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Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-athanasiadas17-2010jan17,0,4807270.story
Opposition in Iran Is Gaining Strength
(Los Angeles Times) Iason Athanasiadis - "The current regime has broken the social bonds that tie it to the public and thus is eventually due to fall," said Bill Beeman, a Persian-speaking professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota. "Iran is a hierarchical society. Folks in the superior position must care for those in the inferior position or they will be toppled. The folks in the lower position will cease to support them - in fact will work to undermine them." There is a Persian concept that translates as the "party of the wind." It refers to the tendency of Iranians to bend politically whichever way the ideological winds blow. One of the reasons that Iran's 1979 revolution was relatively bloodless was the smooth, almost instant shift in the loyalties of thousands of bureaucrats and military men from Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to the opposition. On the last Sunday of 2009, anti-government demonstrators turned on the security forces and discovered that Iran's demoralized riot police no longer had much fight left in them. They often turned tail and ran. Videos emerging from Iran showed angry crowds surrounding trapped, often bloodied, police and plainclothes religious loyalists. In the shocked silence that followed, there was a feeling that the center of gravity had shifted.