Iran's Revolution Has a Vacancy at the Top
The Washington Post / Azadeh Moaveni
26-Jul-2009 (one comment)

Iranians' ambivalence about Mousavi's leadership has also been reflected on their Facebook pages. The personal sites that bore the green logo "What Happened to My Vote?" began to change tone in early July. Many posted a picture of Mohammed Mossadegh, the democratically elected prime minister and national hero who was ousted in a CIA-backed coup in 1953. Under the photograph, his famous statement of anxiety about Islamist politics is quoted in bold: "I hope that Shiite leaders don't have any serious intention of entering the political arena. If this were to happen, Iran will be at the brink of catastrophe."

Mossadegh was a secular nationalist who was fiercely protective of Iran's sovereignty. Invoking him as a symbol of the leader Iranians aspire to have reminds me of the 1997-2005 era of the reformist president Mohammad Khatami. I lived in Iran during a long stretch of that time and find the wistful references to Mossadegh eerily familiar. He reappears cyclically, at moments when Iranians despair of the leaders available to them, and of any chance to shed the Islamic theocracy that many consider corrupt and unaccountable

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Ostaad

Judging the Iranian people's attitudes toward...

by Ostaad on

their political leaders based on their "Facebook" pages is like judging the American people's political views based on conversations among some members of some country clubs! Not everyone does Facebook, Ms. Moaveni. I'm sure yaknowwhatImtalin'bout.

Thad said, I am all  in favor of the people's uprising to be run at the grass-root level without a prominent leader who would suck the oxygen by focusing attention on him/herself.

This is a golden opportunity for the Iranian people to learn and execute an effective political movement to rid Iran of the current usurper regime.

More power to the people.