I couldn't quite decide whether the post title warrants an exclamation or a question mark at its end...Alas, I've had little else but Iran on the mind these past few days. Like many others, I am trying to wrap my head around the ongoing situation to somehow get a sense of what is likely to result. Should we compare the Iranian protests to Tiananmen? The Solidarity movement? The Orange Revolution? Some ignorant commentators have even likened the present situation to the Bush/Gore 2004 recount, demonstrating such a dearth of knowledge regarding Middle Eastern politics that one really can't help but cringe.
Admittedly Middle Eastern politics fall beyond my range of expertise. While I do frequently dabble in democratization theory, I don't quite feel that it's my place to proffer any analyses in this case. Rather, I defer to the experts. Here is a list of several blog posts, newspaper articles and Twitter feeds which I have found to be most interesting and insightful:
- From the Tehran Bureau, "The Leaders of Iran's 'Election Coup.'" A truly fascinating piece which sheds insights on the core ideology guiding supporters of Ahmadinejad and further outlines the primary goals of the coup d'état (aside from the obvious)
- Thoughts on why the revolt is so powerful, from Noticed from Northwest
- Iran's Political Structure and its Potential Implications, from Cheap Talk
- Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton, on what the West doesn't understand about what's happening in Iran - and about Iranian politics in general, for that matter
- Wikipedia has a rather interesting collection of pre-election polls, the majority of which give the lead to Mousavi
- The FT's Gideon Rachman suggests the election results are most certainly rigged - with evidence to boot!
- The ladies at Wronging Rights have been running a great "Ask an Iranian" series. Both Parts I and II are worth the read, though I am particularly biased towards the insights raised in Part II
- From among the countless Twitter feeds tracking the Iranian election aftermath, two in particular have caught my eye: @iran09 and @StopAhmadi
- An Oxford Iranian student has been arrested at the airport in Tehran. Both his family and St. Antony's College where he is based are silently pushing for his release
- Iran's football team is silently supporting the revolution, while pro-Ahmadinejad rallies appear to be photoshopped. Go figure
Photo credit: Boston.com (the link has a striking collection of photographs from the election aftermath)