Of course, it’s not a revolution–not yet, anyway. Although opposition crowds swelled from several tens of thousands at pre-election rallies to perhaps a million or more afterward, the regime controls a vast repressive apparatus…And the opposition’s leaders are not exactly revolutionaries…But there’s no denying that for the first time since the1978-79 revolution, which led to the Islamic Republic, Iran’s leadership is confronted with an explosive and unpredictable challenge: from below, a mass movement whose street energy and high-tech organizing savvy spread from Tehran to Isfahan, Shiraz, Mashhad and other cities. And within the elite there is a swelling wave of dissatisfaction with the narrow-minded radicals in power, who are blamed for having squandered the country’s oil wealth, mismanaged its economy and forced Iran into a crippling regime of sanctions that have walled it off from the technology and foreign investment it desperately needs. As a result, Iran is at a crossroads.
