The Guardian is reporting the streets of Teheran quiet, suggesting that the state has broken the demonstrators. Mousavi is nowhere — as yet — in public leading the demonstrators.
A deadly crackdown on opposition demonstrators appeared tonight to have punctured the most serious protest movement in Iran since the 1979 revolution, as an eerie quiet settled on Tehran and the regime turned its attention to more familiar enemies overseas. … Some opposition figures were still hoping that their figurehead, the defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, would emerge tomorrow to lead another rally calling for the elections to be annulled. But Saturday’s crackdown, in which police wielded guns, truncheons, tear gas and water cannon, showed that the state intends to follow through on veiled threats of zero tolerance from the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. …
Meanwhile, the regime was turning its attention to more distant adversaries, with Ahmadinejad blaming the US, as well as Britain, for the crisis. “Definitely by hasty remarks you will not be placed in the circle of friendship with the Iranian nation,” he was quoted as saying in a meeting with clerics and scholars. “Therefore I advise you to correct your interfering stances.” …
The Italian foreign minister, Franco Frattini, expressed similar sentiments but confirmed that Iran was still invited to discuss Afghanistan and Iraq at a conference in Trieste this week.
Barack Obama did not expand today on earlier comments in which he called on the regime “to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people”.
However, Mousavi has issued a statement to the press, urging his followers to exercise “restraint”. The Times Online says, “Iran’s opposition leader appealed for restraint as his supporters regrouped after Saturday’s bloody confrontations with the security forces. Mir Hossein Mousavi, defeated in a presidential election that his followers say was rigged, issued a statement mourning those killed, denouncing the ‘mass arrests’ and insisting: ‘Protesting against lies and fraud is your right.’”
It’s too early to tell whether street has failed to fatally injure the Iranian regime. But even if Khamenei has beaten back the demonstrators, or bought off Mousavi it is not over. In all likelihood some of the opposition movement will move into a less spontaneous, more clandestine phase: out of the public gaze to be carried on, on both sides, by those with the determination and relentlessness for the job. It’s the world of the cell, cutout, safehouse, the samizdat, the pistol — and alas for some — the bomb. How the resistance will fare, or what its members will evolve into is hard to predict. One thing is probable: that if Mousavi has sold them out, the remnants will require another leadership core.
Supposing that Khamenei has succeeded in repression, all eyes will momentarily be turned on the West. The question before the allies is simple, no different from a bank manager doing a credit check on a customer, or a police officer doing a firearms background check on an applicant. Can Western diplomacy do business with the Iranian regime without watching it so closely that it is no longer in any sense, a ‘deal’?
I think the worst thing that the West can assume, if a period of quiescence ensues, is that it is over. Most analysts didn’t see this wave coming. I’m not sure they’ll see the next.
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52 Comments
1. Doug:Obama sounds like a Bank manager cautioning it’s customers not to take home the complimentary magazines in the waiting areas, as they are there for all to enjoy.
Jun 21, 2009 - 4:16 pm 2. sirius_sir:Cold as ice.
Supposing Khamenei succeeds in repressing the oppostion, that makes our way forward clearer. We can no longer pretend that negotiations are either feasible or desirable. We dare not lend the regime the merit of our diplomacy.
As well, we may consider all possible further actions absent any outsized concern as to the moderate Iranian’s reaction. Destroying the regime’s nuclear weapons capability quite suddently becomes paramount. Previously, an argument could be made that such “meddling” would alienate a potential base of support we would rather cultivate, but if that potential base is neutered, then it ceases to be an over-riding factor in our calculations. It may even be argued that forceful action directed against the regime (and/or its weapons capabilies) would be received favorably by many Iranians who might previously have reacted quite differently.
It may even be argued that such action would be received favorably by many Americans who might previously have reacted quite differently.
Jun 21, 2009 - 4:17 pm 3. Doug:(We knew that, but against the backdrop of events it becomes even less possible to avoid the fact that this is one incredibly dangerous situation wrt to the freedom and future of this country and the World.)
Jun 21, 2009 - 4:24 pm 4. Doug:…I was following up on myself, Sirius, fwiw.
