Expert: Iran could follow Tunisia's fall

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An author and terrorism expert says the sudden overthrow of the Tunisian government has not gone unnoticed in Tehran, where the brutal Islamic regime remains unpopular with the Iranian people.

After his 23 years in power, a populist uprising ousted Tunisia's president on January 14, leaving the government's caretaker to struggle with calming the existing tensions. According to Ken Timmerman, bestselling author and a leading expert on the Middle East, the overthrow happened quickly.

"The leader of Tunisia, President Ben Ali, was forced out of power overnight; nobody saw it coming," Timmerman explains. "He'd been in power for well over 20 years. Tunisia was considered a stable country. It did not have a tremendously powerful Islamist underground, and yet overnight, he was gone."

But he believes a similar situation could take place in Iran.

"We know that the Iranian people detest the clerical dictatorship in their country. We saw three million people take to the streets in June of 2009. What we haven't seen yet has been a well-organized, well-funded opposition movement with support from the outside world," the terrorism expert notes. "But the dictators in Iran are taking no comfort from what happened recently in Tunisia -- I can tell you that from my own sources. They are very, very worried, and they're trying their very best to crack down on the opposition inside Iran to prevent that kind of scenario from taking place in Iran."

Timmerman does not think it possible to predict when the Iranian regime might collapse, but he says it will happen quickly when it does take place.