Iran’s leadership will be extremely reluctant to withdraw from the forward positions the country has gained across the Middle East. Amid the current protests, however, the West has a golden opportunity to push Iran to suspend its regional ambitions and focus on domestic economic conditions.
LONDON – One of the most extraordinary things about the current protests in Iran – the largest since the Green Movement in 2009 – is that the very people that they are directed against may well have been the people who started them. Iran’s ultra-conservative theocrats appear to have thought that by stoking anger over the economy in their political heartlands, they would undermine the moderate President Hassan Rouhani. But, if that is the case, they failed to anticipate the depth of the dissatisfaction of the Iranian people with the status quo – especially their own role in it.
LONDON – One of the most extraordinary things about the current protests in Iran – the largest since the Green Movement in 2009 – is that the very people that they are directed against may well have been the people who started them. Iran’s ultra-conservative theocrats appear to have thought that by stoking anger over the economy in their political heartlands, they would undermine the moderate President Hassan Rouhani. But, if that is the case, they failed to anticipate the depth of the dissatisfaction of the Iranian people with the status quo – especially their own role in it.