...completely. Roger Cohen, in his powerful piece on Iran in the current New York Review, tries to capture the mix of anti-clericalism, religiosity, and secularism he witnessed during last month's post-election protests:
In that moment, the crowd seemed irresistible, too large to be harmed, too strong to be cowed, and it was as if the whole frustrated centennial Iranian quest for some form of democratic pluralism, some workable compromise between clericalism and secularism that denies neither the country's profound Islamic faith nor its broad attraction to liberal values, had welled onto that broad avenue.What Cohen witnessed was "a fundamental battle between nationalist-revolutionaries and reform-minded internationalists...stirred by President Obama's overtures." His bottom line:
A great desire and a great rage inhabited those rooftop cries. I hear them still. Iran, thanks in part to the revolution, now has many of the preconditions for democracy, including a large middle class, broad higher education, and a youthful population that is sophisticated and engaged. If Khamenei and the revolutionary establishment deny that, as they did with violence after June 12, they will in the end devour themselves. When that will be I do not know, but Iran's government and people are marching in opposite directions. I do know that if the hard-liners maintain their current tenuous hold, the one way they will lock it in for a long time would be if bombs fell on Iran. Offers of engagement have unsettled the regime. Military confrontation would cement it.Ugly Thought: Perverse though it seems, this suggests that a shaky Iranian regime might want there to be a military strike against its nuclear facilities--and self-interestedly provoke it.
To add my own ugly thought: I strongly suspect that the neocons' willingness to accommodate such a desire comes more from them wanting a destabilized, and therefore more vulnerable to manipulation, Iran, rather than a democratic one.