Iran: Desperately seeking Yeltsin -Charles Krauthammer
Iran today is a revolution in search of its Yeltsin. Without leadership, demonstrators will take to the street only so many times to face tear gas, batons and bullets.
They need a leader like Boris Yeltsin: a former establishment
figure with credentials and legitimacy, who stands on a tank [holding papers in photo at right] and gives the opposition direction by calling for the unthinkable - the abolition of the old political order. Right now the Iranian revolution has no leader.
[T]he Khamenei-Ahmadinejad regime has shown the requisite efficiency and ruthlessness at suppressing widespread unrest. Its brutality has been deployed intelligently. The key is to atomize the opposition. Start with the most sophisticated methods to block Internet and cellphone traffic. Allow the massive demonstrations to largely come and go - avoiding Tiananmen-style wholesale bloodshed - but disrupt the smaller ones with street-side violence and rooftop snipers, the perfect instrument of terror. Death, instant and unseen, the kind that only the most reckless and courageous will brave.
Terror visited by invisible men. From rooftops by day. And by night, swift and sudden raids that pull students out of dormitories, the wounded out of hospitals, for beatings and disappearances.
The opposition needs a general strike and major rallies in the major cities - but this time with someone who stands up and points out the road ahead. Or to put it another way, can Mousavi become Yeltsin?
Revolutions are dynamic, fluid. It is true that two months ago there was little difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi. But that day is long gone. Revolutions outrun their origins. And they transform their leaders.
[T]he bloody suppression of his followers led him to make statements just short of challenging the legitimacy of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the very foundations of the regime. The dynamic continues: The regime is preparing the basis for Mousavi's indictment (for sedition), arrest, even possible execution. The prospect of hanging radicalizes further.
[T]he revolution hangs in the balance. The regime may neutralize him by arrest or even murder. It may buy him off with offers of safety. He may well prefer to let this cup pass from his lips.
But choose he must, and choose quickly. This is his moment and it is fading rapidly. Unless Mousavi rises to it, or another rises in his place, Iran's democratic uprising will end not as Russia 1991, but as China 1989.
[Jerusalem Post]
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Iran today is a revolution in search of its Yeltsin. Without leadership, demonstrators will take to the street only so many times to face tear gas, batons and bullets.
They need a leader like Boris Yeltsin: a former establishment
figure with credentials and legitimacy, who stands on a tank [holding papers in photo at right] and gives the opposition direction by calling for the unthinkable - the abolition of the old political order. Right now the Iranian revolution has no leader.[T]he Khamenei-Ahmadinejad regime has shown the requisite efficiency and ruthlessness at suppressing widespread unrest. Its brutality has been deployed intelligently. The key is to atomize the opposition. Start with the most sophisticated methods to block Internet and cellphone traffic. Allow the massive demonstrations to largely come and go - avoiding Tiananmen-style wholesale bloodshed - but disrupt the smaller ones with street-side violence and rooftop snipers, the perfect instrument of terror. Death, instant and unseen, the kind that only the most reckless and courageous will brave.
Terror visited by invisible men. From rooftops by day. And by night, swift and sudden raids that pull students out of dormitories, the wounded out of hospitals, for beatings and disappearances.
The opposition needs a general strike and major rallies in the major cities - but this time with someone who stands up and points out the road ahead. Or to put it another way, can Mousavi become Yeltsin?
Revolutions are dynamic, fluid. It is true that two months ago there was little difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi. But that day is long gone. Revolutions outrun their origins. And they transform their leaders.
[T]he bloody suppression of his followers led him to make statements just short of challenging the legitimacy of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the very foundations of the regime. The dynamic continues: The regime is preparing the basis for Mousavi's indictment (for sedition), arrest, even possible execution. The prospect of hanging radicalizes further.
[T]he revolution hangs in the balance. The regime may neutralize him by arrest or even murder. It may buy him off with offers of safety. He may well prefer to let this cup pass from his lips.
But choose he must, and choose quickly. This is his moment and it is fading rapidly. Unless Mousavi rises to it, or another rises in his place, Iran's democratic uprising will end not as Russia 1991, but as China 1989.
[Jerusalem Post]
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