Liberal urbanite anger will overthrown the repressive government
If anything these protests have been most chaotic among "conservative" regional cities out of Tehran.
Iran's current repressed elections already do, never mind the machinations of the Revolutionary Guard?
The high-turnout election in 2017 already showed a non-conservative like Rouhani can win a large swath of the country, nor as if there's an ultra-conservative force lurking in Iran that's really that worse than the whole gamut of mullahs on display now.
There is, are you kidding me? The Rouhani government isn't full of late 90s "reformists..."
Again, Rouhani is a relative reformist but still very much part of the establishment. One of the great uncertainties of the current protests is how anti-establishment the protesters are, and how they could overshadow the reformist politics of older generations.
I don't have insider knowledge on this, but did you not even acknowledge some of the pro-Shah slogans at protests a few days ago? This is probably one of the least silly things you wrote here, but you make it sound like it's a shock that Iranians aren't allying with self absorbed American neocons.
Yes, every authoritarian country says that, but if anything the front groups in Iran are markedly illiberal (like the MEK)
Another one of the less silly things you wrote, though the long term consequences are unclear...
Wow, very scary. The non-elecfed elements of Iranian politics have continued interventionism that his bellicose rhetoric has suggested, so how big would that really be?
You usually at least pretend to be more well informed than this, so I don't know what happened. I'm not calling myself an expert either - I'm just trying to read up on the issue, some of which I documented on AAD.
