CFR on Iran

I attended a CFR discussion on Iran this morning which was pretty good. General consensus was that Obama has played it right (with the exception of his comment that Mousavi=Ahmadinejad), but the regime has cracked down very effectively since last weekend and the opposition has lost considerable momentum. To comparisons to 1979, it was pointed out that, unlike the Shah's regime, the hard-liners have both the will and the skill to asphyxiate their opponents, brutally if necessary. Two panelists argued that Mousavi should have moved earlier from street protests to strikes, but they acknowledged the difficulty he has with communication stifled and nearly his entire support system arrested.

Overall, the mood was that Ahmadinejad would probably prevail this time around. Maybe Sullivan et al have been too colored by optimism and the main stream media wasn't so far off after all?