Iran

I wonder if the current uprising of ‘militant moderates’ in Iran will bring down the hard-line shia islamic regime. I don’t think it will happen without a fightback but ultimately, if people power wins, it will change the course of world affairs.

Ayatollah Khomeni’s 1979 islamic revolution in Iran, that followed so shortly after the socialist semi-revolution that toppled the Shah, demonstrated to the world how islam could be used as a political force.

Iran blazed a trail for radical islam around the world. Ironically, most radical islamist groups, like Al Qaeda, are sunni and regard the Iranian shia regime as infidels who should be destroyed, but that doesn’t take way the fact that Iran sowed the seeds in peoples’ minds of how people could be mobilised.

This is almost the first widespread use of people power against radical islam in a muslim country, although there were violent demonstrations against the Taliban in Pakistan recently.

If the Iranian religious regime falls at the hands of Iran’s own people, what will that suggest to the people of Saudi Arabia etc?

One of the main appeals of radical islam seems to have been as a way of asserting identity as non-western, by being as different as possible from western infidels. But maybe people are beginning to feel that the solution is worse than the problem.