I'm exhausted and brain dead but felt compelled to give your post at least one comment.

We feel what's happening in Iran. We feel what is breaking the heart of one woman in Iran, a woman who believes in reforming the government.

Thanks for your post. If it moved my heart it must have moved others.

Dan

Hilzoy,
Your post is essential reading, just for the elucidation of the 3rd, unthinkable nightmare scenario that may be unfolding.

However, I feel like there is a stark contrast that can be drawn between what is going on now, and the Central Asian foreign policy crisis that occurred 11 months ago between Russia and Georgia. We were in the midst of a Presidential campaign, and when Sen. McCain said that "We were all Georgians." Even wingnuts went, "Huh?" The two crises are not the same thing, but in this case, we are all hoping for a peaceful democratic outcome. Even though our leaders may be appropriately reticent to comment on the events that have occurred over the past 60 hours, we may not all be Georgians, but we do know what a just Revolution smells like.
I can only hope that relentless coverage of this issue from you and the rest of the blogosphere will highlight the importance of what is going on.

I'm always suspicious of revolutions based on anecdotal interviews of sobbing women or men. Why do we continually fall into the trap of projecting our concepts of representative democracy onto other cultures ? When we insisted that the russians have free and fair elections, the russian government said: OK, let's have a free and fair election, and then install who we need to have at the top. It reminds me of the phrase: let's have a fair trial and then execute the defendant. The Georgians were part of stalinist russia before they became our darling representatives of democracy in new europe, but guess what, they're still exactly the same people. It's just that we insist on looking at the rest of the world through our special rose-colored glasses. Why not start out by looking at the world as it is, and try working with that ?

We don't have democracy here, we can't get our government to act on our directives, and yet you muster up anger and heartbreak for reporting that's not reporting from Iran (ala Wag The Dog's Albania) over an election's outcome that may or may not have been just.

Let's just assume Iran's election was as fixed as our elections have been; Iran's people exhibited more willingness to confront the lies and injustices of their election than we have. In 2000 and 2004, we had our elections stolen, and we fell in lockstep with the 'Deciders'.

The commentators and I suppose the post author himself (with his opposition to making trouble for our enemies) are a pretty cynical and wimpy bunch, whining and equivocating about the a farcical electoral result in Iran and a false conspiracy theory about Bush's electoral victories in accordance with the rules of the US constitution.

I think the cultural relativist take on this as promoted by rbe1 is probably the most despicable of them all. What people are up in arms about is that the Iranian government allegedly falsified the electoral results, i.e. BROKE THE RULES THEY SET FOR THEMSELVES IN THEIR OWN CULTURAL CONTEXT. While I assume most Americans would like to see a free press, civil liberties and open elections for Iran, this crisis is not about exporting US-style democracy, it is about the inability for Iranians to decide on a president within their own political system, a power grab by hard-line elements in governments and the security forces. Comments like rbe1's seem to suggest we should just play ostrich, abandoning our values and not having a foreign policy at all, for fear of 'projecting our concepts of representative democracy onto other cultures.'

By all appearances, and according knowledgeable commentary in as left-wing of places as Juan Cole and The Nation, there has been a soft coup in Iran. Instead of monitoring the situation and pretending that this is somehow the same as the Florida electoral controversy of 2000, wouldn't it be better for the US to have a strong show of support for democratic forces in Iran? It would serve the purpose of promoting freedom overseas and helping us with a delicate foreign policy problem.

(Note to news media: please do a better job of covering this!)

you mean interview liz cheney or her father?

and better job?

we don't have enough people to report on the weekend too...

let the bloggers do it..

Given the apparent results in Iran, and the underlying possibility of their real illegitimacy, nothing could be more irresponsible now than for the U.S. and its leaders to start trumpeting a neocon line of the sort being urged for a long time now by Cheney and Fox News and other domestic conservatives.

