The role of labor was crucial in Egyptians’ popular efforts to oust Hosni Mubarak, perhaps the bale of straw that broke the U.S.-supported dictator’s back. Naturally, organizers and activists are glowing. But will [...]]]> Our colleague Emad Mekay has a piece on Egyptian labor in today’s International Herald Tribune, the global edition of the New York Times.

The role of labor was crucial in Egyptians’ popular efforts to oust Hosni Mubarak, perhaps the bale of straw that broke the U.S.-supported dictator’s back. Naturally, organizers and activists are glowing. But will it last?

With continued military rule in Egypt, at least until elections in the fall, the recent kingbreakers find themselves at odds with the newly-elevated junta, who have asked them to calm things down.

Here’s an excerpt of Mekay’s report from Egypt’s textile hub El Mahalla, home to a long-oppressed labor movement:

[Organizer Hamdi] Hussein was all smiles as he announced that he was heading to Cairo to attend a meeting to chart out future labor demands after the stunning success of the Egyptian revolution.

“Yesterday, this meeting would have been secret and I would have been forced to sneak in and out of El Mahalla,” Mr. Hussein said during an interview.

“Now, the labor movement that helped topple Mubarak will take its rightful place in protecting the revolution.”

But will it? This newfound labor empowerment has startled the interim government, which was originally appointed by Mr. Mubarak, and challenges the efforts by the military, which is effectively in charge, to protect Egypt’s existing institutions and return the country to a more normal life.

“All ministers here are displeased with the strikes,” Magdy Radi, the cabinet’s spokesman, said by telephone. “It is hampering our work as a caretaker government. But it is an issue for the supreme council to take care of, not us.”

The military council, despite initial reports that it would move to ban strikes altogether, has so far taken a more measured approach. On Tuesday, it issued a communiqué urging Egyptians to tone down their labor protests, citing the consequences for the economy and the supply of everyday needs.

The new government and the military may have a more profound reason to be worried about a new wave of strikes, which played a critical role in bringing down the Mubarak regime.

Earlier this month, as the world was riveted by the young “Internet generation” demonstrating in huge numbers in Tahrir Square, Mr. Hussein and 20 other labor leaders were busy using their mobile phones to plan a nationwide series of strikes and sit-ins.

Takeyh starts with a little armchair psychology on the Islamic Republic’s enforcers — the mid-level officials as well as the foot [...]]]> Council on Foreign Relations scholar Ray Takeyh has an intriguing op-ed in the International Herald Tribune, the global edition of the New York Times. He asks: “Just how stable is Iran’s clerical regime?”

Takeyh starts with a little armchair psychology on the Islamic Republic’s enforcers — the mid-level officials as well as the foot soldiers of the regime — “all require an overweening ideological cover to justify their brutalities to themselves.”

Yet the crackdown against Iran’s nascent Green Movement after the June 2009 elections is calling these justifications into question:

The subtle and subversive victory of the Green movement is to hollow out the state and demonstrate to its loyalists that they are not defending a transcendent orthodoxy but craven and cruel men addicted to power at all cost. In the words of the reformist cleric, the late Ayatollah Hossein Montazeri, in the violent crackdown following the elections in June 2009, the Islamic Republic ceased to be either Islamic or a republic.

In his seminal study of revolutions, Crane Brinton observed that a ruling class becomes imperiled when “numerous and influential members of such a class begin to believe that they hold power unjustly, [and] that the beliefs they were brought up on are silly.”

Takeyh points to a string of high level defections of some former defenders of the regime to the opposition. He says the “accomplishments of the Green movement are impressive,” but stressed the future of Iran is still very much uncertain. In his estimation, it’s not a matter of if the regime collapses, but when.

Here’s the rub for U.S. policy:

The series of decisions that the United States and its allies make today will help condition the contours of power in tomorrow’s Iran.

This is not to suggest that the United States should cease negotiating with Iran. Ronald Reagan continued to sign arms control compacts with a Soviet Union whose demise he perceived as certain. The pursuit of important security objectives did not derail Reagan from embracing Solidarity in Poland or comparable opposition groups throughout Eastern Europe. The important point is that the Iran conundrum is not limited to compelling Tehran to spew out some of its accumulated uranium. Our choices speak as much to our values as they do to our interests. In the long run, America has never gone astray by standing with those who hope for a more decent future.

The “anti-appeasement” hawks may have a tough time with that last graf. Takeyh cites Ronald Reagan (!!! — might as well be pro-appeasement right-wing idol Winston Churchill!). He also implies a fuel-swap confidence building measure is in U.S. interests, although U.S. interests should “not be limited” to this goal.