With a heavy heart, one can't help but anxiously wait for history -- be it gruesome or glorious -- to unfold in the streets of Tehran today. Basiji commanders have announced that three million members of their militia will be deployed. Supreme Leader Khamenei again gave stern warning to the Green movement just last week, stating that the questioning of the June election is a crime. If there was any doubt whether his words were empty rhetoric, then the proceeding sentences handed down to 50 political detainees for committing just this "crime" should suffice. The regime is preparing for confrontation, perhaps because it has no choice -- no choice but to retreat and wither.And as the Islamic legitimacy of the Islamic Republic also withers, so too does the romanticism weaved into the supposed triumphs of the revolution. The taking of the U.S. embassy, the seminal event which today's demonstrations are centered around, is now also losing its luster. Grand Ayotollah Montazeri, in response to a series of questions posed to him by Mowjcamp, has stated regret for the 1979 takeover of the American compound. Comparing the act to a "declaration of war," Montazeri said that the takeover hurt Iranian interests in the long run.
And so while the seizure of the U.S. embassy is supposed to be treated as a nationalist (read: propagandist) holiday, the man who was one day supposed to be Supreme Leader has labeled the act a "mistake" on the eve of its thirtieth anniversary. What is left of this revolution? More and more, a generation once removed -- the 70% that is Iran's heartbeat -- is struggling to find an answer, all while readying to take to the streets and challenge tyranny as their mothers and fathers did before them.
