Iranian protests are in their third week. What began in outrage over a woman murdered in police custody has spread across the country. Protests have captured the popular imagination. Videos go viral of women cutting their hair, burning headscarves, or singing. Chants of "Death to the Dictator" are undeniable. That Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei must rely on the Lebanese Hezbollah to quell unrest suggests desperation.

Wishful thinking is no strategy, no matter the hunger for change. The price of liberty will be high. In 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini promised Iranians an "Islamic democracy" and forswore any interest in personal power. Iranians who joined Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution quickly discovered they had simply traded a secular dictatorship for an even less tolerant religious one. The Islamic Republic was never popular; the regime was just better at smothering embers of dissent than were ordinary Iranians at fanning the flames. What the outside world does matters.