(The New Republic) | February 17
Abbas Milani
Iran finds its Nelson Mandela.
Traditional Iranian husbands, the sort found in the highest ranks of the Islamic Republic, sometimes refer to their wives as “the house.” For them, this is not just an expression of their understanding of gender relations. It is viewed as a necessary euphemism, vital protection [...]

The people have not sat idly by, and in the past month a clear distinction has been made between the people on one-side, and the regime on the other. The world has seen the people’s aspirations for freedom, and their bravery in the face of terror and the tyranny of a false theocracy. The world has also seen the last shred of legitimacy that the government of Iran may have held disappear to reveal what can be safely described as a government structured like a mafia that sees itself as God’s representative on earth with the right to butcher its own people. It can’t be more clear than that.

The price has been paid in blood by the Iranian people. And blood has been spilled across every facet of Iranian society.

What we are witnessing right now in the streets of Tehran is, first and foremost, a political battle for the future of the Iranian state. But closely linked to this political fight is also an old theological dispute about the nature of Shiism–a dispute that has been roiling Iran for more than a century.

“This crack in the clerical establishment, and the fact they are siding with the people and Moussavi, in my view is the most historic crack in the 30 years of the Islamic republic,” said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University. “Remember, they are going against an election verified and sanctified by Khamenei.”

A tyrannical triumvirate, one that is led by Ayatollah Khamenei and supported by the military might of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the street presence of gangs with ranks numbering at least a few million, seems hell-bent on forcing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the reluctant and still-resisting people of Iran.