Jun 21, 2009 - 4:27 pm 5. Doug:With this “man” in the Whitehouse, I think all bets are off with regard to rational expectations.
Relatives of Ex-President of Iran Are Briefly Detained
Jun 21, 2009 - 4:32 pm 6. Mongoose:Family members say all have been released.
Sirus: Fat Chance of that. Obama will continue his “diplomacy” with the Mullahs and give them cover.
Looks ike another Tienanmen Square at this juncture, though the scale is much more massive.
We might even have the EU take the principled lead in all of this. Now who would have thought that? I see where most of their embassies where taking in the injured. What about ours? Does anyone know?
Of course, as far as realpolitik goes the Russians and the Chinese come out ahead if the regime survives, at least in the short and mid terms.. Looks like they must have had some of their advisers for their “crowd control”. What happened here is certainly in line with what the Chinese would do in a similar situation.
Obama has just demonstrated what a chilling little fascist he is. He would surely do here in the USA what the Mullahs did over there. He would act just a cold should Israel get nuked or overrun. Same for E. Europe or Taiwan.
I do not thing that we have every seen anything like this out of an American government before. Just chills one to the bone.
Had he acted correctly this could have ended differently.
Makes one wonder if there were back channel deals made with the Mullahs when this all began.
We all should be very concerned for the future, not just in the ME but here at hme as well.
Jun 21, 2009 - 4:33 pm 7. Doug:Mr. Moussavi’s Web site, which has become a clearing house for demonstration calls and opposition news, contained no call for another major demonstration on Sunday. But other opposition Web sites reported Sunday that Mr. Moussavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard, said his site had been hacked.There were few signs that powerful political leaders had dropped their challenge to Mr. Khamenei. Mr. Moussavi, himself a former prime minister and longtime insider, has continued to demand the nullification of the presidential election.
Meanwhile, the moves against members of Mr. Rafsanjani’s family were seen as an attempt to put pressure on Mr. Rafsanjani to drop his challenge to Mr. Khamenei — pressure Mr. Rafsanjani’s son, Mehdi Rafsanjani, said he would reject.
“My father was in jail for five years when we were young. We don’t care if they keep her even for a year,” Mehdi Rafsanjani said in an interview, referring to the arrest of his sister, Ms. Hashemi.
—
Mousavi’s official news site GhalamNews in now available in English thanks to @GOOGLE, see http://is.gd/16b2j #Iran
Flickr mousavi1388’s Photostream
Jun 21, 2009 - 4:40 pm 8. NahnCee:“Cold as ice.”
Too much ice cream will do that.
Jun 21, 2009 - 4:47 pm 9. E. Nigma:Iran has once again clearly shown what kind of people truly hold the power and what they will do to retain it. Of course, this will be rationalized away by those wiser heads.
One wonders what the Iranian government will do next, because part of the mechanism of control was to maintain a climate of fear of the outsider (the Great Satan and the Little Satan). So who will the Iranians lash out against to create the atmosphere of paranoia that they thrive in?
Israel?
Iraq? (always a favorite whipping boy of the Iranians)
Stir up trouble in the Gulf with a blockade or harassment of tankers?
Part of this has to be rooted in economic unease. With Iranian oil exports dropping, and the price of oil also declining since last summer’s peak,one wonders what the real exchange rate is for the Iranian currency versus the Euro, the Yen or the Yuan Reminbi, for instance. I would bet the Iran is on course for a round of inflation due to economic stagnation and a shortage of hard currency to buy what they cannot produce.
Jun 21, 2009 - 5:24 pm 10. Leo Linbeck III:The street did the mullahs suppress
Is the game done or just on recess?
We cannot be sure
In a land so obscure
Does Mousavi play checkers or chess?
— —
L3
Jun 21, 2009 - 5:29 pm 11. Mongoose:E. Nigma: Why the Jews, of course.
Jun 21, 2009 - 5:32 pm 12. Doug:Barack Obama, superhero!
