If we're not going to do anything substantive about Iran...

You know, like strongly worded letters to editors, shouldn't we at least uninvite then from our cookout? [Link]

A State Department spokesperson said yesterday that the Obama administration is not considering revoking invitations to Iranian diplomats around the world for vaious Fourth of July celebrations:

QUESTION: Do you think it's still appropriate to have Iranians come to these July 4th parties under the circumstances? I mean, is there any thought being given to like, rescinding invitations?

MR. KELLY: No, there's no thought to rescinding the invitations to Iranian diplomats.

QUESTION: It's appropriate to have a social dialogue with them if they come?

MR. KELLY: Well, we have made a strategic decision to engage on a number of fronts with Iran, and we tried many years of isolation and we're pursuing a different path now.

QUESTION: Have they said yes?

MR. KELLY: I don't know.

Some adminstration critics claim that President Obama's foreign policy has been driven by little more than the impulse to do the opposite of what President Bush did or would do. I have been unwilling to assume that the president's decisionmaking could be that mindlessly crude. But the exchange above makes me wonder.

UPDATE: Administration shamed into uninviting Iran, but the spin is in (they hadn't accepted so it doesn't matter). [Link]

Presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs noted earlier in the day that the invitations were withdrawn.

"Given the events of the past many days, those invitations will no longer be extended," Gibbs said.

Postelection protests and violence have rocked Iran since the contested re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The past 10 days in Iran have posed the strongest challenge to that nation's clerical rule since the system was established in the 1979 Islamic revolution.

President Barack Obama condemned the violence against protesters Tuesday and lent his strongest support yet to their accusations the hardline victory was a fraud.

No Iranian diplomat had accepted an invitation from U.S. diplomatic posts abroad to attend embassy Fourth of July parties, according to the State Department.