Say Anything Blog

It started out as resentment over a rigged election but is now becoming much, much more than that.

I said a few days ago that if the protests didn’t lead to some sort of victory and soon, the government would begin to start picking off the protesters, dragging them from their homes and schools, and some may never be seen again.

I was right, but I’m not gloating about it.

People are being dragged away and beaten and tortured in a “crackdown” by Iranian security forces. It looks like the government is getting the upper hand. They’ve managed to block most communications out of the country - a rather remarkable feat that I don’t think anyone expected - and have given the boot to outside journalists so that no one can reliably relay the extent of their brutality. Those who didn’t leave have actually been jailed.

There are rumors that some of those “security forces” are Palestinian thugs shipped in by the government as enforcers, which would make sense on the government’s part. Radicals with no emotional ties to the populace would make formidable and deadly opponents of the protesters. Not only in that their loyalty to the government would be unquestioned. They have to win. Losing and being stranded amid a population that hates you is unthinkable.

So…it looks bad for the protesters right now, but the Iranian mullahs are miscalculating. They should have compromised a bit to mollify the population, at least until the next election, but they haven’t and they won’t. Like any other dictatorship throughout history they will fight to keep power at all costs. And here’s why it will cost them.

This isn’t thirty years ago. This isn’t an Iranian population who only know what the mullahs tell them and who mindlessly kneel at their feet in worshipful obedience. These are intelligent and sophisticated people who are well aware of the outside world and who are well aware of when their government is feeding them nonsense. And the mullah’s crackdown won’t stop what they’re trying to do - it will only slow it down.

For a rather chilling first hand account complete with pictures of what’s happening to people behind the closed doors of the “security forces” go over to Salon.com and read the story of a 17 year-old who was in their hands.

Note this part of his story:

.....we were transferred to the minus 4 level of Ministry of Intelligence building. There were a lot of riot police in black uniforms like those on the streets there. They were mostly non-Farsi speakers, and those who spoke Farsi kept telling us they could kill us right away and no one would ever know, they were also insulting us with very bad words.”

Non-Farsi speakers. Arabs? Palestinians?

Importing animals to torture your own people is not something they are likely to forget. Nor will they forget the people who were shot down in the street by their own government. The mullahs have made a bad mistake. It may take some time but they have assured the absolute certainty of their downfall.

The people may have to withdraw now but what started as resentment over a rigged election will most certainly become a seething hatred of the theocracy. The mullahs and their henchmen will pay the price when it boils over, even if it is unthinkable to them now in the smugness of power.

Just ask Romania’s Ceausescu. Oh, wait - you can’t, can you?