That was then:
This is now:
Iran is experiencing its deadliest political unrest since the Islamic Revolution 40 years ago, with at least 180 people killed — and possibly hundreds more — as angry protests have been smothered in a government crackdown of unbridled force.
It began two weeks ago with an abrupt increase of at least 50 percent in gasoline prices. Within 72 hours, outraged demonstrators in cities large and small were calling for an end to the Islamic Republic’s government and the downfall of its leaders.
In many places, security forces responded by opening fire on unarmed protesters, largely unemployed or low-income young men between the ages of 19 and 26, according to witness accounts and videos. In the southwest city of Mahshahr alone, witnesses and medical personnel said, Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps members surrounded, shot and killed 40 to 100 demonstrators — mostly unarmed young men — in a marsh where they had sought refuge.
The revolutionary government in Iran has now become exactly what they took power to replace.
In 1978, one of my dad’s friends was an ESL instructor working in Tehran. As Iran descended into violence, he was lucky to escape with his life. Back in those days, an American expat with a PhD could find work in Iran before the revolution. Afterwards? Not so much. Anyway, my dad’s friend had a sobering story to tell and the scar from a bullet wound he received as he was in the process of making his escape. A reminder that first-gen PhDs (probably especially in the liberal arts) take some real crap jobs so the more well connected PhDs don’t have to.
Early on as a young adult, I remember there being some hope that the Revolutionary government would be overthrown quickly. Went to college with a few student activists (mostly from families who had fled) who agitated for a regime change. Not a lot of love lost for the Shah (who was a reprehensible dictator in his own right), but no way for those who preferred a more secular form of government to survive there either. Their hopes were eventually dashed.
And here we are. The regime seems ossified. The sanctions re-imposed against it certainly hurt a lot of the less privileged in Iran, who are feeling the pain in shock price increases. Not sure how the regime survives, but not exactly sure what kind of government would fill the void left behind.
They are just like the other regimes American neocons love and support.
This is what happens when you overthrow democratically elected governments.
There’s precious little evidence that sanctions work if an authoritarian regime is willing to use violence against its people. In ’78, the US pressured the Shah to curtail the violence and human rights abuses, and then the military abandoned him. The Revolutionary Guard aren’t going to abandon Khamenei. They will continue to kill protestors, because that works. This is Tiananmen not the Berlin Wall.