Part of Obama’s reticence may be reflect his advisers’ tendency to conflate the Islamic Republic’s longstanding and somewhat limited “reform movement” with Iranian civil society as a whole. True, many of the pre-2009 reformists have said that U.S. assistance taints them. On the op-ed page of the New York Times, for example, Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan blamed Bush’s advocacy of democracy for a backlash that culminated in Ahmadinejad’s 2005 victory. This theory conflicts with claims from unsuccessful candidates in the 2005 election that Ahmadinejad won that vote through widespread fraud–claims whose credibility the most recent election has heightened.  Regardless, Derakhshan showed his and the reform movement’s true colors when he endorsed the regime’s use of forced confessions from dissidents. As the liberal American journalist Laura Secor wrote in 2005, “Iran’s reform movement, for all its courage, was the loyal opposition in a fascist state.” It is unwise for Obama to permit this small group, rather than the much larger and more moderate body of Iranians who oppose the theocracy, to guide U.S. policy.

This does not mean that all dissidents want U.S. assistance. Journalist Akbar Ganji voices a common complaint when he says that U.S. assistance provides an excuse for government repression. Yet when Ganji was sent to prison for six years, Bush had not yet taken office. Obama should realize that the Islamic Republic’s repression predates any U.S. support for the Iranian people. The 1988 massacre of more than 3,000 imprisoned dissidents–described in Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri’s memoirs–had nothing to do with Washington and everything to do with the character of the Iranian regime.