Unsustainable

 It's difficult for most Americans to understand the profound grip that soccer/football/futball has on the rest of the world. It's somewhat manic.

Which is why the news that Iranians are celebrating their country's ouster from the World Cup by the United States (The Great Satan) feels like another watershed moment. It is sometimes difficult for Americans or Westerners to understand that authoritarian regimes can actually be legitimate in the eyes of its' people. 

Since Covid, anti-authority protests have rocked governments around the world, authoritarian to democratic. George Floyd to the Yellow Vests to Iran to China. But democratic regimes are more adaptable, and we are seeing a fundamental challenge to "the way things are" which democracies are better able to address. 

Right now, the only thing keeping the mullahs in power in Iran is the military, specifically the Revolutionary Guard. There is a non-Revolutionary Guard military, though, and if they break with the Ayatollah the way the previous military broke with the Shah, we could finally see Iran rejoin the community of nations that it left in 1979.