--- title: Joe Klein on Iran's Election | TIME description: TIME Columnist Joe Klein discusses his 10-day trip to Iran to cover the election canonical: https://time.com/video/sHDzfFb2/ og:title: Joe Klein on Iran's Election og:description: TIME Columnist Joe Klein discusses his 10-day trip to Iran to cover the election og:url: https://time.com/video/sHDzfFb2/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/sHDzfFb2/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Joe Klein on Iran's Election twitter:description: TIME Columnist Joe Klein discusses his 10-day trip to Iran to cover the election twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/sHDzfFb2/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Joe Klein on Iran's Election > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Joe Klein on Iran's Election [Watch (HLS stream): Joe Klein on Iran's Election](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/sHDzfFb2.m3u8) (6:56)  _Published 2009-06-17. TIME Columnist Joe Klein discusses his 10-day trip to Iran to cover the election_ --- Jul 27, 2023 1:10 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Joe Klein Takes a Road Trip](/video/OcmAaBli/) ### Joe Klein Takes a Road Trip [Election Road Trip 2012: Joe Klein Kicks Off Battleground Tour](/video/vR67YNJ6/) ### Election Road Trip 2012: Joe Klein Kicks Off Battleground Tour [Joe Klein Begins 'Election Road Trip 2010'](/video/zxJLiGZv/) ### Joe Klein Begins 'Election Road Trip 2010' --- ## Transcript >> Most important misapprehension that people have about Iran is that it's like every other country in the region and it's not. People are better educated there, they're more sophisticated, they are more middle class. There aren't very many truly poor people there. The government takes care of the lower class and the upper class women are much better educated and much more active in Iranian society than in any other Islamic society in the region. I've been to Iran before in 2001 and it was striking to me from the moment I got there at this time, how much more wide open the place was. -[ Foreign Language ] >> One of my first nights there, Nahid Siamdoust who was there, a Tehran reporter and I went to an Ahmadinejad rally and with tens of thousands of people and they began to filter in to downtown and the Mousavi people began to filter into downtown and they were just kind of joking with each other. -[ Foreign Language ] >> It seemed as if someone had opened a magic door and an entire country had spilled out. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a very considerable constituency in Iran. It's a working class constituency. The people see him as one of them. -[ Foreign Language ] >> He's very much a populist and he is a new style of politician for Iran. He's a guy who clearly has some kind of media advisor telling him how to go against his opponents. He was very effective in the debates and his reform opponents were of the older generation, the generation that made the revolution and they were kind of flummoxed by his directs- direct attacks on them. And then you have the middle, upper middle class supporting the reformers and looking for more personal freedom and you also had young people who comprise a- the vast majority of the Iranian population; 70 % of Iran is under the age of 30. They were also with Mousavi for the most part. >> Mousavi, Mousavi. [ Foreign Language ] Mousavi, Mousavi. [ Foreign Language ] >> Well, Mousavi was- is fascinating. I, you know- It was the first time in my life, I mean, I've covered untold numbers of elections. It was the first time in my life I ever covered a- interviewed a presidential candidate in a building that he had designed himself. He's an architect and he'd been very prominent during the early years of the revolution as Prime Minister. He, you know, really pretty much ran the government, made the trains run on time during the Iran- Iraq war and then he disappeared for 20 years. His wife, Zahra Rahnavard, whom we also interviewed, is more famous than- was more famous than he was. -[ Foreign Language ] >> He is a very sweet and soft- spoken- actually, soft spoken is an exaggeration. He's whisper- spoken and he said a number of things to me and to Nahid that really put him at odds with even the other reformers. I mean, this was a guy who said if we have a program to weaponize our nuclear material, that should be subject to negotiations with the United States. It's too bad we're not gonna actually see what happened in this election 'cause I suspect that Ahmadinejad might've won anyway but with a much more narrow margin. And I think one of the things that tilted it in his favor was the appearance of strength during the debates. And the fact that Mousavi seemed to- seemed to be too gentle to be an effective president especially when it comes to trying to resolve the relationship with the United States. >> I am deeply troubled by the violence that I've been seeing on television. The democratic process, free speech, the ability of people to peacefully descent. All those are universal values. >> As I talked to people in the Obama administration and now, I've talked to a lot of people in Iran who are in positions of authority, there's a real feeling that there were gonna be negotiations. And I think a lot of what this fixing was about was that the supreme leader wanted the tough guy, Ahmadinejad, to be involved in the negotiations with the United States. It's very important to know that even the reformers I talked to weren't in the mood to make many concessions with the United States. >> I've always believed that as odious as I consider some of President Ahmadinejad's statements, as deep as the differences that exist between the United States and Iran on a range of core issues that the use of tough, hard- headed diplomacy, diplomacy with no allusions- >> We need to negotiate. >> about- >> We do need to negotiate. In some ways, Iran is a natural ally of ours in the region. They could be very helpful to us in Afghanistan. They can be helpful to us or less harmful to us in Iraq and, you know, they- if they would agree to reduce their support for Hezbollah and Hamas it would be very helpful to us in the Middle East. The alternative to negotiations is greater tension, greater risk of provocation and the possibility of war. And war against Iran is not something that we want. -[ Foreign Language ] >> I have to say I go to a lot of countries and I just love the Iranian people. I wish they had a better government. They are news junkies. They love to text message and they are devoted to the internet now. You know, communication is making it very, very difficult to run a repressive regime these days. -[ Foreign Language ] ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Joe Klein on Iran's Election","description":"TIME Columnist Joe Klein discusses his 10-day trip to Iran to cover the election","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/sHDzfFb2/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2009-06-17T23:49:38.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/sHDzfFb2.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/sHDzfFb2/","duration":"PT6M56S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/sHDzfFb2/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```