Wall Street Journal Says, Obama Ordered US Not to Support 2009 Iranian Green Movement Because He was Courting Khamenei

How is this man still in office?

Since completion of the agreement in July, Tehran security forces, led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have stepped up arrests of political opponents in the arts, media and the business community, part of a crackdown aimed at ensuring Mr. Khamenei’s political allies dominate national elections scheduled for Feb. 26, according to Iranian politicians and analysts…. 

But the ranks of reformists in Iran have been depleted. 

Many activists are angry at the Obama administration for failing to support them six years ago in a rebuff that hasn’t been previously reported. 

Iranian opposition leaders secretly reached out to the White House in the summer of 2009 to gauge Mr. Obama’s support for their “green revolution,” which drew millions of people to protest the allegedly fraudulent re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. 

The demonstrations caught the White House off guard, said current and former U.S. officials who worked on Iran in the Obama administration. 

Some U.S. officials pressed Mr. Obama to publicly back the fledgling Green Movement, arguing in Oval Office meetings that it marked the most important democratic opening since the 1979 Islamic revolution. 

Mr. Obama wasn’t convinced. 

“‘Let’s give it a few days,’ was the answer,” said a senior U.S. official present at some of the White House meetings. “It was made clear: ‘We should monitor, but do nothing.’ ” 

The president was invested heavily in developing a secret diplomatic outreach to Mr. Khamenei that year, sending two letters to the supreme leader in the months before the disputed election of Mr. Ahmadinejad, said current and former U.S. officials. 

Obama administration officials at the time were working behind the scenes with the Sultan of Oman to open a channel to Tehran. 

The potential for talks with Iran—and with Mr. Khamenei as the ultimate arbiter of any nuclear agreement—influenced Mr. Obama’s thinking, current and former U.S. officials said.

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