Iran: Historic Opportunity Squandered Under Weak US President

This, dear readers, is a turning point in history. There are many moments historians can point to as defining moments in history, i.e., the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, which set the world on fire with war in 1914; the democracies' failure to stop Hitler at Czechoslovakia ...........I am sure Atlas readers can list them.

This is such a moment. The murdering mullahs are empowered. Nothing and no one will stop them. We are careening down a collision course towards untold horror. Pray. Hard.

Going Out With A Bang, Or A Whimper? Strategy Page

July 6, 2009: The government has systematically hunted down demonstration leaders, and those who were using blogs, Twitter and social networking sites to get news out of the country. This has put a halt to large demonstrations in the capital. At least twenty people were killed during the crackdown, several hundred injured and over a thousand arrested. Foreigners, or Iranians working for embassies or foreign news organizations, are being released, as well as the few foreign journalists who were picked up. The government is planning to prosecute many of those arrested, especially those responsible for getting embarrassing (to the government) news out of the country.

The government has, for two decades, been studying the mass revolutions of 1989, and the 1990s, that brought down all those communist dictatorships, and believe they have developed methods of preventing a similar fate for themselves. Unlike the former communist states, the Iranian dictatorship has the loyalty of 20-30 percent of the population. This is where the Revolutionary Guard and Basij come from, and a lot of these guys are willing to die to maintain the clerical dictatorship in Iran. The communists of 1989 had lost most of their true believers, so a mass revolution in Iran will have to be a bloodier affair, and also be a battle between Islamic radicals and moderates (including non-Moslems). The senior clerics appear willing to fight to the death, and their opponents are, more and more, willing to deal with that head on. Meanwhile, no matter how successful the government was in suppressing the demonstrations in the capital, it was a defeat for the government. More people were radicalized, and dissention in the clergy became visible. The Iranian Islamic radicals are losing. Long term, they are lost. But like any tyranny in decline, there's the danger that the clerical dictatorship will go out with a bang, not, as the Soviet Union did, with a whimper. And if it is with a bang, it could be a very loud and destructive bang if the clerics have  nuclear weapons.

Iraq and Afghanistan are officially quiet about the turmoil in Iran, but unofficially both countries would like to see the Iranian Islamic radicals out of power. The current Iranian government lets its radicals interfere with the neighbors, supporting terrorism in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But the neighbors know that any kind of Iranian government would be overbearing and prone to throw its weight around. Iran has been the neighborhood bully for thousands of years, and no one expects that to change, no matter how many times Iran changes governments.

July 5, 2009: The Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qom (ARTQ), which speaks for the majority of senior clerics and religious faculty, issued a statement calling for a new election and denouncing the recent vote, and the violence against protestors. The ARTQ represents rank and file clerics, who have not yet been appointed to the several dozen senior clerical positions that, in effect, control the government. The ARTQ did not represent the views of all these lower ranking clergy, but obviously spoke for a majority.

All Iranian revolution liveblogging archives here.