Revolution in Iran

For years, whenever I have tried to learn about Iran, I have turned first to Michael Ledeen. He writes this week in FrontPage Magazine.

...The country is on fire. All classes, all tribes from the Persians to the Kurds are fighting the security forces and the Revolutionary Guards, the Basij, and an increasingly divided Hezbollah. The leaders of the regime are unrestrained in their crackdown. In order to keep their actions as far as possible from public view, the leaders have killed off the internet links with the outside world, and despite American boasts that Washington can turn on the internet at will, the regime has kept communications with Iranians at historic minima.

...They’re also demanding new job opportunities, enhanced unemployment insurance, electricity, basic services, the end of the rule of Iranian-sponsored militias, and an end to corruption and foreign rule, whether it be Iranian or American.

In the words of Rick Moran, whatever reasons were invoked, protesters in Iraq originally took to the streets to express their frustration with the government have now been tossed aside and outright revolution has become their goal.

...The same applies to Lebanon, where ongoing demonstrations are calling for an end to Iranian domination of the country. The Lebanese people want Hezbollah out, their demonstrations—largely in Beirut—demanded a clean break with the Iranian forces, of which Hezbollah is certainly a central element.

In other words, Iran is fighting on multiple fronts, against a new generation that desires an end to the Islamic Republic and a rebirth of freedom. The regime is fighting fiercely, killing significant numbers of people and arresting thousands of others.

During the internet shutdown, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asked Iranians to send him evidence of the repressive measures taken against the people. There was a significant response: almost 20,000 messages

Read more here.

Revolution in Iran?

For years I have always found Michael Ledeen to be the most knowledgeable American writer on the subject of Iran. He reports in PJ Media,

The apparent discovery of the mummified remains of Reza Shah by Iranian archaeologists must have sent chills up and down the spine of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Reza is the symbol of the kind of government most Iranians want: secular, tolerant, modern. His name has often been chanted in the nationwide demonstrations that have continued unabated for weeks.

We don’t get anything approaching a decent picture of the national tumult -- foreign journalists are forbidden to travel outside Tehran -- but I asked a well-informed Iranian if he could tell me where the demonstrations were going on, and he said “it’s easier to tell you where there aren’t any.”

The country is convulsed, and the “return of Reza Shah” will be widely taken as an omen. I wonder if Trump, Macron, and Merkel understand how powerful this event can be.

Most of the “coverage” of the Iranian uprising attributes it to misery, in keeping with the widespread belief that revolutions are driven by economic failure and the attendant social suffering. Indeed, workers have gone on strike at businesses and factories, as they have not been paid for many months. But that only accounts for part of the revolt, which has spread to mosques.

When mosques are not sparsely frequented, which is the rule, they have become sites of anti-regime outbursts. Iranians correctly see that the mullahs and ayatollahs have wrecked the country, from the ecological catastrophe (many regions are slated to run out of clean water in a matter of months) to the corruption of the ruling elite, including the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and the supreme leader himself. They have stolen billions, while the value of the rial has crashed, approaching 1/1000th its worth at the time of the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

Meanwhile, oppression mounts. President Rouhani, who is invariably termed a “moderate reformer,” has presided over a 50% increase in the rate of publicly announced executions. The women’s revolt against the mandatory dress code covers the whole country. Schools and universities are under virtual military occupation because the regime leaders know the students detest them.

It’s a revolutionary situation, in short, and Reza Shah’s reappearance symbolizes it. Of all people, former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has given voice to the conviction that the regime is now on the edge of the abyss. Ahmadinejad, long regarded as one of the meanest of the hardliners, publicly said the current regime acts "in a way as if they'll be around forever. They have no news of what's happening. There's not ground below their feet. Events in Iran will soon transform the whole world."

No event would be more beneficial to the United States than the fall of the Tehran regime and its replacement with a freely and legitimately elected government. It would likely spell the doom of Assad’s Syrian tyranny, give some breathing space to those Iraqi leaders willing to fight for independence rather than submit to Iranian demands, undermine Hezbollah’s murderous domination of Lebanon and big chunks of Syria as well as their expanding operations in Latin America, deprive the Russians of a major source of cannon fodder for their Middle Eastern adventures, provide Saudi Arabia’s new leaders with victory in Yemen, and diminish radical Islamist terrorism throughout Africa.

...Yet we do not seem to be supporting revolution in Iran, even when it costs nothing and is easily done, as in changing the lineup at our Farsi-language broadcasting facilities. We learned during the Reagan years that dissidents desperately need information about their own country, and Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and Radio Liberty successfully informed the Soviet citizenry that they were not alone -- that dissidents all over the Empire were fighting for freedom.

Today, Iranians need to know that revolutionary activity challenges the regime everywhere. That we stand with them in this revolutionary moment, and that we, too, would welcome a return of the values that make Reza Shah a contemporary political force.

Instead of arguing with allies about whether to continue to adhere to an unsigned nuclear agreement with a regime that is undoubtedly cheating at every possible opportunity, we should exert every effort to defeat that evil regime.