The disparate opposition in Iran continues to grow. Anti-government protests show no sign of stopping. If anything, they’re getting more brazen.
The New York Times columnist Roger Cohen outlines a possible way forward (and gels with my experiences there in 2007, a people maybe looking for change, but not a revolution):
Something has to give, someone has to yield. If the Islamic Republic is incapable of honoring both words in its self-description — that of a religious and representative society — it must give way to an Iranian Republic.
The former course, of reform rather than overthrow, would be less tumultuous and so, I suspect, more attractive to a people weary of tumult and flanked by mayhem in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Maziar Bahari is an Iranian-Canadian journalist, filmmaker and Newsweek reporter and was imprisoned by authorities in Iran after the June elections:
Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship. The Revolutionary Guard, who are in charge of—who want to become in charge of Iran at the moment, they have taken over all the strategic positions in the country, including the nuclear program, and they want to establish a military dictatorship in Iran.
I think they will fail in the long run. But in the process of creating this military dictatorship, there will be much violence, bloodshed, and there will be many victims. What we witnessed a few days ago in Tehran and other cities is just the beginning of the end of the Islamic Republic as we know it…