Great post. I agree with everything you just said.
Yes, that is how it is my brother. While Egypt today must develop a political system which is relatively democratic but more importantly it must be a system which allows for future changes to be make. And this is just 1% of the work. The rest of 99% is going to be hard work and sacrifice for decades to come. As for Iran they are working and sacrificing to keep the progress going while keeping their sovereignty intact. But Iran also has challenges ahead. Its economic structure must be reformed to allow for high growth and as well they need to keep adjusting their political systems.
In the past two years, Iran has started to re-structure its economy by removing subsidies and tax reform, the results of which have not yet come out. As for their political system, they have changed their constitution and power structure a couple of times since revolution. Many laws have been experimented with and Iranians now have some experience in home grown legislation and political system planning. But their biggest challenge in their political reform is yet to be done. This challenge I believe is to make the seat of supreme leader to have a tenure. While all political posts today in Iran are either directly or indirectly elected, and this makes Iran a democracy but because Supreme leader seat of power does not have a set amount of years in power as per constitution, this makes their system a bit flawed. Now some people also challenge that in Iran guardian council vets candidates for election, but this is nothing new as in all democracies there are bodies that do such a job. For example in most western countries candidates must be background checked by intelligence agencies in a very non-transparent way and this is considered legal. In many others there are lobbies that do this job illegally but in a hush hush way.
So Iran is not different, only they have to make some changes to their constitution to make this process more transparent. If they do such a thing then their system is going to be even more democratic than even some western countries. In addition, while it is understandable that Iran has created a multi centered political system with different levels of power and has even two different armies in order to reduce the possibility of foreign instigated coup but they need make some small adjustments to it as I said. Right now supreme leader in Iran is indirectly elected by people through a special separate parliament called assembly of experts. This parliament can elect and remove the supreme leader. It can be said that it is completely democratic much like how prime ministers are elected in other democratic countries except that Supreme leader position does not have a tenure. I believe Iran needs a supreme leader in addition to president since it gives an advantage by making consistent long term plans for the country more viable. While presidents change more quickly and most try to do only short term projects that benefit their voting bank but supreme leader is more long term and thus its plans are long term too.
That is why I believe Iranians should change their constitution to make seat of supreme leader a long term political post with a tenure of let's say 7 to 10 years, after which there has to be a new voting in assembly of experts to either re-elect him or elect a new one. That way Iran's political system will become much closer to ideal while still retaining its long term planning option. As Iran progresses, I believe this is going to be their biggest challenge to introduce a tenure for the supreme leader in constitution. I think it is possible for Iranians to expect this to happen in the next 15 years, as people become more politically mature and Iran's economy and science progresses. At any rate this change will probably happen when Khamenei who is in his late seventies dies and in a way this current time can be considered the last "term" of Khamenei as supreme leader. But if Iranians try to instigate a coup, revolution or attack by US and regime change then all the progress in Iran will stop for a very very long time and Iran will fall behind definitely. They can not expect to have the world's fastest growth rate in science and technology any time soon or if ever.
Once this change happens to Iran's constitution, Iran will become much a different place. Being majority Muslim and having integrated its Islamic belief in a democratic system, with complete tolerance for Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians as is already. As for human rights again this is a relative term, as human rights are even abused in west but with time both Iran and Egypt can be hopeful to improve as people become more aware and the political system is slowly adjusted to reflect that awareness. There is alot of things we can learn from each other, it seems.
