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.