What's up with Iran?

Seriously, what's up with Iran?  It's so hard to tell what is going on there because the government is putting the kibosh on the press and Internet and cell-phones have been shut down.  There's Twitter, but like I said earlier, Twitter is hardly a reliable source of information.  Plus, how many Iranis actually have access to Twitter?

So, is this a situation where a majority of people have been fucked over and aren't going to take it anymore?

Or is it the case of a sizable minority that can't stand the fact that it lost?  Is this 2000, when Democrats should have been in the street burning busses and buildings and generally running amok - pissed that the majority-chosen candidate lost out in a Supreme Court decision?  Or is this 2004, when half the country had to shake its collective head and wonder why the Dems couldn't come up with a better candidate than John Kerry?

 

A friend of mine brought up the possibility of CIA involvement.  I'd be surprised.  He's cynical enough to be surprised if they are not.  But, I figure

1) the US is currently dealing w/ the repercussions of involvement in Iran (see the Shah), and if there was any real evidence of US involvement again, we'd be set back in our relationship with Iran, like, 100,000,000 years.  We'd lose all credibility with our allies, and Iran would probably get a nuke w/o too much fuss from other nations, and then Israel would attack Iran and then the Middle East would, like, explode.  It just wouldn't be that smart.

2) The CIA does coups pretty well.  Talk to/bribe/arm/whatever, a couple of key leaders and, boom, next thing you know, you've got the Shah, or Pinochet, or whichever 3rd world military dictator you want.  This doesn't seem to be that sort of event, which leads us to

3) This is a massive, relatively spontaneous, popular demonstration.  There is no way the CIA orchestrated this.  Could they have been involved on some level?  I suppose, but it had to have been really low-key: propaganda, perhaps.  But there doesn't appear to really be a leader of this uprising, and the CIA simply couldn't have organized the masses - they don't have the resources, plus leaderless masses probably freak out the CIA as much as they freak out the Irani leadership.

So, is this what democracy looks like?  Actually, I think so.  At least on the street, there is this massive democratic movement.  It's facing a much less democratic system than ours, but at least the society gets it.  The people seem to have maintained the nugget of freedom from the Iranian Revolution, even as the system has become institutionalized and reactionary.  The people in the streets are at least forcing the state to deal with them.  Unfortunately, it seems like the state's main way to deal is to beat the crap out of people, but I think that in order to move forward, the leadership is at least going to have to make some real concessions.

So, given all this, what should US involvement be?  Mostly, I think we're actually playing it right.  On the one hand, if we really believe in democracy and freedom, we need to be saying something.  On the other hand, this is really just their business, so we can't get too involved.  As much as the Republicans have been griping about Obama's lack of response, it seems totally appropriate for our Congress to get all apoplectic and make the points about democracy, but our diplomat in chief has been keeping his head and staying super calm and basically getting involved as little as possible.