The Bed the Neocons Must Lie In
Monitoring various corners of the political blogosphere today has been informative and amusing. The fact that some columnists and pundits have been so taken aback by Iran's public displays of democracy is in fact more telling of the false choice often offered on Iran.
Some believe - and have reminded us ad nauseum as of late - that "something is happening" in Iran. What that is, no one seems to be certain of. The shock and surprise is understandable, as much of the rhetoric we've heard from the Right regarding Iran seems very, very inconsistent with the scenes we've witnessed this week.
Those who have argued that Iran is a completely top-down, totalitarian state are now scrambling to qualify the quasi-anarchic scenes of joy and protest in the streets of Iran this week. Indeed, those who once over-simplified the complex and congested power structure in Iran are now rushing to dismiss the power and legitimacy of the Iranian president.
Max Boot, for example, is correct to throw cold water on Mir-Hossein Mousavi's "reformist" bona fides. His dilemma, however, is that he resides in a camp that diminished Iran's complex power structure, opting instead to make Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the face of Iranian intentions, and the 'Mullahs' the quick and easy bumper sticker bad guys. Meanwhile, the only legitimate 'Mullah' running in this race is Hojatoleslam Mehdi Karroubi; arguably the most reform-minded of the bunch, and an unlikely victor in today's contest.
Mousavi is not Iran's Barack Obama, nor is he their John Kerry. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad isn't Sarah Palin, or Harry Truman, or Martin Van Buren. Karroubi isn't Ralph Nader, and the Supreme Leader isn't Dick Cheney. This isn't Prague Spring or Tiananmen Square.
What this is is a surprisingly fun and hopeful election in a surprisingly democratic and dynamic country - A surprise, that is, if you mistakenly believed the Iran hawks over the past four years. many of those hawks remain frustratingly correct to this day, but they unfortunately did a disservice to their own argument by choosing to exaggerate rather than educate.
We should celebrate what's happening in Iran today, no matter who ultimately gets the job of president. What we shouldn't do is continue making false and sweeping assumptions about the surprising/unsurprising Islamic Republic of Iran.
UPDATE: Now the problem, of course, is that the Left is likewise going to do an about-face on the efficacy of the Iranian presidency. Suddenly, somehow, Iran will change course on nuclear weapons, and relations with the west will automatically improve. That may well be the case, but it's worth reminding these newly-minted optimists that we've witnessed this before: the election of Mohammad Khatami was well received in the west, and it was widely believed that "something was happening in Iran" back then, too. We of course now know that the nuclear weapons program carried on unhindered during Khatami's tenure as President, and that Iranian support for asymmetric terrorist organizations in the region didn't skip a beat.
The truth of the matter is that Mousavi has ruled out any discussion of the Iranian nuclear energy program, much as Ahmadinejad has. The current president simply makes the same point in a far more bellicose fashion, which gets to the heart of the big difference between these two gentlemen.
Mousavi would be a substantive upgrade - I have already said as much. But we mustn't succumb to hyperbole just yet.
--
Photo credit: AP Photos
