Iran's Die-Hard Democrats

Are Iran's democratic stirrings truly a thing of the past? Ever since the so-called Green Movement coalesced in the wake of the country's fraudulent June 2009 presidential vote, Western observers have rushed to write its epitaph.

Over the past year, more than a few Iran watchers have argued that the internal contradictions within Iran's opposition movement doom it to failure and that, as a result, Washington has no alternative but to engage with Iran's ayatollahs. Similarly, some media outlets, in reporting the Green Movement's lackluster showing during Ashura celebrations in mid-December, have suggested that Iran's once-vibrant democracy drive has run out of gas. Still others have concluded that, at least when it comes to mobilization and mass protest, the Green Movement should now be considered largely defunct.

But is it? Unquestionably, the wave of opposition that swept over Iran in the summer of 2009 has receded significantly. Organizationally, Iranian democrats' lack of sustained leadership and the absence of a unifying common vision have served to undermine their long-term cohesion. Practically, these opposition activists gradually have been cowed into passivity by the widespread brutality of the regime's domestic militia, the Basij. Any yet, if the Iranian government's recent machinations are any indication, the powers-that-be in Tehran are far less certain than are Western foreign-policy experts that Iran's democratic impulses have withered on the vine.

To wit, Tehran's chief prosecutor, Abbas Jafari-Dolatabadi, announced plans this month to prosecute Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Kharroubi, the thwarted presidential candidates who went on to become the titular leaders of the Green Movement. "Leaders of the sedition will definitely be prosecuted," Mr. Jafari-Dolatabadi has confirmed, warning that "[t]he accusations against the sedition leaders are more than they think and they will understand when we issue our list of charges."

Trying to figure out the politics of the Mid East is fruitless, thankless, and dangerous!

The article was about Iranian politics. Here is just one of many reasons I arrived at the perspective of Islam that I write from.

A friend put in a cold storage warehouse and dock for his refrigerated ships - location in Iran. The Shah is booted from office because of events at the nexus of American Mid East politics and Iranian politics.

The dock was built, the cold storage facility was on line, and the Moslims took over. $25 megabucks was lost to the Moslims. That’s when gas was 25 cent per gallon. Think a loss of over $320 megabucks on todays economy.

As with the F-4 aircraft also taken by the Moslims, nothing really functions today.

I am of the opinion that hoping that “democracy” will ever really take over in any Moslim land is a vain and dangerous hope. Winston Churchill said it best:
“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.

The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.

No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”

— Sir Winston Churchill (The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 [London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899]).

Nuke ‘em all, nuke ‘em all,
the Sunni, the Shia, and all,

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