In the same column I responded to below, Reihan gets something else pretty badly wrong:

If the regime can’t do business with the likes of Mousavi, they certainly can’t do business with Obama, no matter how many barbecues he invites them to.

Reihan must know that this doesn’t make sense. If an authoritarian regime won’t “do business” with an internal critic and would-be opposition leader, does it follow that it won’t and can’t “do business” with a foreign government? It’s one of those things that sounds good at first (“they are implacable fanatics!”), but it is something that we know simply isn’t true. Repressive regimes have been happy to “do business” with the U.S. and other major powers for decades while simultaneously suppressing internal opponents, and as we know perfectly well Washington has been prepared to not only “do business” but also to forge decades-long alliances with authoritarian states that refuse to tolerate a viable political opposition. No one could take this kind of question seriously if it had been applied to Mubarak and Nour today, or Musharraf and Sharif a couple years ago, or even Putin and Khodorkovsky. One may or may not approve of the business being done, but the idea that the authoritarian government is the one that cannot by its very nature do business with Washington is just completely wrong.

The problem the regime has with the “likes of Mousavi” is ironically that Mousavi and those like him are too close to the leaders of the regime in his professed beliefs. He represents competition for the definition of the regime’s worldview. Heretics are always perceived as more dangerous than non-believers. He can threaten them in a way our government never could because he can replace them or show them to be frauds and shabby dealers. His time in political exile and his personal connection to Khomeini lend him credibility as a “real” revolutionary that threatens to expose them as much less than what they claimed. For these purposes, it doesn’t matter that he is allied to the shabbiest dealer of them all in Rafsanjani. At this point, they can’t risk permitting Mousavi to offer a counter-example of what the Islamic revolution ought to be. At the same time, if they can reach some sort of agreement with Washington that advances their interests, they will do so. We have seen clearly that the current leaders of the regime have no trouble engaging in the necessary ideological acrobatics to justify what they do.