Meddlesome Americans

Krauthammer and the neocons continue to complain that Obama hasn't backed the revolution enough in Iran.

Moreover, this incipient revolution is no longer about the election. Obama totally misses the point. The election allowed the political space and provided the spark for the eruption of anti-regime fervor that has been simmering for years and awaiting its moment. But people aren't dying in the street because they want a recount of hanging chads in suburban Isfahan. They want to bring down the tyrannical, misogynist, corrupt theocracy that has imposed itself with the very baton-wielding goons that today attack the demonstrators.

This started out about election fraud. But like all revolutions, it has far outgrown its origins. What's at stake now is the very legitimacy of this regime -- and the future of the entire Middle East.

This revolution will end either as a Tiananmen (a hot Tiananmen with massive and bloody repression or a cold Tiananmen with a finer mix of brutality and co-optation) or as a true revolution that brings down the Islamic Republic.

The latter is improbable but, for the first time in 30 years, not impossible. Imagine the repercussions. It would mark a decisive blow to Islamist radicalism, of which Iran today is not just standard-bearer and model, but financier and arms supplier. It would do to Islamism what the collapse of the Soviet Union did to communism -- leave it forever spent and discredited.

What the neocons don't understand is the basic history of American meddling in Iran which led to the mullahs taking over in the first place. We most certainly backed the revolution in 1953, in which we installed Shah Pahlavi up until the Iranian revolution of 1979 removed him.

The report chronicled gruesome details of the events in 1953: how, by spending a meager sum of $1 million, the CIA "stirred up considerable unrest in Iran, giving Iranians a clear choice between instability and supporting the shah"; how it brought "the largest mobs" into the street; how it "began disseminating 'gray propaganda' passing out anti-Mossadegh cartoons in the streets and planting unflattering articles in local press"; how the CIA's "Iranian operatives pretending to be Communists threatened Muslim leaders with 'savage punishment if they opposed Mossadegh'"; how the "house of at least one prominent Muslim was bombed by CIA agents posing as Communists"; how the CIA tried to "orchestrate a call for a holy war against Communism"; how on August 19 "a journalist who was one of the agency's most important Iranian agents led a crowd toward Parliament, inciting people to set fire to the offices of a newspaper owned by Dr. Mossadegh's foreign minister"; how American agents swung "security forces to the side of the demonstrators"; how the shah's disbanded "Imperial Guard seized trucks and drove through the street"; how by "10:15 there were pro-shah truckloads of military personnel at all main squares"; how the "pro-shah speakers went on the air, broadcasting the coups' success and reading royal decrees"; how at the US embassy, "CIA officers were elated, and Mr. Roosevelt got General Zahedi out of hiding" and found him a tank that "drove him to the radio station, where he spoke to the nation"; and, finally, how "Dr. Mossadegh and other government officials were rounded up, while officers supporting General Zahedi placed 'unknown supports of TP-Ajax' in command of all units of Tehran garrison."

What the neocons still don't get (and this goes for liberal hawks too, Biden and Hillary's inner Rumsfeld is showing) is that America's popularity in Iran is totally shot after 8 years of Bush, and would still be shot even without Bush thanks to nearly 60 years of bad blood. They don't trust us, precisely because when we meddled in Iran in the past we traded one dictator for another, then that dictator was removed in bloody chaos. Sound familiar? Ask the Iraqis.

Obama's current plan is just what the situation calls for. Should the crackdown come, what then? Do we invade Iran? How would Obama going on world TV and giving his best Cowboy Up Bush speech prevent a bloody crackdown right now?

The Iranian regime falls after a bloody revolution? Then what? What replaces it? If there is "another Tiananmen" then exactly what are we supposed to do about it, send in Giant Dr. Manhattan?

Why is the neocon plan always:

Step 1) Regime change!
Step 2) ????
Step 3) Profit!

That era is over, folks. The adults are now in charge and the teenagers are bitching and moaning that the President just isn't listening to them. There's a reason for that.

[UPDATE] Paul Wolfowitz is telling Obama he needs to back to protesters too. What goes for Krauthammer goes triple for that asshole.

[UPDATE 2] TNR's Michael Crowley:

For more than a year conservatives have ridiculed the alleged belief that Obama's special rhetorical powers can do anything, including parting the waters. Now they're all clamoring for him to change the course of Iranian history by leveraging what Paul Wolfowitz calls "his enormous political prestige." In other words, by giving a fancy speech.

Reagan would have gone to the Muslim world and made a stirring speech about freedom!

...wait, what do you mean Obama did that already and the neocons hated it?