The Iranian regime is smashing thousands of satellite dishes in Tehran in a crackdown against Iranians recieving any kind of news from the outside world.
Naturally, this isn’t good. With all the rumors flying about about Iran doing something on August 22nd, any sign of action from the Iranian regime is a distressing one indeed. The Iranian government has been cracking down on anything that might provide an avenue for dissenting information — the Ahmadinejad regime is playing by the old-fashioned playbook of totalitarian rule.
However, with unemployment up and many in Iran grumbling about Ahmadinejad’s rule, it’s also possible that the regime is reading the writing on the wall – unless they crack down now, the long-dormant seeds of another revolution could spring up at any time. Still, that has not happened yet, and no one really knows what’s going on in Iran at the moment.
One thing is for sure — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a tyrant, and an especially dangerous one at that. It is critical for the West to understand that the Iranian state represents a clear and looming danger, and start taking the necessary diplomatic and political actions to prevent the need to take military action later on down the road. If there’s one thing we should have learned from the 20th Century, it’s that trying to ignore problems and use half-hearted and ineffectual diplomatic measures to stop tyranny only results in more bloodshed. Not every compromise is a Munich, but every Munich begins with an attempt at compromise.