Jun 21, 2009 - 5:40 pm 13. Leo Linbeck III:ht – Rufus
Many critics from all ‘cross the land
Said Barack showed a lack of command
So to protect the big boss
Each disciple must toss
Their nice WWBD? green wristband
— —
L3
Jun 21, 2009 - 5:48 pm 14. Willie G:Leo – we will know soon enough what the N00b will do.
The remaining question is: What will WE do?
It would be nice to think that we have until Nov. 4, 2012, but I doubt it. I expect another “crisis” will result in the permanent postponement of the 2010 elections.
YMMV, of course.
Jun 21, 2009 - 5:56 pm 15. Randall:I saw somewhere that Mousavi has called for a general strike this Wednesday and Thursday. If true, and successful, it would be more important than continued street demonstrations. In Iran,as the bazaar goes,so goes the country.
Jun 21, 2009 - 6:01 pm 16. E. Nigma:After doing a little research on the Iranian Rial versus th Euro,HK Dollar, Yuan and the US Dollar, there does not seem to be any incipient inflation going on (of course the last six months of the world economy are hardly typical). But one wonders if some of the big banks will drop their Rials next week. If the Iranian government actually collapses, or a real revolution starts, the value of their currency has to drop, doesn’t it?
Which comes first, a currency devaluation (as found in exchange rates), or a revolution?
That’s why I think that Iran will lash out in the Gulf or Iraq (or both!) very soon, to goose up oil prices. President Obama has already indicated he is not looking for a confrontation with the Mullahs of the Theocracy; they will expect him to back down to their threats and gestures. And he’s not alone out there on that branch; Richard Luger wants to “talk” to the Iranian government too. Spines and stiff backs all around, huh?
Jun 21, 2009 - 6:01 pm 17. Doug:Will the Real Barack Obama Please Stand Up?
The Identity Card
The first thing I ever heard about Barack Obama was that he had a white mother and a black father. I heard this over and over again, never in a snide or gossipy way, always matter-of-factly. Apparently this was the way we Americans had to introduce Obama to each other. For some reason, knowledge of his racial pedigree had to precede even the mention of his politics–as if the pedigree inevitably explained the politics.
Jun 21, 2009 - 6:15 pm 18. Doug:—
But Obama is not likely to take this path. He is a man bound by forces outside himself and by a practice that is central to the minority experience in America: masking. As the word itself makes clear, the mask is not an authentic representation of one’s true self; rather it is a presentation of the self that angles for advantage. Today we blacks have two great masks that we wear for advantage in the American mainstream: bargaining and challenging.
Poem for 6/19/09
Obama to the Iranians
Or
If it Weren’t So Serious, It’d Be Funny
By Tarzana Joe
I’ve taken some abuse
Because I haven’t spoken out
Sometimes it’s best to whisper
When the world expects a shout.
You’ve taken to the streets
Despite the edicts and the bans
(Who know that you Iranians
Were such rabid Laker fans?)
I don’t want it to appear
That my intention is to meddle
I don’ think our way of living
Is a system we should peddle
Sure, I know there are some preachers
Who can stir up real dissention…
That’s why for twenty years
I just didn’t pay attention
Of course I’ve taken notice
That your anger has been rising
After all I made my living
Community Organizing
And if you organize your outrage
No power can resist you
If I’d known what you were planning
I’d have sent Acorn to assist you.
Now the world will long remember
Jun 21, 2009 - 6:32 pm 19. Dishman:Your bravery and your pluck
On behalf of all Americans
I’m here to say…Good Luck!
There’s a question of what Obama can do.
I think the regime fundamentally requires the belief that it has a future. Rafsanjani and Larjani are both rumored to be wavering. If the regime does not appear to have a future, there probably wouldn’t be any wavering any more.
Enough of the leadership know the financial situation. It’s dependent on future oil prices. Without that, the regime could not maintain its largess.
To me, this suggests an obvious target… the belief that oil will be a high value commodity in the future.
One way of hitting it would be to announce an intent to seek serious funding of Fusion research, based on significant promise (but undisclosed) of the Polywell approach. Maybe an intent to fund “WB-100″ (for roughly $100 million total). The underlying reality probably is sufficient to support a carefully worded statement. It doesn’t have to be a loud comment, either. It just has to be in such a way that it comes to the attention of the Iranian leadership.
