Fareed Zakaria provides one of the first acknowledgements in mainstream press of how pivotal the Iranian situation has become to the Middle East.   He writes in MSNBC/Newsweek that it's "Time to Expose the Mullahs"

For several months, bloggers have been earnestly watching and analyzing the situation in Iran faithfully following reports from Michael Ledeen and others. Zakaria, however, tempers some of the enthiusiasm the Blogosphere has for the Iranian situation:

Students are protesting in Tehran by the thousands. But this is not an equal fight. The ruling clerics have the money and the power

The cause of the power discrepency is the classic Mid East one -- Oil.   Oil has allowed an oppressive state to maintain its grip on the citizenry without requiring the citizen's creative efforts to fund the instruments of the state:

Despite having run the economy into the ground, there is a powerful minority in Iran that has greatly benefited from the revolution. The clerics use their oil loot to keep happy a cadre of religious leaders, corrupt bureaucrats, student revolutionaries and Army officers. These people will not suddenly mellow into liberal democrats because they watch students protesting. The mullahs must be pushed.

Although Iran is a potentially unbounded threat (for ex., recent revelations that they are funding Nuclear Reactors despite Oil wealth), there is a far different policy required for dealing with them relative to Iraq.

Many bloggers (myself included) have made the mistake of clamoring too loudly for a new front in the administration's general war on terror.  Fareed very correctly points out that Iran will require a more nuanced "soft" approach.   A few of his prescriptions:

...[the administration] can obtain—from Switzerland, Luxembourg, wherever—the hard evidence that will show Iranians that their sainted leaders are as corrupt as Africa’s worst tin-pot tyrants. Iranians already suspect this, but they cannot know the extent of the damage.

Washington should also fund the satellite-television stations, many beaming out of Los Angeles, that have become manna for information-starved Iranians. Most of their programs are not particularly political, but news, entertainment, fashion—all harmless windows into the modern world—are the slow killers of a closed society.

The Mullah in Iran, should be disposed by truth & kindness.