We need to deal diplomatically with the hand we've been dealt by what passes for the regime in Iran while sending a signal to those who have supported Mousavi that "we hear you, we know you're there, and we won't forget."

And here, to and for our American audience, we need to delegitimate, ridicule, and brand as intemperate all brash calls for a hard line response. A neocon Cheneyesque response would be stupid, immature, self-indulgent, trivial, short-sighted, superficial, destructive, irrational, counter-productive, dangerous, harmful to reformists in Iran, and not responsible. That's what I really think.

Laughing out loud at your "note to media"...have you learned NOTHING...our media doesn't "cover anything"...they spin off one report that someone makes (perhaps out of their insane brain like Glenn Beck) and reword and ramp up information with little or no research or backup. That's how we got into Iraq under BUSH & COMPANY...watch the current video with Chris Matthews and Reza Aslan (C&L)...it's appalling to watch Matthews continue to put forth what he "thinks" in dispute of what Reza is saying...that is how all these characters "cover" and report the news. Now, we could just follow the advice of yet another braindead caller on WJ this morning and invade Iran to support the students...YEGODS!!! Say a little to prayer to whomever your creator is that Obama isn't just Bush with a brain...

Are we seeing US tax dollars at work again? The Bush regime budgeted $400M to destabilize Iran. A few bombs from Jundallah do not cost $400M, perhaps $200 a piece, so where has the remaining $399,999,000 gone?

Why do you expect our intrepid reporters and journalists to emulate the fine work of The Guardian and Observor? With half of them covering the comments of Donald Trump and the others drooling at the outrage from Ms California USA Prejean, who would be available to cover some story about, in the words of Peter Beaumont at the Observor, "will be very hard to put the "genie" of democracy back in the bottle"?

It will take a while to figure out what's going on in Iran (not that I for one had a particularly clear notion in the first place). And so we shouldn't hot-headedly imagine that this is an opportunity to jump in and perhaps make things worse. That said, whether it's the clerics maintaining control or option 3 you quote above, it's clear that people antagonistic to our interests have decided to double down. How are they justifying this, to themselves and ultimately to Iran? Through the necessity of confrontation. So let's not have any illusions. The Iranian government is now likely to become more aggressive, not more conciliatory. That means our confrontation with them is going to ratchet upwards. And if that's going to happen, doing what we need to do to make sure that that confrontation occurs on terms as favorable to us as possible -- including "making trouble" if we can see concrete benefits in setting those terms -- is just sensible policy.

I had not considered, or even thought of the first scenario. And after reading it and thinking it was wild fantasy, I remembered we are talking about Iran.

Though it's hard to imagine the Revolutionary Guard turning on the Mullahs, it is also true that Ahmedinejad was one of their founding members. I still think it's a bit far fetched that a coup has occurred as such, but the way this has unfolded doesn't make sense and I just don't believe that Mr. Ahmedinejad actually won by the margin reported, or at all. And it doesn't make sense that the Mullahs would go down this perilous destabilizing road just to keep the status quo, though they have had a long standing feud with mouchovi.

If there was such a coup, then the world just got a whole lot more dangerous.

Frankly, I would have been surprised if the challenger won. He was very good at appealing to the moderate and middle-classes of Iran. But Iran is, by-and-large, neither moderate or middle-class. So while he had is rallies in the larger, urban areas with decent middle-class and moderate stakeholders, people seem to over-look the fact that while the SMALL urban, middle-class of Iran did vote for the challenger the FAR FAR FAR larger theocratic and rural populations did, in fact, vote for massively for Ahmedinejad.

We can see that in Ohio in 2004. Sure, a lot of the bigger, "liberal" areas went for Kerry. But Ohio went for Bush.

Personally, I think the whining about this is, well, another case of Western Arrogance. So often people in the west automatically assume that people in other parts of the world want things exactly like they want things...

It ain't so, and you people really need to learn that... Cultural imperialism is as ugly from the left as from the right... Although with, perhaps, a few less guns and dictators...

