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The deadline for Iran to accept a U.N.-brokered deal on its controversial nuclear program expired on Dec. 31, proving yet again that the policy of modifying the behavior of the Islamic Republic is not working. While Washington frets over what the Obama Administration should do next, legitimate power is tilting away from the central government toward a confident Green Movement. More and more experts are concluding that it is no longer a question of whether the regime in Tehran will fall, but rather when.

The stranglehold on Iran's economy wielded by elements of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and the state militia's attack last month on mourners at the funeral of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, revealed to the nation as a whole, from city dwellers to villagers, and from the secular to the religious, that the Islamic Revolution has degenerated into an illegitimate cartel backed by merciless armed militias. In the meantime, disparate groups have coalesced into an inclusive Green Movement, representing the aspirations of a range of Iranians for social freedom, democracy and human rights.

The religious faction of the democratic movement comprises elements within the bureaucracy, university professors, teachers in religious seminaries and enlightened younger veterans of the IRGC who fought in the Iran-Iraq War and remain loyal to the legacy of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The liberal and social democrats include women and youths, ethnic and re... >>>