Iran's rebellion is for real

David Ignatius:

What's happening on the streets of Tehran is a lesson in what makes history: It isn't guns or secret police, in the end, but the willingness of hundreds of thousands of people to risk their lives to protest injustice. That is what overthrew the shah of Iran in 1979, and it is now shaking the mullahs.

This is politics in the raw -- unarmed people defying soldiers with guns -- and it is the stuff of which revolutions are made. Whether it will succeed in Iran is impossible to predict, but already this movement has put an overconfident regime on the ropes.

To understand why the regime is frightened, ask yourself this question: How many of the demonstrators in the mile-long parades along Vali-e Asr Avenue were Iranian nuclear scientists -- or their brothers, or cousins? We read that the oldest daughter of opposition presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi is a nuclear physicist, but how many more?

And how many disgruntled Revolutionary Guards, and war veterans?

Nobody knows, and that's the point: The regime must be frightened of the forces it has unleashed. The more it attacks its own people, the more vulnerable it becomes.

If you take a step back, you can see a similar process of ferment across the Muslim world these days. Muslim parties and their allies have suffered election setbacks over the past several years in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco and Pakistan. The most extreme group of all, al-Qaeda, has alienated former supporters everywhere it has tried to put down roots.

The reasons for these political setbacks vary from place to place. In some countries, Muslim radicals have overreached and created a public backlash; in others, they have been seen as timid and corrupt. But there's a common theme: "The Muslim parties have failed to convince the public that they have any more answers than anyone else," says Marina Ottaway, the director of the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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Obama's agenda of "engagement" with Iran must be on hold for now. He shouldn't renounce his offer of talks, but allow it to sit. Let the Iranians chase the West for a while; they're the ones who need legitimacy.

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The Iranians are headed for an ugly showdown, because the religious bigots cannot tolerate defiance. One of the reasons the religious parties are such failure sis their main response when things get bad is to ratchet up religious requirements because they perceive a lack of piousness as the reason for failure and not a bad economic plan.

The Ayatollah will not accept the rejection that is obvious on the street and will therefore lash out at those who reject him.