Will Deal With Musharraf, Why Not Ahmadinejad?

Returning to the question of who runs Iran, many people may argue that Iran is run by a president democratically elected with 61.7 percent of his peoples’ votes (against George Bush’s 51 percent of the American popular vote in 2004, and his even more dubious election by the electoral college in 2000 while his opponent Al Gore actually won the popular vote). To raise the question of who runs Iran, therefore, goes against the grain of popular Middle East thinking and may appeal only to what the man on the street in Tehran sees as the American mentality of “my way or the highway.”

Another question that might equally bewilder the Iranian and Muslim people would be why America finds it so difficult to deal with the elected Iranian regime while it has no qualms about pampering and protecting dictatorial rulers of Pakistan, Egypt and other Arab despots. One could, however, see the ice-breaking visit of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Syria as a breath of fresh air in American diplomacy, heralding a new dawn for U.S realpolitik and a way forward to responsible American relations with other countries.
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/bashir_goth/2007/04/will_deal_with_musharraf_why_n.html