Overall, it’s clear that Iran As The Enemy is a narrative that many in the West are loath to abandon. Ahmadinejad has allies, indeed. ~Aziz Poonawalla

Of course, it is the broad, bipartisan consensus embracing the “coup” interpretation of the election that is doing far more to preserve and entrench the “Iran As The Enemy narrative” than anything anti-Iranian hawks have done recently. When Ezra Klein of all people is pushing the “Iranian government is irrational and unpredictable” meme, the only beneficiaries are those who have been demanding more hard-line, confrontational policies. Ahmadinejad does have allies of a sort in the West. Perversely, they are the people who are shouting the loudest on behalf of his opponent and changing the color schemes of their blogs. After all, as an authoritarian populist Ahmadinejad is much more likely to gain strength from foreign vilification, especially if it turns out that a majority of Iranian voters actually did vote for him. As an Iranian national security hawk, Ahmadinejad stands to gain domestically from any dynamic in which the outside world is condemning and criticizing the Iranian government. Nationalists thrive in an atmosphere in which they can portray themselves as defending and standing up for the nation against the rest of the world.

Having pilloried Mousavi as an agent of corrupt clerics, whom he may have effectively scapegoated for Iran’s economic problems, Ahmadinejad could probably use the widespread foreign criticism of the election to his advantage in a similar way to distract attention from his own actions and failures. Our own politicians rail against anti-American leaders and anti-American sentiment around the world for much the same reason, and they will exaggerate the hostility and the danger from other states to keep the public from paying close attention to their own mismanagement of national affairs. It seems clear that Ballen and Doherty are right to warn that “[a]llegations of fraud and electoral manipulation will serve to further isolate Iran and are likely to increase its belligerence and intransigence against the outside world.” The advocates of the “coup” view might respond by saying, “Well, we don’t want that to happen, but we can’t ignore the fraud,” but this assumes not only that there was large-scale fraud, which is likely, but also that it was necessary to Ahmadinejad’s victory, which is much less so.

When neoconservatives complained about the Iranian government in recent years and urged military action against its nuclear program, most people, including the former President, had the good sense to stop listening. Some neoconservatives are now glad to have Ahmadinejad to kick around for at least four more years, because he seems to make it easier for them to demonize Iran, and other hawks take for granted that Ahmadinejad must be the legitimate winner because the contempt they have for him extends to the majority of Iranians. That doesn’t necessarily invalidate other, independent arguments that the election was not stolen. Bizarrely, it is the people who are disgusted with this neocon satisfaction with the “clarity” Ahmadinejad’s victory provides who are doing so much to help make neoconservative support for confrontation with Iran more viable.

Oddly, George Packer breaks his own rule and makes a point of crafting his response to the election in such a way so as not to sound like the neocons he criticizes. Indeed, I suspect that there is something of a knee-jerk reaction among chastened former supporters of the war in Iraq against whatever they perceive to be the hard-line neoconservative/hawkish position. If Pipes and Boot are satisfied with an Ahmadinejad victory for whatever reason, the reasoning seems to be, it simply must not be true that he would have won the election regardless of any fraud. Maddeningly, this reaction ends up aiding the hawks here at home just as Western condemnations of the election results seem more likely to shore up Ahmadinejad’s domestic support than to undermine it.