An Iran without the ayatollah is no longer unthinkable

This weekend marks the 39th anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini’s return from exile in 1979 to hijack a popular movement that led to the dismissal of Iran’s monarchy and its dictatorship.

But the largest countrywide uprising since 2009 suggests that the Iranian people are prepared to write the next chapter in their history, and it may happen sooner than Tehran’s Washington lobby would like.

Policy toward Iran has historically been an enigma for Western powers and for Washington in particular. It could even be argued that U.S. policy toward Iran has been the bete noire for bipartisan administrations — Republican and Democrat — since the 1979 revolution.

This is partly due to fabrications that the Islamic Republic and its apologists have peddled for decades, including that:

The Iranian regime enjoys the support of the population, in particular the poor.