The odds don’t look good for the Iranian people. The regime has a corps of thugs, the Basij, who enjoy the perks of license to brutality, the motorcycle gangster hip reputation, and a degree of financial support. This army of brownshirts is backstopped by another force, the “revolutionary guards”, that has both business and military branches. It’s all very fascist. The mullahs, Ahmadinejad, etc. are the face the government presents to the outside and to the people, but there’ve been some careful analyses done of who is finally calling the shots, and from these one may conclude that the Revolutionary Guards have the final say. They are, in effect, the government.

So, no one man can have a change of heart and relent. No committee of mullahs, reading theological texts and studying scholarship from Egypt, can have a change of heart that matters. To topple the Nazis it took invasion from East and West, and the regime held on for a time even after the Ruhr industrial district, and Berlin, had both fallen. Two wooden stakes plus garlic were needed to kill it.

This Iranian regime is solidly planted, ruthless and heartless. It has money, weapons, street power. The military isn’t a disinterested professional force.

All these things don’t make the regime immortal. But attempts at revolution can fail even with the backing of most of the people. Any encouragement we give the people of Iran should be given cautiously: we do not promise military help, we will not come to their rescue, they’re on their own. If they win, which we cannot foresee, we will rejoice with them and look to a cooperative future. If they lose, they die.

And if they don’t make the attempt? Life in Iran is hard and the regime is on a crusade [ahm, eh] to get nuclear weapons. And then what? The prospects are just awful. But we, here, are not well placed to see just how likely it is that the regime, once it does have nukes, will plunge Iran into war. We cannot discern whether a desperate long shot rebellion makes sense.

Makes ya want to just cry.