Office of the Press Secretary
December 20, 2009
We express our condolences on the passing of Iranian cleric Grand Ayatollah Montazeri. He was known and internationally respected for his unwavering commitment to universal rights. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and those who seek to exercise the universal rights and freedoms that he so consistently advocated.
That the Obama administration would even go out of its way to express condolences on Montazeri's death is significant, especially in light of the fact that its self-imposed December deadline for nuclear negotiations is just over a week away. Whereas six months ago, President Obama held back from condemning human rights violations inside Iran out of fear of making the United States a "handy political football," today his administration is openly sharing in the loss of Iran's most senior dissident cleric.
This comes on the heels of Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Stockholm, when he said that "the hundreds of thousands who have marched silently through the streets of Iran...have us on their side." With his policy of engaging the Islamic Republic having yielded no results thus far, President Obama may very well be in the first stages of adjusting his Iran policy.
