Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Iran democratic pincer movement results

I had described the US's strategy of entrenching democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq as a strategy to squeeze the political system in Iran to breaking point. This appears to be happening. Together with the demographics of Iran (very high proportion of restless youth), this makes for a country ripe for revolution. I can see that the revolution will be repressed, at least for this electoral cycle, but the next few years will be characterised by:
a) Continually deteriorating economy.
b) Continually defiant hardline leadership.
c) Gradually increasing exodus of population to neighbouring democracies.

These sorts of things will continue to make the current theocracy decreasingly tenable, in the medium term.

Possible long term results are a failed/failing state, or a transfer to a fully fledged democracy or dictatorship/permanent state of emergency.

1 comment:

Marco Parigi said...

http://www.drewconway.com/zia/?p=1010&cpage=1#comment-1118