More demonstrations and more deaths in Tehran over the weekend. It’s a nasty situation and we should offer hopes and prayers for those fighting for a free Iran.

Rouzbeh and Trita Parsi, with the European Institute for Security Studies and National Iranian American Council, respectively, speculate on how close Iran might be to the brink:

With the government growing increasingly desperate—and violent—the new clashes on the streets in Iran may very well prove to be the breaking point of the regime. If so, it shows that the Iranian theocracy ultimately fell on its own sword. It didn’t come to an end due to the efforts of exiled opposition groups or the regime change schemes of Washington’s neo-conservatives. Rather, the Iranian people are the main characters in this drama, using the very same symbols that brought the Islamic Republic into being to close this chapter in a century-old struggle for democracy.

Revolutions are never easy to forecast and the forces of repression in Iran retain many tools. But let us hope that the Iranian people are able to free themselves, and to do so without the brutality and violence reflected in so many other revolutions.