To Help Or Not: Iranian Opposition Figures React To Clinton Remarks

A debate about whether the United States should actively support Iran’s opposition movement appears to have been reignited following recent comments by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The country’s top diplomat said earlier this week that Iranian opposition members should openly seek outside support as did rebels in Libya. 
In reaction to the comments, Amir Ardeshir Arjomand, a close adviser to opposition leader Mir Hossein Musavi, rejected foreign interference and said Iranian people can achieve democracy without outside help.
In her October 26 interview with BBC’s Persian TV, Clinton suggested that it may have been a mistake for the opposition inside Iran to not have appealed for international support in the state crackdown that followed the disputed reelection of Mahmud Ahmadinejad in 2009. 

The interviewer said that some of the BBC’s audience had criticized the U.S. for being slow to support the opposition movement. Others, however, had said that Washington‘s potential support would have given the Iranian establishment an excuse to pressure it. 
“Why has the U.S. not supported [the] Green Movement in Iran?” asked an Iranian refugee in Turkey who had left Iran following the 2009 vote. 

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