Notices of the demise of Iran’s Green Revolution are premature. Without question, the tyrannical triumvirate — Ayotallah Ali Khamenei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Revolutionary Guard — have dealt a crippling blow to the popular movement protesting their electoral coup of June 12.

Thousands of Iranians have been arrested and savagely tortured — from street protesters to election campaign organizers for Mir Hussein Moussavi, the likely victor in that contest. Many are now being forced to “confess” to having been agents of the United States or Britain.

We have seen this play before, not simply in Iran but in other tyrannies that suppressed mass movements for democratic change with massive violence and terror.

But Iran in 2009 is not China in 1989, Burma in 1990 or Belarus in 2006. The crisis in the Islamic Republic has exposed and widened massive cracks within the ruling elite. Such divisions are always a sign of an impending crackup of dictatorship.

Despite the rush to bury Iran’s reformist movement as another lost cause, Iran remains at a possible political tipping point. Democracies around the world have a duty — not simply to themselves, but to their strategic interests — to weigh in. They must not be deterred by threats to shun talks over Iran’s nuclear program.

President Obama has gotten it right by signaling America’s support for peaceful protest, human rights and the rule of law. More explicit language, not to mention action, would only play into the hands of the most cynical and vicious conservative elements in Iran. Moreover, with no diplomatic ties and all but no trade with Iran, there is little more the U.S. could do right now to pressure the regime.

But there are over 100 other democracies in the world. It is time that their voices were heard and their actions felt in Tehran.

Britain shares with the U.S. the handicap of a past history of negative interference in Iran. But Britain has diplomatic and economic ties to the regime, and breaking or suspending those will weaken Ayatollah Khamenei and his reactionary allies.

Moreover, Britain can have a unique kind of impact in Iran: For more than a century, Iranians have believed in the omnipotence of the “British hand” in the affairs of their country. Any indication that Britain is no longer willing to do business with the Islamic regime will hearten the Iranian people and undermine the regime’s aura of invincibility.

Germany, France and Italy are major trading partners with Iran. They have little history of colonial interference in Iranian affairs. Their decision to refuse to recognize the Ahmadinejad regime would have an immense effect. More compelling still would be a similar declaration from the entire Group of 8 at its impending summit.

The smaller and less powerful democracies can also have an impact. It would be preposterous for Iranian hardliners to attribute ulterior strategic motives to actions by the Scandinavian countries or the Netherlands, Ireland, Canada or Slovenia. If a coalition of such countries were to condemn the crackdown, call for a release of political prisoners and demand full respect for human rights — and back up these positions with a downgrading of diplomatic and trade ties — this would send a powerful message to both sides in Iran.

Many democracies around the world, including the above, have diplomatic ties with Iran. It is important that they maintain their embassies in Tehran. But they should now refuse to recognize the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad’s government.

The most powerful coalition of democracies in the world, the 27-member European Union, is now debating whether to withdraw their ambassadors from Tehran in protest over the detention of the British Embassy’s Iranian personnel.

The withdrawal of E.U. ambassadors would send a stunning message to the Iranian hardliners that coups and bloody suppression of peaceful protests carry a heavy price in international standing.

With the simple diplomatic act of denying legitimacy — something nearly all democratic forces in Iran are now asking of the world — the democracies of the world can give a needed boost to the forces of democratic change in Iran and earn the lasting gratitude of a movement that will eventually triumph.

East and Southeast Asia are aging rapidly. South Korea, for example, has become one of the fastest aging societies in the world. In France, 115 years (1865–1980) were required for the proportion of population aged 65 and over to rise from 7 percent to 14 percent, but in South Korea, it is expected that a comparable change will occur in only eighteen years (2000–2018). More strikingly, it will take only eight years (2018–2026) for the proportion of South Korea’s elderly to increase from 14 percent to 20 percent. The nation’s old-age dependency ratio grew from 5.7 percent in 1970 to 12.6 percent in 2005, and is projected to further increase to 72.0 percent by 2050. At the macroeconomic level, these figures suggest an increasing burden on the working-age population to support the elderly population.

Such figures, however, do not tell the whole story about the burden shouldered by the working-age population. The lives of elderly and working-age individuals are not separate but rather, are linked by the institution of the family. Working-age adult children often take on the role of caring for elderly parents, who may have functional limitations and cognitive impairments. Such informal family caregiving is embedded in traditional Korean culture, as it is in many Asian societies that uphold traditional norms of filial piety.

As the elderly population grows, the demand for elderly long-term care will increase sharply. The supply of informal care, however, is decreasing for a number of reasons. Declining fertility rates have already diminished the potential pool of family caregivers. Further reducing the availability of family caregivers is an array of socioeconomic changes, such as increased migration, decreasing rates of intergenerational co-residence, and increasing labor force participation rates among women, who have historically served as the main family caregivers. Adult children, therefore, will increasingly experience a conflict between parental care responsibilities and their own work. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many daughters or daughters-in-law give up their professional employment to care for their disabled parent(s) or parent(s)-in-law. The work-family conflict also has important implications for the economy—informal caregiving may have additional negative effects on the labor force participation of the already shrinking working-age population.

I recently conducted a study using data from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging. My study indicated that providing at least ten hours of care per week reduces the probability of female labor force participation by 15.2 percentage points. I concluded that informal care is already an important economic issue in South Korea even though its population aging is still at an early stage. If the current trend continues, the labor market costs of informal caregiving will increase as the country experiences the full force of the demographic transition. One of the expected benefits of the public long-term care insurance implemented in July 2008 is to help family caregivers participate more easily in the labor force. In Japan, there is some evidence that long-term care insurance positively affects female labor force participation, but such beneficial effects have not yet materialized clearly in Korea. In both countries, there is much to learn from early experience with long-term care insurance.

In most parts of Asia, informal caregivers remain invisible on the policy agenda, not only because of cultural norms that perpetuate family-centered care but also because informal care incurs no public cost. However, the demographic transition, coupled with socioeconomic changes in the region, underscores the need to examine whether informal care is really without costs, at both individual and societal levels. Throughout Asia, the challenge for public policy will be finding the optimal mix of informal, family-based and formal, socially supported elder care.