W's spotlight on Iran

I've finished watching the archive video of the State of the Union speech. Very moving. It reinforces my feeling that the country may have turned a corner in the debate over the liberation. As Dennis Prager said on his radio show last week, now that Iraq has held successful free elections, no true liberal can be in honest opposition to the initiative. I look forward to seeing the next batch of polls that show what kind of approval rating W now enjoys.

There were many remarkable moments in the speech. One of those that has attracted quite a bit of attention is;

"And to the Iranian people, I say tonight: As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you."

Fraters Libertas even has it prominently posted it in their masthead. Regime Change Iran blog has noticed that the speech actually puts more attention upon Syria than Iran. But with popular support in Iran for democracy and a pro-Western alignment among the student activists and Iranian bloggers, those words coming from George W. Bush on the heels of free elections in neighboring Iraq can only be highly inspiring. It must be remembered that many of the activities of this GWOT is ongoing behind veils of secrecy. Washington does not tip its hand to the enemy as to what it is doing.

Is there a covert activity on the part of the U.S. government to encourage a popular uprising against the Mullahs? We don't know. But I think it's not unsafe to say the Mullah's have got to be worried about that. They continue to clamp down on their people and prohibit any demonstrations or acts of rebellion. But a seed of optimism has been planted in the democracy advocates with these recent events in Iraq and the president's words.