{"id":1461,"date":"2008-10-14T09:18:35","date_gmt":"2008-10-14T13:18:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/?p=1461"},"modified":"2008-10-14T09:18:35","modified_gmt":"2008-10-14T13:18:35","slug":"a-survey-of-iranian-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/2008\/10\/14\/a-survey-of-iranian-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"A Survey of Iranian Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Since we&#8217;re likely to end up with an administration whose foreign policy toward Iran doesn&#8217;t begin and end with &#8220;Hulk smash!&#8221;, understanding a bit more about the power structure of the country just might be more useful than knowing about its military capabilities.\u00c2\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foreignaffairs.org\/20081001essay87604-p0\/akbar-ganji\/the-latter-day-sultan.html\">This Foreign Affairs article<\/a> is a good start down that road:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Ahmadinejad is only as powerful as he is devoted to Khamenei and successful at advancing his aims. Khamenei&#8217;s power is so great, in fact, that in 2004 the reformist Muhammad Khatami declared that the post of president, which he held at the time, had been reduced to a factotum. Blaming the country&#8217;s main problems on Ahmadinejad not only overstates his influence; it inaccurately suggests that Iran&#8217;s problems will go away when he does. More likely, especially regarding matters such as Iran&#8217;s foreign policy, the situation will remain much the same as long as the structure of power that supports the supreme leader remains unchanged.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s a long read, but well worth your time, I think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since we&#8217;re likely to end up with an administration whose foreign policy toward Iran doesn&#8217;t begin and end with &#8220;Hulk smash!&#8221;, understanding a bit more about the power structure of the country just might be more useful than knowing about its military capabilities.\u00c2\u00a0 This Foreign Affairs article is a good start down that road: Ahmadinejad [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-policy","category-politics","category-society"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1461"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1462,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461\/revisions\/1462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}