Following on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s message for the Iranian New Year, or Noruz, President Obama released his own video to the Iranian people today. At the end of the message, Obama told Iranians in Farsi, “Eideh shoma mobarak,” the equivalent of “happy holidays.” But the message was not all pleasantries: Obama also focused on the suppression of the free flow of information in Iran, and announced steps to counter it.

Obama initially listed some heartening interactions between Iranians and Americans — such as the best foreign language film Oscar for the Iranian movie A Separation. He continued that Iranians and Americans both use the same tools on the internet to communicate, but that Iran’s increasingly repressive government hinders the free flow of information:

OBAMA: Because of the actions of the Iranian regime, an ‘Electronic Curtain’ has fallen around Iran, a barrier that stops the free flow of information and ideas into the country, and denies the rest of the world the benefit of interacting with the iranian people who have so much to offer…

Even as we’ve imposed sanctions on the Iranian government, today my administration is issuing new guidelines to make it easier for American businesses to provide software and services into Iran that will make it easier for Iranian people to use the internet.

Watch the video:

Indeed, the Iranian government cracks down on satellite dishes (somewhat futilely) and jams signals by international broadcasters over U.N. objections.

Amid the increasingly severe internet restrictions of the Electronic Curtain, the Obama administration today released new Treasury Department guidelines removing some of the ambiguities that hindered American software producers from allowing their products to be used in Iran. In a blog post, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes expanded on the new guidelines and wrote:

Today we are taking another step, by making it easier for Iranian citizens to get the software and services they need to connect with the rest of the world through modern communications methods. The U.S. Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) today issued guidance that will facilitate the availability of software and services that Iranians have told us are essential in order to effectively use the Internet.

A Treasury release outlined some of the specific areas where allowances are now made to export software to Iran, including software for chatting and voice-over-internet-phonecalls and related mobile apps, data storage like Dropbox, web browsers, RSS readers, and more.

The benefits of the free flow of internet information to and from Iran was on full display last week when a Facebook page drew Iranians and Israelis — two peoples whose countries are seemingly approaching the brink of war — to share messages of mutual admiration, solidarity, and speak out against confrontation.

The Obama administration, while wanting to apply additional pressure on Iran, came out today in a letter to a key Member of Congress and in a Congressional hearing with “strong opposition” to a Senate amendment to the Defense Department budget that would level hard-hitting sanctions against Iran’s Central Bank (CBI). The Kirk-Menendez amendment, named for the sponsoring Senators Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ), would bar any companies or central banks abroad that do business through Iran’s central bank from doing any business in the U.S. Kirk has said the legislation was designed to collapse Iran’s currency and expressed indifference to the suffering of ordinary Iranians as a result of doing so.

At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing today, two administration officials pushed back against the Kirk-Menendez amendment, offering a critique that while they shared the goals that underly the bill — pressuring Iran — they feared consequences of the legislation might be counterproductive.

Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen, who recently returned from a trip to Israel and the United Arab Emirates to work with U.S. allies in pressuring Iran, told the committee that the Kirk-Menendez amendment could shatter the international coalition that has been successful in slowing Iran’s nuclear progress:

COHEN: [It] risks fracturing the international coalition that has been built up over the last several years to bring pressure to bear on Iran, especially today in the aftermath of what has occurred in Tehran over the last several days, in the aftermath of the IAEA report, and in the growing sense of urgency internationally with respect to Iran’s nuclear program.

I think we have an opportunity to work cooperatively and collaboratively with our international partners to bring additional pressure to bear on Iran. The amendment, however, would focus the most powerful sanction that we have, the termination of access to the United States on the largest financial institutions and the central banks and some of our closest partners.

Watch the video:

Cohen said the “threat of coercion that is contained in the amendment” could alienate even close and cooperative allies like Japan and European countries. The administration believes, Cohen added, that cooperation and coordination can be better achieved “if we approach this issue through an effort to coordinate action voluntarily.”

Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, who also appeared at the hearing, said the administration’s analysis concludes that “there is absolutely a risk that in fact the price of oil would go up, which would mean that Iran would in fact have more money to fuel its nuclear ambitions, not less.”

Also today, as committee chair Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) acknowledged, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wrote a letter to Armed Services chair Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) stating the administration’s “strong opposition to this amendment because, it its current form, it threatens to undermine the effective, carefully phased, and sustainable approach we have undertaken to build strong international pressure against Iran.”

Yesterday, the Treasury Department, announcing sanctions on six suspected al Qaeda facilitators, alleged a pact between Iran and al Qaeda. According to a statement, Iran agreed to a “secret deal with al Qaeda allowing it to funnel funds and operatives through its territory.” Treasury offered few details about the deal, leaving its contours mostly a mystery.

“Our sense is this network is operating through Iranian territory with the knowledge and at least the acquiescence of Iranian authorities,” a Treasury official, named in some reports as Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen, said in a phone briefing. The Departments of Treasury and State did not respond to requests for interviews.

None of the six people named for sanctions were Iranian, and only one is allegedly based on Iranian soil: Syrian national Ezedin Abdel Aziz Khalil. Of the other named operatives and facilitators, one is based in Iraq, one in Pakistan, one in Qatar and two in Kuwait. The Gulf monarchies of Kuwait and Qatar are close U.S. allies, leading Columbia professor and former Iran-based foreign service officer Gary Sick to comment that articles about the announcement could just as easily have been headlined: “Two U.S. Allies in the Gulf promote and support anti-U.S. terrorism.”

The announcement yesterday piqued the interests of some prominent Iran hawks, including the neoconservative editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, which has already more or less called for war with Iran. The Journal editorial concluded that news of the agreement served as “a reminder of why a regime that has no qualms serving as al Qaeda’s facilitator can on no account be permitted to build a nuclear bomb.”

Al Qaeda has long been known to have some affiliated personnel inside Iran. Several operatives fled there after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001. But tensions between the Sunni terror group and Iran’s Shia government have long been thought to temper co-operation. Iran detained many of the operatives on its soil, usually at least restricting their travel. Those conditions were reportedly eased when al Qaeda reportedly helped Iran get an agent released by Pakistani militants, according to “Western officials.” Last year, then head of U.S. forces of Afghanistan Gen. David Petraeus said Iran’s attitude toward the group was “unpredictable,” and the Financial Times noted today that “there have been persistent reports of co-operation between the two given that they share a mutual enemy: the U.S.”