We might hope that this time change will overcome theocratic conservatism, and there are small signs that the reformers intend to push the issue to a crisis point — and then, who knows? Charging voting fraud in the recent presidential election, which was called by the government before all the votes could have been counted by hand, the opposition groups have repeatedly taken to the streets.
It must not be lost on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the real power in Iran's pseudo republic, that crowds in the streets in 1979 marked the beginning of the end of the Shah of Iran at the dawn of the nation's Islamic revolution.
If nothing else, the ongoing protests are proof once again that Iran is not a monolithic culture, and that change is possible. And if it does now seem possible, the approach of the Obama administration to seek a new start with Muslim nations in the wake of the Iraq war is a sound one.
There is a tide of modernity rippling below the surface in Iran and other Muslim nations that is friendly toward Western democratic traditions and values. As always, it seems, as in the
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