‘The concerns that we have about Iran are no different than we had last Thursday or last Friday.’

I’m going to chalk this up to Robert Gibbs just being Robert Gibbs, and giving an incomplete, off-the-cuff, answer. But this statement from today’s briefing is a bit troubling.

The concerns that we have about Iran are no different than we had last Thursday or last Friday.  Our primary concerns are obviously the state sponsorship and the spread of terror, and their efforts to secure a nuclear weapon.  Those interests — our interests are no different today than they were before the election.  The President remains committed to strong action and principled diplomacy to address our national interests; that our interest haven’t changed regardless of ultimately who the Iranians pick.

“The concerns that we have about Iran are no different than we had last Thursday or last Friday” — last Thursday and Friday there weren’t tens or hundreds of thousands of Iranians in the streets protesting an election result that they don’t trust, with riot police beating them with batons and in some cases, shooting them. This doesn’t mean that the nuclear program and the spread of terror aren’t number one and number two, but a brutal crackdown ought to somewhere on our list of concerns, right?

But what’s worrying is that Gibbs gives the “nothing has changed” message twice, adding “our interests are no different today than they were before the election.” I thought our interests would include the basic rights of the Iranian people as the thugs move in.