Jun 21, 2009 - 6:46 pm 20. E. Nigma:Drill here, drill now?
Nah…..
Jun 21, 2009 - 6:51 pm 21. Doug:Steven Hayes, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Steyn, etc interviews – mp3’s
Jun 21, 2009 - 7:01 pm 22. Alexis:“Definitely by hasty remarks you will not be placed in the circle of friendship with the Iranian nation,” he was quoted as saying in a meeting with clerics and scholars.
So Mahmoud (Ahmadinejad) is whining. Here he is, from the same regime that advocates genocide against the American people and talks of wiping Israel off the map, and now he talks of whether America would be “placed in the circle of friendship with the Iranian nation”. Boo hoo. I’m sooooo scared. (Not!)
Mahmoud, didn’t your parents raise you to have a stronger backbone than a chocolate eclair? Mahmoud, why do you care so much about what some American is telling you? Mahmoud, don’t you realize you are showing yourself to be a wimp? Hey Mahmoud, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Jun 21, 2009 - 7:25 pm 23. RWE:Everyone on TV seems to have forgotten the most important aspect of this uprising.
This is all going according to plan – George W. Bush’s plan.
Invasion of Iraq. Democracy in Iraq. Subsequent destabilization of Iran. Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah, North Korea all lose a key ally. Sound familiar? Yeah, THAT Plan.
Obama and the current American “regime” (the first American administration worthy of that title) have so convinced themselves that The Bush Plan would not work – or was even basically evil in intent – that they can’t even see that it is working.
When The Surge worked in Iraq they denied it -and still are (we bought off the Sunnis instead of beating them in combat, Iran agreed to cooperate and back off, etc.)
So now The Bush Plan is still working and they are too shocked to admit it, still proceeding down the track they laid.
You see this in bureaucracy so much. They not only can’t see that they will have to change but think it unacceptable that they would even have to try.
Jun 21, 2009 - 7:35 pm 24. wretchard:Paradoxically, some analysts will interpret recent events in Iran as an even greater opportunity to reach a Grand Bargain. The reasoning will go as follows: Iran is now behind the 8 ball, it lacks legitimacy, it may strapped for money. So now is the time to rush forward with a deal which they must sign under disadvantageous conditions! The worse it gets in Iran, the greater will be the justification for a deal. Some people never give up on the idea of a Grand Bargain. Even when the Tamil Tigers were down to their last few bunkers there were those who were afraid the Sri Lankans would win a complete military victory and thus get in the way of a Grand Bargain with the Tigers. Even madness has a method.
The alternative is to simply say, “don’t call us, we’ll call you”. This election was in part, I believe, about a scramble for the expected value of Engagement. All those deals that were to be made possible by the lifting of sanctions must have danced like sugarplums in their heads. Tell them there ain’t gonna be no sugarplums. Say they have no future as themselves. It’s a risk no doubt to walk away. But everything involves a risk and in any case it is a better strategy than throwing a drowning dictatorship a lifeline it doesn’t deserve.
But I don’t think the administration will walk away from its hopes of a Grand Bargain. It is hostage to its own self-imposed timetable to create an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. Iran is on the critical path to project completion, therefore, that milestone will be paved over one way or the other or the timetable falls down. Today President Obama went net negative in the opinion polls for the first time. His political capital is dwindling by slow degrees. The demonstrators in Iran may not have stopped the regime — yet — but they have delayed, perhaps fatally the process which the President was pursuing. They may have put it beyond his reach for just long enough for his political gas to run out. For those who believe that the Iranian engagement was inimical to Israel, in some paradoxical way, the Iranian students may have saved that country from an unknown fate, apart from altering the course of their own. In the long view that may have been the greatest effect the uprising has had upon the history of this troubled region.
Jun 21, 2009 - 7:35 pm 25. sirius_sir:Alexis, what is really rich is the following admonition: “Therefore I advise you to correct your interfering stances.”
Hey Mahmoud, I advise you to dig a really deep hole and don’t come out until we tell you it’s safe.
Jun 21, 2009 - 7:36 pm 26. Subotai Bahadur:#14 Willie G
Absolute agreement.
