Silence Isn’t Golden: Via .

Since a wave of protests broke out in Iran last weekend following its presidential election, the American media has promoted the Obama administration’s view that it could do more to help demonstrators by staying on the sidelines than actively offering rhetorical support.

The theory is that if President Obama publicly encourages those taking to the streets in Iran, it will only backfire by allowing the Islamic regime to paint protesters as tools of America. As Obama himself put it, “sometimes the United States can be a handy political football…”

But Amir Fakhravar says this approach is dead wrong. And he speaks with authority. Jailed and tortured in Iran for advocating democracy and speaking out against the Iranian government, Fakhravar in 2006 fled for the U.S., where he currently lives in exile while maintaining close ties to the reform movement in Iran.

Contrary to most reports in the American press, he said the demonstrators he is in contact with in Iran are desperate for Obama to make a forceful statement reassuring them that he stands with those who are striving for freedom.

“Right now, the people in Iran are disappointed,” he said in a telephone interview with TAS. He recounted a recent conversation with a female actively involved in the current protests in Iran who asked him, “Is it possible for us to send a letter to Barack Obama and tell him, ‘Don’t be quiet’?”

Fakhravar serves as secretary general of the Confederation of Iranian Students, a network of young Iranians inside and outside the country, which began under a different name in 1994. At the time, he was a medical student in Orumiya, but he was expelled from the school and sent to jail for several months in 1996 after being convicted of speaking against the Supreme Leader.

He also spent several years in prison in the earlier part of this decade, during which time he said he drew inspiration from President Bush’s words in support of Iranian dissidents.

Read Original Article:(Via The American Spectator.)