Moreover, it is vital to the war on terrorism and to the effort to combat Islamic radicalism to demonstrate Iranian-style radicalism is a failure, and its implementation leads to a failed society. Iran is the chief test case for the proposition that Islamic fundamentalism can make for good government, and that it should be adopted by nations throughout the Muslim world. We know that proposition to be false - the Iranian economy is in a shambles, the Iranian people are increasingly embittered by the way their government treats them. If the reformist movement can succeed in changing the nature of the Iranian regime and the policies it pursues, it could demonstrate to Islamic radicals throughout the world that the fundamentalist vision advanced by Khomeini is a failed one, and that it should not be pursued elsewhere. Communism suffered a tremendous blow to its reputation when the Warsaw Pact nations threw off the oppression of their communist governments, and when the Soviet Union itself fell. Islamic fundamentalism could be similarly discredited via a regime change in Iran - especially given the fact that Iranians are determined to bring that change about.

From a TCS article attacking the indifference of the West to the Iranian revolution-in-the-making. I agree 100% of course. Iran saw the first fundamentalist revolution, we are about to see the first counterrevoltuion against it. The political/historical significance of this could be immense, it could be the shock treatment the Middle East needs to shake itself out of its theocratic fever, and the US should be doing everything possible to make it happen.