Ted Cruz

Obama continued, quote, My first impulse was to express strong support for the demonstrators, Obama records further in that memoir.

But when I gathered my national security team, are Iran experts advised against such a move?

According to them, any statement from me would likely backfire.

Activists inside Iran fear that supportive statements from the U.S.

government would be seized upon to discredit their movement.

The latter statement was ridiculous on its face as the demonstrators were openly pleading for outside support and from him specifically.

He may have been ignorant about how Ronald Reagan's harsh anti-Moscow rhetoric boosted the morale of imprisoned dissidents like Natan Sharansky.

But what of that national security team?

Obama does not name them, but his administration would become known for high-level sentimentalists towards Iran.

Rob Malley, Samantha Power, Philip Gordon, Sahir Nawrazadeh, and the diplomatic weaklings who would negotiate the nuclear deal.

So Obama issued a series of statements that he himself would describe as, quote, Actually, he was six years away from truly coddling it.

our cerebral leader lamented that as president, quote, my heart was now chained to strategic considerations and tactical analysis.

My conviction subject to counterintuitive arguments that in the most powerful office on earth, I had less freedom to say what I meant and act on what I felt than I had as a senator.

In other words, what passed for his convictions were easily defeated by an America bad briefing from his subordinates.

Now,

It goes on to say, numbers are still inexact, but Tehran's thugs made about 4,000 arrests and killed hundreds to quell the 2009 demonstration.

The Green Movement's leaders were jailed, globally dissidents of all stripes, and even Madonna and U2 spoke out in favor of Iranian democracy.

By the way, where are Madonna and U2 right now?

That's an interesting question.

Was it a bitter pill