Well, women and youth in Iran had already gave Khatami eight years* -- who can blame them if they got tired of the reformist movement and wanted to try a different faction?
The thing is that, if Ahmadinejad were the kind of guy who would immediately appeal to Western leftists, including Iranian-born ones, most Iranian voters wouldnt' have voted for him in 2005. The gap between Western leftists and poorer Iranian voters is now that wide, imho.
* <blockquote>What started last month as a small disturbance over university privatization soon became one of the largest public demonstrations against both the Islamic regime and, surprisingly, the reform-minded president Mohammad Khatami. Students turned their outrage over increased tuition fees into a demonstration against the Iranian regime's restrictions on political and social freedoms; they also expressed their dissatisfaction with Iran's sliding economy, where youth unemployment has reached nearly 50 percent; and with the sluggish pace at which government reformers have pushed for social change. (Juliette Niehuss, "Why Washington Needs Iranian Students," 23 July 2003, <http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EG23Ak05.html>)</blockquote>
On 10/29/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Oct 29, 2006, at 10:15 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > Cultural Revolution-scale upheaval is about to happen in Iran based on
> > just one speech.
>
> If George Bush gave a speech saying "get the liberals out of the
> universities!," a lot of people would be rightly scared.
Well, except Ahmadinejad didn't say that, nor does "liberalism" in Iran or anywhere else for that matter mean the same thing as what Americans tend to mean here. But, like Juan Cole's vain effort to clarify what he said with regard to Israel, I suppose this point won't be considered. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>