Forty-four million Iranians are eligible to head to the polls today, in a country that often sees its rigged elections generate voter turnout in the 60 to 85 percent range.
Internal opposition to the hard-line leadership remains as strong as it's ever been. From the Christian Science Monitor:
Many reform-leaning Iranians on Friday said they saw no point in voting at all, since their ballot would not turn back hard-line control. Some 1,700 candidates, most of them reformists, were disqualified by hard-line vetting bodies, ensuring that the bulk of the 4,500 who remain are members of two main conservative camps....Widespread anger at reform leaders for failing to keep those promises – and allowing conservatives to checkmate their progress at every turn – caused reformers, many of them young, to turn away from politics and punish their former heroes. Today there is also widespread unhappiness with economic problems, and fierce criticism of Ahmadinejad's policy even from fellow conservatives.
Here at home, conservatives aren't even waiting until the ballots are counted before calling for America to become more hostile to the Persian state. Arthur Herman, last seen arguing that the Vietnam War actually went just fine, wrote in today's New York Post: "In dealing with rogue states, diplomacy can never be a substitute for, or even the alternative to, force. It can only be effective as the extension of force - force that is a credible threat because it will be decisive if unleashed, and because it plainly will be unleashed should diplomacy fail."
Of course, if Iran is not a rogue state committed to American destruction, but instead is a weak, divided country run by insecure leaders terrified of America's huge military presence on its borders, then threats of force will only succeed in scaring the leadership into bellicosity. But hey, recklessly threatening a state with force worked last time, right?
---Jordan Michael Smith
