Doha is nice this time of year right?

I should probably look into moving to some country that actually has a media. Like Qatar.

Because there isn't anybody in America watching this thing. Maybe they weren't surprised, but this is a country where the Presidential candidates are all vetted by the actual leaders (the Ayatollahs). The election of any one of them shouldn't be a cause of concern. And yet we see an election where the voices of dissent are silenced by shutting down internet and satellite access, cell phone access and text messaging, sending out the shock troops, and arresting the "reformist" leaders. That's a lot more than Iran usually bothers with. Despite the underlying theocratic regime, they've done a good deal to present a legitimate face of democracy beside it. This totally undermines that, and may backfire on the Iranian regime.

For example, they may have been better off letting Mousavi win (or at least make the results look legitimate instead of ridiculous) and having Obama waste time talking to the guy who doesn't actually run the nuclear program while we can't step on the gas to get them to stop because there's a "reformer" in office. We suffered the same problems when Khatami was in office. They'd also have been better off because their economy would have a chance of repair without serious sanctions, which will be coming if Ahmadinejad is charge, and with someone who presented an actual economic agenda instead of blaming Zionists/Israel/Americans for everything. The importance of that is that it mollifies many of the domestic reformers. It doesn't address the women's rights issues or various human rights problems with freedom of speech, religion or press. But keeping domestic rabble-rousers at bay is more important to the Iranian regime than worrying about international opinion. When they have to run about stamping out dissent locally it sort of makes it difficult to appear like a legitimate and influential country internationally (China somehow gets a pass on this, probably because they're not run by the sort of Muslims who attract the real ire of American interventionists).