Obama's Iran Tightrope

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images At his press conference today, Obama offered his most emotional condemnation of human-rights abuses in Iran. Benjamin Sarlin parses the president’s rhetoric to how delicately he has supported the protesters.

Plus, read more insight on Iran's election from other Daily Beast writers.

After walking a rhetorical tightrope in response to the Iranian protests, today President Obama aligned himself with the opposition protesters more directly, saying that the White House would "bear witness to the courage and dignity of the Iranian people and to a remarkable opening within Iranian society.” He added, "Those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history." But despite anticipation that the press conference would mark a turning point in White House policy, Obama stuck to many of the same talking points from his previous statements on Iran. At one point, a reporter even complained that Obama wasn’t breaking any news.

As for the Iranian government, Obama specifically condemned "threats, beatings, and imprisonments of the last few days" and acknowledged the world's outrage over images like the death of Neda Agha Soltan, who was killed during a protest. He also deliberately took a question from the Huffington Post's Nico Pitney, who had been asking Iranians to submit questions to Obama that he would relay on their behalf.

Obama refused to say whether there was a specific point of no return at which Iran would no longer be a credible negotiating partner. He left the issue relatively vague:

"We have provided a path whereby Iran can reach out to the international community, engage, and become a part of international norms. It is up to them to make a decision as to whether they chose that path."

Obama also did not dispute the legitimacy of the election, instead pointing to the demonstrators' own concerns and once again emphasizing the government's reaction to the protests instead.

"We didn't have international observers on the ground; we can’t say definitively what exactly happened at polling places throughout the country. What we know is that a sizable percentage of the Iranian people themselves spanning Iranian society consider this election illegitimate."

To give a sense of how careful the White House’s rhetoric has been since the June 12 election, here is a timeline Obama and Vice President Joe Biden’s statements:

June 13
Joe Biden, Meet the Press:

The day after Ahmadinejad was declared the victor, Biden did not definitively side with claims of vote fraud and offered a cautious response:

"Is this the result of the Iranian people's wishes? The hope is that the Iranian people, all their votes have been counted, they've been counted fairly. But look: We just don't know enough. … Our interests are the same before the election as after the election, and that is we want them to cease and desist from seeking a nuclear weapon and having one in its possession and, secondly, to stop supporting terror.”

June 15
President Obama, press conference:

While saying he was "troubled" by violence in Iran and that "free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent" are "universal values," President Obama seemed to prepare Americans for the possibility that they would still have to negotiate with Iran regardless of who emerges from the election:

"I've always believed that as odious as I consider some of President Ahmadinejad's statements, as deep as the differences that exist between the United States and Iran on a range of core issues, that the use of tough, hard-headed diplomacy—diplomacy with no illusions about Iran and the nature of the differences between our two countries—is critical when it comes to pursuing a core set of our national-security interests…

“We will continue to pursue a tough, direct dialogue between our two countries, and we'll see where it takes us. But even as we do so, I think it would be wrong for me to be silent about what we've seen on the television over the last few days. And what I would say to those people who put so much hope and energy and optimism into the political process, I would say to them that the world is watching and inspired by their participation, regardless of what the ultimate outcome of the election was. And they should know that the world is watching."