"Always historicize"

It continues to be difficult but not impossible to get news from Iran. My heart goes out to the people of Iran for whom this latest crisis contains the vivid memories of earlier struggles.
Payvand Iran publishes Payvand Iran News, whose recent post shows the faces of peaceful protest on June 18, and the signs held by the protesters. Ayatollah Ali Khameinei's speech in response is being characterized as hardline, and threatening violence against further protests, and calling out Rafsanjani by name, a powerful leader who is supporting Mousavi (both of them previously held high office within the current political structure). You can see a video from The NewsHour on PBS on the same events here, at PBS Engage, with Abbas Milani again, and reporter Joe Klein who has just returned from ten days in Tehran. I can't embed the video, but it is well worth clicking here to watch it. Klein also reminds us that the U.S. helped overthrow democracy in Iran in the 50s to install the shah, and sided with Saddam Hussein in the dreadful Iran-Iraq war, that claimed millions of lives.
Obama must avoid playing into the regime's hands by replaying the role of meddling, and Scott Rosenberg reminds us of this history and new evidence of how the U.S. helped put the Shah in power in the coup of 1953, an event that Obama acknowledged in his speech in Cairo. Obama knows that if he is too public in his denunciation of the regime, this will create backlash.