Inside the Iran Talks

““The revolution is in a midlife crisis. What is a midlife crisis? When you think idealism and youthfulness are gone. The revolution doesn’t want to accept that it has grown older, that it won’t achieve everything it wanted to achieve. Or that it has to adapt to survive.””

“In “The Anatomy of Revolution” (1938), the Harvard historian Crane Brinton likened revolution to fever. The first stage is raging delirium, as ruthless radicals eliminate the ancien régime and purge their moderate collaborators. In the second, societies begin a long, fitful convalescence, often under dictatorial rule, as the “mad religious energy” subsides. The final stage is recovery and a return to normalcy, which may even include remnants of the past, as “the religious lust for perfection” dies out, “save among a tiny minority.””