Back to Tehran. There's a debate on Hoder's weblog about whether women really have been burning their headscarves by the thousands... no-one saw it, and no-one writing about it seems to have realized that Ledeen is just quoting SMCCDI... perhaps the LA stations have been talking about it too.

About three months ago Mr. Alavitabar predicted a "turning point" in Iran within three months. But as we saw, nothing happened. As Elton Daniel commented in A History of Iran, "Scholars, analysts, and journalists in and outside of Iran largely failed to comprehend either the nature or the direction of the Islamic Revolution when it occurred. Since then, many of them have confidently and repeatedly predicted the imminent demise of the Islamic regime whenever it faces a crisis, or its transformation into a "moderate" or "pragmatic" government with every reshuffling of its personnel. This has been due to their determination to make the facts of the Iranian case fit into preconceived models of revolutions and revolutionary behaviour, and they have invariably been proven wrong." So I agree with Mr. Shariatmadari... "It's been almost four years now that they've been saying we are reaching a deadlock. But we don't see any."