Yesterday's massive mourning assemblage of demonstrators in Iran was dignified and, thankfully, marked by minimal violence. Meanwhile, our Omniscient One at 1600 Penn awaits a second "Miracle of the Abacuses" recount, after the original "Miracle of the Abacuses" tally. Robert Kagan nails Obama's narrow realist view. The Jerusalem Post reports that this morning the Supreme Guide Ayatollah Ali Khamenei used Friday prayers to try to quell the protests once and for all: (a) declare that the election result was free of fraud; (b) blame America and other "furriners" for the unrest; and (c) warn that future protests are highly illegal and would be dealt with severely.
Charles Krauthammer says Obama should do more; he lets fly at 44's putting negotiations first:
Dialogue with a regime that is breaking heads, shooting demonstrators, expelling journalists, arresting activists. Engagement with -- which inevitably confers legitimacy upon -- leaders elected in a process that begins as a sham (only four handpicked candidates permitted out of 476) and ends in overt rigging.
Then, after treating this popular revolution as an inconvenience to the real business of Obama-Khamenei negotiations, the president speaks favorably of "some initial reaction from the Supreme Leader that indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election."
Where to begin? "Supreme Leader"? Note the abject solicitousness with which the American president confers this honorific on a clerical dictator who, even as his minions attack demonstrators, offers to examine some returns in some electoral districts -- a farcical fix that will do nothing to alter the fraudulence of the election.
Before slamming Nixonian Press Secretary Robert Gibbs for his contemptible euphemism re the two sides in Iran being engaged in a "vigorous debate" and nailing 44 on his illusions that he can talk Iran away from the nuclear precipice, CK notes the immense stakes for the entire Mideast in how the Iran showdown ends:
This revolution will end either as a Tiananmen (a hot Tiananmen with massive and bloody repression or a cold Tiananmen with a finer mix of brutality and co-optation) or as a true revolution that brings down the Islamic Republic.
The latter is improbable but, for the first time in 30 years, not impossible. Imagine the repercussions. It would mark a decisive blow to Islamist radicalism, of which Iran today is not just standard-bearer and model, but financier and arms supplier. It would do to Islamism what the collapse of the Soviet Union did to communism -- leave it forever spent and discredited.
In the region, it would launch a second Arab spring. The first in 2005 -- the expulsion of Syria from Lebanon, the first elections in Iraq and early liberalization in the Gulf states and Egypt -- was aborted by a fierce counterattack from the forces of repression and reaction, led and funded by Iran.
Peggy Noonan says Obama need not do more, as everyone knows whose side Obama & America is on. The WSJ offers us Voices from Iran and says that the fear is gone. Jeffrey Lord reviews Reagan's rhetoric during the endgame of the Cold War and finds more support for Russian dissidents than 44 is offering those in Iran. Iran maven Michael Ledeen says we should give the protesters tools to fight tyranny: information age tools such as Internet and smuggled satellite phones, a strike fund for workers and more open, clear encouragement. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius says the protests are "for real" this time. National security maven Daniel Byman says that while Iran is ripe for revolution, Mousavi is no Mikhail Gorbachev. Alas, Byman is right about Mousaavi.
Discovery Institute founder-CEO Bruce Chapman offers Iran blog posts and ties Iran & North Korea together. (Full disclosure: Discovery sponsors LFTC, though LFTC content is solely mine and my own choosing.)
Revolutionary Guard leader Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has switched sides, and is now back in the Ayatollah's camp. Rafsanjani--who in 2001 said that it would be worth losing 15M Iranians to nuke Israel and kill 5M Israelis, because the Jewish State would be extinguished while Iran would survive--is a nasty piece of work. But had he stayed with the protesters the chances of ending clerical rule in Iran would be greater. Such an end would be a huge victory for the West, even were a secular, hostile Iran to survive and make other kinds of trouble. Now that appears suddenly less in prospect.
Here are more evaluations of the unfolding drama. This report shows how dangerous a place Teheran is.
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