US Shifts Toward Support for Iran's Dissidents

The US has accelerated its effort to provide dissidents in Iran with computer hardware and software to evade government censors. But it's a shift that many activists say is insufficient to bring political change in Tehran.

The Obama Administration says it is seeking to aid the Green Movement by facilitating its ability to communicate inside Iran and by punishing government entities responsible for the political crackdown. One primary goal of the U.S. tech-support program is to counter Tehran's jamming of Iranian websites and Western broadcasting, including reporting from the Voice of America, which Tehran routinely blocks, and U.S.-funded Radio Farda, which provides real-time political news. As part of the effort, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which enforces U.S. trade sanctions, provided San Francisco-based Censorship Research Center a license to export Haystack anti-filtering software to Iran.