A year ago, THE WEEKLY STANDARD Online published an article of mine titled “The Poland of Islam?” predicting that democratization in Mesopotamia, however imperfectly accomplished, would stimulate political change in neighboring Iran and Saudi Arabia. In this way, it would reproduce the “Polish paradigm” in which the proximity of reform in Warsaw helped undermine the Soviet empire. Small changes in Saudi Arabia as well as recent events in Iran have seemed to demonstrate the reality of such developments.
