It is hard to overstate the importance of February 1st in Iran. Set the Wayback machine to Tehran in the Winter of 1979. Pahlavi-American absolutism, guaranteed by SAVAK, sputtered through gestures at reform and reaction throughout 1978, ending in mid-January with the Pahlavis fleeing to Egypt. Today Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini deplaned in Tehran, from Paris, after 14 years in exile, and was greeted by ... millions of people.
A sea of names, heads of SAVAK, ministers, generals, Anglo-Americans in and out of uniform, in oil, in state security services, technocrats, cardiologists ... precede this moment. The moment of the Alavi Secondary School for Girls -- of the Komiteh-ye Imam.
A sea of names, Bakhtiar, the Kometehs, the Pasdarans, 37 days, Bani-Sadr, Beheshti, Bazargan, Ghotbzadeh, the coup attempts, the executions, the Americans ... follow this moment ... to the present moment, defined in part by the disaster at Bam.
Around all these swirls a vast sea of names, dates, places, acronyms -- Sheik Fazlollah Nuri, Muhamad Hossain Naini, dozens of Pahlavis, Mossadeqq, Kermit Roosevelt, Zahedi, Tudeh, the Fedaiin Majority and Minority, UIC, Pekar, Mojahedin, PKD, the Siahkal Incident, and Ayatollahs and clerics, some good, some simply murderers.
Joe Biden met with Kamal Kharrazi at Davos. Javad Zarif got an over-night pass out of the restricted-New-York box and allowed to travel to a dinner on the Hill. Arlen Specter wants to travel to Tehran. All very busy-buzzy in Washington policy circles.
Meanwhile, 117 of the 290 members of the Majlis resigned over an issue of the first importance in Persian politics -- the powers of the successor-in-interest of the Komiteh-ye Imam -- the clerical Guardian Council -- to select candidates for elections to the Majlis. Faced with their own 12th-of-December moment, the progressives and moderates of that legislature have chosen to walk away from a suspension of Democracy. They chose this day. The Day.
At least Iran appears to be off the Bush-Cheney re-elect war plan.
[Update: The resignation count is now 126. The Mellat Electronic Newspaper is here: mellat.majlis.ir.]