IRAN'S DEMOCRATIC FUTURE

When the moment comes, Iran's democratic future will be built not only by the political elite in the capital's palaces, but also by the people who have kept the country's administrative institutions functioning against all odds

- Kian Tajbakhsh

Speculation about the end of Iran's Islamic Republic has surged in the wake of Israel's astonishingly effective bombing campaign, which succeeded in degrading and destroying much of Iran's offensive capability in just under two weeks.

Some commentators, like the economist Nouriel Roubini and the Stanford political scientist Abbas Milani, see regime change as plausible or imminent. Others, like the strategist Richard Haass, argue that the necessary preconditions for a democratic breakthrough are still absent.

A third group does not advocate regime change at all. While they find aspects of the Islamic Republic objectionable, they largely regard Iran as an aggrieved postcolonial state struggling for autonomy and dignity. Figures such as the exiled Iranian scholars Djavad Salehi-Isfahani and Esfandyar Batmanghelidj have expressed variations of this view.

Many in this camp reserve their deepest hostility not for Islamist zealots or domestic oppressors but for foreign powers, especially the West. And they continue to insist - despite the jailing of opposition politicians and the dismantling of civil society - that a viable democratic reform movement is always on the verge of breaking through, only to be thwarted by meddling outsiders and a few uncompromising hardliners. (It is striking that the people making this argument are largely secular expatriate Iranians who would almost certainly be arrested if they expressed themselves freely inside Iran.)