the gushing and premature support of western media and elites. Like any revolutionary regime, Tehran has gladly embraced the words and rhetoric of external actors and used them as evidence of yet another plot by outsiders to interfere in Iranian affairs.

It is this last point that is especially relevant here. If the White House daily scolds Ahmadinejad as a usurper and a villain, which would warm the hearts of pro-Mousavi Westerners everywhere, who benefits from a steady stream of American vilification of the de facto president? It isn’t going to be Mousavi and his supporters, that’s for sure. What could be more damaging to Mousavi’s claims to represent the true vision of the revolution and Islamic republic than to have the U.S. government regularly echoing the protesters’ complaints against Ahmadinejad? It would be a simple matter for state propagandists to say that Mousavi is collaborating with foreign powers and coordinating his message with them when foreign governments are happily repeating Mousavi’s charges.

The reality is that there is little the U.S. can do to affect the outcome of internal Iranian disputes, and most of what our government might try to do is likely to end up harming the people many Americans want to help. The non-starter idea of a gasoline embargo, which Iran’s major trading partners will never accept, would be political gold for the de facto government if it could be implemented. The government could blame any worsening economic conditions, rationing and shortages on external enemies and have one more thing to use against internal dissidents to turn public opinion against them. Luckily for the protesters, this deeply misguided effort to “help” will never get off the ground.

Update: Don’t take my word for it–Hamid Dabashi makes much the same argument against sanctions. Dabashi writes:

As in the Iraqi case, imposition of economic sanctions on Iran will have catastrophic humanitarian consequences, while it will even more enrich and empower such critical components of the security and military apparatus as the Pasdaran and the Basij. The two organizations work like a massive corporate conglomerate and have major control over the export-import components of both the official and the unofficial economy.

It will also give them a welcome opportunity to accuse the opposition of cooperation with “the Enemy” and initiate even a harsher crackdown of the opposition, and perhaps even move toward a full-fledged military coup.

The fact of the matter is that the nascent civil rights movement in Iran, which can use the moral support of ordinary Americans, is an amorphous uprising still very much in its earliest, formative, stages.

No one, particularly a panel that has a very thin and dubious claim on scholarship on Iran, can speak for it in any certain terms, especially in its having asked the United States to lead the imposition of new economic sanctions on Iranians.

Prof. Dabashi’s article also includes a depressing run-down of the embarrassing interventionist biases of practically every establishment think tank in Washington.