The world, watching through the likes of Twitter, is holding its breath on what happens next in protest-rocked Iran.

The swelling defiance in the streets of Tehran may lead to new civil reforms one day — or to more brutal crackdowns by security forces.

“The protests are about people’s quest for freedom, human rights and democracy,” said Yeganeh H. Farzin, an Iranian native and professor in agricultural and resource economics.

Farzin says that a more democratic Iran would more peaceful and less threatening, especially in regard to the current regime’s drive for nuclear weapons. An Islamic state, Iran is a pivotal country in the world’s most combustible region, the Middle East.

“Once there is a truly democratic government in Iran, the issues of the spread of nuclear power for military ends, the spread of international terrorism, and the obstacles to the Middle East peace process all will ease up,” he said.

The street protests have gone beyond the disputed June 12 presidential election, Farzin noted. Now many are demanding fundamental, comprehensive reforms.

He said one possibility would be to hold a national referendum to change the country’s constitution that now gives so much power to the Islamic clerics and few personal freedoms to the average Iranian, especially women.

Freedoms sought, sagging economy

The supporters of presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi were seeking specific economic and political rights for women and greater individual freedoms overall, Farzin said. But just hours after the polls closed, the official Iranian news agency declared incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner, despite concern over alleged voting irregularities.

Underlying the political turmoil is the fact Iran is is suffering high unemployment rates and the oil revenues the clerical regime promised Iranian citizens have not materialized. As a result, many young people are out of work.

Many of those young Iranians are fond of the U.S., Farzin said. He expects that a politically reformed Iran would seek better ties with America — dubbed the “Great Satan” by the late Ayatollah Khomeini.

“The Iranian people look forward to the day that they renew their friendly relationship with the American people,” Farzin said.

Stakes are high for clerics

Ali Anooshahr, an assistant professor in history, said that though the Iranian political structure has some checks and balances, the ultimate head of the state is the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who condemned the protests.

“By putting his reputation behind the elections, the supreme leader has raised the stakes. He has made it clear that the protests are no longer a contest for the presidency, but a defiance of his office,” he said.

Anooshahr thinks this will not be a “mere contest of pure force,” but one of shifting momentum, public opinion and backstage political intrigue.

As for the U.S. reaction, the Obama administration has struck the right rhetorical tone in showing restraint, he said.

“The Iranian opposition is not and does not want to be seen as a tool of the United States,” said Anooshahr, who specializes in pre-modern Islamic history and describes himself as more of an “observer” than “expert” on modern Iranian politics.

Arguably the most fascinating aspect of the protests is how the Internet and social media tools like Twitter circulated images and eyewitness reports to the world, he said.

Each era has its protest medium. The 1979 revolution was spurred by the speeches of Ayatollah Khomeini, an Islamic leader living in exile, through tapes and fliers distributed throughout the country.

“Thirty years later, it is the youth who have access to technology and are communicating with each other and the outside world. The information is very diffuse with no single leader making the calls,” Anooshahr said.

The uprising signals a fundamental shift in the Iranian political paradigm, he believes.

“Never before have the people defied the supreme leader in such a way,” he said.

‘Long, hot summer’

Keith Watenpaugh, a historian and associate professor of modern Islam, says the ground is shifting so quickly that the next few days could prove historical.

“The stealing of the election, the fierce reprisals and brutal attacks against demonstrators all confirm to many Iranians that their country is moving to a dictatorship in which the worst abuses of civil and human rights will be justified as Islamic and the cronyism and corruption of the clerical elite will continue and expand,” he said.

As a result, Iranians are so afraid of their future that they are “willing to take to the streets in the face of riot police and government thugs,” said Watenpaugh, who is returning to campus after a year as a senior fellow in international peace at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C.

He explained that the current protests have their roots in the student unrest of the 1990s, which called for more personal freedoms, women’s rights and political safeguards.

What is different this time is that the youthful protestors now have allies in the moderate wings of the clerical and business communities, Watenpaugh said.

“These protests will continue,” he said, “and I anticipate general strikes as well as work stoppages in Iran’s all-important petrochemical sector. This will be Iran’s ‘long, hot summer.’”

Watenpaugh agrees that the Internet has shined an extraordinary spotlight on the situation, humanizing it for people in Iran and elsewhere to better understand the sacrifices of the protestors. Martyrdom is a powerful force in the world of Shia Islam, he noted.

“Look at the case of the Neda Soltan, the young woman shot in the heart during a demonstration, who bled out in front of a cell phone camera, her eyes staring into the lens. That image is power in the modern world.”

The picture, sent worldwide through the Internet and TV, suddenly became iconic in how it depicted the Iranian struggle in the shocked form of the dying young woman, Watenpaugh said.

“We can identify with them,” he said. “We can feel with them.”