People are starting to point out the potential similarities between 1979 Iran and 2011 Egypt. Thoughts from Michael Ledeen, Victor Davis Hanson, and Flopping Aces.
The Shah was no saint, but is Iran and the rest of the world better off, three decades later (or at any time over the past thirty years) for having deposed him and replaced him with a brutal theocracy? This is a situation where one should hope for the best, but fear the worst. And the history of that part of the world doesn’t give great cause for optimism. And the fact that we (incredibly as that may be) seem to have a president even more lacking feck than Jimmy Carter just depresses all the more.
Indeed, to which the pat response shall be, “at least they’re not Al Queda…”
“at least they’re not Al Queda…”
I was just about to say that.
“is Iran and the rest of the world off”
I think you left a “better” out of this line.
Once things settle down we can expect another land war against Israel.
Is Iran better off compared to what? In our timeline the Shah was deposed in 1979. In an alternate universe the US does everything possible to support him and he does everything possible to stay in power for the rest of his life. Which ended in 1980.
I guess if Obama really wanted to channel his inner Reagan he would learn from lesson past and not tuck his tail and run like we did from Beirut. Furthermore, couple this with the resolute manner in which Bush had Colin confronted the U.N. All the derision from the left that we were making ourselves look like fools in front of The World. Well, show us those shining chops Obama and send in the clowns to set that U.N. straight. It’s not like your trying to sway an Olympic committee or anything.
Perhaps I was mistaken — perhaps there is no real difference.
I yield to few in my low expectations for Arab rational behavior, but there are a few key differences between Iran ’79 and Egypt ’11. Most notably, Egypt has armed forces that are not entirely a Potemkin show where national defense is concerned – as opposed to defense of the regime internally. The military has some street cred in Egypt and is almost certainly going to be the key player in defining whatever is to follow Mubarak. That wasn’t remotely true of Iran either before or after the Ayatollah’s revolution; nobody in the Shah’s military had combat experience. The Egyptians – military and civilians alike – will tell you they won the ’73 Yom Kippur War and they have a point; they got the Sinai back.
Also, the Egyptian military have the sanguinary example before them of how the Iranian islamists pretended to make a no-reprisals deal with the Iranian military to stand aside as they took over and then lined most of the officer corps up against various walls and shot them anyway, afterward. The Egyptian military is not going to allow any such outcome vis-a-vis the Muslim Brotherhood. If the NB get too obstreperous and the soldiers decide they need to get medieval on these yay-hoos to make the point that imams should stay in their mosques, I see no basis for predicting either hesitation or mercy in the conduct of the resulting purge. That, frankly, is the outcome I’d most like to see and I think I have a quite reasonable shot at getting my wish.