The Iranians – or those who choose for them and on their behalf – have chosen for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to remain their president. Perhaps the comment made by Mohammad Raad when describing the Lebanese elections is fit to assess the result of Iran's presidential elections. Raad, Hezbollah's MP, said that with the March 14 alliance obtaining the majority in parliament, “the crisis is still the same.” Yet Iran's crisis is of a different kind. If renewing Ahmadinejad's mandate reveals anything, it is primarily that the inability to change the way foreign and domestic policy is managed seems highly appropriate to Iran's current necessities: the mixture of populism in resolving internal economic problems has reached its climax in accusations leveled against the “grey eminence” (as was the term used by journalist Akbar Ganji during his interview with former President Hashemi Rafsanjani), the stern tone of discourse addressed at the outside, and the Iranian nuclear program portrayed as the remedy to all ills – things that make seeking a policy that would be marked by a minimum of rationality, such as the one suggested by candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a highly difficult and dangerous matter for a regime that refuses to renew itself without risking collapse. The meager difference between “ultraconservative” Ahmadinejad and “moderate conservative” Mousavi defines with precision the line that separates insistence on draining what is left of the Islamic Revolution's political and popular support among Iranians – coinciding with astonishingly ignoring the facts of the declining national economy – from seeking to put forth ideas applicable under the entire system of the Iranian regime, with its many heads and arms. Indeed the media – and especially that of the West – has burdened Mousavi with what he himself refused to carry, as he neither suggested exceptionally opening up to the West (nor to the Arabs – in what concerns us), nor put himself forth as calling for world peace or even for dialogue of civilizations – as had his friend Mohammad Khatami, who withdrew his candidacy early on in the electoral race. Yet the situation in Iran and the world is what made Mousavi the perfect candidate for the phase that started with Obama's arrival to the White House and the tone of reconciliation he has adopted, which was reinforced by a series of factors – such as the shrinking isolation surrounding Syria, the victory of the March 14 in the Lebanese elections, and the possibility of achieving progress on several fronts of currently suspended negotiations. Most probably, Mousavi, whose achievements are restricted to his management of a nearly socialist economy during the Iraq-Iran war, would not have overstepped any of the broad lines of general Iranian policy, nor ventured to challenge the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic – or its varied influential apparatus – after Khatami's failed experiment. Nevertheless, it appears that the time of change in Iran's style – not content – has not yet come. In this sense, the Iranian elections may not have been a wasted opportunity on the path of promoting dialogue between the West and the Muslim world, and of seeking sound ways out of seemingly intractable crises. Despite raucous protests in Tehran, it does not seem that reformist forces seek to bring the conflict over the results of the presidential elections to the point of open confrontation. Perhaps the peoples and governments of the region have to coexist for the coming period, which could last a while, as some realize – slowly and with difficulty – that they are unable to achieve their ambitions and plans.
