Iran: Countdown to Self-Implosion
As the media focuses on the arrest of British Embassy officials, innocent civilians and United Nations staffers internal dissent, will continue to grow against the conservative regime. In the midst of an apparent crisis of confidence in the leadership, markedly high voter turnout reflected popular dissatisfaction with the hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The moderate presidential hopeful Mr. Moussavi, challenged the fraudulent election results, spurring a series of political protests and absurd accusations of foreign meddling.
Images in the international press of women lining up to vote, riot police and militia forces and a protesting soccer team, are reminiscent of the 1979 Revolution that deposed the Shah and turned Iran away from capitalistic growth and in the direction of a fundamentalism and social and political oppression. What differs today is the proliferation of outlets for freedom of expression. Information conduits such as Twitter and YouTube were the premier sources of information for Broadcast Media such as CNN.
Nothing demonstrated the repression in China better than the shutdown of servers on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. The more the government actively attempts to silence protests, the more internal dissent will grow. When dissent reaches a tipping point in which a majority of people do not view the current regime as legitimate, the grip of control will deteriorate as military soldiers face a civil war in which they are crushing the political liberty of their neighbors, brothers and wives. The government can clench the fist of authoritarianism for only so long before the pendulum will swing to a younger, more moderate direction on Iran.
The challenge will be the patience of the Western governments as innocents are detained and arrested. The voice of the world community will most likely grow and want response by the Western governments. The promotion of democracy through the imposition of force will result in a strengthening of the conservative elements of the Iranian government. Consistently, Ahmadinejad demonizes the West, his favorite target the former President G.W. Bush, in order to create internal unity and distract from his own lack of domestic appeal.
As a third party, we must allow the Iranian President and Supreme leader to self-destruct and refrain from the tendency to involve ourselves, unless our own security is at risk. The fall of the Ottoman Empire and the period of British imperialism after WWI, left the sour taste of the West in the mouths of the disenfranchised lower and middle classes. At this critical juncture nearly 100 years later, the motto of self-determination should guide the day.