A Year Later

FP has a series of articles marking the anniversary of the Iranian elections. Here's Reza Aslan:

For most of us, the Green Movement was an empty vessel to be filled with our dreams. Its goals became our goals, its agenda our agenda. And so when it failed to do what we wanted -- when winter came and the demonstrations dissipated, the regime endured, and the opposition leadership seemed paralyzed -- we were quick to declare the movement dead and buried, as Flynt Leverett of the New America Foundation and Hillary Mann Leverett did in a controversial New York Times op-ed in January.

...But there is just as much reason to believe that the memory of last year's struggle will reinvigorate the Green Movement as there is that the movement will fade into history as just another failed attempt to challenge the hegemony of the Iranian regime. Either way, perhaps it's best that we keep our prognostications to a minimum.

(Photo: Olivier Laban-Mattei/Getty.)