re: #675 captdiggs

To be charitable, one could say that Obama’s strategy of projecting a “moderate and conciliatory” American face was to “strengthen the moderates” (as opposed to a strategy of directly threatening Khamenei/GuardianCouncil/Ahmadinejad).

If so… well the strategy sure did not work.

So the real next test is: in the face of such an obvious rejection by either the Iranian people (assuming the vote was basically accurate) or the Iranian power elite (assuming the vote was totally rigged)… what next?

Unless Iran starts to back down (as my Iranian-American friends* hope it will, in new recognition of the sizable internal opposition), the US and its allies had better toughen up for the bad months ahead.

*Unfortunately, these are the same hopeful moderate folks that barely escaped their homeland, having once before misjudged the West’s resolve to remain loyal to educated/secular/modern society.

Meanwhile, the nuclear clock just keeps on ticking quietly in the background.