"With Saad Hariri's win, Khamenei worried about his regime..."

The frenzied lies ... from the minds of WINEP, Jeff Goldberg interviews Patrick Clawson, here

JG: Will Hezbollah's semi-defeat in the Lebanese election make it more conciliatory, or will it send it back to its jihadist roots?

PC: Unhappy that it and its allies lost the recent Lebanese elections, Hezbollah may well take up arms to insist that it retains its powerful role in Lebanon's government - a good example of how the principal victims of Iran's proxies are Arabs rather than Israelis.  Even before the election, Hezbollah was claiming that no matter what the election results, Hezbollah was still entitled to enough cabinet seats - a "blocking third" - to prevent the cabinet from taking positions of which it disapproved. Hezbollah had sent its militia to occupy all of Beirut, including the Christian-majority East Beirut, to demand this "blocking third." While the reform March 14 movement agreed to this under duress, that agreement - the Doha Accords, negotiated by the Qatari government - was to expire with this last election, but Hezbollah insists the Doha Accords formula will remain valid.  So the friends of Lebanon are likely to soon to confront the question: if Hezbollah picks up arms to reverse the election results, what can the West and moderate Arab states do to shore up Lebanon's democratic forces?

 

JG: When do you expect the next eruption in violence between Iran's proxies and Israel?

 

JG: There are clearly large numbers of people in Iran, the urban elites and the young most particularly, who seem unhappy with their government's priorities. Do you think we could be on the cusp of something new and different, and, from the Western perspective, better?

PC: The majority of Iranians are profoundly unhappy with the government of the Islamic Republic, but that does not necessarily mean that change is imminent. What keeps the regime in power is its support from a dedicated minority of true believers, which is at least ten percent if not twenty percent of the population.  The regime can count on its fanatical backers to use force - deadly force, if need be - to stop protests and keep the public in check. Those unhappy with the current system have overwhelmingly dropped out of politics, convinced that real change is not possible. 

 

But Iran's Supreme Leader is worried about the vulnerability of the regime.  The main focus of his public speeches is about the danger of "soft overthrow" from "Western cultural invasion."  Khamenei warns that the West is plotting a "velvet revolution" like that which overthrew the Czechoslovak communist government in a mere one week's time.  Presumably Khamenei knows something about his own country, and he worries that the regime is vulnerable.  Let us hope he is correct."