Two years ago, watching the Green Revolution sweeping the streets of Tehran, I was transfixed on the symbols, the heart, and the tragic yearning of Iran’s young people, particularly it’s young women in the form of Neda Soltan, who died while taking to the streets against the repressive theocratic regime represented by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.. I became transfixed by revolution, especially one so poignant in its victims and as ruthless in its villains.
I’ve been asking friends who live in the region what kind of revolution do we have in the Middle East today? Is it cultural, like the one that overthrew the American-backed shah Reza Pahlavi establishing a theocracy and fundamental Muslim rule over Iran? Or is it economic, like the demonstrations in Greece? The answer seems to be both.
The revolution started in Tunisia where in recent elections Tunisians voted to unseat President Ben-Ali, a long-time political ally of the United States. It has spread to Yemen against its President Ali Abdullah Saleh and now, has ignited almost the entire nation of Egypt to rise up against its president Hosni Mubarak. Tunisia and Yemen have long standing strategic relations with the United States, and a stable Egypt as ally, personified by the Mubarak regime and the powerful Egyptian army, has been a mainstay in the region for the interests of the United States and its strongest ally Israel since the Camp David talks led by President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s.
Yet, as empires fall, so do their proxy states. In recent history we saw the breakup of the Balkan states in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Soviet-bloc communism. Now as the American empire is reaching its economic limits, so are its proxy states and leaders facing change built up under the pressure cooker of regimes too tightly held for interests other than those of the people living there.