Punditry on Iran from serious to vapid – read Fisk!

Jeffrey Goldberg at Atlantic has a good overview of how the situation in Iran has bent or broken some traditional American political categories on foreign affairs stances. I don’t totally agree with his take on realism, but it’s still a good piece.

One of the people he gives a bit of a flogging is fellow Atlantic contributor Andrew Sullivan. And, Sully delivers, right on cue. Like his post of Thursday claming “this is the central event of modern history right now.”

Ahh, such prophetic foresight! And, with it, the breathless idea that:
A. Mousavi really is that different;
B. That the election was, for sure, rigged, and rigged badly.

Sully also makes unwarranted assumptions vis-à-vis other world events. For example, Pakistani citizens taking matters into their own hands against the Pakistani Taliban earlier this week. Sully, are you sure that’s less important? Or North Korea’s plans to launch yet another missile? Or, something that may happen next week that we don’t even know about?

If you really want vapid, though, Joe Klein says head for the dynamic neocon duo of Krauthammer and Wolfowitz.

And, if you really want serious, your must-go starting point is Robert Fisk of the Independent who, unlike Sully, University of Michigan professor Juan Cole of liberal darlingdom, Wolfowitz, or Krauthammer, is an actual reporter, not a columnist, and has spent more than 30 years living in and reporting from the region.,

He’s a realist with generally somewhat liberalist sympathies and knows what the hell he’s talking about. His latest dispatch engages in shooting down inside-Iran rumors, such as claims that Iranian cops are really Hizbullah.

Next, he challenges the fantasies of the likes of Cole:

When I visited the slums of south Tehran on Friday, for example, I found that the number of Ahmadinejad supporters grew as Mousavi's support dribbled away.

In other words, Ahmadinejad has had the support of the poor all along. Juan Cole can keep on deluding himself about that, but at some point, I think he recognizes that he’s going beyond self-delusion. (Cole is approaching the point of PC liberalism, foreign policy division, in my book. Sully is just approaching his normal fatuous stupidity which his support for Obama disguised for six months.)

That said, Cole does have a good guest poster, former Reuters Tehran bureau chief Jeffrey Lyons, offering an overview of the likely mindset of many senior Shi’ite clerics at this time.