Egypt and Iran

Why Tehran's thugs will be harder to depose than Hosni Mubarak.

Iran's Green movement, the squelched democratic hope of 2009, isn't dead after all. Wearing green scarves and chanting "Death to the dictator!", tens of thousands turned out in Tehran, Shiraz and other Iranian cities Monday to demand political change. The size of the protests surprised and embarrassed the regime, but it's important to understand why revolution will be harder than in Egypt and Tunisia.

Iran has many of the revolutionary ingredients found in those countries: a technologically savvy and frustrated young population, a stultifying society, stagnant economy and a corrupt military-run regime. Its middle classes are, if anything, better educated and more politically conscious than in the Arab world.

But Iran's leaders are also more ruthless. The regime in Tehran—aptly described by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday as "a military dictatorship with a kind of theocratic overlay"—feels zero compunction or shame about repressing political opponents. Hosni Mubarak and Egypt's military, dependent on U.S. aid and support, were susceptible to outside pressure to shun violence. Tehran scorns the West.

To put it another way, pro-American dictatorships have more moral scruples. The comparison is akin to what happened in the 1980s when U.S. allies led by authoritarians fell peacefully in the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan, even as Communist regimes proved tougher.

Global View Columnist Bret Stephens reveals the disturbing history of one of Egypt's rising powers.

Plainclothes basiji militias and riot police cleared Tehran's streets Monday with electric batons, wooden bats, pepper gas and rubber-coated bullets. At least one protester died. Opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi were placed under house arrest, and Iran's rubber-stamp parliament yesterday called for them to be tried as "corrupts" and hanged. The regime arrested thousands and executed dozens of opposition protestors in 2009, and it assumed Iranians wouldn't dare challenge them again. Monday's protests were the biggest in 14 months.

Iran's rulers are equally brazen as censors. Egypt's rebels could organize on Facebook and sound off on Twitter, but Iran's regime blocks opposition websites and even probes text messages for offending passages. The plans for the protests, organized under the cover of solidarity with Tunisia and Egypt, had to get out by word of mouth and occasional Web messages.

Also notice how relatively little coverage the demonstrations received in the foreign media. Footage came in grainy videos posted on YouTube. Iran booted out most foreign journalists in summer 2009. CNN's Anderson Cooper may have been roughed up in Cairo during the Egyptian uprising, but he and hundreds of others were allowed to broadcast live from Egypt for 18 days. And where is al Jazeera in Tehran?

Associated Press

Iran has many of the revolutionary ingredients found in Egypt and Tunisia, but Iran's leaders are also more ruthless.

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Perhaps the most significant difference is the nature of the struggle. In Tunisia, as in Egypt, the demands of the demonstrators were straightforward: Down with the strongman. It's not as simple in Iran, which doesn't have a single dictator as much as a dictatorial system. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who claimed victory in fraudulent elections in 2009, galvanized the millions of protestors at the time. But he's no more than one leader, and in some ways a figurehead, atop the regime. The opposition itself isn't sure whether to push for the regime's downfall or its reform.

Iran's military is also too marginalized to play honest broker as the armed forces did in Tunisia and Egypt. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps holds the real police power in Iran as well as huge stakes in the economy. Add the ideological loyalty of the Revolutionary Guard to the regime, and the task for the democratic opposition looks even more daunting.

It was good to hear Mrs. Clinton and President Obama sound a morally clearer note in the past few days than they did in 2009. Two years ago, Mr. Obama suffered from the illusion that his silence would buy him good will from Tehran in talks over its nuclear program. Those talks went nowhere, and the bomb work continues. Yet many policy makers and pundits in the West still want to engage the regime as if it were merely another thuggish status quo power, rather than the greatest threat to world order.

The revolution will come to Iran eventually. Iranians are overwhelmingly young and pro-American, and they hate their anti-American regime. But in the meantime, the U.S. and its allies need a far tougher strategy of isolation and pressure. Louder and more active support for Iran's democrats should be a main plank of the strategy whose goal should be freedom for Iranians.

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