We are not persuaded that any Iranian faction we know of promises much good, though none could be much worse than the present regime.

So we post the following extract not primarily in support of the resistance, nor even out of sympathy (which we have) with the regime’s victims, but as an illustration of how Obama’s policy towards Iran goes beyond appeasement to base, humiliating, toadying submission.

Kenneth R. Timmerman writes:

The Obama administration has cut funding for pro-democracy and human rights programs in Iran, reversing years of efforts during the Bush administration to help develop a civil society …

The move is apparently intended to please Iran’s rulers after they criticized President Obama and the State Department for allegedly seeking to fund a “velvet revolution” during the June presidential elections in Iran. …

Word that the administration was planning to cut the pro-democracy programs leaked out in June, when the draft budget for the State Department sent to Congress zeroed out the funds.

The aid cut-back became public last week, when the executive director of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, which is affiliated with Yale University campus in New Haven, Conn., disclosed that her center’s request for a grant of $2.7 million had been denied.

“If there is one time that I expected to get funding, this was it,’’ Renee Redman told the Boston Globe last week. “I was surprised, because the world was watching human rights violations right there on television.” …

“The State Department cut in pro-democracy funding for Iran is part and parcel of a very deliberate policy by President Obama to diminish the role of human rights and democracy as goals of U.S. foreign policy,” said Joshua Muravchik, a scholar focusing on democracy promotion with the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. …