If Iranians only protest in Tehran, the revolt will fail

This video of protesters in Tehran is making the rounds, (via the LA Times Babylon and Beyond blog), and shows a real desire for the evidently fraudulent vote in Iran to be overturned.

But, sadly, beyond some cryptic reports from Twitter feeds that I can’t confirm, I am not seeing any evidence that protests are breaking out in other major cities. A capital protest will never result in Ahmadinejad being sent packing. If Mirhossein Mousavi’s supporters don’t have the resources and organization to put together insurrections across Iran, the current protest will follow an obvious pattern. Ahmadinejad’s government, with the backing of the Supreme Leader, will dismiss the protesters in Tehran as a few thousand disenchanted traitors who don’t represent the country, as evidenced by the 60%-plus who supposedly voted for the incumbent. Troops will be called into Tehran from the hinterland, just as occurred in Beijing during the Tiananmen Square uprising. And they will brutally silence the protesters. They’ve already warned they’d do this, see AFP:

The elite Revolutionary Guards had warned of a crackdown on any “velvet revolution” by supporters of the 67-year-old who was prime minister during the war with neighbouring Iraq in the 1980s.

If major protests break out in Isfahan and other major Iranian cities, the Revolutionary Guard will be spread too thin and turn to the Supreme Leader who will have to broker a solution. Which goes to show that Iran is not Georgia or Ukraine where politics is heavily centralized in one or two cities and a velvet or rose or orange revolution can question the very fabric of the existing political order.

Just about every story that’s alleged fraud in the Iranian election has pointed to Ahmadinejad’s heavy support in other parts of the country. All this pointing to protests in Tehran would be like looking at a surge in street activity in New York City after President Bush’s 2004 reelection and saying it was evidence of a desire for recasting the result all over America. But that’s where the foreign media outlets are – Tehran. They can’t see what’s going on in Mashhad or Shiraz where voters may be staying home.

So for the good of reform and change, if he can’t make the protest nationwide, I hope Mousavi will ask his supporters to return to their homes so that they can fight, and vote, another day, with ther skulls intact.