Twenty Palaces

Regime Change in Iran?

Things have been pretty busy lately. I’m finishing up the galleys for Game of Cages and itching to get back to Man Bites World. Not to mention coming up with a new title for the latter. (I came up with one I really, really liked, but it turns out to be the title of a pair of unrelated-to-each-other non-fiction books, one of which is forty years old and still in print. ::shrugs::)

So, busy. And that means I haven’t had time or mental energy to follow important news stories. I haven’t looked at a single image or video of the devastation in Haiti. I haven’t sat down and teased out the differing reasons Portugal, Spain and Greece are struggling with economic collapse. And I haven’t been following the renewed Green Movement protests in Iran.

I have had the emotional resources for more minor stories: The Amazon.com/Macmillan confrontation exploded all over my blog list, and I stuck with that story throughout the week. And yeah, it was important to the people involved, but not Haiti-important–the stakes in the conflict were not going to send me into a fit of misery. (And let’s not get started on the way Democrats, including Obama, have fucked up on health care reform.)

But still, we can’t shut our eyes to the rest of the world, which is why I wanted to post this: Marc Lynch on the latest Green Movement protests in Iran. It appears that regime change in Iran is a long, long shot at this point. The government has consolidated its hold on the country through force of arms and the shutdown of communications technology, and there’s not much we can do about it besides what we’re already doing.