The ongoing revolt against the oppressive theocratic regime in Iran is being enthusiastically observed by the mostly disenfranchised Arab people in the hope it will spill across the borders into its neighboring autocratically ruled Arab countries. At the same time, Arab ruling oligarchs are frantically trying to determine how the outcome of Iranian uprising will affect their shaky systems. Sunni Muslim Muftis (the highest religious authority) in countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan and the Mullahs in Iran, Afghanistan and other places, are rethinking their fate as a result of what is happening in Iran. These self-proclaimed religious leaders and power wielding clerics are worried about their control as a result of the courageous Iranian people’s loud expression of defiance against their illegitimate “supreme” Mullah, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
For the West not to support and take notice of what is happening in Iran is a self-defeating policy blunder for two major reasons:
The men and women who subject themselves to ferocious police bullets are not doing it for fun, they want liberty.
Not to support those who yearn and are willing to pay the ultimate price for liberty in Iran, as well as in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, will only strengthen the hands of the autocratic regimes and empower those who want to topple them and institute totalitarian religious systems.
www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/opinion/21tehran.
