With ten days to go before Iran\u2019s presidential election, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, and U.S. neoconservatives are on opposite sides of the regime-change question, as one might expect.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the reality of Iran\u2019s presidential vote: there isn\u2019t going to be any regime change, despite Khamenei\u2019s fears and the hopes of right-wingers such as Robert Joseph, a former George W. Bush official. The next president of Iran, whoever he is, will settle into a working relationship with Khamenei, and President Obama will have to deal with the actual Iranian government, do business with it, and seek an accord over Iran\u2019s nuclear program. And, because President Ahmadinejad of Iran has been so belligerent and thus so demonized in the United States, Obama will find it a lot easier to sell a deal to the American public that he makes with a president whose name isn\u2019t Ahmadinejad.<\/p>\n
Khamenei, widely vilified by outside critics for endorsing the Guardian Council\u2019s decision to ban an Ahmadinejad aide and former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani from running for president, gave an important speech yesterday \u2013 with both Rafsanjani and the Ahmadinejad aide, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, sitting on the stage with him! Apparently, neither man was so miffed by Guardian Council\u2019s decision that he\u2019d refuse to sit with Khamenei, yet another signal that the Islamic Republic\u2019s political system is staying intact.<\/p>\n
In his speech, according to The Washington Post:<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, accused foreign and domestic critics Tuesday of attempting to undermine the country\u2019s June 14 presidential election\u2026. Khamenei dismissed these criticisms as misguided plots to undermine Iran\u2019s political system.<\/p>\n
And he added:<\/p>\n
\u201cA vote for any of these eight candidates is a vote for the Islamic Republic and a vote of confidence in the system and our electoral process.\u201d<\/p>\n
So it is. That hasn\u2019t stopped the neoconservatives from demanding that Obama abandon his policy of engagement with Iran and, instead, seek precisely the regime change policy that Khamenei is talking about. Writing for National Review, Joseph says:<\/p>\n
Tinkering with current policies will not achieve a non-nuclear and democratic Iran. Instead, it is time to \u201creset\u201d U.S. policy and recognize the need for regime change. This change must come from within Iran and be led by Iranians, but the United States and the international community can provide essential support to encourage and strengthen the opposition inside and outside of Iran.<\/p>\n
Read more: http:\/\/www.thenation.com\/blog\/174632\/irans-election-regime-change-and-neocons#ixzz2VGGRqSUT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With ten days to go before Iran\u2019s presidential election, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, and U.S. neoconservatives are on opposite sides of the regime-change question, as one might expect. Here\u2019s the reality of Iran\u2019s presidential vote: there isn\u2019t going to be any regime change, despite Khamenei\u2019s fears and the hopes of right-wingers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-important-news-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35985"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35986,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35985\/revisions\/35986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}