Sonic Chamer here expressed all my muddled thought very eloquently here.

Due to various very stupid actions on the part of the mullahs over the past 30 years, 70 percent of the population is under the age of 30. This is out of approximately 70 million people, give or take.

They have their own “baby boom” coming of age, and in numbers that will dwarf the US baby boom, and probably have ramifications even larger than occurred in the US (1960′s radicalism and such).

Almost 3/4 of the Iranian population have been born and raised under the mullah’s iron rule and know nothing of any other kind of lifestyle.

The only thing they know of the US is what they’ve been told – namely that we are evil and seek to destroy them.

Yet, the US for decades has not acted in ways that reinforce that claim.

Eventually, even the slowest members of society will begin to question dogma when it’s not backed up with reality and the younger generation are the ones programmed to question authority.

There’s some biological impetus to reject authority and leave the nest, and when it’s expressed in large groups of a younger generation it’s going to be directed at whoever the most convenient authority figure is.

That authority is the system the mullahs have set up.

That younger population is likewise arguably far more technically savvy than older generations – and I suspect this is going to be true no matter what society you apply that issue to.

So, it’s not unusual for this generation to use *twitter* to support their defiance of authority, but if it had not been twitter it would have been something else.

I just don’t see this younger generation of Iranians wanting to live the way the older generation did, and if the mullahs bring in what amount to mercenaries to keep order, then it will only estrange the mullahs governing system even more from the average Iranian.

The best thing the US could do at the moment is simply voice moral support for the opposition and let them work through it themselves.

The guy leading the opposition is no saint (he supports Iran having nukes and was involved in their revolution years ago), but if he is successful in confronting the ruling system then it may eventually lead to greater relaxation between Iran and the rest of the world, and then HE’LL have to deal with that same under-30 generation of Iranians who are supporting him now and will demand greater changes.

So, we should just sit back with our popcorn and enjoy the show….

You mean they skipped over a huge revolution that turned into a woman-hating, gay-slaughtering mass of enthusiastically spreading oppression?

Golly, why on earth would they have skipped that to tell us how horrible the US is, and how great Woodstock was, and how no woman ever went to college before the 60s? (All things that actually happened to me– MAN did I piss them off when I pointed out both of my grandmothers were college educated and worked outside the home.)

As for history… *lol* Europe didn’t exist except for “Columbus bad” and “Crusades worse.” Seriously, pathetic.

Nowhere I said that you “suggested that I know what the demonstrators actually want in the end, or that it resembles the American idea of a republican (small “r”) form of government, or other characteristics of America.”

I guess they do want democracy, and “wider openness to the West”, as many of the Iranian bloggers state. All I said is that their idea of it might be much different from ours.
In any case, I don’t think it’d involve welcoming back those Iranian Jews they chased out of the country, or normalizing relations with Israel.

And nowhere have I suggested that I know what the demonstrators actually want in the end, or that it resembles the American idea of a republican (small “r”) form of government, or other characteristics of America. My guess is that it does involve democracy, however, and some sort of liberty, in that what originally inflamed them is the fact that their votes were thrown away and election fraud was perpetrated on them, and that the candidate for whom they voted was in favor of relaxing some of the more Draconian aspects of the mullahs’ rule as it affects their daily life.

Another thought – and I think I and others said it already many times: the opposition (and all these people on the streets) aren’t fighting against mullahs or against theocratic government; their flags are green and they are chanting “Allahu Akbar”.I wouldn’t be surprised if what they understand under “democracy” is much different from American model, despite their superior (compared to other Muslim countries) education, technology and surface-deep westernization.

I’ll post again the link to a blogspot blog somebody advised as a good source for factual info. Somewhere in the updates the author mentions that the wounded are searched for in the hospitals by Basiji. In a LJ blog I read an interesting twist: the hospitals’ staff is ordered to admit the wounded, register their names and personal info, and then transfer them to the military hospitals; who knows if they would be ever returned to their families after that, and in what condition, if ever.

Even if Churchill did say it first.

What say you about the possible role of Russia now and in the future?