There is, of course, democracy advocates in Iran, but how many?

Reuel Marc Gerecht writes an interesting article in The Weekly Standard called The June 12 Revolution. It points out that there was democracy talk of reform during Khatami in the 90s but this talk was suppressed by Rafsanjani and Khamenei.

Gerecht seem to have a grain of optimism regarding a possible opening of Iran's politics in his argumentation if Moussavi wins but I don't get an answer to the question of why Iran only makes business mainly with the SCO and with the Friday prayers sounding fiercely "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" and now recently "Death to UK". Western orientation does seem small and insignificant?

Gerecht writes about "leaving the revolution" whereas I earlier read "restoration of the revolution". That is more like Taheri's becoming a normal country and in-line also with the devout clergy who advocated separation of church and state.

Wikipedia tells me that Khomeni preached that revolt, and especially martyrdom, against injustice and tyranny was part of Shia Islam, and that muslims should reject the influence of both liberal capitalism and communism with the slogan "Neither East, nor West - Islamic Republic!" I might remind of an incident during the Gaza War in January where Khamenei asked for volonteers for suicide bombings in Israel and got 75,000 answers.

In other words they tried Islamic Republic for 30 years but it is not popular anymore, whatever it was politically--obedience to Islamic jurists. Ahmadinejad has by now bungled the economy. Will they now try East or West? Again my bet is they want double digit growth under severe control like in China. President Obama's dialogue would depend on if they want to go global, both East and West.

Europe might have an influence in Iran and could possibly build on the experience from German and Italian exports to the country as Bronwen Maddox discusses in Iran's mullahs cannot afford to ignore EU but it is what Obama says that count. So far there has not been any Death to Germany or Death to Italy. The reason, as I have discussed earlier, might be that Ahmadinejad thinks the German will come out as anti-Semites and join him in the holocaust denial, although recently Gerard Schröder had to remind him that the holocaust is a historic fact.

President Obama did indicate today, depending on the violence in Tehran, that he is about to change strategy on dialogue which might mean that he in principle listens to Gerecht and EU.

Update from Robert Kagan.
Update from iht.com by Philip Bowring. Iran's Chinese lessons.