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Friday, February 11, 2011

Why Tehran is backing the anti-Mubarak protestors


This piece of mine appears in the First Post.


Neil Clark: Iranians are being asked to support Egypt’s ‘Islamic awakening’. But will it backfire on Tehran regime?

Many western liberals have been keen to portray recent events in Tunisia and Egypt as the Arab world’s 1989: the year when street demonstrations and anti-government protests were followed by the fall of long-standing Communist regimes in eastern Europe.


But in Iran, they see things rather differently. From the perspective of the Iranian regime, what we’re witnessing is not a re-run of 1989, but of 1979, when the Iranian people overthrew the western-backed Shah of Iran and the Islamic Republic was established.


You can read the whole of the piece here.
UPDATE: Mubarak has fallen after almost 30 years in power. Latest news from Egypt here.

2 comments:

Douglas said...

Alas, it looks like 1979 all over again from this side of the pond as well. Egypt as Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood as Khomeini, Mubarak as the Shah (they even left on the same day of the year, February 11), the feckless inexperienced Barack Obama as the feckless inexperienced Jimmy Carter, the US intelligence community as a collection of bumbling idiots yet again. I do not consider these good developments.

Dave Rowland said...

Off topic, but you will find this of interest:

http://aaronovitch.blogspot.com/2011/02/from-desk-of-aaronovitch-watch.html