Iran’s Green Revolution, or another Tehran Spring?

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

I have been meaning to post on the dramatic events occurring in Iran since the election last Friday, but the reporting in the American news media has simply been atrocious. Now that the foreign news media have been expelled from Iran, the American news media is relying upon unconfirmed reports purportedly sent from Iranian citizens inside Iran via Twitter, FaceBook, etc., with the requisite disclaimer that the information is unconfirmed. This reflects the technology obsessed American news media that has invested heavily in technology as a substitute for real reporting. As Andy Ostroy said, The Ostroy Report: The Revolution Will Not Be Twitterized.

Much of the American news media is engaged in speculation about whether the events in Iran are comparable to the Orange Revolution in Ukraine following the disputed election in 2004, or whether this populist movement will end in brutal repression like Tiananmen Square in China in 1989. Neither example is a relevant comparison. Iran must always be viewed through the lens of Iranian history and political experience.

Observing recent events in Iran raises questions whether this is actually a sustained populist revolution to topple a corrupt government as occurred during the Iranian Revolution in 1979? Or whether this is but a momentary reformist movement similar to the "Tehran Spring" that occured in 1999, which was subsequently suppressed by the clerical hardliners of the Iranian government? Shutting down the Tehran Spring

There are important distinctions between the "Green Revolution" some observers are now calling the current movement in Iran with the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Thirty years ago, the revolution was centered around an almost mythical savior-like figure in Ayatollah Khomeini returning from exile to deliver Iranians from the corrupt and repressive government of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi who had been restored to the throne by the CIA's "operation ajax" coup d'état against the nationalist movement of Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953. During the Iranian Revolution of 1979 the United States was as despised as the Shah and was labeled the Great Satan. Millions of Iranian protestors marched in the streets chanting "death to America."

Today, the movement comes from the youth of Iran (a demographic majority), most of whom were born after the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and who have no memory of the Shah. The current movement has the appearance of being a generational movement. Their protests are against the corrupt and repressive theocratic regime of clerics who have ruled Iran since 1979, the only government they have ever known. There is no savior-like figure to return from exile to deliver Iranians from this corrupt and repressive government. The leaders of this revolutionary movement will emerge from within Iran this time.

The so-called "Reformist" candidates whom the current unrest is centered around are themselves insiders of the theocratic regime and were active participants in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. It is not entirely clear to me that support for the Reformist candidates represents support for the candidates themselves per se, or rather support for a broader reform movement, and the candidates are but symbols or a means to achieve that end.

Recent polls in Iran have shown that a large majority of Iranians want normalized relations with the United States, greater trade and cultural exchanges. The United States is no longer demonized as the Great Satan, and there are far fewer who chant "death to America." All of this could change in an instant if the United States is seen as meddling in internal Iranian politics.

This requires President Obama to walk a fine line between encouraging respect for democratic principles but not choosing sides (there are no good choices among which to choose) or being seen as meddling in internal Iranian politics. This is exactly what the clerical hardliners are currently trying to foment. Iran accuses U.S. of meddling in election crisis The clerical hardliners would like nothing better than to refocus Iranian public attention to the "Great Satan" and away from their own corrupt and oppressive regime. So far, President Obama has warily avoided stepping into this trap.

If the current movement develops into a populist revolution, I suspect that no one really knows who will emerge as the eventual future leaders of Iran. A revolution would either sweep away anyone associated with the current theocratic regime in a wave of reformist fervor, or the theocratic regime may yet prevail and hold onto power through brutal repression and military force. This is yet another reason why it is premature for the U.S. to choose sides — we really don't know who will emerge as the eventual leaders of Iran.

Any populist revolution must develop organically. In Iran, it cannot be seen as directed or influenced by any foreigners or the revolution will quickly lose popular support. Iranians are fiercely independent and nationalists, something Iranians share in common with Americans.

