In a country where poverty, corruption, water and power shortages, and runaway inflation are fueling unprecedented anger, the sight of a massive crowd gathered freely in the heart of Tehran could have done more than provide music; it could have lit the fuse of a street revolt.
The abandonment of the Iranian people cannot be laid solely at the feet of their rulers. The same indecision and short-termism that have long characterized the regime’s nuclear diplomacy appear, in another form, in the fractured ranks of the opposition.
What steps in domestic politics could keep us from sliding into an external military aggression, a coup, civil war, and economic–environmental ruin?
A sense of belonging to one’s home is a human feeling; it does not inherently require allegiance to any particular state or fixed borders. Home is where you work, toil, build a life and a house.
After Israel’s twelve-day military onslaught, the moderates are openly talking about the need to change the “governance paradigm.” That paradigm, when stripped of euphemism, is the Supreme Leader’s doctrine of clerical rule (Velayat-e-Faghih) and the Shiite radicalism of the “Axis of Resistance.”