This One's for You

“Tomorrow it is going to be you.” (From a letter by Iran’s former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani sent to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei before the election, according to Neil Macfarquhar of The New York Times.)

Rafsanjani was warning Khamenei about ignoring the public. Nothing scares a revolutionary government more than its own revolutionaries.

Iran’s religious rulers are hemmed in by centuries of tradition. They have not reached the wretched level of the politicians who rule America’s faux republic. Khamenei and his cadre of clerics will learn quickly. He may be a weak ruler, but Khamenei cannot be too scared. The Guardian Council’s ploy to recount some of the ballots allows time to pass, hot heads to cool. The trick is to keep the people returning to the polls, to keep believing that elections are fair.



Iran’s rulers will quickly lose their clumsy ways of governing and provide their people a smoother, more skilled tailoring of the wardrobe of democracy. Underneath their clerical robes, they will remain as autocratic as any ruling class.

Iran’s government is not for its people; no government is. Today and tomorrow, Mr. Khamenei, as a wretch in Iran would say, the government, it is going to be you.