Is a revolution brewing in Iran?

Fareed: Why Iran Has the Ingredients for Revolution

To understand why Iran looks poised for a period of instability, look to Alexis de Tocqueville’s assessment of the French Revolution, Fareed argues in his latest Washington Post column. Sometimes a country is most vulnerable to revolution just as it is reforming.

“Iran’s Green Movement of 2009 is an illustration of Tocqueville’s thesis. It happened only because the country held elections, complete with debates, candidates with opposing views and secret balloting. The process raised the hopes of many Iranians, who were then deeply disappointed when, in the end, the elections were thought to have been rigged and the more reform-minded candidate was defeated. In Egypt today, no one expects an actual election, so when Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sissi wins 97 percent of the vote, no one protests,” Fareed notes.

“Iran has the ingredients for a revolution. More than half of the population is younger than 30, many youths are educated yet unemployed...and reformers have consistently raised expectations yet never delivered on their promises. But the regime also has instruments of power, ideology, repression and patronage, all of which it is ready to wield to stay in control.”

The Saudis are keeping quiet. The United States and Israel have been quick to express support for protesters in Iran. But don’t expect Tehran’s biggest regional rival to be as vocal, suggest Isabel Coles and Margherita Stancati in The Wall Street Journal.

“[A]fter the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, Saudi leaders and their allies also realize how quickly protests in the region can jump borders and topple leaders who had been in power for years, if not decades. That year, Saudi Arabia dispatched troops to neighboring Bahrain to help quash an uprising of the country’s majority Shiite population against its Sunni rulers. The move snuffed out demonstrations of the kind that swept countries like Egypt and Tunisia,” they write.

“Saudi Arabia, a hereditary monarchy, itself faces economic pressures, with lower oil prices straining the budget and forcing the government to roll back some of the cradle-to-grave services that underpin the relationship between the monarchy and its subjects.”

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