Iranian Theocracy Under Scrutiny

The truly significant result of the suppressed Iranian revolt is that the most important Islamist radical movement in the contemporary world has demonstrated that it has become a brutally repressive dictatorship whose leaders rig elections and beat down clear popular demands for a true election count or repeat of the election itself.

This affair has nothing to do with the alleged war of civilizations or the machinations of the American Great Satan, or of the hereditary enemy of Iran, the British Empire.

It is the consequence of the abuse of power by leaders who established a new form of religious republic, meant to combine what they believe God's law, as set forth in the Quran, with the exigencies of modern politics and power, among them nuclear power, leading toward nuclear weapons to deter enemy Israel and Infidel America.

Iran has made itself the leading Islamic state in the Middle East, a republic standing alongside the traditional Muslim monarchies of Jordan, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. It was meant as a model of Muslim self-liberation from foreign oppressors.

It had been an exemplar in both 1951 and 1979 of popular uprising against Western domination, and subsequently of the installation of a modern Islamic form of government with a democratic substructure, controlled within clerical institutions, with a clerical Supreme Leader who spoke the divinely inspired final word on government decisions.

This government now stands discredited internationally, as well as in the eyes of what clearly seems the majority of Iranians, who are ruled today by a massive deployment of police power for the sake of unaccountable personal or clan advantage of the leadership.

They, and Muslims in general, should learn from this that the enemies are not all without -- they are also within the Islamic world.

The Iranians have been revolutionaries twice in modern times, both times eventually submitting to foreign power. This time it is Iranian and Islamic power that abuses them, not foreign oppressors. Could they successfully revolt once more, against domestic tyranny? Or does the revolt still go on?

The first rebellion followed World War II occupation by Britain and the Soviet Union, followed by an attempt by the U.S.S.R to set up a Soviet-controlled splinter state in the north. However, Iran's constitutional movement goes back to the start of the 20th century, and the Shah at that time accepted a constitution and parliament in 1906. However, the country was divided into Czarist and British spheres of influence, and the United States took over from both after the Second World War.

In 1945, the national movement was led by a veteran pre-war parliamentarian, Muhammad Mossadegh, who demanded nationalization of the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.

When parliament voted the nationalization, the Shah was compelled to name Mossadegh prime minister. But Mossadegh's resistance to the terms demanded by Britain led to a political crisis in which the Shah fled the country -- to be brought back and reinstated by the CIA.

Mossadegh was sent to prison for three years of solitary confinement, and then held in house arrest for the remainder of his life.

The Shah encountered the second rebellion 28 years later, the CIA being unable to save him a second time.

The successful Islamic revolt of 1979 installed the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and the revolutionaries sacked the U.S. Embassy to boot, successfully holding its members ransom for more than a year.

Why this was allowed to happen remains a mystery. Instead of recognizing the seizure of the embassy as an implicit act of war, and detaining Iranian officials, businessmen and students in the United States for exchange under the auspices of the Red Cross, the Carter administration frantically forced all the Iranians in the country to leave the U.S. as fast as possible. The American embassy staff then endured 444 days imprisonment, and an ill-conceived military rescue fiasco, before the Iranians triumphantly handed them over to Ronald Reagan.

The admirable Lebanese editor and commentator Rami G. Khouri, has just written that ordinary Arabs elsewhere, living under autocratic and potentially vulnerable leaders of their own, have watched this Iranian uprising with "forlorn envy."

Why forlorn? What stops them from their own revolts, if that is what they want?

The Pakistan tribesmen of the Swat Valley, and elsewhere in the country's northwest territories, are even now fighting to expel Taliban intruders.

The Iranian revolt may not be over. But even if it is, Iranians will one day surely try again.

The Iraqis, whose nation seems approaching another sectarian or ethnic precipice, could, if they had wanted, have saved themselves much and misery by rebelling against Saddam Hussein themselves, as they had done against previous unwanted rulers.

