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Although "People Power" has worked in some countries, it has worked in countries where the military had sympathy with or were unwilling to slaughter their own people.

In Iran, however, I am afraid that the Mullah's armed forces, indoctrinated in and selected for Islamist religious zealotry, would machine gun down a demonstration of their own grandmothers if the Mullahs told them that Allah would be pleased by a river of Granny's blood.

You may be right, but I question how deep the "fanaticism" of the Republican Guard runs. How many participate in the fist pumping and flag burning just to get along, but are privately, or at least potentially, hostile toward the regime? The mullahs seem to be worried about this too, and have reportedly been salting the Republican Guard with imported Arab fanatics (a palpably desperate measure for a Persian government).

The students seem to think the time is ripe. I hope they are right. We'll see. Obviously we should have some plan to leverage the consequent deligitimization of the mullahs if there is a bloodbath. Maybe Dubya or other U.S. officials should threaten, in advance of the strike, to support military insurgency against the mullahs if deadly force is used against the strikers?

You may be right, but I question how deep the "fanaticism" of the Republican Guard runs. How many participate in the fist pumping and flag burning just to get along, but are privately, or at least potentially, hostile toward the regime?

I don't really know for certain.

However, one thing to keep in mind was that the Iraqi regime was secular and the Iraqi Republican Guard thought they answered to Saddam while the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are very religious and belive they answer to Allah.

If I were an Iranian student going off to a demonstration to do potential battle with a religious zealot, I wouldn't leave home without my AK-47 and my RPG......and 20 of my closest, similarly armed friends. :-)

The fear that the military of Iran will kill its own people is real but not likely. The military and the revolutionary guards have members on both sides of the struggle. There have been numerous reports of the revolutionary guards calling emergency meeting with the Iranian leaders warning of a civil war if they try to ask them to crack down too violently on the student protesters.

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