The Hill News

In June 2009, hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets to protest the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which opposition candidates and their supporters claimed was fraudulently won.

It was the first time since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 that such large-scale protests took place, and the world watched closely as the beginnings of a democratic uprising in Iran appeared to take hold. However, after thousands of arrests and nearly 100 deaths, the march toward freedom in Iran came to a crawl, and then to a halt, all within a matter of weeks.

Unlike the uprisings during last year’s Arab Spring, the United States remained neutral during the 2009 Persian Awakening, as it’s been called, with President Obama arguing, “It's not productive given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations to be seen as meddling."

It took 30 years for the Iranian people to find themselves at a moment in history when they had the strength, in numbers and! of will, to challenge the leadership in Iran. We do not know when that opportunity will come again, but when it does my hope is that the leadership in Washington will act with a clearer sense of conviction, and a keener sense of timing, than this administration did in 2009.

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