People must make their own decisions. If not, they risk getting the governments, or the liberators, they deserve.

Iran Elections

As Iranians Revolt, Their Government Reveals True Self
by William Pfaff

The truly significant result of the suppressed Iranian revolt is that the most important Islamist radical movement in the contemporary world has demonstrated that it has become a brutally repressive dictatorship whose leaders rig elections and beat down clear popular demands for a true election count or repeat of the election itself.

The War Between Civilizations That Never Was
by William Pfaff

An important change is evident in what since Samuel Huntington's time has been mistakenly identified and manipulated as a war between Muslim and Western civilizations.

Iran's (So Far) Revolution-less Struggle
by William Pfaff

Iran's cosmopolitan and liberal middle classes and its students are making a revolutionary bid without intending a revolution. Few think that the demonstrations in Tehran, and now in other Iranian cities, can produce a change in regime.

Hungary 1956, Iran 2009
by Paul Greenberg

Liberty is not something that can be rationed; one freedom leads to another. Iran's demagogue-in-chief understands that old truth, which is why he is so determined to crush this peaceful revolution in today's Iran. All the odds are in favor of his doing just that, but Mahmoud Ahmedinejad has already lost something far more important than Iran's presidency; he has lost legitimacy.

Iran Elections: The Silent Revolution
by Paul Greenberg

This is something new: a Silent Revolution. The huge throng that marched through the Iranian capital last Monday spoke nary a word, Theirs was a silent vigil for a liberty not so much lost as never gained, from Shah to Ayatollah. Meanwhile, the White House and President Obama practiced its own form of silence. Things have changed since a president of the United States could be counted on to at least voice a protest when another people are cowed.

Iranian Regime Change Is for Iranians to Decide
by Mary Sanchez

I find Iran's government structure of vaguely democratic elections and Islamic theocracy almost incomprehensible. However, if Iran's government needs reform, it is Iran's people that must make that case -- and they are, very eloquently and tragically even with their lives. The last thing Iranian reformers and protesters need is to be painted as agents of the Great Satan.

The 'Neda Moment' Shows Promise of Social Networking
by Leonard Pitts, Jr.

Maybe you were there when Neda died. If you were, you saw a tragedy, of course, a 26-year-old Iranian protester gunned down in the streets. But I am convinced you also saw the future -- a profound change in the way you and I will henceforth comprehend the world.

Obama's Iran Policy Is a Bomb
by Jonah Goldberg

Here is the one immutable fact of Barack Obama's foreign policy agenda as it relates to Iran: It's over. If the forces of reform and democracy win, Obama's plan to negotiate with the regime is moot, for the regime will be gone.

Obama's Choice Is Not to Choose on Iran
by Jonah Goldberg

Stop measuring the success of your diplomacy with Iran by the degree to which the grinning, hate-filled stooge of a clerical junta will "temper" his rhetoric about the pressing need to destroy Israel and slow his ineluctable pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Iran's Crisis of Legitimacy
Ramin Jahanbegloo - Global Viewpoint

Increasingly, Iran's divine sovereignty has been less about religion than about political theology. As for the popular sovereignty, it has found its due place in social networks and political action of Iranian civil society

Iran Must Void Elections to Restore Peace on Streets
Shirin Ebadi - Global Viewpoint

People's dissatisfaction with the results does not concern the present elections alone: Many objections were made four years ago when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was first elected president. Ahmadinejad's most important position until then had been mayor of Tehran. He was, however, supported by Basij and Ayatollah Khamenei, the Islamic Republic's leader for life. Ahmadinejad's four years of presidency resulted in people's great dissatisfaction.

Will Iran Look More Like Turkey, or Turkey Like Iran
Nathan Gardels - Global Viewpoint

The effort to forge new forms of non-Western modernity in the Muslim world has pushed Iran into bloody civil strife while Turkey swirls with persistent rumors of military plots against the Islamist-rooted government. The great historical question is whether, at the end of the day, Iran will look more like Turkey, or Turkey like Iran