When dealing with this essentially lawless regime; it behooves us to prepare for a normal electoral contest in November 2010, and yet also be prepared for either an outright cancellation or a vote count akin to that just completed by Buraq Hussein Obama’s unrequited love, Ahmadinejad.
I commend Chapter One, Section 24 of Vom Krieg by General Carl Philip Gottlieb von Clausewitz to the attention of all; not the heading but the first sentence thereafter. It would seem to bear on Iran, and may yet for our poor country.
Subotai Bahadur
Jun 21, 2009 - 7:44 pm 27. sgi:The time in Iran is 6:45 am, June 22. We won’t know for a few hours if the state has broken the opposition.
Barack Obama is the face of the other (not a white man). He understands and respects the other, expects less of them, so cannot hold them to the highest standards. They have been disadvantaged by white men, like all the others.
He can’t draw the line in the sand with Iran or North Korea or the Palestinians. Their behavior is just as rational as well, Canada or Australia. They are all others just like him.
Jun 21, 2009 - 7:54 pm 28. Robohobo:Ahmadinnerjacket = “Definitely by hasty remarks you will not be placed in the circle of friendship with the Iranian nation,”
Oh, boo frakkin’ hoo. What you gonna’ do, Mahmoud? Stomp your foot? Not talk to The Pantywaist pResident? The truth is this ineffectual posturing by a mouse. If he gets a nuke he might grow to the stature of a rat.
But, The Pantywaist will give him all deference and treat is sorry self like he matters.
Subotai @ 26: Should there be either a cancellation of the ‘10 elections or declaration of marshal law in the US, I think we then may find out why there has been shortages of ammo.
Things are moving faster and faster. Teams are being chosen and sides being taken. Both here at home and out in the wider world.
It’s gonna’ be a long, hot summer, so to say.
Jun 21, 2009 - 9:01 pm 29. Subotai Bahadur:#28 Robohobo
In my past, I have gone into hostile situations to the tune of “Garryowen”, knowing the implications. I suspect that I, and others will be doing it again. At least those of us who remember the Oath.
Subotai Bahadur
Jun 21, 2009 - 9:48 pm 30. Morton Doodslag:I’ve never known this site to be filled with so much dreamy nonsense and magical thinking. I am disappointed in the caliber of insight (or lack) displayed here in recent days. IMHO, nothing has changed in Iran, and nothing will change in Obama’s “engagement” (betrayal) with the Shiite Muslim Nazis. He won’t “run out of gas” in his schemes to make American reparations to the Muslims, the Iranians won’t stop building their nuclear bombs, Islamic rule in Iran is utterly unscathed and will remain. In truth, THAT was never in question — Islam was never threatened — Muslims never threaten their Islam.
So once again most in the West have been duped into cheering on a fake “revolution” where one set of Muslims (who are somehow, magically mystically “moderate”) rampage against another bunch of Muslims (who are seen as immoderate simply because they’re in power, but ultimately leave the entire apparatus of Islam intact. Don’t you people yet grasp that our mortal and growing danger will not be mitigated until the edifice of Islam is attacked and destroyed??? This will not be an incremental thing. Not least because we don’t have the time, but also because the unicorn of moderate or moderating Islam is a figment of your ill-informed imaginations.
Jun 21, 2009 - 10:14 pm 31. NahnCee:Morton, there are other sites for you to go to and bestow your incredible intellect. I, for one, will not mourn your absence since you bring absolutely nothing to the party except smug pomposity.
Shoo, now. Begone with your wascally little self.
Jun 21, 2009 - 10:22 pm 32. rickl:30. Morton Doodslag:
From where I sit in the United States, the most immediate and dire peril I’m facing right now is leftism. That’s the greatest threat to my life, liberty, and property.
The most pressing thing is to defeat and destroy leftism. Islam will just have to wait.
Jun 21, 2009 - 10:35 pm 33. Robohobo:Doodslag: “Don’t you people yet grasp that our mortal and growing danger will not be mitigated until the edifice of Islam is attacked and destroyed?”
