The popular rising in Iran against its revolting regime is gaining momentum. But will that be enough?

A good WSJ piece on the Big Picture:

Much has been written about the fact that Iran’s democratic movement today combines the three characteristics of a velvet revolution—nonviolent, nonutopian and populist in nature—with the nimble organizational skills and communication opportunities afforded by the Web. Less discussed has been the significance of the youthfulness and Internet-savvy nature of the Iranian population.

Seventy percent of Iranians are under the age of 30. And in a population of 75 million, 22 million are Internet users. In spite of the nominal leadership of reformists like Medhi Karroubi, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mohammad Khatami, the real leaders of the movement have been the thousands of groups and individuals who work autonomously, and whose structure replicates the Internet.

A good case can be made, and is made by me at least, that the fall of Milosevic in 2000 was the world’s first Internet-driven revolution: public opposition to the regime was amplified by well-networked opposition groups, and especially the OTPOR students group.

Iran seems to be taking this to a far higher level. It is a bigger country with a huge youthful population and all the networking benefits of massed mobile phones, Twittering and the rest. Even if it is losing skilled people at a startling rate:

… Iran is today one of the most corrupt economies in the world. It also has the ignominy of topping the list of all countries in terms of brain drain. Each year, between 150,000 and 180,000 of the country’s best and brightest leave the country. The yearly cost to Iran for this brain drain alone is estimated to be almost equal to the yearly cost of the Iran-Iraq War, according to the World Bank

See for example how an attempt by the regime to smear an opposition figure by showing him in women’s clothes has backfired – the symbols used by the regime are swiftly being annexed by protesters themselves and used to hit back in fierce post-modern irony.

Yesterday I heard the argument from a top UK official who is closely following all this that one good move by President Obama has been to neutralise the argument that the USA is the Enemy of Islam; it is far harder now for the Iranian regime to blame its woes on the Great Satan’s machinations.

Maybe.

We went round this one earlier in the year – should or should not Western leaders speak out in support of Iranian protesters? Thus:

By not encouraging them publicly, Western leaders send a signal that they don’t care if they win or lose. Demoralising and profoundly cynical?

Let’s be fair and not exclude one option. Namely that in some way the Americans and maybe Europeans too have agreed with the Iran Opposition leaders not to say anything in public, so as to deny the regime the propaganda momentum of saying that the Wicked West is fomenting anti-Iranian spies and disarray.

This is what happened in the historic Serbia election of 2000.  As a matter of deliberate policy the Americans did not come out publicly in favour of Kostunica against Milosevic. Instead they whistled nonchalantly and looked the other way, while quietly throwing technical and other support to the anti-Milosevic organisations.

This crafty silence led to a good outcome for Western policy, viz the giddy collapse of support for Milosevic, precisely because the whole campaign against him was not ‘internationalised’ – Serbs could think of it as a purely home-grown revolution.

I’d like to think that something like this is going on in this case…

Thrashing around wildly as the protests intensify, the regime has decided to blame someone else: Great Satan Lite, ie the UK:

Manouchehr Mottaki, Iran’s foreign minister, claimed statements from the British Government were inciting demonstrations that swept the country’s biggest cities on Sunday. He warned that Iran would strike back against the British and other western governments that were supporting the opposition movement launched in the wake of June’s disputed presidential election.

"If Britain does not stop talking nonsense it will get a slap in the face," he said. "The lowly and downgrading remarks by some foreign officials show the black stain on their record in their contradictory interactions."

The regime even summoned HM Ambassador Simon Gass to berate him in this general direction and to show Iran’s official rage at this provocative and inflammatory outburst by David Miliband which plunged a perfidious British dagger deep into Iran’s internal affairs.

What might we best do to help?

The strength of the Iranian protest movement lies in its diffused, domestic and almost spontaneous mass nature. But that can be a weakness too – to bring down a system like Iran’s will require deadly focused force aimed at the heart of the regime, and probably a lot of ruthless killing along the way.

One way Western powers can help is to try to drive wedges into the system. To try to identify moderate or wavering fanatics within the ruling elite, and urge them privately that the game is up – and that they should hold back as and when the final crisis comes. Nothing like an obviously authentic secret personal message from the top of a Western intelligence agency to concentrate the mind.

More publicly we might want to think about setting up websites populated by lists and pictures of the worst people in the Iranian regime whom we would expect the Iranian people to want to put on trial for crimes against humanity, as and when the regime falls. Once people are on an open list that warns that the long arm of Justice will eventually nab them, who knows what they might do to get off it?

And when in doubt, push stories that the regime’s top people are getting ready to run away. Those around them are likely to believe them and get cross at the idea of being left behind to face the music. Remember all the rumours that Milosevic was poised to flee to Kazakhstan?

The trouble with countries as corrupted as Iran is that far too many people are implicated in misdeeds. Which means that it may suit the mass of pirates running the ship to throw a couple of leaders overboard as if in a great popular convulsion and go below decks for a while, to bide their time when they can sneak back into power or at least strong places of influence under a new fairer dispensation.

We Western diplomats will want to think that things have changed once and for all, and pat ourselves on the back for having played a limited hand so deftly. But in practice it all will be much less dramatic than it looks…

See Russia and Serbia passim.

2010 to see long awaited regime change in Iran? Or only in UK?