I have never felt like an Iranian. The Muslim world of the Middle East can seem alien to those of us in the West. Yet with the tumultuous event of the last two weeks in the land of ancient Persia, I feel a kinship with the Iranian protestors that I have not experienced before. I am rooting for them to overthrow the mullahs and embrace freedom and democracy as hard as I have rooted for any sports team in my life.

Image Credit: AFP

World solidarity and hope are all well and good, but they don’t win revolutions. Many, perhaps most, revolutions fail (Wikipedia has a list here). There is a great deal of research on the causes of revolutions, but less on the outcomes. What are the factors that lead to a successful revolution, and how do they relate to the situation in Iran?

Pick your Poison: Guerilla Action or Non-Violent Protest

A great many famous revolutions, including the American, French and Russian Revolutions, were violent. When evaluating the likelihood of a rebellion succeeding in this contest, one can look at the number of soldiers on each side, the arms and supplies of each group, support among the population, and external pressures. Some guerilla movements, like those led by Castro in Cuba and Mao Tse-tung in China, eventually gain a military victory by overthrowing the government and installing their leaders. Others, like FARQ in Columbia or the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, fight for years against the government before eventually being defeated.

Non-violent protests were traditionally thought to work best in open societies. The most famous examples are Gandhi in India from 1916-1947 and Martin Luther King in the United States from 1955-1964.

The dangers of the non-violent approach can be seen in the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. After seven weeks of peaceful protests and hunger strikes, the Chinese government ordered in the tanks. The square was cleared at a cost of hundreds and perhaps thousands of lives.

In general, having a peaceful protest against a totalitarian regime is a good way to get shot, and an ineffective way to change things. One salient counter-example, ironically enough, occurred in Iran in 1979.

First, a little history. Iran became a constitutional monarchy, complete with Parliament, back in 1906 with the signing of their Constitution. The monarch in this monarchy was known as the Shah, but the Parliament had a great deal of power. In 1953, Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh threatened to nationalize the country’s oil reserves. This led to a joint CIA-MI6 operation in which Mossadegh was deposed and the Shah became the head of the Iranian government. Over the years of his rule, the U.S./U.K. backed Shah became increasingly autocratic.

In 1957 he set up SAVAK, the notorious secret police, again with the help of the CIA. In 1963 he crushed opposition forces. At first, however, he had to walk warily because he lacked the necessary state apparatus and because he had to take account of Western public opinion. But in 1965 after an assassination attempt he appointed General Nematollah Nassiri as head of SAVAK and gave him virtual carte blanche to put down his enemies. Massive, organized state terror had begun.

In 1977, demonstrations began over the death of (future Ayatollah) Khomeini’s son Mustafa. Protests continued in the face of brutal government opposition, and in 1979, the Shah was forced to abdicate and go into exile.

The revolution which overthrew the Shah of Iran, often compared with the landmark French and Russian revolutions, may well deserve a historical niche all its own. It would be difficult to think of another unarmed popular uprising which was sustained over such a long period by so many people - against a police and army with nearly unlimited firepower.

Meet the New Boss. Same as the Old Boss.

The Shah was replaced by Ayatollah Khomeini, who consolidated power as Supreme Leader and established the Guardian Council to protect against un-Islamic legislation. The Iranian people traded one tyrant for another. In many revolutions, the same thing occurs.

Until very recently, revolutions have invariably failed to produce democracy. The need to consolidate a new regime in the face of struggles with domestic and foreign foes has instead produced authoritarian regimes, often in the guise of populist dictatorships such as those of Napoleon, Castro, and Mao, or of one-party states such as the PRI state in Mexico or the Communist Party-led states of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Indeed, the struggle required to take and hold power in revolutions generally leaves its mark in the militarized and coercive character of new revolutionary regimes.

Only in the last few years have there been counter-examples of the revolutionary tendency to replace old tyrannical dictators with new tyrannical dictators.

It is therefore striking that in several recent revolutions—in the Philippines in 1986, in South Africa in 1990, in Eastern European nations in 1989–1991—the sudden collapse of the old regime has led directly to new democracies, often against strong expectations of reversion to dictatorship (Foran & Goodwin 1993, Weitman 1992, Pastor 2001). The factors that allowed democracy to emerge in these cases appear to be several: a lack of external military threat, a strong personal commitment to democracy by revolutionary leaders, and consistent external support of the new democratic regimes by foreign powers. (ibid)

So for all of our hope, and all the hope of the Iranian people, there is a strong chance that the revolution will fail. Even if it does succeed, there is still a good chance that the new leader, perhaps Moussavi or perhaps another, will simply take as much power as he can for himself, and leave nothing but the illusion of democracy in place.

What can the US do?

President Obama is in a difficult spot. On one hand, America has an instinctive need to embrace the advocates of democracy and support the revolution. On the other hand, much of the political power of Ahmadinejad derives from being able to portray America as the Great Satan, and blame us for interfering in Iranian affairs. Any action by the US to support the protestors could backfire, and strengthen Ahmadinejad’s position.

There is another difficulty. Revolutions nearly always require some kind of outside support or pressure, especially if the successive government is going to be democratic.

Time and again and around the world — from as recently as Tibet in 2008, to Egypt in 2005, to Tiananmen in 1989 — the prospects of reform dim considerably without international support. In fact, we know of no modern democratic evolution or revolution that has succeeded without some support and pressure from the west.

We must hope that Obama has the political skill to support the revolution without seeming to. Indeed, there are some indications that this is the case. A few days ago, for instance, the State Department apparently persuaded the website Twitter to postpone scheduled maintenance so that it did not correspond with peak Iranian use times. This was a small, but vital effort as the protesters have been relying on Twitter for its communications.

As for the rest of us, all we can do is pull for the Iranians to pull off the biggest upset they’ve seen in 30 years.

Alex Knapp also contributed to this article.