Obama Finally Speaks About Iranian Upheaval

It's about time. It's also the bare minimum.

President Barack Obama says it's up to Iran to determine its own leaders.

But he also says he's troubled by the situation in Iran and that it would be wrong to stay silent. Obama says any investigation into Iranian election results must not result in bloodshed.

It was the U.S. president's first comments following the disputed outcome of Iran's presidential election in which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad retained his post. The results set off allegations of ballot fraud as well as a wave of violence and arrests in Iran.

Obama's remarks came at the end of an Oval Office meeting Monday with Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi.

It's indeed up to Iran to determine its own leaders and that the ongoing demonstrations should not result in bloodshed.

Is this sufficient support for the protesters to continue their efforts? Possibly. I would have preferred a stronger statement on liberty and freedom, but that would have been out of character of what President Obama has said in the past.

UPDATE:
Video:


UPDATE:
President Obama keeps trying to play this both ways, and saying that he'd talk with the regime gives Ahmadinejad an unwarranted out.

Now, with respect to the United States and our interactions with Iran, I've always believed that as odious as I consider some of President Ahmadinejad's statements, as deep as the differences that exist between the United States and Iran on a range of core issues, that the use of tough, hard-headed diplomacy -- diplomacy with no illusions about Iran and the nature of the differences between our two countries -- is critical when it comes to pursuing a core set of our national security interests, specifically, making sure that we are not seeing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East triggered by Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon; making sure that Iran is not exporting terrorist activity. Those are core interests not just to the United States but I think to a peaceful world in general.

We will continue to pursue a tough, direct dialogue between our two countries, and we'll see where it takes us. But even as we do so, I think it would be wrong for me to be silent about what we've seen on the television over the last few days.

Talking isn't going to bridge the gap between Iran's intentions to obtain nuclear weapons and the rest of the world's stated preference to see Iran without nuclear weapons.

Of course, Mousavi isn't going to give up the nukes either, not when he was one of the prime architects of Iran's nuclear program. He was Prime Minister when he authorized Iran moving forward on its nuclear program. He's not about to turn his back on that now.