Lebanon held their elections today and Hezbollah did worse than expected, with their coalition failing to gain power. Meanwhile, Iran’s elections are scheduled for Friday and Ahmadinejad is looking very vulnerable.
The presidential campaign, now in its final week, has reached a level of passion and acrimony almost unheard-of in Iran.
In part, that appears to be because of a surge of energy in the campaign of Mir Hussein Moussavi, a reformist who is the leading contender to defeat Mr. Ahmadinejad in the election, set for Friday. Rallies for Mr. Moussavi have drawn tens of thousands of people in recent days, and a new unofficial poll suggests his support has markedly increased, with 54 percent of respondents saying they would vote for him compared with 39 percent for Mr. Ahmadinejad.
I’m not going to get into much detail in this post. I just want to point out that, should Mr. Moussavi prevail on Friday in Iran, both Lebanon and Iran will have voted for moderate and fairly pro-western governments. In rejecting Hezbollah and Ahmadinejad, the voters of the Middle East will reverse a course that began in response to Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Coming, as these elections do, in the immediate aftermath of Obama’s conciliatory Cairo speech, they seem to signify a cooling off of the recent tensions between the United States and the Muslim world. I don’t think this is a coincidence. I hope that Israel will feel a sense of relief and have some new confidence that they can make some concessions to help get the peace process moving again. If nothing else, they will have lost some talking points.
These are positive developments, and I am not at all sure they would be happening if John McCain had been elected president.
