Brinksmanship in Iran

Yesterday, a close friend told me that he ultimately expects the Iranian regime to crush the street protests in Tehran using "a Tiananmen." One can validly reach that conclusion, hearing government officials threatening execution of protesters, and continuing to raise the specter of the Velvet Revolution to describe what they clearly regard as a mob.

Yet, the government continues to concede ground to the protesters; despite the blockage of Internet and so forth, the Guardian Council -- the body designated to investigate allegations of election fraud last Friday, has offered a meeting the day after tomorrow with the opposition presidential candidates including Mir Hosain Mousavi.

And then there are the compellingly large, continued street demonstrations.

Since brinksmanship is not a matter of simple arithmetic, there in fact is no way to project how this ends up.

In a smart analysis At RFE-RL, the perspicacious Geneive Abdo sees a power shift coming from the tumult, but the balance of power remaining in current hands for at least another decade -- until the leaders of the 1979 revolution leave political life. Support of Hamas and Hezbollah will remain, in addition to development of nuclear technology. What do the younger generation want once they do have power? Not "a government that shuns Islamic principles or even a state that does not include clerics, as some in the West might think," writes Abdo.

"Instead, they want free and fair elections to choose their own leaders; social freedom, now denied them by strict interpretations of Islamic law; and they want Iran’s militias to stay out of their private lives. They also want uninterrupted access to technology, which includes the Internet and social networks."

Update: The Wall Street Journal's Jerry Seib, who has deep experience in Iran, weighs in with a list of possible outcomes, both optimistic and pessimistic. Seib, too, thinks the situation is impossible to predict.