Technology is after all a means that can be applied to an end. But for the means to be applied at all, there must be a motive. Or, as Nietzsche said, there must be the will. The elections in Iran provided an opportunity for disgruntled youth to support a candidate—”moderate” and “reformer” only in terms of the established extremism of the Islamic Republic’s government—who might put a kinder and gentler face on the rigid theocracy, and might give them a bit more breathing room. Their campaigning expressed this desire, motive, will.

But the “Supreme Leader,” not satisfied with his few hand-picked candidates, and with the absolute power to veto policy or legislation he did not like, decided to fix the election in favor of the most extreme candidate, Ahmadinejad. Those opposed to Ahmadinejad were stunned that their votes were nullified and replaced with nonsensical vote counts. The challenging of the governors of the Islamic Republic began with voters’ rejection of the fixed election. There was now a double motive, a strengthened will.

The Supreme Leader, not satisfied with having spoiled his legitimate monopoly by fixing the vote and betraying Iranian voters, decided to respond to the demonstrators with the batons and guns of the police and militia, beating and killing ordinary citizens more or less at random. The Supreme Leader, after all, represents God and the Islamic Revolution. Except he no longer does. The brutality of the regime has provided a triple motive, an even more strengthened will to the opposition. The Supreme Leader and his acolytes have lost legitimacy, as has this form of rule. So the opposition yells from the rooftop, “Death to the dictator” and “God is great,” invoking the oppositional slogans of the Islamic Revolution.

It is true, as Rubin says, that the opposition have used technology—Twitter, the internet, cellphone cameras—to mobilize and to send abroad their message and images. This is important. But we must remember that martyrs have become legends and spurs for opposition for millennia, long before modern means of communication. And that primitive forms of communication, such as opposition samizdat, have trumped modern communications technology in the hands of the state. So, yes, advanced technology can help, but it is advantageous, not necessary.

If we recall Ibn Khaldun, we will be reminded that, in addition to motive and will, organization and solidarity are factors that can be decisive in regime change. It is the superiority in these elements that Ibn Khaldun credits with the ability of peripheral tribes to conquer states, as so often has been the case in the Middle East and North Africa. And here I would recommend caution in prophesizing the rapid fall of Islamic Republic. The Revolutionary Guard, the militia, and the army are highly organized; the opposition, no matter how strongly motivated, is not. The best hope for change is that a major part of the military, also disillusioned with the loss of legitimacy of the government, will go over to the opposition. If this does not happen, it may take the opposition years to organize sufficiently to challenge effectively the government.

Philip Carl Salzman is a member of MESH.