The Iranian Elections

By BJ Bjornson

Elections are taking place in Iran today, with the reformist-minded Mir Hossein Mousavi looking to unseat the current neocon-friendly president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Neocon-friendly in the sense that he has provided all sorts of extremist rhetoric to support their own extremist views.

Now that it looks as though Ahmadinejad will be facing electoral defeat, the war hawks are scrambling to embrace what progressives have been saying for the last several years while the hawks were waiting with baited breath for the next eruption from the Iranian big mouth; namely that the President isn�t the top dog in Iran.

Matt Duss has an excellent post on the subject.

As Dana Goldstein indicates, the newly minted conservative position on Iran is that, regardless of all the time and effort they�ve spent over the last four years setting up Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the new Hitler, it really doesn�t matter who the president of Iran is, because Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is in charge. In the event that Ahmadinejad is defeated at the polls, expect a landslide of conservatives making this argument. I suspect that even John McCain � who famously refused to hear anything about it last year � will suddenly magically discover that the Supreme Leader is actually the supreme leader.

Of course, as Spencer Ackerman points out, the fact that Ahmadinejad may soon be defeated shouldn�t be seen as a referendum on the US. Iran has a whole host of domestic issues that are driving people to Mousavi�s camp, and what was true during Ahmadinejad�s reign is still going to be true should Mousavi win. Much of the real power, and particularly control of the military and foreign policy, resides with the Supreme Leader. As such, dramatic change in those areas seem unlikely.

Still, Mousavi is unlikely to be as prolific with the extremist rhetoric as Ahmadinejad was, which is a good thing so far as decreasing tensions in the region are concerned.  Not having a US president making threats and inflamatory rhetoric means Ahmadinejad doesn't have that sort of distraction to rile up his own extremist base, which also helps the moderates.

This also explains why the Bolton�s and Abrams� of the world are rooting for Ahmadinejad's victory and will be scrambling to reorient their arguments should he lose. On the other hand, as Matt Duss says;

Of course, if Ahmadinejad wins, he�ll still be the new Hitler and the presidency will once again matter a lot.