Bolton Sets the Record On Iran

John Bolton reminding that the Iranian election is much more complex than good guys vs. bad guys. However, I don think it's a step in the right direction, Iranians are sick of their government, they need outside support help topple the Islamic Revoulution.

The media’s endlessly incorrect narrative about struggles between “moderates” and “hard-liners” within the Islamic Revolution of 1979 will doubtless continue, because abandoning it now would be admitting the intellectual poverty of three decades of Western reporting. It would have been easier if outsiders had from the outset understood the debate between the regime’s moderates and hard-liners this way: Hard-liners like Ahmadinejad want to continue Iran’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs and boast about “wiping Israel off the map.” By contrast, the moderates want to continue Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs but remain silent, thus more effectively deluding many willing Westerners.

Make no mistake, as the post-election demonstrations have demonstrated, there is enormous opposition to Iran’s existing government structure, and indeed to the entire Islamic Revolution of 1979. Young people (those under 30 constitute approximately 70 percent of the total population) are unhappy and know they could have a different life if freed from harsh clerical rule. Economic grievances are massive, after 30 years of theologians mismanaging the economy. And ethnic discontent (only about 50 percent of the population is Persian) is widespread.

But giving effect to this discontent was never in the cards in the June 12 election, which was intended to bolster the Islamic Revolution, not to undercut it. Outsiders, including Obama, conflated the seething national discontent with the sham election process and simply misunderstood what was actually happening. Such dramatic misperception of political reality inside Iran, does not, needless to say, bode well for overall U.S. policy toward Iran’s nuclear and terrorist threats.