The nationwide uprising raging across Iran has dark and bloody parallels with the Hungarian uprising of 1956, when tens of thousands of students, leaderless at first, took to the streets of Budapest and were fired on by State Security Police.
As news spread about the death of one student, disorder and violence erupted across Hungary and the government collapsed. As the fighting stopped and normality returned, a new government under Imre Nagy declared its intention to withdraw Hungary from the Warsaw Pact. Unfortunately, this became the first major challenge to Soviet control and soon the Red Army was sent in to crush the revolution. But the world had learned a historic lesson.
A corrupt and repressive government, which orders its security forces to kill its own people, as it desperately tries to cling to power, is on its last legs, doomed to disintegrate. The Hungarian revolution toppled their criminal regime and would have been an outstanding success, but for the malicious intervention of Moscow and the Soviets. Shamefully, the West stood back and watched the Soviet invasion of Hungary and did nothing.