WSJ: Democracy for Iran The students could use some U.S. encouragement.

Wall Street Journal ^ | December 8, 2004 | Editorial

[OESY]

We keep reading that there are "no good options" for diminishing the threat of Iran's nuclear program. And certainly preemptive military strikes are an imperfect solution at best, though the option has to be kept on the table. But that still doesn't explain why the Bush Administration has been so reluctant to support Iranians who want to overthrow the bomb-building mullahs.

Opposition to the Islamic Republic remains alive and well in Iran, despite the best efforts of Supreme Leader Ali Khameini and his loyal ayatollahs to kill it. On Monday the ineffectual Mohammed Khatami, the outgoing "reformist" president, was heckled repeatedly while speaking at Tehran University. "What happened to your promised freedoms," the students asked....

[W]ith the current Iranian system, all the real power lies with the Supreme Leader and an unelected body called the Council of Guardians, who must approve all candidates for office. Mr. Khatami was the more liberal of the two major candidates the mullahs approved to succeed former President Hashemi Rafsanjani in 1997, and he won in a landslide. But in office he refused to stand up for reform as the clerics vetoed laws curbing the power of the Guardian Council, thus earning the contempt on display Monday.

In parliamentary elections in February, the Khameini crew abandoned all pretense of running a real democracy by disqualifying scores of sitting deputies allied with Mr. Khatami. About 100 newspapers have been closed in recent years. And in the presidential vote set for next year the hardliners look set to recapture the office. Rumor has it that Mr. Rafsanjani -- once hailed by Foggy Bottom and the Council on Foreign Relations as a "pragmatist," but who has said openly that Iran must have the atomic bomb to threaten Israel -- is interested in having his old job back....

[FreedomNeocon]

I figure Iraq has everything so monopolized at the moment, they don't want to start something up.

It'd be after Januaray election in Iraq, thats for sure... and even then its a toss up between Iran and Syria.

I mean... rumor is that without 'addressing' Syria, many in Iraq don't think things will ever settle down (since it is used as a base as well as condiut for people, money, and munitions)