Okay. Who’s first? Islam or Leftists? Look, we do get it around here. But the idea of a massive 1b person genocide is one to be not approached. Should it ever get to wretchard’s 3 conjectures then nothing can be done. But until that time we can work against becoming what we abhor.
I am not one of those who will shirk if push comes to shove here at home but I cannot advocate for whole sale slaughter of an entire religious group. Targeted and selective culling of the herd when they show rabid behavior, I am okay with.
Jun 22, 2009 - 12:33 am 34. chi hair straightener:First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.
Jun 22, 2009 - 1:13 am 35. Barry 0351:Someone told me long ago there’s a calm before a storm, CCR
Jun 22, 2009 - 4:59 am 36. Pajamas Media » Will Mousavi Stand Strong?:Even if the dempnstrations cease the hard corps riot troops will still be punishing them. They at this point have nothing to lose by continuing the fight.
[...] Read the entire piece here. [...]
Jun 22, 2009 - 5:38 am 37. Delia:That kind of ’silence’ is spooky. *shiver*
Jun 22, 2009 - 7:02 am 38. Marie Claude:“Like others, McAleese projects steady demand for arms in the Middle East — and sustained willingness on Washington’s part to provide and even underwrite much of the weaponry. The way McAleese describes it, U.S. interest in the region is about more than profit. He says there’s growing consensus in Washington that it’s cheaper in the long run to reinforce allies’ military capabilities than it is to skimp on weapons exports and allow those allies to be threatened. That, McAleese says, could result in the U.S. intervening with its own forces, perhaps sparking a trillion-dollar war that it can no longer afford.”
hmm !!!
http://warisboring.com/?p=2287
Jun 22, 2009 - 8:06 am 39. Marie Claude:and while there’s the Iran great protestation, the Chineses are trying to hide that their policemen move back in front of the mobs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5K7U-TFDY0
Jun 22, 2009 - 8:11 am 40. Ricardo:To propose a “Grand Bargain” at this stage you have to be a fool or a knave.
Jun 22, 2009 - 8:25 am 41. Marie Claude:A fool if you believe the pledges made by a government that stole an election and killed its citizens to protect it.
A knave if you know the truth.
http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20090621_1.htm
about the chinese events
Jun 22, 2009 - 8:40 am 42. Professor Guvinoff:@23, RWE.
This is all going according to plan – George W. Bush’s plan.
Invasion of Iraq. Democracy in Iraq. Subsequent destabilization of Iran. Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah, North Korea all lose a key ally. Sound familiar? Yeah, THAT Plan.
Agreed. Let’s not forget that 70% of Iranians are 30 years old or less. In the first week they learned that the regime can truly be afraid of them. As the ruling clique bares its teeth, the insurgents will figure out less confrontational methods, strikes, pamphlets, graffiti, nightly chants from the roofs, whatever. The Iranian economy is already precarious as it is, it won’t take much to bring it to its knees. Can the chinese and the russians come together to bail the mullahs out? Who is kidding whom?
Tyrants always alienate their subjects. Under so-called “normal” circumstances people would rather live on their knees than die on their feet, so the tyrants win, as a general rule, but what rule is devoid of exception, particularly what brutal rule?
What is “normal”? The only norm that transcends culture is a profoundly human norm, the yearning for freedom! Let us remember that the American revolution did not have a chance, either!
Jun 22, 2009 - 9:47 am 43. always right:23 RWE
This is all going according to plan – George W. Bush’s plan.
Therefore, under no circumstances will Obama be seen as following GWB’s footsteps.
Jun 22, 2009 - 11:45 am 44. RWE:Always right #43:
Old baseball story: A rookie gets sent out to left field and screws up thoroughly, drops balls, misses easy catches, runs the wrong way.
Two innings later the team sends out a very reliable experienced player to left field instead of the rookie. He does no better.
The experienced player coems in at the end of the inning and says “That rookie got left field so screwed up that no one could straighten it out.”
If Obama’s approach goes down in flames it with be W’s fault for screwing up the ME so badly that even The Prince could not fix it.
