Gibbs walks back Ahmadinejad recognition

During a press gaggle aboard Air Force One this morning en route to South Bend, Indiana, White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs walked back his seeming recognition yesterday of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran’s president. Gibbs said today that it is not for the U.S. to determine Ahmadinejad’s legitimacy:

MR. GIBBS:  Well, let me correct a little bit of what I said yesterday.  I denoted that Mr. Ahmadinejad was the elected leader of Iran.  I would say it’s not for me to pass judgment on.  He’s been inaugurated, that’s a fact.  Whether any election was fair, obviously the Iranian people still have questions about that and we’ll let them decide that.  But I would simply say he’s been inaugurated and we know that is simply a fact.

Q    Do you recognize him as the leader, elected fairly or not?

MR. GIBBS:  It’s not for — it’s not for me or for us to denote his legitimacy, except to acknowledge the fact.

Q    Does the White House believe the election was fair?

MR. GIBBS:  That’s not for us to pass judgment on.  I think that’s for the Iranian people to decide, and obviously there are many that still have a lot of questions.

Yesterday, when asked if United States does not recognize the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad as Iran’s elected president given his inauguration, Gibbs said, "We have said through this that this was a decision and a debate that was ongoing in Iran by Iranians" and he described Ahmadinejad as "the elected leader" of Iran. The seeming recognition of Ahmadinejad’s legitimacy troubled some Iranian Americans, and provoked a firestorm of online criticism.

"Why this rush?" the National Iranian American Council’s Trita Parsi said by e-mail. Citing recent news reports, he said, "Iran watchers told [Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton Iran is too consumed with internal stuff [and] can’t negotiate [now]. Then why push for talks now? To secure failure?" Writing for ForeignPolicy.com last week, Parsi urged the Obama administration to take a "tactical pause" in its outreach to the Islamic Republic.

Parsi said the White House had acknowledged to him yesterday that Gibbs’s statement had "come out wrong."

Parsi said he is fearful that the Obama administration may be committing itself to a timetable for engaging with Iran that is unrealistic given internal political turmoil there. Issuing "red lines" that it may not follow through with could lead to a situation similar to that faced by the Bush administration, Parsi said, "which brought a large number of unimplemented red lines with the final outcome of the U.S. losing credibility as a result."

Administration sources have indicated its timeline is being influenced in part by Washington’s efforts to try to make sure that Israel does not act unilaterally against Iran.