Bofferbrauer2 said:
The Question is: Does Iran really need to replace Khamenei? I mean, they have a president, and he's still alive. Khamenei was in theory just a religious leader, though he had massive power and influence beyond that. The president could take over the political power from Khamenei and be done with it. The question would probably be more about his succession, as Khamenei had a hand in selecting the persons who were allowed to run in the first place, so this could be widened. Reza Pahlavi is pretty popular by dissidents of Khamenei both inside and out of Iran - though certainly not with the same powers as his dad had, rather either as a president or a constitutional monarch like those in Europe. Either would be fine by me: As a constitutional monarch he wouldn't wield much power either way and if he can get elected to the office of president in an open and fair election, then he would have earned the position. |
Optimally, the result would be Iranians deciding their own destiny in free and fair elections. Also optimally, if the U.S. didn't like who the Iranian people chose, oh, well.
The last time the Iranians tried free and fair elections was in 1951, when Mohammad Mosaddegh was elected prime minister on the promise to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and return the Iranian's oil wealth to them instead of seeing it siphoned off to the dying remains of the British Empire. The U.K. and the U.S. naturally didn't like their choice, demonized Mosaddegh as a Communist (he was not affiliated with any Communist movements in Iran, and the CIA even said as much later down the road), and orchestrated his overthrow. Muhammad Reza Shah went from a constitutional monarch to an absolute monarch, becoming increasingly brutal and repressive to the point where his SAVAK were a feared feature of Iranian life in the 1970s, when the Shah had begun referring to himself as Shahanshah, or Emperor.
Ultimately, the Iranian Revolution happened, and the Iranian people were dancing in the streets when the Shah left for the U.S. for cancer treatment and never returned. The Ayatollah Khomeini, who had been living in exile in France, returned to Iran to the exuberant cheers of millions of Iranians. However, a little over a month later, came the International Women's Day Protests over the hijab edict. (Ironically, the father of Muhammad Reza Shah had caused violent protests from women when he banned the hijab for a five year period in the 1930s).
So hopefully this time, the Iranians will be free to actually choose their leadership, without the say-so of either a bunch of high-ranking hardline Islamist clergy or a bunch of people with big guns and imperial ambitions to rule Asia and siphon its wealth to North America. I'm very skeptical of them avoiding either outcome, sadly.
