Growing up, my memories of the 1986 EDSA revolution that overthrew Ferdinand Marcos were hazy. I was, after all, only six, and my mom and I spent all of a day on the streets before fleeing to the boonies in case the demonstration became violent. Later, while attending private Catholic high school, our resident priest would regularly look back on the events of that week and attribute its success to the prayerful nature of the demonstrations. The verbiage was that “God was with us.” I’m all for triumphalism from the faithful, but sometimes the smugness can cross the line. As our priest would continue his diatribe about the power of faith, he would contrast it to the failure of the Chinese demonstrations at Tiananmen, attributing to the godlessness of the Communists and ancestor worshippers. Years later, I’ve realized just how messed up that mentality is.

I don’t have the desire nor the resources to launch a rational study comparing regime changes worldwide from nations and cultures. You can only begin to imagine how much data across multiple fields can work as factors in determining whether a peaceful protest would succeed in an overthrow, violent suppression, or if it simply peters out  (EDSA III), among other possible outcomes. The same kind of protest that worked in the Philippines was futile in the same country fifteen years later.

Today, news reports indicate that Tehran has fallen silent after violent suppression by agents of the Iranian government against its own people. Given that it is a Moslem country, the Catholic God that my school priest so proudly touted is absent, but I doubt that that is the reason why this attempt at revolution has failed. Much has been written about our current president’s silence on the matter. It cannot be denied that from a foreign policy standpoint, our current president seems more calculating than passionate, to the dismay of many of us on the Right. Few among us on the Right, at least among those who have spent much time building credible reputations on our political commentary, advocate direct military intervention or assistance of the citizen rebels in Tehran. However, many of us were hoping for our current president to maintain the tradition of championing the principles of a free democratic process, especially in nations where democracy and freedom are under threat.

Given that no matter what our current president may have done or said would be misinterpreted by our enemies in Iran as an attempt to destabilize their nation, the proper action is to stand on principle. Not the personal principles of a Chicago machine politician for whom power is itself an end, but the principles of the country that chose him to lead. Today the streets of Tehran are silent. While I would want nothing more than to attribute the failed attempt at revolution in Iran to the silence of our current president, I cannot rationally do so.

If I may at least indulge in some tautology: Iran has not undergone regime change because Iran is not yet ready for regime change. Not today. But soon enough, Iran will.