The moderate leadership of Iran's opposition movement is being pushed aside as the anti-regime protests become more and more radical - fueled by social networking sites like Facebook.
The regime understands the power of the Internet in empowering the millions of Iranians who hate the dictatorship of mullahs. Websites, blogs and cell phones are crucial tools for the pro-western revolution. In anticipation of the current protests, the regime staged an electronic clampdown, censoring websites, slowing down connectivity, and jamming cell phone transmissions.
To little avail.
This time around, the mainstream opposition leaders are hard to find. As a New York Times correspondent observed, the new, radicalized student-dominated movement "often seems to be built more around semi-spontaneous mobilizations over Facebook and Web networks than with the aid of any clear leadership."
The regime is ignoring calls for conciliation, brutally crushing the protesters. If other revolutions are an indicator, this over-reaction is a good thing strategically - it will provoke more fence-sitters to take sides, and the more extreme the reaction, the more likely the fence-sitters will join the radicalized opposition.
Much of this ferment continues over the elections which were rigged to deprive opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi of the presidency.
Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran and a former president who has become a part of the opposition, cautioned that "the young and the elite have been estranged from the regime." He criticized the regime for deploying the Revolutionary Guards and Basij militia against the demonstrators, according to the Times.
Iran's intelligence chief Heidar Moslehi lashed out at Rafsanjani, calling him part of the anti-regime "conspiracy" and warning of dire consequences. He challenged moderate opponents to take sides.
Political ferment is far greater than expressed by the protesters, Moslehi warned, in comments published by the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), a regime mouthpiece. "The recent plot is like an iceberg floating in the ocean. Its larger part is under the water, while a small part of it is visible."
Indeed, said Moslehi, the anti-regime revolution has infiltrated senior levels of the Iranian government itself. The sons of senior clerics, he alleged, were among the infiltrators: "Through the sons of clerics, the enemy is effecting the thought of some of the country's senior figures."
Authorities shut down a pro-reform newspaper, Hayat-e No, edited by a brother of Iran's supreme leader. Iran's top prosecutor declared that the courts should not be "lenient" with the hundreds or more people arrested in the latest crackdown, and hinted that the regime might go after Mousavi himself.
The Islamic Republic is undoing itself. It is in a self-destruct mode. With international solidarity for the more radical protesters, the entire system can become undone.
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