This week’s column: Step up on Iran

The transcript from President Obama’s press conference, Wednesday, June 23

Survey raises questions about Iran vote results

The operative section is this:

.The survey made four main observations:

In two conservative provinces, Mazandaran and Yazd, a turnout of more than 100 percent was recorded.

At a provincial level, there is no correlation between the increased turnout and the swing to Ahmadinejad. This challenges the notion that his announced victory was due to the massive participation of a previously silent conservative majority.

In a third of all provinces, the official results would require that Ahmadinejad had received not only all former conservative voters, all former centrist voters and all new voters but also up to 44 percent of former reformist voters—despite a decade of conflict between these two groups.

In the 2005 election, as in the elections of 2001 and 1997, conservative candidates—and Ahmadinejad in particular—were markedly unpopular in rural areas. That makes it “highly implausible” that the countryside swung substantially toward Ahmadinejad.

This column was filed before President Obama called the Iranian government’s actions against its citizens “outrageous,“ and it ran before the Iranian government arrested eight local employees of the British Embassy. Five of those employees have been released, but three “are still being interrogated.“

In a related item, CNN reports that according to a new poll, Americans are upset about what’s going on in Iran, but not so much that they want their own government to get directly involved.

What would “directly involved” mean? If it means swooping in there to support demonstrators, I wouldn’t be for that, either, but if it simply means supporting their struggles from here with rhetoric and holding the Iranian government responsible for their treatment through sanctions, then I’m all for it.

I would have appreciated it if this poll would have provided a definition of “directly involved.“ Without it, the poll is pretty useless; it’s unclear whether Americans have become blasé about their freedom or just their willingness to stand up for it for others.