Obama's Plan to Aid Iranian Moderates Failed Spectacularly

Remember when the nuclear deal with Iran had a chance tostrengthen the country's moderates? Jeb Bush was the Republican presidential front-runner. Fetty Wap ruled the charts. Serena Williams nearly won the Grand Slam of Women's Tennis. 2015. What a year.

You don't really hear this line any more from President Barack Obama. To understand why, consider Friday's elections in Iran. In theory, Iranians will be choosing members of their parliament and the Assembly of Experts, a panel of Islamic scholars who will choose the country's next supreme leader, who controls Iran's foreign policy and nuclear program.

With most sanctions lifted, the nuclear deal is popular in Iran. So this should be a golden opportunity for Iran's relatively moderate president, Hassan Rouhani, to consolidate his power. But this is Iran.

Beginning in January, the regime's Guardian Council began purging any candidates who espoused the slightest deviation from the country's septuagenarian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei...