Iranian Diplomat Denies Seeking Democrat Nomination

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http://www.scrappleface.com/?p=2514

by Scott Ott

(2007-03-11) — Despite his call this weekend for a timetable for the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, Abbas Araghchi, told reporters at a multinational peace conference in Baghdad that he has “no immediate plans” to seek the Democrat nomination for the U.S. presidency in 2008.

But of course, in political circles, such denials only set tongues to wagging, spur pundits to handicap the hypothetical race and send pollsters to the phones.

An overnight Quinnipiac University poll of likely Democrat voters showed that while 93 percent could not pronounce the Iranian diplomat’s name, a majority still felt that his opposition to the U.S. occupation of Iraq proves that he has “the right stuff” to mount a serious bid to head the Democrat White House ticket.

Sen. Joe Biden, D-DE, already a presidential candidate himself, said the deputy foreign minister’s early bump in the polls shouldn’t come as a surprise after the rock-star treatment received by presidential rival, and fellow war critic, Sen. Barack Obama.

“I mean, you got the first mainstream Iranian who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” Sen. Biden said, “and he doesn’t have the baggage some of us carry of having voted for the Iraq invasion in 2002. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”