Did the Green uprisings in Iran fail?

Absolutely not, says one astute reader of Andrew Sullivan's blog: "The only way the [Iranian] state can survive now is through the raw projection of power - through violence and oppression. I don't think they can preserve the Islamic Republic that way - it has always depended too much on piety, on genuine faith, on the desire of many Iranian people to live in a godly nation. I don't think it was a cynical joke in the same way that Stalin's Russia was. It will probably take 10 years - time for the wheels to turn, for new people to cycle into positions of power. But it's not going to last. It's pretty clear in hindsight that the events in Hungary in 1956 and the Prague Spring in 1968 really damaged communism as a system. Those events were part of a process; they de-legitimized the system, and did a lot to spread the truth about it around the world. They didn't finish off communism, but they certainly nailed down some essential truths about it. That's what the Greens have done."