Obama Warns Against Direct Involvement by U.S. in Iran

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WASHINGTON — President Obama said Tuesday that it would be counterproductive for the United States “to be seen as meddling” in the disputed Iranian presidential election, dismissing criticism from several leading Republicans that he has failed to speak out forcefully enough on behalf of the Iranian opposition.

Although the president said he had “deep concerns about the election,” he also said that any direct involvement by the United States would not be “productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations.” How Iran goes about electing its leaders and establishing freer debate and democratic principles, he told reporters at the White House, “is something ultimately for the Iranian people to decide.”

In his first public statements on Monday, Mr. Obama had said he was deeply troubled by the postelection violence and called on Iranian leaders to respect the democratic process, but he also said he would continue pursuing a direct dialogue with Tehran.

Aides said the White House response had been calibrated to avoid a perception that the United States was trying to push for a regime change. With protesters filling the streets of Tehran to denounce the declared outcome of the election, administration officials said they were wary of doing anything that would allow the declared victor, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to portray the protests as American-led.

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, offered some of the sharpest critiques of Mr. Obama’s tempered response.

“He should speak out that this is a corrupt, flawed sham of an election,” Mr. McCain said in an interview Tuesday on NBC’s “Today” show. “The Iranian people have been deprived of their rights.”

But Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said he agreed with the approach that Mr. Obama and his advisers had taken since the Iranian elections on Friday, which Iranian leaders have said Mr. Ahmadinejad won in a landslide against three challengers, including his nearest rival, Mir Hussein Moussavi.

“For us to become heavily involved in the election at this point is to give the clergy an opportunity to have an enemy and to use us, really, to retain their power,” Mr. Lugar said in an interview Tuesday on the CBS News program “The Early Show.”

In an interview Tuesday with CNBC and The New York Times, Mr. Obama cautioned that the outcome of the election might not lead to a radical change in Iranian policy, no matter who ultimately emerges as president.

“It’s important to understand that although there is some ferment taking place in Iran, that the difference between Ahmadinejad and Moussavi in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as has been advertised,” Mr. Obama said. “Either way, we were going to be dealing with an Iranian regime that has historically been hostile to the United States, that has caused some problems in the neighborhood and is pursuing nuclear weapons.”

The news conference in which Mr. Obama reacted to Republican criticism was a joint appearance with President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea. Mr. Obama said that recent nuclear rumblings from North Korea presented a “grave threat” to the Korean Peninsula, the United States and the world. He said that “belligerent” threats from the North made it clear that the nation could never be accepted as a nuclear power.

“We are going to break that pattern,” Mr. Obama said, noting that a new United Nations resolution seeking to stop the development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles in North Korea must be fully enforced.