As people die from the government crackdown, I asked Amir Taheri if any real progress is actually being made in Iran, for Iranians. He’s optimistic:

Yes. The regime has already lost control of the streets. It is now holding them not through “popular masses” but with armored cars and forces of repression.
On Wednesday, the regime was forced to cancel its rent-a-mob demonstration against Britain’s alleged “interventions in Iranian affairs.” Its fear was that the opposition might use the stage-managed event as a cover for its own genuine protest demonstration.
Meanwhile, the taboo of criticizing Khamenei has been broken.
Hundreds of poems and songs mocking him, some using his sobriquet “Ali Gedda” (Ali the Beggar), are now in circulation throughout Iran. He has been exposed as the “godfather” of the Khomeinist establishment rather than the arbiter of national interests as he claimed.
People like Zbigniew Brzezinski can no longer go around claiming that the Khomeinist regime is a “vibrant democracy.” Sen. John Kerry cannot pretend, as he did in a recent New York Times oped, that Iran was facing not a popular uprising but a “neco-con plot.” Even if Ahmadinejad manages to impose himself for four more years, President Obama will not have a remotely credible interlocutor to negotiate with.
The revolution that led to the shah’s fall took a year before it bore fruit.
History is not written in advance, and the current revolt in Iran may well fizzle out.
However, one thing is now certain: The oxymoron “Islamic Republic” has been exposed as a sham.
The regime in Iran has become an Islamic emirate, or imamate if you prefer, like the one that existed in Yemen until 1961 and in Afghanistan under the Taliban until 2002.
In Iran we have reached a moment of clarity. And, believe me, that is priceless.
In my humble way I have fought for three decades to help bring about that clarity, to show my people, and the world at large, the true nature of the regime created by Khomeini, and I am happy.
To be sure, I hope to be even happier a year from now.

Read more Taheri here.