This is a bit of non sequitur. Saying that the government of Iran is sovereign simply means that it is its own country, and its destiny is its own (not ours to choose). One can certainly support and respect both the sovereignty of Iran and the movement toward real democracy of its citizens.

Note also that the protesters are by and large not demanding that the Islamic Republic be overturned, but that the democratic processes that are supposed to be part of it actually function honestly.

And finally, Obama is doing exactly what a US president has to in this situation – taking care not to make it easy for Iranian government to argue that the protesters are tools of the US, which would cost those protesters dearly in public support. Many Iranians may be unhappy with their government, but they are justifiably suspicious of our intentions toward their government and their country.

it’s too bad Obama can’t say things that make Americans feel great on this matter, but that’s not really the point. He’s playing it much like Bush 1 played the Phillipines and Reagan played the unrest in the Soviet Union.

Uh, not quite. From Wikipedia:

Sovereignty is the right to exercise, within a specific territory of a kingdom or a nation-state, the highest authority by the law.

This is a distinct notion from that of sovereign (same link):

A sovereign is a supreme lawmaking authority.

Sovereignty, therefore, deals with the province of rights, as opposed to a factual assessment of who is in power. The whole point of the passage in the Declaration is that one cannot be a legitimate sovereign without the consent of the governed, for the express purpose of protecting the rights of the governed.

The government of Iran, which does not rules with the consent of its people, and is the principle violator of its citizens’ rights, is not a legitimate government. It is, in the literal sense, tyrannical. This is why we refuse to recognize it.

Nobody is suggesting military or other intervention, but words of support carry weight, and confer moral legitimacy. Obama’s equivocating is poor form, to put it mildly.

So would it be good form for Obama to strongly denounce the Iranian government, offering it great tools for a propaganda battle to pain the dissidents as tools of anti-Iranian westerners, helping to undermine their legitimacy in the eyes of less politically active countrymen?

We’re seeing Obama do exactly what presidents before him do in these situations.

Propaganda battle against whom? Their own people?

Reagan pulled no punches with regards to Polish Solidarity, and Kennedy famously went to the Berlin Wall to offer his condemnation (as did Reagan).

Iran already blames everything wrong on their society on the west, regardless of what we do… see the Hitchens link above.