Okay, I've been reduced to looking at National Review for news about Iran, that's what it has come to. There's an explanation for why the CNN story was so different from what was turning up in alternate news sources here. It does sound like whatever it was is over. A posting at the Corner (the NR's blog) says: "An activist type tells me: 'it's never calm over there...there's always SOME town or region that's in upheaval but where yesterday's movement is concerned it has subsided. The next big day where people are going to go out there will be April 2nd which is the 25th anniversary of Khomeini declaring Iran to be an Islamic Republic.'"
Oh, and the Corner also had a link to a story about Syria in the Torygraph.
How can unrest in either of these two countries be so far off the radar? Wasn't everyone all paranoid about U.S. plans to invade either Iran or Syria or a couple of other places at the end of the Iraq War? Not anymore, I guess.
G. said: Oddly for me, I blame the Bush administration, or maybe (not so odd) the State Department. If the folks over there were whispering to the press corps that they are anxiously watching developments, it would prod them into paying more attention.
I suspect that Foggy Bottom is scared to death that there might be change in the works. Maybe the White House is afraid that any cheerleading will give the Baathists and mullahs ammunition to claim it's all a CIA plot (as if the CIA were capable of pulling off a plot). The could be a point.
Still, it raises disturbing parallels to the first Bush administration's attempts to discourage/downplay the Tiananmen Square protests.
I replied: Well it's impossible to know what they're really thinking, isn't it? Whenever I hear anti-war people go off on the fiendish neocon cabal that's taken over Washington, with its dastardly agenda to globalize democracy and human rights, I just wish I could share their total confidence such a Plan is afoot.
G. added: The Chicago Tribune mentions the Iranian celebration today -- in the 12th paragraph deep in the jump on a Metro story about fun-loving suburban Chicago Persians and their quaint ways. Makes it seem like the action in Tehran is little more than another Forest Preserve picnic event. World's greatest newspaper, yep.