There are many reasons to fear that the protest movement in Iran could end badly. The regime could once again decide to crack down on its own citizens, killing dozens or hundreds or perhaps thousands of them in the process. (Indeed, according to eyewitness reports, it has already started doing so.) Power might shift from the ailing ayatollah, Ali Khamenei, to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, perhaps lifting some restrictions on the country’s women but frustrating the broader political and economic aspirations of the population. Even a transition to democracy need not bring lasting results, as the failed experiments with democratic rule from Egypt to Tunisia prove.
But the sympathies of every single person who believes in freedom and equality and the basic rights of women should be with those courageous millions in Iran. And yet, across the West, there has been a deafening silence in the face of these historic protests.
