Another Iran option

Most writers have seen the options in Iran painted in colors of bad to worse. Mark Steyn, surprisingly, is a bit more optimistic. Sure, he's aware of how ridiculously ineffectual Europe is being regarding Iran, how swiftly Iran is moving towards full nuclearization, and how incredibly difficult it would be for Israel and the U.S. to take the regime (and the weapons) down with airstrikes. But he still sees some thing that could be done:

But, granted the Iranian destabilisation of Iraq and their sponsorship of terror groups in Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority, surely it shouldn't be difficult to give them a taste of their own medicine. Who, after all, likes the Teheran regime? The Russian and Chinese and North Korean governments and the fulsome Mr Straw appear to, but there's less evidence that the Iranian people do. The majority of Iran's population is younger than the revolution: whether or not they're as "pro-American" as is sometimes claimed, they have no memory of the Shah; all they've ever known is their ramshackle Islamic republic where the unemployment rate is currently 25 per cent. If war breaks out, those surplus young men will be in uniform and defending their homeland. Why not tap into their excess energy right now? As the foreign terrorists have demonstrated in Iraq, you don't need a lot of local support to give the impression (at least to Tariq Ali and John Pilger) of a popular insurgency. Would it not be feasible to turn the tables and upgrade Iran's somewhat lethargic dissidents into something a little livelier? A Teheran preoccupied by internal suppression will find it harder to pull off its pretensions to regional superpower status.

I've been wondering that myself. That is, I've wondered whether the Iranian population, aside from the carefully selected crowds as political/anti-Semitic rallies, really is on board with this apocalyptic game plan, or if there are enough people who would be willing to engage in a second Iranian revolution, before it's too late. Talking to Technorati: Iran