Jonah may be correct that Mousavi actually wants us to meddle: “But Obama supporters and others who think America should do nothing to help the opposition need to at least wonder whether they have a better grasp of the situation than the opposition itself does.” But alternate explanations are possible, like that Mousavi now figures his own neck might be on the line, literally, and wants us to bail him out. I think Peggy Noonan’s caution is the place to start: “Modesty and humility seem appropriate stances from which to observe and comment.” And as my graduate adviser was fond of saying, when in doubt, fall on the ball.

I don’t believe for a minute that Obama has some clever grand strategy in mind by falling on the ball. Rich is probably right that “at some level, he buys the post-colonial critique of the West as the root of the developing world’s troubles, and thinks we lack the moral standing to judge non-Western governments that resent and envy us.” And Victor may well be right that Obama has a “fear of offending terrorist-supporting and quite murderous theocrats.” But motivations and feelings aren’t the point here — results are. If he’s doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, I can live with that. And if the good cop/bad cop approach to Iran we’ve fallen into, with the French and the Germans playing the heavies for once, actually works, who cares whether it was planned that way.

A lot of the dissatisfaction with our muted response results from simple misunderstanding of what we’re facing. Several readers objected to my earlier posts, asking what’s the difference between Iran today and Poland during Solidarity’s rise, or other countries under the Soviet yoke. If there’d been only one e-mail like that, I’d have ignored it, but there were enough that it’s necessary to point out the obvious: Solidarity was trying to free its homeland from foreign occupation, while the mullahs in Iran may be bastards, but they’re Iranians’ bastards.

Also there seems to be a sense that our historical baggage with Iran is easily forgotten. I don’t mean to pick on Victor, but his dismissal of the CIA’s role in the overthrow of Mossadegh — “all of that is all now in the distant past” — is uniquely American. Only we could imagine 1953 as the “distant past” — the Shia still bemoan defeat at the Battle of Karbala in 680 AD. Whether overthrowing him was or wasn’t a good idea isn’t the point — rather, it’s the event’s place in Iranians’ historical memory that counts.

With regard to Khamenei’s ravings at Friday prayers, Marc Ambinder had a useful insight:

If President Obama have come down forcefully on the side of the protestors and students, would Khamenei’s rhetoric be different today? To this, some will say: well, if Khamenei would say the same thing, then why shouldn’t Obama have said more? To which one might well respond: the millions of protesters know whether the U.S. is meddling or not. If they’re not and Khamenei says they are, he’s not credible — even less credible. If they are, and Khamenei says they are, then he’s correct. And anger might well turn toward the United States.

The success of the protest movement will not mean a reshuffling of government offices, but instead mullahs hanging from lampposts and basiji stormtroopers beaten to death in the street by outraged citizens, with revolutionary effects in the Middle East. That is the outcome that best serves our interests, and keeping our mouths shut as the mullahs dig their own graves just seems like the more likely way of getting there.