I have been fascinated by the series of articles on the subject of Iran in Daily Kos since the Iranian election. I have been fortunate enough to have gathered some relevant experience at pretty high level in Iran during the last few years - particularly since the economic meltdown hit in earnest last September. FWIW I used to be a director of the International Petroleum Exchange (now ICE Europe) and global energy markets are a subject I know something about.
I think that the US has, for whatever reason, successfully adopted policies in almost every field which could almost have been calculated to achieve diametrically the reverse effect of what is required.
US financial sanctions have successfully protected Iran from the worst effects of the Credit Crunch; economic sanctions have slowed the spread of connectivity in Iran, the power of which has recently been conclusively demonstrated; and attempting to prevent nuclear energy development has massively supported the current regime. I could go on.
William Pfaff has an interesting view of Iran in terms of a struggle between religion and modernity.
Truthdig - Reports - The War Between Civilizations That Never Was
The West was wrong about this being a war of civilizations, and so were the Muslims. George W. Bush's Great War on Global Terror, against Islamic radicalism and Muslim terrorism, and the Great Fear that came close to paralyzing America after 9/11, and continues to preoccupy the American and West European governments, are both fundamentally due to a crisis inside Islamic civilization: a double crisis, of modernity and of religion.
Nothing could be clearer today in Tehran. Iran is convulsed by a struggle between its modernizing classes, reaching out to become part of a cosmopolitan international society, and to possess the respect of Western nations (if necessary, through the dangerous possession of nuclear weapons, as well as other evidences of Western modernity), and to be taken into the high councils of the modern world and be invited to participate in the rounds of international meetings where the Iranians no doubt think the world's problems are today being settled over their heads and against their interests.
The Iranian modernizers want all this, while remaining an Islamic great power (the Islamic Great Power, if possible). They want it without losing their immortal souls and their civilization. They will, of course, as others before them (as in Turkey, and on the Christian side, in Europe and the United States), find that this combination is not easily achieved.(continued)
I was also struck by what a pretty well-placed individual in Iran said concerning those who have taken power, and his is a genuine, but quiet (as Robert Pirsig said, you are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in....) Islamic faith.
Yes, the situation is very unpleasant and unexpected. We have no doubt that we are now facing a situation that a group with some sort of ideology that in our opinion is very different with what late Emam Khomeini presented to us are consolidating their administrative power. What worries me is the fact that they have not yet clearly indicated what sort of political view as well as religious sect they would like whole country to follow.
While there is a generational change going on along the lines Pfaff suggests, I believe that what we are seeing currently is the final stage of a struggle for administrative economic power between two factions of the ruling elite as I wrote in Asia Times, and also here...
A Very Iranian Coup
So my view is that the "coup" wasn't about political ideology or religious dogma, but was mainly about business, and this explains the fragmentation and tentative nature of the government response. It also explains the continuing internecine struggle in Qom and elsewhere. The absence of a genuinely religious element removes another source of trouble: you don't see suicide bombing for profit.
In the course of the work I have been doing to assist the Iranians with a next generation of financial/market infrastructure it has become clear to me that there is a fundamental and irreconcilable tension between Islamic values and a financial system based upon money created as interest-bearing debt.
In a nutshell, leverage is unIslamic.
Most intriguing to me has been the recent apparent rejection by the Iranian elite I met of the Western privatisation/globalisation agenda. Until late last year they had thought this agenda - the economic goal of the "reformists" - to be the cure for their economic ills. It has now become a standing joke that it was in fact Western sanctions which had perversely acted to save them from the credit crunch.
However, they, like the West, need a "Plan B", and that is where I think that networked economies operating within partnership frameworks - which are self evidently Islamically sound - offer a solution both for us and for them.
I think that the West should offer Iran all of the help they can, with as few strings as possible attached, and the rest will follow.
Iran is IMHO potentially the fulcrum for moving the world.