Iran in Ferment: Cracks in the Regime

Issue Date October 2009
Volume 20
Issue 4
Page Numbers 11-15
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In today’s theocratic Iran, everyone remains guilty until proven innocent. The ruling mullahs and their lieutenants operate on the premise that each citizen’s every deed or word is potentially both a crime and an act of disobedience. Yet there are reliable indications that many in the ministry either sympathize with the reform movement or simply do not believe the paranoid “Western conspiracy” theory of all that has happened since June 12, and see it instead for what it is: an outpouring of deep and genuine popular discontent. In addition, rifts within the IRGC-Khamenei-Ahmedinejad triumvirate have become public. Yet while the opposition movement has not been crushed even by months of brutal repression, neither has it carried the day and pushed the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) toward a decisively more democratic alternative.

About the Author

Abbas Milani is director of the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies and a visiting professor of political science at Stanford University. In addition, he is a research fellow and codirector of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution.

View all work by Abbas Milani