Iran Out of Puns

Desultory Eclecticism had the pleasure of spending a good part of the weekend at Columbia University's "Iran: After the Election" conference.  13 Iranian and American academics and retired officials, including headliners Ervand Abrahamian and Gary Sick, spent all of Saturday presenting and discussing various Iran-related themes.  Three points of consensus:

1) The revolution (1979) has come full circle.  Mansour Farhang recounted his own experience from adolescence of being imprisoned and beaten by the Shah's secret police (this predated SAVAK) for his role as a propaganda mule for Mosaddeq.  Then he described Maziar Bahari's recent experience.  The difference?  Farhang's interrogator/abuser spoke with an upper-class accent and had no problem looking his victim in the eye.  Bahari's kept his prisoner blindfolded, leaving his "rose water" cologne as his most identifiable trait.

2) Nobody makes a good prognosticator.  Academics, analysts, journalists, diplomats, the participants themselves--they'll all extrapolate differently from the present and recent past.  One of them may be right, owing to luck rather than prescience.  Nobody knows exactly what June means or what it leads to.  

3) A hardline U.S. approach produces the best outcome for the Islamic regime.  Refusing to negotiate allows the Khamenists to continue branding dissidents as CIA tools.  Sanctions give the regime an excuse for economic stagnation.  This interpretation provides a rational actor explanation for Iran's recent nuclear bluster.  

The Orange and Green revolutions may have been inspired by similar events and infused with common sentiments, but Ukraine had no Basij.  Like the Shah in 1979, Kuchma's government refused to open fire on protestors; the Khamenei regime did not.