The Iranian government arrested all the opposition leaders and moved them to a military jail over the weekend. Bear in mind none of these guys is an actual liberal, merely calling for less oppression from the state. Still, it appears to have acted as some weird trigger. That and the protests elsewhere.

Anyhow, #10esfand is the hash-tag and the protests are happening right now. Unbelievable stuff. Traffic is ground to a halt in major cities. Thousands of people are standing on their roofs screaming, “Down with the dictators”. Plenty of YouTube stuff showing the crowds and chants. Absolute chaos. I still don’t believe the Iranian regime will fall but it is weakening daily. Who knows, though.

A lot of governments are considering that the choice is definitely as extreme as Egypt or Libya and have to be asking themselves which world they want to live in…

However, try for a moment to imagine a world in which most of the Middle East is run by representative governments. It doesn’t matter whether they’re Islamist. Imagine a shade of Turkey, for example. It could be the largest shift in human development … ever…