Iran

I've been feeling like writing something about the demonstrations going on in Iran and the incredible Twitter posts Andrew Sullivan has been running. My feelings are mixed. Mousavi is no opposition leader. He was selected not by the Iranian people, but by the Guardian Council, to be a presidential candidate in a country where the president has relatively little authority. The disappointing tenure of the last "reformist" president, Mohamad Khatami, highlights this latter point. This was no free and fair election. But what is very clear is that the Iranian people are now rising up and demanding that their voices be heard, and we have to be on their side. By the way, "we" includes the Obama administration. As Hitchens puts it:

Want to take a noninterventionist position? All right, then, take a noninterventionist position. This would mean not referring to Khamenei in fawning tones as the supreme leader and not calling Iran itself by the tyrannical title of "the Islamic republic." But be aware that nothing will stop the theocrats from slandering you for interfering anyway. Also try to bear in mind that one day you will have to face the young Iranian democrats who risked their all in the battle and explain to them just what you were doing when they were being beaten and gassed. (Hint: Don't make your sole reference to Iranian dictatorship an allusion to a British-organized coup in 1953; the mullahs think that it proves their main point, and this generation has more immediate enemies to confront.)

Tom Friedman offers some advice about how exactly we might go about supporting the Green Revolution--have our own green revolution:

If we could bring down the price of oil, the Islamic Republic — which has been buying off its people with subsidies and jobs for years — would face the same pressures. The ayatollahs would either have to start taking subsidies away from Iranians, which would only make the turbaned shahs more unpopular, or empower Iran’s human talent — men and women — and give them free access to the learning, science, trade and collaboration with the rest of the world that would enable this once great Persian civilization to thrive without oil.

That pretty much sums up my view, better than I could have, anyhow.