Who's next?

The New York Times has an editorial about the Iranian elections:

Even before the vote this week, Iran’s presidential election has to be seen as deeply flawed. The Guardian Council that vets candidates disqualified more than six hundred potential contenders, including Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president. Only six names are on the ballot, all men who are acceptable to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s real power. Reformers who led protests after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s fraudulent 2009 re-election remain under house arrest, and there has been a new crackdown on newspapers, political activists and foreign journalists.
Despite such failings, the election is important, because it gives Iran and the United States a fresh diplomatic opportunity to avoid a dangerous confrontation over Iran’s nuclear program. On the Iranian side, the chance of engagement is bleak, but not impossible. While the candidates all support Islamic rule, campaign debates suggested differences on the economy, women’s rights, even foreign policy. For instance, while they all assert Iran’s right to a peaceful nuclear program, Saeed Jalili, Iran’s doctrinaire nuclear negotiator, has drawn criticism for failing to make progress on a deal with the major powers that would ease punishing sanctions in exchange for curbing the program. His rivals, especially Hassan Rowhani, a former nuclear negotiator who is seen as a moderate and the West’s best hope, hinted at a more pragmatic approach.
The administration has kept up the pressure by tightening sanctions. Once the election is over, it also needs to step up diplomatic efforts, testing through intermediaries if there is any willingness by the new president, and Khamenei, to consider a more comprehensive agreement— dealing with Syria, among other issues— than the narrowly focused nuclear proposal that the United States and its allies have outlined so far.
Tensions are higher now that Iran has inserted itself directly into the Syrian civil war on the side of President Bashar al-Assad. But President Obama needs to be clearheaded about the core American interest, doing whatever he can diplomatically to rein in an Iranian nuclear program that could quickly produce a weapon.

Rico says whoever gets elected, they'll hate The Great Satan, just on general principles. (And Rico hopes they hold off until he finishes Armageddon...)