The moderates dont want Americas help; they know any attempt to get more involved risks digging the ground from under their feet, not shoring it up. The regime is just waiting for the moment they can paint the moderates as the stooges of the Great Satan. This would give them all the rhetorical ammunition for a bloody crackdown which would put current casualties into the shade. The moderates thus tarred and feathered would lose their current influence inside the system which may at the moment be strengthened by the show of popular support giving them room for future maneuver.^[1]

1. ^ http://www.cfr.org/publication/19685/leave_iran_to_the_iranians.html

The international code that the free world stands by is sovereignty. If there is one right that is universally recognised, that is the right of the political governing body to manage its own country. This is the logic that governs the West's relations with the Communist powers of China, North Korea and Cuba. It was also the approach that the UN took during the Myanmar Buddhist monks crackdown. Hence, as a unit of standardisation it should apply to Iran as well. Only then can the western powers, especially USA, retain its credibility to other countries. Failing to act as one has promised is tantamount to lying, of cheating people's trust.

There has to be more than a rudimentary understanding of the situation before any party acts. Strong-rooted ideals of Islam exist not only in Iran, but in the entire region with oil-wielding states like Qatar and Saudi Arabia. To interfere in Iran would be to incite anger and outrage in these countries which have long since developed a strong distaste for Western interference, which to them invades their sovereignty and religious values. In light of the Afghanistan and Iraq invasion, another attempt to meddle in the Middle East would only serve to create more tension, however noble the motivations might have been.

Furthermore, interference would motivate fundamentalists to react with more violence. Already, sympathisers of religious extremists shield them from authorities and international forces. They behave so because they feel that the extremists are fighting for them, protecting their religion and their rights. To give them more reasons to do so would only prolong this debacle. If Iranians were to pull themselves out of the situation, the West should let the East fight their own battles.

Short of serious military intervention there is very little for the US to do. Stronger condemnation of Iran is pointless rhetoric, it would just feeds the Iranian hard-liners as it always has. The other weapons in the arsenal are all essentially in use, there are already sanctions, the US supports Iranian émigré radio, US and BBC reporters have reported from the ground and that has fed through to the protests.^[1] And military intervention itself? surely not an option, the US is withdrawing from the streets of Iraq but its still overextended, and any intervention could easily destabilize Iraq once more.

1. ^ http://www.cfr.org/publication/19685/leave_iran_to_the_iranians.html

If the US were to fly in gung-ho like the boys from Sun Hill every time there was a riot in some far flung land then it would become a bit of a joke. I'm sure those that demand American intervention in Iran would be dumbfounded if the Marines quashed the next French fishermen blockade at Calais, or sent the Seals into the Falls Road after the Armagh bombing. This may seem facetious but, fundamentally, what is the difference?

America are not the World Police and neither should they be. Let Iran, China, Korea sort out their own problems - just as we would wish these countries to keep their noses out of our domestic strife.