Reality Check Iran

I have read a very good article by Abbas Barzegar in the Guardian.
I don’t usualy agree with him and he is often proved wrong but here I agree with him. Its a very depressing read. He basically says the chance of any kind of popular resistance forcing the regime's hand is very remote. The worst elements of the regime have the firm backing of the Sepah and the Sepah have gained such a position of strength that they are unassailable now with defections or desertions extremely unlikely and a huge military strength that has barely even been tested or even shown at all against these protests. According to him the most that will happen will be a nasty and bloody but contained civil conflict.
People who say the regime will start to crumble under the weight of these protests underestimate its invulnerability and the huge amount of apathy, confusion and fear that predominates among the vast majority of the public.
The 12th June elections marked a disastrous turning point for Iran. It marked the decisive point at which the state changed from an inefficient, ungainly, over complex, theocratic and semi-democratic system to little more than a thinly concealed military junta with a client president and an associate ruling cleric head of state. It wasn’t without warning that this would happen. The Sepah had been growing in influence unchecked since their establishment following the revolution. They have now swallowed the government completely after first taking most of the industrialized economy.
This change was not wholly appreciated by outsiders. All they saw were apparently fraudulent elections in a shady country they know little about, where the incumbent regime held onto power. What they missed was that, where before there had been a relatively unresponsive and inefficient government riven with opposing factions and constrained by an all-powerful conservative upper house of appointed clerics, afterwards there was an entirely unaccountable, military controlled government with only the ostensible appearance of the former.
This is a disaster for Iran, its people and its prospects for the future.
For me it was a heavy blow to my hopes for this country and the wider region. Iran first came onto my radar five years ago when I became more aware of the plight of the Palestinian people. It was the most powerful country that completely and unashamedly opposed the ruinous and corrupting hegemony of the US and wholeheartedly supported the Palestinians against their vicious Zionist tormentors. I have since visited Iran twice and am very enamoured with its approachable and friendly people and was impressed with its decent infrastructure, industrial activity and tidy cities relative to its hapless and beleaguered neighbours. I know it seems strange and childish but it also felt really good to be in the middle of a big, developed city, outwardly European in appearance, and stand on an Israeli or American flag painted on the paving as a mark of disrespect and know that the authorities openly sanctioned this. Israel is probably by far the thing that I hate most in the world. Its very frustrating and dispiriting for me to live in a country who’s head of government is openly Zionist, to live in a wider continent where Israelis can walk around and do business unhindered with the respect and support they think they deserve and to share the streets with holidaying Israeli soldiers who will go back to kill and terrorize some more. Being in Iran it was liberating to be able to spend money and just know that not the tiniest fraction of it would end up in Israel but almost all of it would stay with Israel’s sworn enemy and walk around in the knowledge that Israelis would not be accepted here because everyone is very aware of what goes on in Palestine.
To indulge in this kind of pleasure I put to the back of my mind some of the glaring problems of this country. Huge cracks in its mask that I thought would heal over with time and progress. That was wishful thinking on my part. The cracks were structural and ran far deeper than I was willing to concede initially. “Yes Iran has problems. But so does every country” I would explain to myself. Maybe I should have taken more notice when I saw the pictures of two teenage boys being hung publicly in a suburb of Mashhad for having been found together in a compromising position, when women were stoned to death for adultery, when I saw huge portraits of paternal looking clerics looking down from buildings in a state sponsored personality cult, when a woman goes with her head uncovered in public is treated the same as might a naked person in the UK performing a sexual act on a busy high street. Little signs you might think that the government lacks sanity. But no, for talking back to the US from an unassailable position, for putting information sheets about Israeli crimes in all its embassies and consulates, for having international news channels that don’t mince their words about the foreign policies of western countries, for keeping its economy growing despite western sanctions, for being unfairly targeted by a hypocrite west for its nuclear program, I was prepared to pay these things less attention.
But when elections are brazenly rigged, when millions of demonstrators throng the thoroughfares of its cities and are attacked with steel batons and live rounds, when hundreds are arrested and repeatedly beaten and raped in prison, when the opposition are put on show trials in prison fatigues, when the cities are polluted with smoke from burning busses, wheely-bins, police vehicles and security services buildings; then I know there is something seriously wrong. The sight of streets that I recognise seen in the harrowing footage of a violent crackdown make me feel stupid.
Perhaps I should become more anarchist in my outlook, when the most powerful politicians are by turns cowards or tyrants and generally self interested bastards. I know if I myself were to be a dictator with an entire nation at the mercy of my whim, I would be a fearsome tyrant with a harem of sex slaves, a squad of secret service agents to capture anyone who displeased me, a torture chamber where I would personally administer to them the most fearsome and painful deaths and live a generally extravagant life.