Max Boot Shows Sympathy for Fellow Militant Conservatives in Iran

Andrew Sullivan is attentive to neoconservative attitudes to the Iranian election fraud issue:

Max Boot seems pleased. The neocon hope that Ahmadinejad keeps himself in power - barely disguised any more - seems to me premature. The US would be wise to wait and see how this develops before making any policy decisions. We have learned two things we knew already but now know with fierce urgency - that the Iranian people want more freedom and better relations with the outside world, and that the regime itself has a desperate, dangerous core that cannot be trusted. But how we engage these two facts remains a prudential decision best left until this revolution takes its course. What I find a little gob-smacking is that this outbreak of democracy in Iran seems to have left the neocons saddened. Interesting, no?

Max Boot has now made it official: the radical conservatives in US and Iran have a mutually cherished love/hate relationship. Max Boot on June 14 at Commentary:

On the principle of “the worse the better” for our enemies–and, make no mistake, Iran is our enemy–it is possible to take some small degree of satisfaction from the outcome of Iran’s elections.

If the mullahs were really canny, they would have let Mousavi win. He would have presented a more reasonable face to the world without changing the grim underlying realities of Iran’s regime–the oppression, the support for terrorism, the nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. He is the kind of “moderate” with whom the Obama administration could happily engage in endless negotiations which probably would not accomplish anything except to buy time for Iran to weaponize its fissile material.

If would be so sad if more reasonable people would come to power in Iran, wouldn't it? Without the Iranian threat there would be no distraction from the pressure for resolution of other issues in the region. This attitude is completely understandable. Peace is such an awful state of affairs.