Informed Comment Shared via AddThis - Jonathan Lyon's discussion of the religious history of Iran and the contending views of clerics and how they view the 'Supreme Leader' - recommended reading
With the supreme leader’s address to Friday prayers in Tehran affirming the election result and warning protesters to stay off the streets, it is hard to see how the protests can end in anything but a violent crackdown. Any move in that direction will certainly increase the pressure on President Obama, now chiefly from the neo-cons but likely to spread, to “do something” to support the protesters. In the current circumstances, however, any White House response is virtually certain to backfire and will only entangle the United States in a struggle it cannot see or fully understand. The West must not allow itself to be so destracted by the political street theatre in Iran that it falls back on its default position – that the end of clerical rule is at hand.
It would serve us well to remember Iran, like it or not, is a sovereign country and the last time we 'meddled' with such a country in Iran was and is a disaster. And we might want to remember what has happened in this and other countries when we've tried to insert ourselves into political issues in another country.
