The director of the tutoring center where I work part-time is from Iran but is an American citizen. She has many relatives in Iran and usually visits once a year or so. When I asked her today if she had been keeping up with all the news covering the election in Iran, where people are taking to the streets in mass numbers to criticize President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, she stuck her hands in her sweater pockets, leaned against a desk, and shrugged her shoulders. "We have a saying in my country," she said,"that goes something like this: It's the same old donkey with a new saddle ."
A less succinct and less colorful quote from a White House official reveals a similar conclusion:
"We take what we get," a White House official said of the forthcoming Iranian elections. "Whether with Ahmadinejad or Khatami in power, it's clear the Iranian president has limited influence, either for better or for worse. So even were Ahmadinejad to lose, there will not suddenly be flowers blooming" in Washington's efforts to engage Iran. (from Laura Rozen's blog The Cable, at Foreign Policy: "Lebanese election results relieve Washington," June 8, 2009; and quoted in Schmuel Rosner's essay, "Who cares who's president of Iran," in Slate, July 11, 2009)
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