The Iranian & Saudi governments are powerful, heavily militarized operations which are pervasively repressive toward their own citizens & operating militarily & brutally against the Syrian & Yemeni people. Why anyone feels the need to defend them as if they were persecuted or calls on either to play an emancipatory role in Middle East politics boggles the politically sane mind. A regime is judged by its relationship with its own citizens & by its military policies. By those measures, both Iran & Saudi Arabia are long overdue for an “Arab Spring” uprising of the kind they are trying to obliterate in Syria & Yemen.