DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — In a matter of days, nationwide protests challenging Iran’s theocracy exploded into a crackdown and bloodshed that blew past reported casualty figures of decades of past demonstrations in the country. This new level of mayhem summons the chaotic days surrounding the birth of the Islamic Republic in 1979. That poses perhaps the greatest risk to Iran’s theocracy in the time since that revolution: It now faces a populace increasingly willing to defy a government long willing to use violence to suppress dissent. In the run-up to revolution in 1978, Iran witnessed running street battles between forces loyal to the U.S.-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and demonstrators. Also part of that movement: attacks that targeted cinemas, nightclubs, U.S. interests, Iranian officials and minorities. Each fresh mourning for slain protesters expanded into a cycle of demonstrations. That ultimately ballooned to millions on the streets and pushed the monarch, fatally ill with cancer, to flee. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in exile in France, returned to Iran and soon seized all levers of power …