Michael de Laine

By Michael de Laine, The Copenhagen Voice, 24 June 2009

There will be no revolution for the present in Iran, although many people, especially young people, do not accept the results of the recent presidential election.

The repression of people in 1979 was combined with the view of the Shah as as a representative of foreign powers, but the same cannot be said about the present leaders in Iran, three observers of Iran told the Copenhagen Voice.

“The leaders today are suppressing the people but they are not sees as doing the job of a foreign power, which was very revolutionary,” said Søren Schmidt, a project researcher at the Danish Institute of International Studies’ research unit on defence and security. repression does not have that connection. This is why it will be a more murky and difficult process. It will not be good for foreign powers to intervene, if they see us as intervening it well help the mullahs will say ‘these people (those demonstrating against the regime and the election result) are associated with foreign powers’, which will not help the demonstrators. Why I say this is the beginning of the end is because a society like Iran cannot suppress the voice of the people indefinitely.”

See the Copenhagen Voice interview with Villo Sigurdsson, an immigration and integration expert in Copenhagen; Søren Schmidt; and Karin Bergquist, author of ‘Revolutionens børn - Unge i Teheran (The Children of the Revolution- Young People in Teheran)’.

See also Karin Bergquist’s column ‘Iran: The genie is out of the bottle’ here.