IRAN: Come the Revolution.

In a development that is potentially as far-reaching as the Iraq war, Iran has been rocked by anti-government demonstrations. Started by students, but taken up now by large segments of the population, the outbreaks have spread beyond Tehran to at least seven other Iranian cities. The clerics have dispatched vigilante Islamist goons to beat, stab, shoot, and defenestrate the protesters. The sketchy accounts of journalists, augmented by the testimony of Iranian bloggers, suggest a see-sawing struggle. A major strike has been called for July 9.

Struggles for freedom inspire free men everywhere. It is also in the interests of the United States to wish Godspeed to the demonstrators. The Iranian mullahcracy is already doing all it can to destabilize Iraq, importing the radical Shi'ism of non-indigenous clerics, though a well-run Iraq should be able to frustrate their schemes. More alarming is the Iranian nuclear program. One atom bomb, as Ayatollah Rafsanjani noted with hope, "has the power to completely destroy Israel." And who knows how many other Israel-sized bits of territory, if slipped to the right folks? Not that a bombless Iran has been a force for good: It is a patron and command center of international terror; along with Syria, it has kept Lebanon a snakepit of terrorist satrapies for more than two decades.

Twenty-four years ago the Ayatollah Khomeini launched the Islamist assault on the West, in his confrontation with the Great Satan. Along the way, he accumulated lesser Satans, including the left-wing novelist Salman Rushdie, against whom he issued a fatwa, which led to worldwide attacks, one of them fatal, on ...