Referring to the recent anti-American foment in the streets of Iran, Matthew Yglesias (of “The Matt Yglesias Experience”®) writes:

[…]obviously the Ayatollahs are manipulating public opinion here, but lets not forget that until recently the demonstrations we were seeing were either in support of the reformist President or else were in order to condemn him for being insufficiently radical.

Turns out that people may not like having their nation, bad as it may be, labeled an ally of two different vicious mass murderers (bin Laden and Saddam) both of whom it was fighting against long before the US got in the battle.

Evidently, Matt’s not buying Andrew Hofer’s “Game Theory” argument. But according to Michael Ledeen, the Iranians just might be. Writing in The National Review, Ledeen argues that — far from an ominous sign pointing to a resurgence of fundamentalist sympathies — “yesterday’s mob was an insult to the regime, a further demonstration of its weakening grip on the Iranian people.”

The story is even clearer when you realize that the regime knew in advance that it would have to work hard to fill the available space, and it pulled out all the stops to get bodies in place. The secret police, the Basiji, went around threatening students and teachers, warning of dire consequences if they didn’t show up. All government employees, and all members of the armed forces were ordered to participate. The poor were told that if they didn’t celebrate, their welfare would be cut off. Thousands of buses dragged people from the countryside to the city.

And still the best they could come up with was about a third of the usual turnout. That should have been the headline, and that is a big story.

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