Courtesy of Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, I have received two more brutal links from inside Iran. The situation inside the country is obviously getting worse. I don’t know how we should respond to this, but it’s clear information is important. Obama continuing his plan to negotiate with mullahs is execrable and a complete betrayal of these brave people in the streets that you see in these videos. Also, I wonder what has happened to the Fourth of July invitation linked below. Banafasheh and Michael Ledeen will be on PJTV later today to discuss the ongoing crisis.
First the exhalted protest, expressing the hopes of the people, then the brutal response, expressing the fears of the regime. From this point, which side is more adaptable to whatever degrading circumstance comes next?
The protesters can go underground, because this is a better way, form a pragmatic cost/benefits analysis. They can paralyze the economy, or at least bring it down to a mere subsistence level, for which the regime does not have any counter-measure of any effectiveness. In this waiting game of attrition, the hopes, nor the fears, lose their intensity, they only become relatively quiet. A degrading of the national economy is a sacrifice the people can make, but that the regime cannot survive.
In the meantime, the relatively silent clergy (the so-called “quietists” by the way) will recognize their chance to restore their respectability by terminating the heresy commited by Komeini some 30 years ago, presently embodied by Kamenei, in which a religious authority should be endowed with political authority as well.
The most respected “quietist” scholar does not live in Iran. He is the grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf, in Iraq. He is the one who declared that there was no theological contradiction between his religion and democracy, in other words, separation of church and state is a principle applicable to Islam, contrary to the more typically sunni claims who insist on the primacy of middle-age standards and practices.
Among other miracles (democracy in the Middle East, eventually), the people of Iran might bring some clarity as to whether Islam can find a deserved place in a modern world!
Bottom line, Iraq is the model, and Bush was right!
Corrolary: Our president could throw his teleprompter away, and get a compass instead.
What Professor Guvinoff said.
Amazing how cool the people in the streets are – just hopping out of the way of the billy clubs swung at them. Get the feeling that this is a population that has been terrorized by its government before?
Professor Guvinoff:”The protesters can go underground,” — too late, round-up has begun, midnight knocking at the door, leaders are arrested, wounded are executed and carted away.
“They can paralyze the economy,” — the Unions refused to strike.
http://threatswatch.org/rapidrecon/2009/06/unimaginable-horror-in-tehran/
http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2009/06/communication-from-tehran.html
ic @4
I expect things to move with less speed, at least in appearance. The Iranian economy was already precarious before this debacle, which can hardly help it along, precisely because the fragility of the economy reflects a deficit of trust, or any other source of social cohesion.
I’m not talking about instant economic paralysis. The trust is no longer just deficient, it is now broken. The republican guards can dispense carnage, but they cannot persuade people to see a better future, and work towards it. The revolution of 1979 took many months before reaching its sorry destination.