Hezbollah’s inability to win support outside its Shiite base, along with the poor showing of its Christian ally, Gen. Michel Aoun, leaves Sheik Nasrallah diminished and less able to drag Lebanon into another war with Israel. He will play hardball, no doubt, in the negotiations over the next Lebanese government, and he retains the ability to take over downtown Beirut as he did in May 2008. But such displays of power were apparently the exact kind of thing that turned off swing voters  mostly Christians  and Hezbollah now uses them at its political peril.

Image Credit... Matthew Hollister

We should not idealize Lebanon’s election, nor its politics. Most voters support only candidates from their own religious group, and the political talk is not of liberals and conservatives but of Armenians, Maronites, Druze, Shiites and Sunnis. Some districts seem as permanently owned by one family as any “rotten borough” in 19th-century England. Still, the election produced a consequential result: the majority of Lebanese have rejected Hezbollah’s claim that it is not a terrorist group but a “national resistance.”

Unfortunately, Iran’s election today presents the voters with no similar opportunity. There is no chance for voters to register their opposition to the theocratic system or tell the ayatollahs to go back to the mosques. The candidates have been carefully screened to exclude anyone opposed to the ruling clerical establishment; each is part of the Islamic Revolution’s old guard.

Nor is it likely that the votes will be fairly counted; indeed most analysts concluded that the 2005 election was manipulated to produce Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidential victory. Vote destruction and ballot stuffing are easy in a hidden process controlled by the Interior Ministry. And if all else fails, the 12-man Guardian Council has the power to throw out the results in districts where there were “problems”  problems like a reformist victory.

Voting in Iran is a contrivance for settling certain policy disputes and personal rivalries within the ruling elite. Elections are not without meaning; if Mr. Ahmadinejad loses, it may result in more sensible economic policies and fewer loud calls for the destruction of Israel. But Iran doesn’t hold elections for supreme leader  Ayatollah Ali Khameini will hold that post for the indefinite future  and the failed presidency of Mohammad Khatami from 1997 to 2005 reminds us that the power of a putative reformist is illusory. The Khatami years saw increased repression inside Iran, growing support for Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorist groups, and the covert construction of the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz.