A recent poll of Iranian students (Scroll to May 1st: Life and Liberty in Iran) at Regime Change Iran gives reason to think that if we can avert a military showdown with Iran long enough the fundamentalist regime might fall like a rotted tree in the winds of popular contempt.
In early 2003 a large Internet poll of students of the Amir Kabir University (the second most prestigious university in Iran) was conducted. Here are some of the results:
For example, a government conducted survey revealed that 86 percent of the youth say that they do not perform the obligatory daily Islamic prayer.
Only 6 percent of the students said that they support the hardliners, while another 4 percent said they support the reformists within the regime.
In other words, only ten percent of respondents supported the regime at all.
Most significantly, 85 percent of the students said that they would support the establishment of a secular and democratic republic.
The balance of the post discusses why the mullahs still retain their power despite their immense unpopularity. The analysis includes with this:
While apathy may be the outward appearance, there is a cumulation of repressed anger, which may explode by a trigger. A potential trigger may be an outrageous act by regime elements as occurred in Lebanon by the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri. Another trigger may be American military attacks on fundamentalist coercive apparatuses such as Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Basij corps, Ansar-e Hezbollah vigilantes, Ministry of Intelligence headquarters, and the like.
We do not believe that any military strikes on the nuclear facilities would serve as a trigger for mass uprising as some have argued in Washington. The reasons being that with coercive apparatuses being intact, they have not only the power to crush any uprising, but also the added motivation and anger to do so. Iranians are angry at the coercive apparatuses for having oppressed and repressed them for so long but not at any inanimate nuclear facility.
Perhaps we shouldn't place too much confidence in the poll results, since it was conducted over the net and there's no explanation of the measures taken to insure a representative cross-section of respondents nor of the measures taken to prevent fraud. Nevertheless, it is suggestive.
The discussion of what might trigger a revolution in Iran makes a very interesting and important point about the sources of Iranian resentments. It could be that an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities will produce only a shrug from the people themselves. This could be disappointing, but it could also be good news if such an attack becomes necessary. If the popular reaction tends toward indifference it makes such an attack somewhat less perilous.