Don't expect much change from the Iranian elections if you are hoping for a moderate ascendancy.
And the bottom line?
The ballot on Friday will almost surely leave Iran’s power struggle unresolved, as it has been for most of the past 37 years.
I nearly sprayed my adult beverage across my computer screen.
Apparently, I've been mistaken over the last 37 years about the nature of the Iranian regime. Rather than being a nutball Islamist government (of the Shia variety), the power struggle between Iran's nutball factions has simply been ongoing over that time--sadly still unresolved.
And likely to be unresolved after this faux election.
If I may be so bold, the last 37 years have shown that Shia nutballs run Iran. The only question is how much they care to pretend to Westerners that they aren't nutballs.
Really, some people know so much about a subject that they really do forget the big picture, believing that the nuanced shades of difference that they perceive are the important part of the picture.
Behold the proto-responsible regional power in action!
Iran's top leader warned voters on Wednesday the West was plotting to influence elections pitting centrists close to President Hassan Rouhani against conservative hardliners in a contest that could shape the Islamic Republic for years to come.
Well, not a plot so much as it is a sincere pretending by this administration (tip to Instapundit) that Iran will evolve into a sane state.
Where do they get these people? And I'm speaking of Brookings, and not Iran.
UPDATE: The actual voting is pretty much irrelevant:
Iranians headed to the polls Friday in parliament elections made easy for conservatives after sweeping bans that left many pro-reform candidates off the ballots, adding further political pressures on Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s pragmatist president.
Yes. That's how Iranian elections work. Hopes for change remain "unresolved" in favor of the nutball status quo because the hardliner nutballs screen the candidates.
Yet hope springs eternal for some:
So is Iran a real democracy? Perhaps that is the wrong question. What continues to plague Iran -- and indeed much of the Middle East -- isn't a deficit in participation and process, but rather one in accountability and opportunity. While it may assuage our liberal sensibilities to outright dismiss Iranian democracy, our objections do little to improve the daily lives of Iran's young and ambitious population.
Are you kidding me? The man makes an excuse for the lack of an actual real election by saying the lack of democracy really isn't Iran's problem?
So nothing is resolved; Iran' rulers rail against America; candidates are mullah-approved; and democracy isn't really important to Iranians anyway.
Which explains this:
Remember when the nuclear deal with Iran had a chance to strengthen the country's moderates? Jeb Bush was the Republican presidential front-runner. Fetty Wap ruled the charts. Serena Williams nearly won the Grand Slam of Women's Tennis. 2015. What a year.
You don't really hear this line any more from President Barack Obama.
Iran will remain under the control of nutballs after this election. And they will go nuclear.
Nice legacy, Mr. President.
UPDATE: This is late, but this level of sucking up to the tyranny of Iran by making excuses for them is amazing:
Clearly, democracy in Iran is far from perfect. Scores of opposition activists and journalists lie behind bars and the key opposition leaders and their wives are still under house arrest from the highly disputed presidential elections in 2009. A state ban on publishing the name or picture of former reformist president Mohammad Khatami remains in effect. And certain campaign posters belonging to leading reformists, like the fiery former president Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, mysteriously disappeared from city streets in early February.
Is that all? Just those little flaws in perfection?
If Canada's democracy was that far from perfection, do you think the author would praise Canada for their system? Of course not.
But that's just the tip of the imperfect totalitarian iceberg. These are the ascendant "moderates:"
Preliminary results of the February 26 national elections indicates that the reformers did much better, more than tripling representation in parliament from about ten percent to at least a third. Unlike 2012 the ruling clerics did not try to rig the voting.
The actual voting--if you ignore the variations in perfection leading up to the vote, including the selection of candidates by the hardliners--was unrigged.
But the hardliners realized they had to give a little ground to people upset with the ruling class lest the people resort to a rebellion. So the ruling hardliners gave a little ground--30 percent.
And who are the so-called "moderates?"
Violent rebellion is still a possibility, especially with so many new “reformers” being former hardliners who now are all for less corruption, lifestyle police and more foreign trade but still want America and Israel destroyed one way or another.
Ah yes, moderates want a more efficient and prosperous Iran, which would be better able to destroy America and Israel.
Feel the Farsi version of hope and change!
