Democracy is a gift only a nation can give itself. Even then, it can give it solely after its body politic has reached certain maturity, and has developed the requisite organs of political mediation—from civil society and a propertied middle-class to a culture of religious tolerance and epistemological and political pluralism. There is, then, an implicit Historic law of democratic determinism. And the history of modern Iran has been, hitherto, a tragic tale of rulers and intellectuals ignoring these laws, trying to bring democracy too soon, or halting its overdue arrival. The Islamic Revolution of itself was the result of a modernizing but authoritarian monarch realizing only too late the force of this democratic determinism. Ironically the very clerics who hijacked that democratic movement and went on to create a theocratic despotism are still harboring the delusion that they can ignore the very laws that brought them to power. They have now pinned their hopes first on sheer brutality, and secondarily on emulating the China model, or more specifically of affording people the economic benefits of a controlled market economy, while ruling over them with an iron fist.

Testimony of Dr. Abbas Milani, Co-Director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs

Hezbollah is Iran’s tool in exporting revolution. But a lot of the power brokers in Tehran don’t want to risk their $70 billion a year in oil loot on a group of crazies in southern Lebanon. By Abbas Milani.

How can we deal with the nuclear threat from Iran? By encouraging democracy in Iran. By Abbas Milani.