US President Barack Obama staked out his toughest stance yet on Iran on Tuesday, expressing outrage over a government crackdown and a “heartbreaking” video of a woman bleeding to death during a street protest.
Obama, speaking at a White House news conference, also for the first time appeared to suggest that his strategy of offering negotiations with longtime US foe Iran may depend on the end-game of the crisis.
“The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, the beatings, and imprisonments of the last few days,” Obama said, stiffening his rhetoric on the crisis.
“I strongly condemn these unjust actions and I join with the American people in mourning each and every innocent life that is lost,” he said.
Obama came to power in January offering dialogue with US foes, including Iran, which former US president George W. Bush largely refused to engage.
“We’re still waiting to see how it plays itself out,” Obama said of the current crisis.
“My position coming into this office has been that the United States has core national security interests in making sure that Iran doesn’t possess a nuclear weapon and it stops exporting terrorism outside of its borders,” he said.
“What we’ve been seeing over the last several days, the last couple of weeks, obviously is not encouraging, in terms of the path that this regime may choose to take,” Obama said.
He said he was not interfering in Iranian affairs, as alleged by the Tehran government, but said he had to “bear witness to the courage and dignity of the Iranian people.”
He was asked specifically about graphic footage of the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, a bystander apparently shot in the chest who died on the street, which has spread around the Internet as a symbol of the post-election uprising.
“It’s heartbreaking, and I think that anybody who sees it knows that there’s something fundamentally unjust about that,” Obama said.
“I think that when a young woman gets shot on the street when she gets out of her car, that’s a problem,” he said.
Some Republicans, including election rival John McCain, have accused Obama of being timid and too slow to embrace the protests sparked by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed win over Mir Hossein Mousavi.
But he hit back: “Only I’m the president of the United States … in the hothouse of Washington, there may be all kinds of stuff going back and forth in terms of Republican critics versus the administration.”
“That’s not what is relevant to the Iranian people,” Obama said.
McCain said later on CNN that he agreed “there’s only one president,” but defended his right to speak out.
“Many of us who have had long years of experience on these issues not only have the right to speak out, but we have the obligation to speak out on behalf of people who are being oppressed,” he said.
McCain accused Obama of not sticking up for American values.
“The president saying that we didn’t want to be perceived as meddling, is, frankly, not what America’s history is all about,” he said.
Earlier, a key committee in the US House of Representatives voted to target Tehran’s gasoline imports and its domestic energy sector by prohibiting the US Export-Import Bank from helping companies that export gasoline to Iran or support its production at home.
The US State Department also said US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discussed the situation in Iran by telephone with her French, British and German counterparts, but provided no details on the talks.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to