The one-year anniversary of the stolen election in Iran was met with small-scale demonstrations, but it is clear that the Iranian opposition is still crushed under the jackboot of overwhelming force wielded by the regime.
To put this in Cold War terms, it's 1981 (the suppression of the Solidarity movement in Poland), not 1989. Or maybe it is 1989—but in China, not Eastern Europe.
There have been a variety of retrospectives on this anniversary, from the hopeful—observing that the Iranian regime has lost all pretense of having the support of the people, which is a very material weakness—to the despairing. The best overview I've seen is the one below, which sums up the positive and negative, and succinctly and accurately describes how history will view the current administration and its role in a kind of global recession for the cause of freedom.
"Iran and the 'Freedom Recession'," Fouad Ajami, Wall Street Journal, June 11
Those expecting a quick deliverance for the people of Iran never fully took in the power of the regime and its instruments of repression. This wasn't Leipzig and Budapest and Warsaw and Berlin in 1989 when the Communist despotisms gave way; this was China after Tiananmen Square.
In retrospect, it could be said that the first Islamic Republic (1979-2009) had fallen, and that a second republic, more cruel and unapologetic in its exercise of power, had risen….
The truth of this Iranian state is straightforward: It is a petrocracy. Oil income sustains it, enables it to defy the opinions of its own people, and of people beyond. In the past year, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his allies in the bureaucracy and parliament have been pushing for a "streamlining" of the country's extensive system of subsidies—in effect for a phasing out of price subsidies for bread, electricity, water and gasoline.
The system in place is inefficient and costly (it takes an estimated 40% of the budget to sustain the subsidies). But it isn't a true desire for reform or economic progress that motivates President Ahmadinejad. What he and his supporters seek is a targeted system of rebates and cash transfers that would give the rulers yet greater powers to reward and to punish. This is the sword of Damocles over the opposition—an administered economy in the hands of the regime and of the Revolutionary Guard.
Freedom House tells us that there is a "freedom recession" in today's order of nations….
Meanwhile, America's new standard-bearer, President Barack Obama, had come to a conviction that the pursuit of freedom in distant lands was not a legitimate American concern. From his first days in office, Mr. Obama signaled his resignation toward the despotisms of the Greater Middle East….
There is no guarantee that categorical American support would have altered the outcome of the struggle between autocracy and liberty in Iran. But it shall now be part of the narrative of liberty that when Persia rose in the summer of 2009 the steward of American power ducked for cover, and that a president who prided himself on his eloquence couldn't even find the words to tell the forces of liberty that he understood the wellsprings of their revolt.
