Your last long winded comment only strengthens my first impression. A typical load of head-in-the-sand crap if I ever seen one.

So, let’s try to take some of it apart.

1. “Systematic slaughter comes to mind, for starters.” So let’s wait for the next one, shall we?

2. “I tend to believe that Iran had its fill of blood during the Iran-Iraq war…” That’s one hell of scientific approach.

3. “But I don’t want to waste too many words on someone who doesn’t understand (or can’t be bothered with) the differences between 1938 and 2006. But let’s inject a few extra facts to the debate.” Let me see: would 68 years be the right answer? Now inject. In your normal haughty style, please.

4.”Is it a monster? Their government isn’t great, but Khamenei is no Pol Pot, and there are far worse things happening in Africa…” Should one dignify this with an answer?

5. “I imagine what you’re actually worried about is Iran obtaining the Bomb and wielding it over its neighbors to secure regional hegemony. And to that I say, sure, it’s a worry.” Thank you, really, for descending to the street level to confirm at least one of my worries.

Now let me explain to you the original post again. Its purpose was a) to show that the Iranian elections and their presentation in the quoted article are so much crap; and b) that the main winner in these elections is no more and no less than a wanted murderer.

It seems that these two facts are still not addressed in your long discourse, so you have wasted your time. And mine, which is (of course) much less important.

Do us all a favor: if you want to continue delving into irrelevance, instead of addressing the original post, do not reappear here, OK? Otherwise I shall ask the owner of the blog to deal with your rumblings in a more dictatorial way.

Iranian history is important to the way we talk about Iran, and important for us to understand. The Iranian government has plenty of reasons to distrust the west: for many years, the US systematically subverted Iranian democracy in favour of British and US oil interests. From the perspective of anyone who wasn’t, say, the Shah in the 1970’s, the West systematically manipulated Iran’s domestic situation from about 1920 to 1979. (A wonderful book on the everyman’s view of politics is My Uncle Napoleon, in which the title character, as he slides into dementia, blames every inconvenience on the secret hand of the British.) There’s a strong argument to be made that the Islamic Republic’s extreme nature was in large part a response to Western meddling under the Shah. Remember ‘Marg Bar Amerika,’ and all that? To this day, relations are defined in terms of historical domestic meddling, and the Iranian right wing defines itself in opposition to the West. As things stand, our policy just reinforces this relationship, and arguably makes the Iranian government stronger as a result.

Is it a monster? Their government isn’t great, but Khamenei is no Pol Pot, and there are far worse things happening in Africa, some of them much easier to fix, if you want to worry about monstrosity. And if it’s simply some deep-seated itch for democracy you’re scratching, well, sorry, we screwed up on that one a long time ago, so far as Iran is concerned.

I imagine what you’re actually worried about is Iran obtaining the Bomb and wielding it over its neighbors to secure regional hegemony. And to that I say, sure, it’s a worry. But with this one, we’re going to have to play with the cards we’re dealt, and no amount of whinging over the direction of Iranian domestic politics is going to make the course any easier. If Iran has a chance at becoming the central regional power, it isn’t by any fault of their own – we set the stage for all of this by breaking our military in Iraq and destabilizing the whole region in the mix. And as a result, there isn’t much to work with at the negotiating table. To pretty much anything we do, Iran will probably say bring it on, and use it to solidify their base, saying, “See? The West really does just want to keep us weak so it can get at our oil! Let’s see what they say when we have nukes!” It’s not happy, but as a realist, you must admit that this is a problem of our own devising…

This mini-speech of yours could have been used for any dictatorship or any regime of the past – from Chenghiz Khan to Pol Pot and everything in the middle, so flexible and accommodating it is. I can hear your predecessors calling for appeasement of Stalin or Hitler or… in the precise same terms.

Now let’s wait for all of them to moderate themselves. Are you waiting?

Tick… tick… tick

This is not to be unexpected. Politics is a Sisiphyan endeavour, where one step forward is often followed by two steps back. That’s the nature of compromise: That process by which we find a way to get along to some extent despite the realities of this big old ugly world. When it comes to Iran, the West (read, the US, Britain, Russia) doesn’t have much of a moral high ground to stand on. Discussion and compromise are the only ways that relations with Tehran have any chance of improving, perhaps with a good dose of patience while we wait for the Iranian government to moderate itself, as it has in the past. Iran is no arena for unleashing hyperbole. That’s what has put relations where they are today.