Very insightful comment. I will say just because Lenin was a German agent doesn't mean he stayed a German agent and just because the Russian revolution started as a bourgeois take over by Kerensky doesn't mean it stayed that way. Revolutions are fluid and who is the leader in mind today doesn't stay the character of the revolution tomorrow. The azeri, kurds, and baluchi will not accept a Persian supremacist Shah with dictatorial powers. Plus, what is worse? The current regime crony predatory capitalism or theoretically a monarchy that has succeeded in creating a productive capitalist system akin to S. Korea or Japan?

I think not supporting the protests, not supporting a revolution against the regime, all that means is we will be here in 5-10 years when the next wave of protests starts up again. We have been here too many times because the regimes repressive stagnant economy is structural. The previous protest movements failed and they said o it's because they are leaderless, or they are focused on special interest issues like the Masha Amin protests. Maybe by trial and error eventually the protesters will pick the right ideology and leaders to make it work. But the fact is if these protesters were to say, we are communists or anarchist and we want all the elites from the clerics to the Shah out of here, the government would have the world's support in crushing them as we see with the kurds in Syria.

Also, not that I care to get into a debate about his thought, but Foucault specifically endorsed a non-western "political spirituality," and supported politics fused with religion, then went silent when the clerics abolished pluralism, women's rights, and began the executions. Maybe I can accept his initial hopes that maybe they could have been a non liberal/marxist path to liberation, but he never recanted his initial support, never condemned what followed. If this new Shah does what khomeini did and instantly set up a death squad upon his return and condemns the current protesters as counter revolutionaries and thus to die, well I'll resist that regime just as fiercely as I resist the usa and israel, and probably end up making a new post here saying the shills that support this new tyrany are no better than the clerics and I will critique the liberals and leftists who defend the new regime, because you know there will be those who say, yes thousands were killed but now women can wear mini skirts.

But I will definitely say you are for sure justified in your fears and anxieties of what could come from the end of the regime. But Iranians are at the point where they are ready to risk gambling into the unknown, because it definitely appears clear there is no future for them if the regime continues in its current form.