How You Conceive of the National Interest

In a post titled "The Good Neocons," Andrew Sullivan writes:

Not all of them wish Ahmadinejad had won, or insist that the revolution is already crushed, or fear a more moderate Islamic republic because it would still threaten Israel, or just reflexively want to use this, of all things, as another bludgeon against Obama. Some are actually thrilled to see democratic forces break out, period.

I'm not sure I follow. So to simply question the direction of the unrest in Iran this week makes one a "bad neocon"?

Isn't a more moderate nuclear-armed Iran still a proliferation threat to the region? Aren't the concerns of Israel (an ally state) at least on par with the concerns of Iran (not an ally state)? In short: Aren't there greater geopolitical questions that these demonstrations simply do not answer?

Stephen Walt posed the same question yesterday, in the form of a hypothetical:

Which world would you prefer: 1) a world where Ahmadinejad remains in power, but Iran formally reaffirms that it will not develop nuclear weapons, ratifies and implements the Additional Protocol of the NPT, comes clean to our satisfaction about past violations (including the so-called "alleged studies"), permits highly intrusive inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities, and ends support for Hamas and Hezbollah as part of a "grand bargain" with the West; or 2) a world where Mir Hussein Mousavi -- who was the Ayatollah Khomeini's prime minister from 1981 to 1989 -- wins a new election but then doesn't alter Iran's activities at all?

This is hypothetical, of course, and almost certainly does not reflect the likely policy alternatives. But your choice of which world you'd prefer probably reveals a lot about how you conceive of the national interest, and the degree to which you think foreign policy should emphasize concrete security achievements on the one hand, or normative preferences on the other.

So which is it?