What is perhaps most amazing about the crisis in Iran is how people all over the world and Iranian nationals all over the diaspora are absolutely certain that the election was rigged. And this is primarily because a million people out of a population of 70 million turned up in the capital to demonstrate against the results.

It is, therefore, accepted without question that the people who are protesting in the streets of Tehran are fighting for votes which have been stolen and so must be supported by democracy lovers everywhere.

Of the multitude of reports I have read, only the Economist has so far admits: "No one knows the real results of the vote."(June 20 issue). That was said in the editorial, but in the report farther on we read that the election was stolen. The fact is most of us have good reasons for wanting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to get lost. He's a despot, a bigot and a religious crackpot who has no moral authority to be ruling over anyone.

surgical analysis

But despite our feelings about him, we have no sure way of knowing whether he won. It is unlikely that he would have won by the wide margin that has been reported, but we really can't be certain that he actually lost in the tally of votes. The respected Chatham House of London and the Institute of Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews published a Preliminary Analysis of the Voting Figures of Iran's 2009 Presidential Election last week which cogently demonstrated how implausible the results were, using figures from Iran's ministry of the interior. It was a surgical analysis which casts grave doubts on the results of the election.

The issue is not, fundamentally, whether the 2009 Iranian election result is correct (there was dispute about the 2005 election result also). The fundamental issue is that Iran needs a real liberal democratic model, instead of the largely theocratic system which it now has and which some protesters are rightly rejecting. The issue has to be seen as larger than whether this managed democratic exercise - whose rules were accepted by all in the first place, represented the will of the people. If candidates have to be approved by some bearded theocrats before they can contest, that system is not democratic.

misguided

But those who are criticising President Barack Obama for not talking tough enough or for not bringing together European allies to pressure Iran to annul its election results or to facilitate the demands of the protesters are misguided.

The Obama administration has been under intense pressure from Republicans to be tougher on Iran, but the administration has been wisely restrained and quite guarded in its comments. Even President Obama's press conference on Tuesday, which has been widely reported in the big US media as tough-talking and raising the ante, was not really such when carefully examined. Obama was very careful, choosing his words delicately and in a way which could stand the closet scrutiny.

He still has not rejected the results of the election, pronounced the regime illegitimate and the election fraudulent. I read the full transcripts of his press conference, not just relied on the reports from big media.

He said America and the international community were "appalled and outraged by the threats, the beatings and the imprisonments of the last few days". That's what any human rights advocate would say of any government which over-reacts to peaceful protesters. That says nothing about the election results themselves. He spoke about the dignity of those standing up for a more open society and he deplored the violence against innocent citizens, including the woman who has become the face of the anti-theocratic stirrings.

He asserted the Iranian people's right to free assembly and free speech. You can do all of that without saying anything about the legitimacy of an election. Obama has been extremely careful and cautious and that is why Ahmadinejad sounds like a fool when he talks about Obama's meddling in Iran's internal affairs and being the protests.

The president of the United States has a right to speak up for values he holds dear and values which are cherished by the international community free speech, a free press, the right of assembly and of peaceful protest, and people's right to be free from fear and threats.

Organising any coalition of the concerned to pressure Iran on its election results would be out of place in light of the fact that the Obama administration, the Republicans and the international press do not have the facts about the election results.

strategic reasons

Besides, there are some important strategic reasons why the right-wing Republicans and their fellow travellers in the media (Fox News, etc) are not thinking straight. And a good reason why two of the most respected foreign policy thinkers and realists, Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, have defended Obama's cautious approach.

Fareed Zakaria, arguably the most informed and most intellectually rigorous foreign policy journalist in the big US media, puts it well in his piece, 'Theocracy and its Discontents' in the current issue of Newsweek magazine: "The fact that Obama has been cautious in his reaction makes it all the harder for (Supreme Leader) Khamenei and Ahmadinejad to wrap themselves in a nationalist flag."

This is what those theocrats would love most: To have Obama take a strong, belligerent, Bush-like response to Iran at this time, so that they can rail against the 'Great Satan', hatch all kinds of conspiracy theories and make claims of interference which would not have the preposterousness which it now commands with Obama's restrained response.

The hothead Republicans who are so addicted to a muscular foreign policy and who do not know the value of soft power are blinded to serious foreign policy strategy.

Make no mistake about it: The people protesting in the streets of Tehran are against Ahmadinejad and might be disappointed in the Supreme Leader, but they are still largely committed to the Islamic republic and are intensely nationalistic. It should be very easy for the authoritarian leaders in Iran to whip up those who have not take to the streets to come out to "defend the revolution" and the Islamic republic, if ever it is plausibly perceived at the US and the Western powers threaten it.

In a highly perceptive and prescient essay in the latest issue of the scholarly journal the Washington Quarterly (April 2009), the director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University and a research fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution, Abbas Milani, says, " To serious students of Iranian society, it has long been clear that saber-rattling by the United States helps the regime and allows the most radical elements to consolidate their hold on power. In contrast, prudent US diplomacy geared more toward negotiations than threats will rattle the regime, help resolve outstanding issues between Iran and the United States and will also help Iran's indigenous democratic movement."

There is a growing coalition of forces in Iran which knows that democracy is superior to theocracy - even bourgeois democracy. That coalition is not helped by bellicose rantings and threats against Iran, which only strengthen the power of Iran's dictators to manipulate the emotions of the masses. Says Abbas Milani: "Nothing is more detrimental to this democratic movement than the idea of a threat of war. Although the United States did not always know what frightens the mullahs and the clerics, the Iranian democrats know the truth - war helps the mullahs and prudent US policy hurts them."

Obama strategy

This is why the Obama strategy of smart power is right and deadly to the authoritarian regime in Tehran. Let the theocrats play out their hand by suppressing press freedom, clamping down in the Internet like other dictators. Let them parade their intensely anti-democratic and repressive nature to the rest of the world. Obama must not play into their hands.

As Obama has said, those protesting for greater freedoms and transparency are on the right side of history. They will be vindicated. With America's sordid role in the ouster of Iran's democratic Government in 1953 and its support of its puppet, the brutal Shah Reza Pahlavi, the worst thing it could do is to be seen as being behind the protests in Tehran. That would only galavanise large numbers or ordinary, patriotic Iranians against these protesters.

Fareed Zakaria compares Obama's cautious strategy with, ironically, George H. W. Bush's approach to the cracks that began to appear in the Soviet empire of 1989. Writes Zakaria: "Then, as now with Obama, many neo-conservatives were livid that Bush was not loudly supporting those trying to topple the communist regimes of eastern Europe. But Bush's concern was that the situation was fragile. These regimes could easily crack down on the protesters, handing the communists reasons to act forcefully would help no one, least of all the protesters. Bush's basic approach was correct and has been vindicated by history." Obama's will be, too.

The street and the state are at odds in Iran, but today, unlike 1999 and 1979, the state is divided. The Supreme Leader is being opposed by powerful members of the clerical elite and he is being defied by hundreds of thousands who ignored his words at prayers two Fridays ago.

Many Iranians want engagement with the world, not the isolation their president is forcing them into. Whatever happens in Iran, things will never be the same and concessions will have to be made by the theocrats. Obama is making the right moves and his administration must continue to ignore the noise of the hawks whose theory of international relations is for the birds.

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist who may be reached at ianboyne1@yahoo.com or columns@gleanerjm.com.