Notes on Iran

The New York Times spit it right out, albeit only at the bottom of the article - Iran has been the victim of a slow moving coup in which a coterie of quasi-Islamo-military-fascists have taken over the key institutions of the state. I note that they do not mention the army, and given the role of the armed forced in abandoning the Shah in 1979, that is a key omission.

The best take would be that a small coterie around Ahmadinejad, which increasingly isolates itself by its intransigence and extremism, is setting itself up for a cataclysmic fail. That would take a long while and many, many lost lives and horrible torments. The worst take is that that coterie consolidates its grip on power by a sustained campaign of torture. heard on TV news today that the scabrous Khatami has called for extreme punishments, and specifically capital punishments for the leaders of the opposition.

The Iranians have held mass executions before ... it only takes a little googling to find some horrific images. They will do it again. They lust after blood. They have no shame. There are not words to describe how horrifying is a theocratic regime, especially in its military-fascist phase.

But maybe, just maybe, these obscene excuses for human beings are themselves on the way to a gallows of their own construction, much as the hapless and venemous Saddam.

But to get back to my point ... this is about the state. The state is decrepit, and eventually it must fail spectacularly. But eventually can be a month or a year or a decade. If it is years, the cost will be staggering.

It is all up to the army. That's the way I see it.