What Egypt & Tunisia Tell us About Iran

Pouya Alimagham asks What Egypt & Tunisia Tell us About Iran.

His main conclusion is that:

Although it remains uncertain which direction they will eventually take, simply by virtue of having emerged within a secular and nationalist framework, the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions’ current states of triumph provide an alternative to the Iranian government’s theory of revolution. By doing so, they have inadvertently detracted from the allure of Islamic Revolution, which the Iranian government has long championed. In other words, the Islamic Revolution can no longer claim the mantle of being the only path to popular revolution. This challenge to the Iranian government’s discourse on revolution explains why authorities in Iran, however unconvincingly, are attempting to depict the recent revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia as part of a wider Islamic Awakening.

Emphasis Mine

This emphasis on an Islamic Revolution also served to stifle the arguments about the possibility of a Communist Revolution in the Middle East.