“It may be too late. Economic malaise in the Arab world is so advanced and Arab regimes so inept and corrupt that some kind of revolution could be inevitable – perhaps even desirable. In 20 years, perhaps less, Iran will be a powerful democracy and a solid U. S. ally. Having ejected its own western stooge and endured an indigenous, orthodox replacement, the Iranians realize there is no alternative to liberal democracy. If the Arab world is entering a prerevolutionary phase, Iran is in a postrevolutionary one. The Iranian polity is already more dynamic than many of its Arab counterparts. Its demographics – a growing population of young, secular reformers and a dwindling pool of aging clerics – are working in favor of stability and modernity.”
This was just a year after the US did them the favor of replacing the government of their biggest regional rival with people sympathetic to Iran and Shi’ism. In 2004 (maybe even today) Iran was probably the most democratic Muslim nation in the region. They could have built on that win instead of going all in on Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis. Their leaders have the same fixation on making the world conform to their ideological ideal as ours do.
Some analysts had been thinking that such was soon to happen … the regime was fragile, its leader ancient, it was, they were saying, on a path for that prediction to occur not very many years behind that schedule. Then recent events threw a wrench …
Reminds me of progressives’ confidence around the same time that demographic shifts toward younger voters and an influx of immigrants would create a wave of liberal sympathies carrying Democrats to long-term success in America.
Nationalism and religion are big fat road blocks to workable liberal democracy in pretty much every country in the world. I used to naively think the US was an exception. Even those democratic ideal states in northern Europe are about to slam into those ugly barriers.
Stuff like this is why I don’t try to ‘predict the world’ with my money - markets and politics are messy, better to stay diversified and keep it boring.
Trump in 2024 was a wild card after a pandemic and an ailing president. Demographic shifts play out over long time periods.
All polls show that younger Trump voters now view him unfavorably and so do Hispanic Trump voters. Nor will Trump be on the 2028 ballot (if for no other reason than his health) and the Trump cult vote is not reliably transferable to others.
The Democrats have been working hard to alienate voters for a long time, but they’ve had repeated local successes in elections since 2024; maybe a new group of left-wing politicians is forming.
Predictions in the Trump interregnum are mostly futile, true, but that doesn’t negate the historic importance of demographic changes, especially in the current era of generational changeover.
