The Green Revolution, Indeed

Those cheering on the demonstrators in Iran, what would be and is your view of student demonstrations in your own country? What did you think of the teenagers on the Countryside March or who protested against the Iraq War? I happened to agree with them on both occasions, but I bet you didn't on the second point, and I bet a lot of you didn't on the first.

All sorts of ideas circulate in universities, so these people could be anything, not least since all manner of people could be, would be and are opposed to the current government of Iran. Being around traditional-age undergraduates is very energising, and I have no doubt that it has done me the world of good following my several major operations over the last year and a half. Their open-mindedness is quite splendid most of the time. But not all of the time. The flip side of youthful open-mindedness is callowness. Come on, we all know this. We were all that age once.

So, who, exactly, are these Iranian dissidents with their student followings? What, exactly, do they want? How can we know that that would pose what the current regime poses to us, namely absolutely no threat whatever, however little it may be to our taste? Or that it would continue to provide guaranteed parliamentary representation to our Assyrian and Armenian fellow-members of Christendom, as well as to Jews who could at least broadly be categorised as ultra-Orthodox, and who will therefore be denaturalised in Israel, as will the Arabs there, once Lieberman's loyalty oath comes into effect? Saying "better the devil you know" does not deny that the devil is the devil.

And anyway, is Iran the devil? The regime may be one of the world's nastier, but it is far from the worst, and it certainly bears comparison with our dear friends in the Gulf and in Central Asia. From one of the former came the 9/11 attacks. Not from Iraq, as Americans were told. Nor did Iraq have WMD, as ninety per cent of Britons cottoned on at the time. And nor did Iraq feed prisoners into paper shredders, as alleged by those now making outlandish claims about the treatment of prisoners in Iran. Be not deceived.