SHUTTING THE GATE AFTER THE HORSE HAS BOLTED :

Ruling cleric warns Iran 'on the brink of explosion' (WORLD TRIBUNE.COM, June 3, 2002)

A key Iranian ruling cleric has warned that the Islamic republic is on the verge of a popular uprising that could topple the regime.

"The people are very dissatisfied, and they are right to be so, and I swear to God that the society is on the brink of explosion," said Ayatollah Ebrahim Amini, the deputy Speaker of the Assembly of Experts

The 72-member Assembly of Experts is regarded as the highest consultative body in the Islamic republic. It is the only group to which Khamenei is responsible, according to Middle East Newsline.

Amini urged the regime to listen to the people. The cleric said not even the Islamic republic can rule by force. "If this discontent increases, as is the case, society and the regime will be threatened. No regime can maintain itself in power by force."

I believe--though hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong--that it was Milton Friedman who said that by the time the Federal Reserve notices a trend it has probably already been taken care of by the market, so they should really do the opposite of what the trend suggests. That is to say : if the Fed notes an uptick in inflation the natural impulse is to raise interest rates; but the market will have already corrected for the uptick and put on deflationary pressure; so the Fed should really cut rates. It seems to me that this rule holds true in nearly all human affairs. We're so slow on the uptake that by the time a problem becomes significant enough for us to take notice, it has probably peaked and headed back downward.

Today's case in point would be fundamentalist Islam, which we suddenly see as a threat to the West even as it seems to have entered its final, though violent, death throes. Iran's revolution is twenty years old now and it is over--stick a fork in it--turn out the lights the party's over--get a toe tag--done. And considering the enormous advantages that Iran started out with--thanks to the modernizing and Westernizing of the Shah--it may represent the best case scenario for the radical Islamist experiment. These twenty years of precipitous decline and the angry demands of its people for a return to Western ways may be the best that the fundamentalists can hope for. Not much is it?

The attacks on 9-11 were enough to get any people riled up and move them to irrational action. Our threats and curses and demands were entirely understandable given the context of the horrific murder of 3,000 fellow citizens. But it is time to step back and take a more mature and realistic look at the Islamic world, which far from being a rising threat to our way of life, is a despondent and confused region facing massive disruption as it transitions, almost overnight and quite unwillingly, from an authoritarian and premodern culture towards liberal capitalist protestant democracy. It's hardly surprising that the prospect of this complete revolution in Islamic life should terrify the Muslim world. Many of the certainties by which people have lived their lives for fourteen centuries have been proven wrong and, in order to survive and thrive in the modern world, Islam will have to reform itself in previously unimaginable ways. But that process is already underway and we need to make sure that we help it along, rather than needlessly turn this whole mess into a contest of us vs. them and ruin the chances for a relatively peaceful reform from within.

We've obviously had a complicated and often fractious relationship with Iran over the course of the last fifty or so years. But it's time to let bygones be bygones and to stand ready to help if the people of Iran are willing to be helped.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 3, 2002 3:15 PM