David Ignatius: Iranians Have Been Embarrassed By the Regime of Old Theocrats and Mullahs

EXCERPT:

IGNATIUS: "So, Joe, when you visit Iran, you discover that the meanest thing you can say about somebody is that they’re uncultivated. Iranians are a people of subtle distinction, learning, culture, and they’ve been embarrassed by the regime that they’ve had, these old theocrats and mullahs. There were, for a while, movies making fun of mullahs that were very popular in Iran. They clamped down on those. But this is a country that really can’t wait to be governed in a more modern way. And let’s be honest, the mullahs, led by supreme leader Ali Khamenei, have made a mess of the country. Its economy is nowhere near what it should be. Its oil industry has been falling apart. It smuggles and cheats on oil with its neighbor, Iraq. It spends so much of its money strutting around in the region, financing its proxies. Iranians are sick of that. So there is ground for change. And I don’t mean regime change in the dramatic sense of, you know, marching to Tehran. I mean a slow process.”