The aftershocks of last week’s overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak continued to reverberate Monday, not only in Egypt but all the way across the Middle East to Iran. And it was the democratic challenge to Iran’s leaders by crowds on Tehran’s streets, reported to number tens of thousands, that the Obama Administration chose to emphasize. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed U.S. support for the Iranian demonstrators: “We wish the opposition and the brave people in the streets across cities in Iran the same opportunities that they saw their Egyptian counterparts seize,” she said in Washington.
Since bidding farewell to stalwart U.S. ally Mubarak last Friday, the Administration has insistently pressed the issue of democracy in Iran — less so in other places, where challenges to long-standing U.S. allies such as Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Algeria’s military-based regime and Bahrain’s monarchy have also continued to gather steam.
