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Gary Sick on The News Hour:
GWEN IFILL: Gary Sick, we've been watching Western governments respond to this. It's mostly been kind of muted, especially here in the U.S., where the president's press secretary, the secretary of state or her spokesman have all said we're watching -- and the vice president have said we're watching with concern, which isn't very strong language. What is that about?
GARY SICK: I think they realize -- at least I hope they realize -- that this is a domestic problem in Iran. This has to do with Iranian domestic politics. And it's a fight that is going on over who will actually run Iran from here on out.
And they have no role in that. The U.S. government cannot even express an opinion or get involved in that struggle without having a very, you know, unconstructive reaction on the part -- the Iranians will say, "You're interfering in our domestic politics," which would be true. And that would skew everything and probably in ways that would not be favorable to us at all, regardless of what we said.
So I think the government is very smart to stay basically silent about this and let nature take its course in Iran.
And one of the things that we've seen in Iran right now, which is really astonishing, is the opposition has adopted the tactics that were used in the revolution, back in the days of the revolution, standing on your rooftops and shouting, "Allahu akbar," "God is great."
These are the kinds of things that were done by the revolutionaries themselves to overthrow the shah. And this "Death to the dictator" sounds very much like "Death to the shah." It really is, in some respects, turning the clock back to 1979.
GWEN IFILL: So the word "revolution," do you think, is too much of a word to use, Karim Sadjadpour?
KARIM SADJADPOUR: I would say it is too much of a word, simply because in 1979 you had the population against the regime -- it was a wholesale revolution, a wholesale change of regime -- whereas this time around, as I said, you have fissures amongst the revolutionary elite themselves.
Certainly, someone like Hashemi Rafsanjani is committed to the continuation of the Islamic Republic, Mir Hossein Mousavi, as well. But I think we may -- there's a serious challenge to the legitimacy of the Wilayat-e-Faqih, the system of the supreme leader, the Khomeini system of government, which is truly unprecedented. And I think if these crowds continue, we may see some type of an evolution of the Islamic Republic, but I wouldn't predict a revolution.