The Islamic Republic will always portray its internal enemies as American stooges. Moreover, when properly deployed, moral and financial support from America can enable dissident movements to survive and expand — consider the success of the Solidarity movement in Poland, which received vital assistance from the US and the Vatican, and kick-started the disintegration of the Iron Curtain. 

Obama has downplayed the significance of the Green Movement by arguing that Mousavi is himself a creature of the system, which is true enough. Yet the fact that establishment figures such as Mousavi and former President Mohammad Khatami have allied themselves with pro-democracy activists suggests that the existing regime may be even weaker than conventional wisdom suggests. Like Miklos Nemeth, the communist prime minister who presided over the liberalisation of Hungary in 1989, these men could provide a vehicle for democratic reform in Iran by virtue of their opportunism. 

During his incarceration as a political prisoner, Vaclav Havel wrote: "When one person cries out, ‘The emperor is naked!' — when a single person breaks the rules of the game...everything suddenly appears in another light, and the whole crust seems then to be made of a tissue on the point of tearing.' 

The protesters in Iran are breaking the rules of this game — why is President Obama playing along?