Survey Says Iranians Favor Free Election Of Their Top Leader, By Robin Wright, Washington Post, March 9, 2008; Page A17

As I've said for years now: the Iranian public is our one great asset in this struggle with the mullahs, so little desire from me to alienate them on the nuke issue, where we seem to give everyone in the region our okay to pursue nuke energy but not Iran. We know what the fix is on their nukes: transparency in return for guarantees of no hard kill. Our fear is entrenched leaders fearing their own, armed with nukes and a desire to create some splendid little diversion abroad that gets them the continued dynamic of U.S. antagonism, which in turn allows them to keep justifying their repression at home. But we're getting that scenario anyway, without tapping into the one asset we should access: their public. So the key question becomes, How to access this population in a way that it's their demands, not poisoned by association with or support from us, that drive the internal political process. Shortest answer to me? We promote growing connectivity, which will be more eastward than westward in implementation, and we deny them an enemy, pushing their sources of new connectivity (India, China, Russia) to temper their behavior. We can either accept the East's desire to make their money and get their energy from Iran and bring them into the enforcement mix that way, or we can try to keep them out and push them to enforce on the basis of no economic gain. I personally like incentivized partners, and I like to take advantage of stuff like this: "But now, almost nine out of 10 [Iranian] voters surveyed want the top political position [Supreme Leader] to be accountable to voters, the poll found."

Remind you of recent Cuban polls that said 87% want to pick their next leader?

But what this approach takes is a whole different attitude on the part of the U.S. regarding enforcement. Right now we see ourselves as the only sheriff in town, and so everyone plays all angles on us instead of our targets, with the end result being we're the ones largely being contained.

And I find that an annoying end to the Bush administration.