lifestyle leader

These are two must-reads on the turmoil in Iran:

1) Paul Wells, who points out that Khameini has put the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic on the line.

Choices force more choices, and events force events. This business did not start out as a people’s revolt. Everyone knows Mir Hossein Mousavi had no plan to to question the regime. He had every intention of serving it faithfully, perhaps a tad less belligerently than Ahmadinejad, but essentially without making any real waves. Everyone can hear that this resistance is one that chants allahu akbar every night; if the regime’s actions had remained even minimally compatible with their faith they would never have questioned the regime. Not like this. Not in massive crowds in every large city, crowds that do not stay away for long even when the regime’s last loyal thugs beat them and tear-gas them and shoot them dead where they stand, dozens so far and more to come.

2) Roger Cohen's latest NYT piece out of Tehran, which looks at the internal divisions in Iran. He concludes:

Whatever happens now, all is changed utterly in Iran. Opacity, a force of the Islamic Republic, has yielded to a riveting transparency in which one side confronts another. The online youth of Iran will not be reconciled to a regime that touts global “ethics” and “justice” while trampling on them at home....I bow my head to the youth of Iran, the youth that is open-eyed, bold and far stronger and more numerous than the near-beardless vigilantes.