When does an uprising become a revolution? Throughout history, demonstrations, strikes and riots have brought crowds out on to the streets and threatened governments. In most countries a swift crackdown coupled with political concessions have usually contained popular unrest. But when violence is extreme, anger long pent up and regimes lose their nerve, a tipping point is reached and revolution sweeps the land. Has Iran reached that point?
The classic revolutions, those that changed world affairs, have come when the dam of repression could no longer hold. The grievances of the French peasants under the ancien régime or of the workers in tsarist Russia had been building up for years. It was only when an attempt was made to accommodate their demands that the would-be revolutionaries were emboldened to strike. The French aristocracy lost its repressive nerve and the mob tur
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