[i]MosesZD[/i]

So why did Ahmedinejad carry EVERY city including Tehran?

MosesZD, we all have to remember that what happened isn't limited to the false dichotomy: either Moussavi really won and was cheated, or Ahmedinejad really won and did so fair and square. Ahmedinejad might have won, but cheating might have increased his margin. IOW, it would still be wrong in principle (and note associated power grabbing and suppression.) That sort of stuff happens, and false dichotomies make clear discussion difficult.

BTW MosesZD, Bush probably did not really carry Ohio. Blackwell and Rove's goons likely cheated there, see e.g. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen. Also, more recently http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr-and-greg-palast/drinking-the-acorn-koolai_b_138390.html.

Ahmebushejad?

I guess I don't see much daylight between the first and third scenarios. The government is the security system, and the clerical establishment has always been dependent on, and closely interrelated with, the putatively religiously motivated paramilitary and militia forces that make up a large portion of the security system. And the question of "who calls the shots" seems likewise to me to be a barely distinguishable shade of gray. Both senior clerics and senior government officials want an authoritarian regime with the color of religious legitimacy. The more specific question of which particular individuals hold power when is probably more fluid than we can imagine: the Persians put the Byzantine Empire to shame when it comes to being, well, Byzantine.

But Juan Cole makes a good point: the outcome of the election is almost irrelevant to US interests -- and I would submit that this is for the same reason as my point above: we're dealing with the same Establishment and the same geopolitics regardless. Even if Mousavi had won, he surely couldn't have changed the course of the ship by more than a few degrees, even if he had wanted to.

As to the RedStaters, you might as well listen to Bill Kristol. Let's show our support for freedom with some major bombing runs. That will show them what we mean by liberty!

all this talk about america promoting "freedom" is complete and utter bullshit.

the only "freedom" that american politicans and power brokers seek to promote is that of the corporations to suck the population dry.

Hilzoy,
please can you explain why you think the thrid option is the worse. I don't see it that way, but like hear your arguments.
Thanks in advance
Anton

MosesZD, we all have to remember that what happened isn't limited to the false dichotomy: either Moussavi really won and was cheated, or Ahmedinejad really won and did so fair and square. Ahmedinejad might have won, but cheating might have increased his margin. IOW, it would still be wrong in principle (and note associated power grabbing and suppression.) That sort of stuff happens, and false dichotomies make clear discussion difficult.

Which is irrelevant and it exposes the rampant cultural imperialism and ethnocentric world-view of most Westerners. Seriously, get over yourselves. Iran is what Iran is, and it's not the US, or Holland or England.

You people are so ethnocentric that you think you have all the answers about what the Iranian's wanted. Even though, at this point in time, there is no evidence, besides a bunch of whining, that a very conservative and popular (whether you like it or not) President won re-election in a very conservative country...

So, please, get over your ethnocentrism's and try to figure out that, oh gosh, the population of a very conservative, primarily agricultural/extractive might just not want what a small minority of PEOPLE YOU IDENTIFY WITH want...

Or, in short, don't let your fantasy of Iran get in the way of the reality of Iran. It's as absolutely, in the long-term, destructive as any neocon fantasy of Iran.

Moses,

Your inane criticism if 'ethnocentrism' and 'cultural imperialism' ignores the fact that a. people can have an informed opinion on what is going on in other countries, b. we have a stake in Iran's politics due to the effect its foreign policy has on us and our allies, and c. if need be, we have the means to affect Iran in very violent ways.

If indeed the 'conservative, primarily agricultural/extractive' people of Iran want to enact a confrontation with our Arab and Israeli allies, or build a nuclear weapon against their treaty obligations, they will be having much bigger issues to deal with than the sort of stuff you learned in your trendy critical IR books.

List of Iranian newspapers... http://enewsreference.wordpress.com/