On June 12, 2009, Iran held a presidential “election” that saw the unabashedly anti-American incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad win an astonishing and suspicious 66% of the vote, while his only real challenger - moderate reformist Mir-Hossein Mousavi- received a mere 33%.

There have been many allegations of fraud made by Mousavi’s supporters, who have been protesting in the streets of Terhan. Nonetheless, it will be difficult to conclusively prove election fraud with the information currently being made available. Lacking concrete proof, the combination of the security council admitting the number of votes recorded in 50 cities exceeded the number of eligible voters by a combined 3 million votes, and statistical analysis indicating that there is only a 1 in 200 chance the published vote numbers were not altered make it reasonable to conclude the election was fixed. Many columnists have questioned how this ‘farce’ of an election should impact President Obama’s diplomacy with Iran. The spirit of these questions are wrongheaded; I am more curious why so many pundits think the Iranian election th should affect Obama’s diplomacy with Iran in any way.