Word: iranian
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...Ahmadinejad's chief targets. But he and others got little sympathy for their complaints that the president's attacks undermined the legitimacy of the revolution itself. Some tartly pointed out that since Khamenei himself was president from 1981 to 1989, Ahmadinejad's claim that his is the first Iranian administration that was not corrupt was a slap at the Supreme Leader...
Some analysts believe Khamenei is motivated by a desire to prevent Iran from normalizing its relationship with the West, fearing that removing the external "threat" against which it was constructed will fatally undermine the Iranian political system. Ahmadinejad's critics charged during the campaign that his provocative antics had undermined Iran's standing in the world, but he certainly functions to restrain any movement toward rapprochement, keeping in place the fear of the "Great Satan" that has been an organizing principle of Iran's authoritarian clerical regime...
...many comments I've read on the Iranian election this weekend, the most poignant - and at the same time, the most misleading - is the idea that the desire for democratic change expressed by those who were opposed to the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a genie that can't be put back in the bottle...
...more sophisticated version of the idea that autocratic regimes can maintain power for decades would stress not just their willingness to use coercion against opponents, but also their ability to find and use safety valves that neuter forces for political unrest. Arguably, the Iranian regime itself did just that in allowing the election as President of Mohammad Khatami, a reform candidate - albeit one with limited powers - in 1997 and 2001. But the classic case of a safety valve is that of China after the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. In effect, for 20 years, China has been able...
...interesting aspect of the Iranian case is not just that the mullahs have demonstrated that they no longer place any store on allowing the election of a reform-minded President to satisfy popular discontent. It is that the Chinese option is not open to them. China's long boom has been dependent on its growing integration into the global economy. But so long as Iran maintains its nuclear ambitions, it will always be subject to sanctions from the most developed economies, principally that of the U.S. Without easy access to markets in the outside world, for both imports and exports...