One of the few analysts of Iranian politics whose opinion I respect, if not always agree with, is Juan Cole, President of the Global American Institute. Mr. Cole has a post today at Informed Comment which offers some insightful analysis into the current situation in Iran:

Day of Mourning, Protests, Called by Mousavi on Thursday

Mir-Hosain Mousavi, who maintains he won last Friday's presidential election despite official assertions that he lost 2 to 1 to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is calling for another rally Thursday, this time in part to honor the persons killed by hardliners or security forces in the course of previous demonstrations.

Mourning the martyr is as central to Iranian Shiite religious culture as it was to strains of medieval Catholicism in Europe, and Mousavi's camp is tapping into a powerful set of images and myths here. The archetypal Shiite martyr is Imam Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, who championed oppressed Muslims in Iraq and was cut down by the then Umayyad Muslim Empire. Recognition that a Muslim state might commit the ultimate in sacrilege by beheading a person who had been dangled on the Prophet's knee has imbued modern political Shiism with a distrust of the state. When Husayn's head was brought to the Umayyad caliph Yazid and deposited before his throne, older companions of the Prophet are said to have wept and remarked, "I saw the Prophet's lips on those cheeks." Shiites ritually march, flagellate, and chant in honor of the martyred Imam or divinely-appointed leader.

Today's protesters are wearing green, which symbolizes Mousavi's descent from the Prophet Muhammad. (Mousavi's family name refers to the Seventh Imam (descendant of the Prophet with claims to divine knowledge), Musa Kazim, whose tomb is in Kazimiya, north Baghdad. Sayyid families, those claiming descent from the Prophet, often take one of the Imams' names as a family name to honor them, though of course they are also claiming descent from the previous Imams right back to the Prophet.) The repertoires of protest the reformists are using echo those of the 1978-79 Islamic Revolution– they are chanting "God is Great," mourning pious fallen martyrs, etc.– another sign that this movement is not just alienated secularized elites.

But now Mousavi's supporters are also sporting black ribbons to indicate that they are in mourning for the fallen. Typically, the dead will be commemorated again at one month and at 40 days. In 1978 such demonstrations for those killed in previous demonstrations grew in size all through the year, till they reached an alleged million in the streets of Tehran. Since the reformists are already claiming Monday's rally was a million, you wonder where things will go from here.

The regime's attempt to paint the protesters as nothing more than US intelligence agents underlines how wise President Obama has been not to insert himself forcefully into the situation in Iran. The reformers and the hard liners are not stable groupings. The core of each is competing for the allegiance of the general Iranian public. If the reformers can convince most Iranians of the justice of their cause, they will swing behind the opposition. If the hard liners can convince the public that the reformers are nothing more than cat's paws of a grasping, imperialist West– i.e. that they are Ahmad Chalabis trying to bring Iran foreign occupation so as to get power themselves– then the reformists will be crushed. Iranians value national independence above all, having suffered with a CIA-installed goverment for decades in the mid-twentieth century.

The prescriptions of John McCain and Faux Cable news for muscular US diplomacy at this point are tone deaf to Iranian realities and would backfire big time, harming both the reform cause and US interests. Anyway, after the basket case to which the US Republican Party reduced Iraq, no one in the global South is likely to want them meddling in their internal affairs.

Reports are streaming in of the arrest of over a hundred opposition figures and of hard line militia men following protesters home and breaking into their homes to terrorize them. See e.g., Basij paramilitary forces terrorize residential complex. The Basij militiamen are said to be afraid to come out in numbers during the opposition demonstrations, but sneak around at night to trail protesters and harass or arrest them.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had met Tuesday morning with the representatives of all four presidential candidates, urging them to make up but continuing to insist that Ahmadinejad was the winner by 24 million to 14 million votes. He portrayed the massive post-election demonstrations and charges of ballot fraud as a minor tiff.

Gary Sick wonders if Khamenei really is the supreme leader any more, and hints that the hard line tack of stealing the election was directed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country's religious national guard.

Reports are coming in from Iran that allege that the regime is tracking down and destroying satellite dishes, using helicopters for aerial surveillance of neighborhoods and Basij, the right wing militia (sort of like Mussolini's Black Shirts) to do the breaking and entering. Kindly neighbors who have tried to warn suspected satellite dish owners that the militiamen were coming have sometimes reportedly themselves been arrested.