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Iran: Reformists Fear Ahmadinejad's Policies
Getting a little urge toward self-preservation, are we?
Several Iranian reformists have sent a message to Iran’s supreme spiritual fearless leader Ali Khamenei warning against the damage that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's policies are causing their country Asharq Al-Awsat can reveal. The group includes former lawmakers and ministers in the government of the reform-minded president Muhammad Khatami, who was succeeded by Ahmadinejad in August 2005. One of the signatories of the message told Asharq Al-Awsat that hardliner Ahmadinejad’s statements and policies are dragging the country to a destructive confrontation. He added that this confrontation will not be with the United States alone, but also with NATO, since America will not hit Iran single-handedly.
Actually, America will hit Iran virtually single-handedly. The NATO countries just won't raise a stink about it, since they're starting to develop their own urge toward self-preservation, however slowly.
The former lawmaker said a senior European official who has good connections with the reform movement in Iran, sent a letter to former Iranian president and head of Iran's Expediency Council Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, warning of the negative implications the president’s policies will have in Washington and other European capitals. He said that the Iranian leadership should take quick and decisive steps to silence Ahmadinejad and change the current course of foreign policies.
It's the curse of the "plain-talkin' populist." So often, that "plain talk" is just plain stoopid. It's what happens when you don't recognize the constraints that the rest of the world has saddled itself with.
The signatories requested a meeting with decision makers and experts to discuss the crisis in Iran. They also asked Khamenei to release political prisoners and to allow freedom of media. “Iran is going through one of the most severe periods in its history,” the message concluded. “And you, as the country’s supreme leader…the life or death of Iran is in your hands.”
Problem there is that Mahmoud is Fearless Leader's pet boy.

Posted by: Fred 2006-03-30
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=146940