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**JUNE 17, 2021**

Meyerson on TAP

The Republican-Iranian Connection

Who's following Sharia law now?

I'm not referring here to the fact that both Islamist fundamentalists
and the evangelical white Christian fundamentalists who make up the core
of our own Republican Party agree on so many social issues, like
hostility to the rights of women.

Rather, the overlap I'm pointing to becomes clear in a Robin Wright
report

on tomorrow's first round of the Iranian presidential election, which

**The New Yorker**posted on its website today. Consider the following
excerpted paragraph:

Given Iran's myriad challenges, [Supreme Leader Ayatollah] Khamenei
may be trying to influence more than the succession [to the presidency],
Ali Vaez, the Iran project director for the International Crisis Group,
told me. The Supreme Leader is willing to risk the legitimacy of the
election-which would be reflected in a large turnout-in order to
consolidate monolithic control by hard-line politicians loyal to rigid
revolutionary principles ... Khamenei hopes to orchestrate a political
overhaul that could effectively remove the republican aspects from
Iran's political system ... "Khamenei understands that the system is
dysfunctional," Vaez said. "The Supreme Leader cares more about
outcome than turnout because he is laying the groundwork for structural
changes in the Islamic Republic."

Sound somewhat familiar? Diminishing the size and changing the
composition of the electorate is central to both the Ayatollah's and
the Republicans' strategies-in Iran, by barring moderate candidates
from the ballot, thus giving moderate voters no reason to vote; here in
the U.S., by suppressing non-Republican votes. Each seeks permanent rule
through changes to the electoral system that will keep them in power,
even should they represent a minority of their nation's voters and
would-be voters.

OK, so the Republicans oppose the nuclear deal with Iran. At the level
of ideology, however, that opposition melts away. Neither the party of
the ayatollahs nor the party of Mar-a-Lago has anything good to say
about democracy or the concept of majority rule. Theocrats and
Trumpocrats, bonded in common hates and fears.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter

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