The women-led uprising in Iran is entering its third month. And it shows no signs of stopping its momentum.
Funerals and universities have been the sight of the largest public demonstrations.
Unlike before, the Islamic Republic's recourse to violence is not dissuading people from voicing their anger. This is a regime that is hanging on by the skin of its teeth. Still, those teeth are very sharp and they don’t discriminate.
Pulling the plug on the Islamic Republic won't happen overnight. Like a zombie it will go down killing.
The question is will those getting killed only be Iranians?
Or will the mullahs try to start a war in the region to galvanize their desperate supporters?
It is a possibility, but, like the acquisition of the nuclear bomb, it would not be in the long-term interests of the Islamic Republic to start a large regional war. At the end of the day, the mullahs are survivors. Their loyalty is not to Iran or Islam but themselves.
As I've written on this blog in the past, Iran, as well as Israel, America and the Gulf countries, are led by cowards who constantly engage in war rhetoric but don't have the courage to actually wage war beyond a skirmish here and there.
The U.S. is currently using Ukraine like a stick to poke Russia, and the Islamic Republic was using poor Afghan refugees to do its fighting in Syria. How low can one go?
Superpowers or regional powers who use proxies are despised and eventually collapse. History has a lesson: either use your own men or don't engage in wars.
It is an easy thing to speak of war, which is what these countries have been doing for the past two decades and even longer. But it's also careless. All that talk produces a costly psychological effect.
It is unnatural and unhealthy for a country to be on a permanent war footing without actually fighting the war and releasing the built up tension.
And it's even worse when that war they speak of is religious in nature.
The Muslims, Christians and Jews who dream of apocalyptic war in the Holy Land better get to it quickly, or they should shut up and retreat back to their mosques, synagogues, and churches.
Holding a nation hostage, as the Muslims have done with Iran, or the world hostage, as Israel has done, is not sustainable. And in the case of the Islamic Republic, its end can't come soon enough.
