Comment on Why What Worked in Egypt, Will Not Trip Up Iran by Joe P
One more reason to be suspicious of the success of “revolutions” in Arab lands is the character of these uprisings. All of them have just kicked out a single guy or family while the whole system of the previous regime remains intact. That is hardly a revolution. And neither it is looking good on democracy front. In Libya the protesters are waving the previous flag, of the Kingdom of Libya. Hardly any democracy there. Replacing an autocratic dictator with a dictator king.
Comment on Why What Worked in Egypt, Will Not Trip Up Iran by Joe P
It is a wonderful article but we have also to put in to context that US has been trying to overthrow Iranian government for the past 32 years. This and Iranians experience of operation Ajax means that any sympathy from nationalistic quarters in Iran must be with the government. Also I have to say that the most powerful force in a nation state is the power of nationalism and religion. Combine these two and you get a very powerful elixir which Iranians have unleashed. It is so powerful that it has stood up the history’s most super power for the past 32 years. Despite the large amount of propaganda going around against Iran in western media the truth is different. Almost all scientific polls conducted by western polling agencies and available on internet show that majority of Iranians support their current form of government and even favor being more powerful internationally to the point of even being ready to accept more international pressures in order to have nuclear bombs. That is the wishes of the people of Iran measured by independent western organizations. So Iranian state is very much comfortable with its position and just afew thousand opposition mostly propped up by 150 satellite channels bankrolled by US and beamed into Iran will not make Iranian state unstable. If anything it just makes their actions more justifiable for the majority of Iranians who support them.
One little fact which almost never gets mentioned is that the revolutionary government of Iran in the past decades had invested heavily in education and healthcare boosting its indicators tremendously. Today Iran has the world’s fastest growth rate in science and technology and according to some reports this progress in science and technology is due to Iran Iraq war which was itself due to the revolution. So out of true great revolutions come out also progress in science and technology, as was the case with French, Russian and Chinese revolutions. This does not happen in fake revolutions (read coups or color “revolutions”) like the one in Egypt.