The current coverage of the protests sweeping across Iran is bad by design. The Obama administration used the press to mislead the American public in order to win the president’s signature foreign policy initiative. The bill for that program of systematic misinformation is still coming in, and the price is much higher than anyone could have imagined, including more than 500,000 dead in Syria and an American press incapable of understanding, never mind reporting, that this death toll was part of Obama’s quid pro quo for the nuclear deal.
It's all about protecting Holy Obama Legacy.
Good luck with that if the Iranian people overthrow President Obama's partner--the thug mullah regime running Iran.
UPDATE: This is still just protests. Widespread and significant protests to be sure, but still protests:
The widespread unrest in Iran has been underway for a week now. Protests have been reported (often with cell phone video) in nearly a hundred cities and large towns throughout the country. The demonstrations and the government response so far has paralyzed the economy. Officials have already leaked details of meetings of the senior leaders several days after the protests began and how there was no agreement on how to deal with it. The leaders would not authorize maximum force to suppress the protests because that is not supposed to be the Iranian way and because there is doubt that the security forces would follow those orders. At least two dozen have died so far, nearly all of them protestors. Over a thousand have been arrested, about half of them in the capital. The protests are largely about poverty, inflation and onerous lifestyle rules. The protestors are mostly under 30 and from all levels of society. This uprising, like the failed effort in 2009, was not a complete surprise. The government lost majority support in the 1990s and never got it back. Iran has become a theocracy, a police state propped up by fear and force. Iranians want a change.
Do read it all.
But the Syrian multi-war started as protests in 2011, too. Those morphed into armed resistance within a year. What has Iran learned from their Syria intervention?
And I still wonder if Iran is diverting the pipeline of their non-Iranian Shia foreign legion that leads to Syria to instead end in Iran to build up loyal forces to unleash violence on Iranian protesters.
Oppression works until it doesn't, of course. I just have no way to judge if my hopes that this unrest will evolve has a basis in reality.
All I know is that it could be different today.
UPDATE: Heck, will Iraqi Popular Mobilization Force militias more loyal to Iran than to the Iraqi government cross into Iran to help the mullahs?
UPDATE: The US government is fully validating the justice of the Iranian protests. Knowing they aren't alone will help the protesters and hopefully deter a bloody Iranian crackdown.
UPDATE: Former Obama Secretary of Defense laments failure of Obama administration to support 2009 Iranian protest movement.
Have the mullahs unleashed repression away from the few foreign eyes in Tehran?
Iran is one giant source of #MeToo abuse at the hands of the mullah regime but don't expect pussy hat protests over here in support of those women.
And finally, is this really the end of the mullah regime we are seeing? Hard to say.
America should do its best to provide Iranians with information about the protests and the regime that the regime itself is blocking. Make sure Iranians know they aren't forgotten by the world and that we recognize the legitimacy of their protests. If we can rally nations to sanction Iran to pressure Iran not to unleash the goons with orders to kill, we will have helped the protesters a lot, I think.
Tips to Instapundit for this update.
UPDATE: Hezbollah is downplaying the protests.
No doubt they want that to be true lest Iran order Hezbollah to send their fighters fresh from losing well over 2,000 KIA in Syria in defense of Assad off to Iran to fight directly for the Iranian mullahs.
Yeah, this map might frighten Hezbollah about the scale of their future deployment if the crisis is worse than Hezbollah says it is.
Oh, and the Turks seem to be siding with Iran's regime. Naturally.
