The Principle of Communicating Vessels (EN)

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UPDATE (25/03): Since I wrote this post, I noticed several comments (see here, also on BBC World yesterday) that getting healthcare reform out of the way has enabled Obama to adopt a tougher line with Netanyahu. I made my original comment in that respect (see below) hours before healthcare reform was voted in the House of Representatives. If anyone can find an earlier comment making this point, please let me know. Until then, I proudly claim the credit of being the first having noted this implication :)
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Though I have watched it passionately, I don't have any strong feelings about the substance of the debate on health insurance reform in the US. There are a lot of technicalities in the arguments that have been going back and forth; some of the objections from the conservative camp seem reasonable; it also seems odd for America not to be able to offer basic care to its sick, like virtually every other rich nation has been doing for a long time.

What gets me excited about this day is not the policy substance of healthcare reform, but the broader political significance of the moment. And its potential consequences for issues that I care a lot more about.

When a Crowd Loses Its Fear of an Army (EN)

Then a strange moment came, a moment of the kind that determines the faith of nations, because when a crowd loses its fear of an army the world changes

Salman Rushdie, The Enchantress of Florence

As the tension ahead of 22 Bahman (February 11) rises, with the Iranian islamo-fascist junta threatening a bloodbath in case of protests and arresting scores of journalists, opposition activists and others in anticipation, and with the opposition leaders standing firm and calling for people to show up in peaceful protest, it is tempting to think that some decisive development might happen this Thursday.

I hope this may be the case, but I am not holding my breath. The regime - notwithstanding the small cracks that emerged since Ashura, seems determined to cling to power through any means, even the most brutal and murderous ones. And all the guns are still on its side.
I however fully stick by my assessment that the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad regime is virtually over and it lives on borrowed time.

Ahead of the much anticipated events tomorrow, I would like to offer some thoughts on what I think are a few common fallacies among some commentators of Iran these days.

Bloody Ashura (EN)

The events unfolding today in Iran (see for instance liveblogging here and here), remind me a lot about Romania exactly 20 years ago, as it toppled its communist dictatorship in a bloody uprising. Like then, the world is watching in awe as history is being made.

Last week I predicted that people's emotional response to the death of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri may be the tipping point of the green revolution. It now seems all but certain that this has been indeed the case.

Making History in Death: Montazeri (EN)

Crowd emotions sometimes have a strange alchemy.
In a political resistance movement, the death of a leader can at times spell the slow extinction of the activist energy of his followers, allowing the establishment to regain its footing and re-establish control.
But more often, it only serves to give fresh, decisive momentum to a mass dynamics that can thereafter overcome any obstacle.

The passing away last Saturday of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri (1922-2009) in Iran appears to be of the second category.