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Comment by breppp | Hacker News Reader

It's usually progressive until the people with guns are too afraid to shoot, as in the fall of USSR

Although I will believe there are a few more iterations before this regime falls

In the fall of USSR, no one was "afraid to shoot". No one was motivated to do so. Or do anything for the completely failed system that no longer worked for anyone, inside or outside it. By 1991, no one cared for good ol' Union. That's the only reason it died so peacefully in its sleep with virtually no violence - it was so rotten, no one could care for its survival.

And indeed that is how the Shah fell in Iran - the regime was so rotten that even the military elite no longer saw it as worth defending. Will the current regime face the same eventually?

Just like in Soviet Union's case, trick isn't how to topple a regime, a sufficiently rotten one will fall by itself, but how to make sure the country that remains is sufficiently neutered to not become a menace again. It was simply overlooked by the West in 1991: they foolishly fell under the influence of their own propaganda and believed that Communism was the problem and with it gone, there was nothing left to worry about. As it turns out, Russia itself, was the problem. It was easy to solve in 1991 and extremely hard now. Hopefully it won't be repeated with Iran.

Let's not forget how much violence there'd already been

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