Dan Senor and Christian Whiton have posted another piece on Iran that is worth reading — this time over at Time magazine. They make two key arguments.

The first is that U.S. support for the Iranian reform movement need not be centered solely around Mir Hossein Mousavi, since the movement he represents (and of which he is the fulcrum right now) likely transcends any single individual. He is a product of the forces of liberation, rather than the other way around. And they make a useful historical comparison to Mikhail Gorbachev, who was dismissed by many Republicans and conservatives at the time as a phony reformer. Whatever Gorbachev’s original intentions, he created a chain reaction that he could not control. In Senor and Whiton’s words, “The record shows that revolutionary change can come through leaders who come to power seeking to prevent it.”

Their second point is that “successful movements to alter authoritarian and totalitarian regimes almost always depend on internal dissent backed by strong international support.” They provide examples, from the Eastern Bloc to South Korea to South Africa, Panama, Taiwan, Georgia, the Philippines, Nicaragua, and Indonesia. It is an intelligent and informed piece — something that is particularly unusual for Time, given what has been written by some of its columnists recently.

To watch what is unfolding in Iran right now is remarkable and stirring. The revolution there is real; whether it survives or not is another matter. America’s capacity to influence events there is limited — but it is not irrelevant. What we can do is act with moral wisdom, to stand with and for the forces of liberation, and take whatever practical steps we can to help this extraordinary uprising. And those who during the last few years mocked the importance of elections and the power and longing for human freedom in the Middle East, who characterized the freedom agenda as simplistic, quixotic, and fated to fail, should feel a twinge of shame in light of Iran’s Freedom Revolution. Whether or not this turns out to be a historical tipping point is unclear; but one senses that in the aftermath of the last week, things have changed in a profound way. And it’s not over yet.