Monday, June 22, 2009

Regime change in Iran?

Looks like the Iranian crisis has legs. Despite tough talk from the top mullah, Khameni on Friday, crows came out for demonstrations on Saturday. Smaller, but still enough to give us video of crowds throwing rocks at cops. This thing has been going for a week now, and the authorities have not yet ordered a Tienanmen Square style crackdown, you know tanks and troops and shoot the demonstrators until they flee.
Either the regime is hoping things will die down, or they fear a real crackdown might not work. The troops might not fire on the crowds, or the resulting outrage might spread the unrest rather than chilling it. Either way, the street demonstrations continue.
Obama has soft pedaled the thing. He was hoping to negotiate with Amadinajahd over nuclear weapons. He fears expressing support for the demonstrators will irritate Amadinajahd and make negotiation more difficult. This is kinda dumb, Amadinajahd hates our guts already. No amount of support for his opponent will make things any worse than they already are. In actual fact, regime change is the only hope we have of preventing a nuclear Iran. We don't know if this thing can hang on and overthrow the mullah's, but it's the best chance we have.
On the other hand, the US of A is not exactly popular in Iran, and siding with the insurgents might hurt them more than help them. Kinda like how a Russian endorsement of an American politician would be a kiss of death.
I noted that Obama claimed lack of knowledge of the true state of affairs inside Iran. Way to go CIA.

No comments: