horse of george

Okay, let's take another stab at this Persian problem: is Mousavi, in allegiance with several disgruntled clerics, trying to wrest control of the theocracy from Khomanei by leveraging the naive enthusiasms of what is essentially a Tehran based 'colour' uprising to his own advantage? From what I've read of Mousavi he's no moderate, no friend of Israel or the US, was a key player in the '79 revolution and the theocratic repression of the '80s etc etc - there's no reason to expect Iran under his titular governance would be much different from A---'s. What if this is simply a case of one conservative faction nominally led by Mousavi conspiring against another conservative faction nominally led by A--- in order to install a more competent but not necessarily more moderate regime? What if the real target here is Khomenei, not A---? [op-ed I just read by Israeli think tank says Khomenei not target, not while Guard on his side, but conflict simply about two conservative factions within Iran's oligarchic, theocratic structure, battling for supremacy - Mousavi's connection to 'reformers' is merely a marriage of convenience]

Persian 'scholars' who claim special provenance over the issue are disagreeing about what this all means so not likely I'm going to figure it out - still, several points strike me as interesting:

• where's A---? What does his seeming detachment mean? Sign of his subordinate role? Indication of confusion? Or does the little bastard have a scheme going?
• why no violent crackdown yet? Does the Guard agree with this tolerance for whatever reason or is it acting against its better judgment and is soon to break loose? Do they have some understanding of the protests that we lack?
• there's a disconnect between the enthusiasm, the cathartic zeal of the protesters and the conservative theocratic reality of Mousavi's past - how to interpret that? The movement is an incoherent mess? Or signs of manipulation by Mousavi and a cadre of insurgent mullahs? And should the uprising succeed, or even if it doesn't, how will the passions that brought it about mutate, evolve, and to what end? The passionate mind clinging to the chimera of change can prove a rather unpredictable, ungovernable thing.
  
• what of the Ayatollah? My impression is he's a little lost at sea here - but the opposite could be true: like A--- he could in fact be ripe with scheming. If he is sitting on a plan I have trouble believing its goal is anything other than to keep the status quo intact. If no plan exists, then either the Guard will soon come to the fore or the uprising's chances of success are dramatically improved.
  
• and finally: where's your Obama now? It's possible things will resolve to his provisional advantage here, but much more likely the 'Obama way' has and will continue to take on serious water. What lessons, if any, will the administration take from what has happened? Trying to play softball with A--- has left them dangling: support the uprising and if it fails they're screwed - or, to put it another way, forced to face the reality that was there all along and clashes with their 'new world' agenda; take a hands off approach and if the uprising succeeds they're screwed and they look like charlatans; support the uprising and it succeeds then how can they argue against the new and ostensibly improved regime should it choose not to abandon nuclear ambitions? This only really works out for them if their plan all along was to allow Iran to go nuclear - but how can one twist that into being a good thing?