Reflections on Iran’s Islamic Republic
From Khomeini to Khamene'i - 31 years of Islamim and misery, with more to come.
by Daniel Pipes
February 11, 2010
Originally posted at National Review Online & danielpipes.org
February 11, 2010
As protesters prepare to gather and the regime flexes its muscle, where does Iran stand? The regime, its grip there, its place in the world? The democracy advocates’? National Review Online asked our experts to assess the situation in Iran and how the international community should react. (For replies by Peter Brookes, Jeff Fortenberry, Jamie M. Fly, Victor Davis Hanson, Peter Hoekstra, Michael Ledeen, Paul Marshall, Michael Rubin, and Benjamin Weinthal, click here.)
Today marks the Islamic Republic of Iran’s 31st anniversary and so offers an appropriate moment both to reflect on its works and speculate about its future.
Looking at achievements, the Khomeinist regime has survived great challenges – especially an eight-year war with Iraq – and succeeded in forwarding its Islamist agenda. By exploiting many tools – religion, subversion, terrorism, carbohydrates, and potential WMD – it has become the world’s foremost security threat.
Beyond this hard shell, however, one discovers deep vulnerabilities. Domestically, there’s impoverishment, rampant inflation, drug addiction, and human trafficking, and what one analyst calls the country’s “galloping demographic decline.” These problems have inspired widespread alienation from Islamism and even from Islam itself, devastating street protests, and a split in the regime’s leadership.
Internationally, the regime’s bellicose stance has both split the Middle East and spawned enmity around the globe. In particular, its nuclear-weapons buildup could trigger an unprecedented world crisis.
Looking ahead, if the regime’s days are indubitably numbered, the agency of its demise remains unclear: millions on Iranian streets, a Revolutionary Guards coup d’état, American aircraft, or an Israeli electromagnetic pulse bomb?
However it dies, Khomeini’s creation has yet to deliver its full measure of death and destruction.
Posted: February 11th, 2010 under Foreign Policy, News, Newsworthy.
Comments: (3) | Print This Post
And what will our answer be (along with the International Community)? A strong condemnation and more sanctions. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1250127/Iran-Revolution-day-protests-Islamic-Republic-nuclear-state.html It hasn’t worked before. This strategy didn’t work for President Bush. It hasn’t worked for President Obama (so far). I doubt it will work now. Unfortunately, it appears increasingly likely that the world will be held hostage by a fully nuclear Iran.
The right can’t figure out whether it should come to the aid of the protesters in Tehran, or bomb the crap out of them. Of course, in Pipes’ addled mind, you can DO BOTH AT THE SAME TIME! Neocons never learn.
Of course you can do both at the same time! The protestors are protesting the “theocratic” supreme leader. Weakening the Ayatollah’s position (and Ahmadinejad) by taking out Iran’s nuclear facility’s would embolden and strnegthen the opposition movement.
Speaking of never learning… administration after administration (both democrat and republican) have refused to deal with Iran in any substantive manner for the past 22 years. So, all Tehran needs to worry about is more useless sanctions as they threaten us and our allies, praise successful terrorist attacks, and send money, troops, and weapons into Afghanistan, Iraq, and North Africa. By the way, who do sanctions hurt more, the Iranian people or the Iranian leadership? When would it be OK to target Iran’s nuclear facilities, after they wipe Israel off the face of the earth? After they detonate a dirty nuke in a US city?