In response to Thomas Barnett’s post Iran’s ‘Nixon’ Considering Getting Kicked Around Again I sent him the following email:

Mr. Barnett,

I just returned from a month in Iran, and my feelings on the ground are that Rafsanjani doesn’t have a chance if he gets vetted for the next election. He is the target of much scorn on the part of the Iranian people, and is considered a greedy opportunist that used his terms as prez to cash in. Out of every person I talked to, young and old, no one said that they would vote for Raf. In fact, one guy told me he would vote for Tony Blair in the next election and another told me George Bush! But by far the most popular candidate seemed to be Rohani, the man currently negotiating with the EU3. Another candidate that popped up was Molavi.

But of course Iran has notoriously low election turnout (somewhere around 50%) and if there is some meddling by the Council like earlier this year…

Just passing on some news from the street.

I will post any reply I get.


COMMENTS / 6 COMMENTS

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ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » Barnett, Raf and the Iranian Youth added these pithy words on May 28 05 at 7:26 am

[...] Hard-rightist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could end up as Iran’s Nixonafter all. Leave a Reply [...]

ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » Friends in Unusual Places added these pithy words on Sep 01 05 at 12:09 am

OMG, Younghusband, you ROCK
Go publicity for cominganarchy.com

Curzon added these pithy words on 28 Nov 04 at 9:42 pm

I am happy with the reply. There is just one section I would like to comment on:

If you check out his site listed below, you’ll see an obvious bias (good one, but obvious), so you judge his judgment as you see fit. Clearly he wants change too, but that’s no reason to doubt his analysis of Rafsanjani vis-a-vis other potential candidates.

Well, obviously we are biased! We make no bones about that. ;)

And I do want change, because I saw amazing potential in Iran and I think that it could be a great ally to the US (and the rest of the Core to use Barnett’s term). There are just a few (minor?) obstacles in the way… I will be posting about these in the near future.

Younghusband added these pithy words on 29 Nov 04 at 3:35 am

Agonist has less than kind words about this post

http://scoop.agonist.org/section/Diary

Chirol added these pithy words on 23 Jun 05 at 9:20 pm
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Iran’s Nixon?

Posted on 27 Nov 04 by Younghusband. Subscribe to follow comments on this post. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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