If the mullah’s thugocracy in Iran falls and democracy arises, it will be credited to Obama. The fact that even people like Fred Thompson are saying on the radio “Boy , we never saw this coming.” ensures that.
I would like to have called Fred and said “This is like a Republican President being elected in November 1944, getting sworn in in Jan 1945 and saying “Howthell did we end up with all these troops of ours in France, Belgium, Czechlovokia, and Germany? Nobody saw that coming!” And indeed, if you ignore 6 Jun 1944 and subsequent events no one would have “seen it coming.”
Jun 22, 2009 - 12:25 pm 45. David W. Lincoln:I am willing to say that given the familiarity of Persia (which was renamed Iran) with chess, we are seeing a change of tactics on behalf of those who the Mullahs were reacting to.
The safer route is economic disruption, brought on by strikes. After all, didn’t the establishment of Solidarity in Poland see national wide strikes in Poland take place before?
So, what we need at this time is a list of which companies based outside of Iran, who are
Jun 22, 2009 - 1:31 pm 46. always right:doing business in Iran. Let them be heavily fined for their part of strengthening the current regime. After all, those who oppress
place less emphasis on the adjective in front of the word, “power”, than we do. So, when they have less money, they have less power to
go after those who communicate, “The Emperor has no clothes”.
44.
None of the current occupants in WH are stupid. What kind of take home message do these people get from this ‘teachable moment’?
I have no confidence that they will draw the correct conclusion.
Jun 22, 2009 - 1:55 pm 47. oMan:How do you say “Who is John Galt?” in Farsi? I predict a lot of low-profile re/organization and consolidation, some vicious payback that may not make much news, and a general weakening of the Iranian economy. Granted, that will be hard to measure and attribute to a formal intent and program by the new opposition(s), but as a core psychological/sociological matter, it seems at least plausible. Think about it, people. If you saw crowds of Tea Party people being clubbed by ACORN types while National Guard and local cops stood by, would you be all perky about going to your job and doing an extra-good job, risking capital in your business, to help the “Won” and his team further refine the means of oppression?
Didn’t think so.
Jun 22, 2009 - 2:47 pm 48. John Samford:You will know it’s over when Ahamadamnutjob comes back from Moscow and steps off the plane to the cheers of millions.
Jun 22, 2009 - 9:56 pm 49. Bad Karma:This round was actually smaller then the ‘99 one and not as bloody as the ‘04 one. This made the news only because there was more channels to get info out before he Mad Dog Mullahs got them closed.
That and the MSM needs a news break from the tanking employment numbers. The Usurper ( or st least his minions) has/have been cooking the books on the unemployment numbers. You can only do that for so long before the real numbers pop up. June will be well past 10 and July will be gruesome. Even though those that go from a 40 hour week to a 24 hour week will not be counted as unemployed.
These statements from Mousavi, I find slightly comical. This is the same person who basically stood up Hezbollah, an architect of the MOIS, and ardent supporter of armed aggression against Israel. Change you can believe in? Hardly. The lesser of two evils? Not really.
Jun 23, 2009 - 12:14 am 50. Typos_R_Us:RWE, good shot! 10 ring. I hadn’t thought of that, but you are correct. I still don’t think anything will be accomplished beyond the murder of some Iranian style ‘useful fools’ but I have been wrong before.
Jun 23, 2009 - 1:44 pm 51. Belmont Club » Sea change:[...] I wrote in the Day After, if Moussavi cannot stay at the head of forces he has tapped, they will find a new leader. On that [...]
Jun 23, 2009 - 8:28 pm 52. Listen up:The events in Iran have moved beyond the election and have now entered a movement for freedom beyond anything that Mousavi was planning. The fuse has been lit. The present government may appear to crush the protests but actually the revolution will go underground and will be far more active and lethal than the Mullahs can cope with. It is the beginning of the end of Mullah rule in Iran. I do not expect it to happen suddenly but it will come within the next three years. The world that Neda saw when she traveled outside Iran is the world the people of Iran want and now they have seen the clear contrast between that world and their own, between their brutal government and the freedom offered in other governments, there will be no stopping them. I do not expect them to embrace America but I do expect them to embrace a new Iran with justice and freedom for their people.
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