Important to Remember

Robert Fisk, the great - and sarcastic - british war reporter is in Iran and he has this report that Andrew Sullivan and others would be wise to remember (though Sully hates Fisk with a passion -- or at least did, over Iraq -- and look who was right about that?):

[The protest] is absolutely not against the Islamic republic or the Islamic revolution.

It's clearly an Islamic protest against specifically the personality, the manner, the language of Ahmadinejad. They absolutely despise him but they do not hate or dislike the Islamic republic that they live in.

This should temper and be remembered by some folks that think the whole system is going to be overturned, that is probably quite unlikely. Though Ahmadinejad may go, and Khamenei may have to either change his mind or be replaced, Fisk's report is clearly supportive of what Obama said yesterday, that foreign policy-wise there isn't a huge difference between Ahmadinejad and Musavi, just that the latter is a hell of a lot more temperate and a lot less likely to say stupid, offensive and counter-productive remarks. Also, history supports Obama. Regimes change, but historical foreign policy and diplomatic goals do not (not to mention for all his bluster as the face of the regime, Ahmadinejad doesn't set foreign policy, Khamenei & company do). Musavi may not scream about wanting a nuclear bomb to wipe out Israel, but he'll want nuclear power and he is and will be be opposed to most all of Israel's diplomatic agenda.