FG

Consider the central goal: To convince the people to believe  what many once believed--that this regime is good, that its Supreme Leader is an honorable and moral man and that he represents Islam at its best.   At the same time a campaign of intimidation against its own people.  The two goals are 180 degeees in opposition.

No doubt regime insiders recognize their dilemna but they continue anyway because they can ‘t think of anything else and because they have gone to far to risk openness now.  At least six specific factors that doom the “re-education” campaign from the start.

1. The horrors Khamenei has recently inflicted on the people are whichgrow even worse by the day.

2. The more crimes the regime commits in the present, the more motive people have to explore its past crimes.

No need to recall those that have gotten the most attention up to this point.   Soon people will start looking into similar behavior that occurred before most Iranians were even born such as the Cinema Rex fire (approximately 500 moviegoees burned alive to teach them a lesson) and the sulphuric acid attacks that blinded and disfigured so many women to intimidate them into conformity with new hajib laws.  The regime’s attitude then (We’ll show ‘em.  They need a lesson“) is identical to the regime’s behavior now.  Why?  Because many of the same people were responsible.

3. Khamenei’s insistence that he did not rig the election go against common sense.  

Best question: Would a man capable of so many worse horrors hesitate to rig an election?  Second best question: Unless he approved, how could Khamenei remain silent when Mesbah Yadzi issued a pre-election mandate ordering election rigging as an Islamic duty?   

4. Regime censorship has failed while its whoppers have undermined credibility.

For example, the Khamenei regime has offered the people at least six different and contradictory explanations of Neda’s murder--anything but take responsibility and admit the truth).  Or the claim that Iranians were happy and content until foreigners stirred them up.

5. Changes in the nature of Iran’s population over 30 years. 

Most Iranians are young.  They are also far better educated.  For many reasons they can’t help being more aware of the freedom and rights enjoyed by young people elsewhere.   Any attempt to suggest that such freedoms are tantamount to hell on earth just won’t play.

6. The regime had implicitly confessed to wrongdoing.

Why the mass graves?   Why the need for so much preventive detention and message-sending sentences?  
Why fear a fair elections, a free press and private criticism.  If criticism was false and the regime had nothing shameful to hide, nonsense could easily be rebutted.  Why don’t democracies have  such fear since their openness would surely make them far more vulnerable to foreign conspiracies?   With the advantage of working against far more open society, the Soviets never managed to accomplish such a thing.  How much harder would it be for foreign schemers to do so in a closed police state where surveillance is everywhere?

Iranians are incredibly nationalistic.  It simply isn’t credible that they would fall for any foreign campaign, especially a well organized one, aimed at turning the Iranian people against their rulers.  That would apply double if they were happy and content to begin with.   Even if Iran had an open society, such an effort would have little chance so how would it suceed in a police state where surveillance is everywhere and the regime has no inhibitions when it comes to countermeasures?