minister who has hundreds of thousands of votes from his constituency rather than a president who could stand up to the supreme leader on key political foreign policy or domestic issues on the basis of having tens of millions of votes. so this election will decide an awful lot about what happens inside iran and in its engagement with the outside world. and, vali, would it be fair to say that one important backdrop here is the failure of the reformists? i sometimes think that americans think they have too much influence or they exaggerate the influence they have on the world, but in this case it seems to me that president rouhani came into office, and the big agenda was, i m going to make peace with the west, we re going to get sanctions lifted and iran is going to grow, the middle class is going to grow, and the fact that the united states pulled out, doubled down on sanctions, put maximum pressure
on iran, in donald trump s word, has essentially shattered the reformist credibility in iran. fair to say? yes, fair to say. in fact, the scenario that robin was laying out of this imperative of consolidation of power under hardliners as the supreme leader moves toward managing his own succession was possible because it was a unique opportunity that the iranianapo the world and also about ro rouhani. they believe he had mismanaged covid, he mismanaged the economy, he had an elitist, aloof air about him, so it was a unique opportunity that the iranian public was not going to come to the ballot box with any kind of enthusiasm about a
attacks. now the question of whether this attack came from iran or iraq will be a very significant one. either way, the administration believes that this was carried out by iror its proxies, but of course if this did originate from iran, this would be a very serious escalation this official told me and all of this of course very note bable given the fact this it come as the u.s. president has been considering a potential diplomatic opening with iran with the united nations general assembly approaching in just over a week. the president trump of course was considering a meeting with the iranian president rorouhani. so far, the trump administration not ruling out that possibility, but it appears this information now could be derailing that diplomatic opening. thank you. i want to go to nick peyton w l walsh and obviously this latest attack though has raised tensions across the region
cnn producer shirzad, thank you. we will continue to check in all morning for updates. let s stay in iran for a moment. i want to bring in cnn global affairs analyst bobby gosh and lieutenant general mark hertling. bobby, tell us about the tone and response we are seeing from iran s leaders. we are hearing from president ro rouhani calling legal acts done by extremists and we are hearing from the ayatollah a much harsher tone. tell us what is happening here? this is the traditional dwight in iran you have president and foreign minister, although we haven t heard from him this morning, who take what we would regard as a line, and
leader saying saudi leaders will face justice. they ransacked the embassy on saturday. our viewers are seeing those protests. more protests are expected today. we have seen evidence in recent weeks of a thorning relation between the two. reports that saudi would send a new ambassador to improve the ties. hard-liners i think it strengthens them in both capital. the road outside the saudi embassy in tehran renamed martin nimr today and provocative in anybody s books. now compare those comments with those of the more reformed-minded president rouhani who has condemned the sacking of the saudi embassy in