A REMARKABLE STORY – AT 12:20 P.M. ET:  This is quite a story of dissent...in Iran.  The fact that it's being reported in Iranian outlets is equally remarkable.  Maybe something is happening.  From AP:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iranian university students in a meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei offered harsh criticism of the country's direction, local media reported Tuesday, an unusually frank discussion showing the concerns many feel over the Trump administration's pullout from the nuclear deal with Tehran and Iran's battered economy.

One student in particular offered a list of problems confronting Iran and directly asked Khameni, whom hard-liners view as second only to God, how he would respond to them.

While concerns regularly come up during the annual audiences that Khamenei holds during the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, the fact that these criticisms received publicized attention in Iran's tightly controlled media is telling. Already, farmers and truck drivers have been protesting and on strike in the country.

At Monday's audience with Khamenei, university student Sahar Mehrabi read a speech in which she recounted the "numerous crises" now facing the country.

Among them, she listed Iran's "intensified systematic inequality in social classes, the decline of public trust and the increase in environmental crisis and shantytowns." She also mentioned high unemployment, the challenges faced by minority groups and the way hard-line element's within Iran's judiciary and security system "fabricate security cases in a delusional way" to target activists.

"What answer does Your Excellency have in response to questions, criticisms and protests," she asked.

In his own speech, Khamenei acknowledged many of the shortcomings, saying that "removing problems is not as easy" as the students expect. He said one solution can be the "injecting of revolutionary, motivated and committed young people into the governmental apparatuses."

COMMENT:  There have been serious demonstrations in Iran since at least December.  We are hoping for a major uprising, which could cripple the regime. 

The last major uprising was in 2009, but it got virtually no support from that great international defender of freedom, Barack Obama.  This time would be different, with Trump in the White House.

May 30,  2018