NO CHANGE IN IRAN – AT 8:21 A.M. ET:  This is real reporting, with the kind of detail we usually don't find in the mainstream media.  Iran is, well, still Iran.  From the great Eli Lake, at Bloomberg: 

... on Sunday Iran's hardliners voted to disqualify nearly all of President Hassan Rouhani's political allies from running in next month's parliamentary elections.

The disqualifications are a blow to President Barack Obama and European leaders who had hoped the nuclear accord would benefit Iran's moderate (by comparison) president. Much of U.S. strategy in the nuclear talks has been aimed at strengthening perceived moderates in the hopes of weakening perceived hardliners. This was Obama's argument to Congress when he urged Democrats to oppose sanctions on Iran. Privately, U.S. officials have pointed to February's elections as a chance for Iranians to give the nuclear deal popular legitimacy inside Iran.

Now it looks like Iranians won't have this chance. Amin Tarzi, the director of Middle East studies at Marine Corps University, told me Tuesday that "the vast majority of Rouhani's candidates have been disqualified." While Rouhani himself has said he will appeal these decisions, Tarzi does not anticipate most of these disqualifications will be overturned.

"Because of Khamenei's health, the factions in Iran that are loyal to the Revolutionary Guard do not want to take the chance that the next supreme leader will not be one of them," Tarzi told me. "They don't want Rouhani and his faction to benefit from the fruits of the nuclear deal. The gloves are off now."

This is particularly bad news for Secretary of State John Kerry. Kerry is hoping that Rouhani's foreign minister, Javad Zarif, will have the flexibility to reach a political agreement to stop the fighting in Syria in Obama's final year. But a parliamentary election that empowers radicals will not help. If anything, it will embolden the elements in Iran's state that want to humiliate the U.S. and their domestic rivals who struck the bargain with the Great Satan in the first place.

COMMENT:  A little lesson from history:  Ultimately, the most important thing that counts in dealing with a foreign adversary is who has the power inside the enemy country.  Whether that country's people are "pro-Western" or "friendly" is of little value.

The Japanese actually had a so-called "peace" government in place toward the end of World War II, but it was the Army that had the power.  And it would not negotiate a peace with the Allies until the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Emperor intervened. 

The German people weren't necessarily anti-American in World War II.  The largest immigrant population in the United States was German-American.  Two of our most senior commanders in World War II – Dwight D. Eisenhower and Chester Nimitz – were German-American.  But it was Hitler who had the power. 

The Iranian people have always, as a general rule, been friendly to the West, and to the United States.  But they don't have the power, and that's what we should worry about.  It's clear from Eli Lake's story that the America-hating radicals are reasserting themselves.

January 29,  2016