Two loose threads

Two articles on Iran stick out this evening. The Economist has a decent wrap-up of the situation so far:

Iran faces a long, hot summer. Though it is tempting to suppose that the situation will be resolved, one way or the other, over the next few weeks, the crisis facing the Islamic republic may continue for far longer. Gary Sick, the White House’s main expert on Iran during the revolution and now at Columbia University, writes that “this is not a sprint; it is a marathon. Endurance is at least as important as speed.”

And to quote from Shah of Shahs by Ryszard Kapuscinski, his meditation on the Islamic Revolution which he wrote while being virtually locked up in a deserted international hotel in Tehran at the time:

Every revolution is preceded by a state of general exhaustion and takes place against a background of unleashed aggressiveness. Authority cannot put up with a nation that gets on its nerves; the nation cannot tolerate an authority it has come to hate. Authority has squandered all its credibility and has empty hands, the nation has lost the final scrap of patience and makes a fist. A climate of tension and increasing oppressiveness prevails. We start to feel into a psychosis of terror. The discharge is coming. We feel it.

The ramifications of the past weeks may be more subtle and it’s difficult to account for all the elements at play from this distance. Although Kapuscinski’s observation is almost too general, the parallels with the current crisis are striking. He goes on to argue that even if an oppressive regime is allowed to get away – literally – with murder for a long time it can subsequently come down to the tiniest provocation that really rouses a people into rebellion. If the election charade was the start and the subsequent demonstrations only the first showing, who knows what still lies in store? It might be just one of those unknown unknowns Rumsfeld so infamously spoke of that proves to be the final push.

Meanwhile, I also found this interesting analysis by Hamid Dabashi of the demographics of the demonstrators:

The overwhelming majority of the people pouring into streets of Tehran and other major cities in support of Moussavi are precisely these 15- to 29-year-olds. How could this then be a middle-class uprising if the overwhelming majority of those who are supporting it and putting their lives on the line are in fact jobless 15- to 29-year-olds who still live with their parents — who cannot even afford to rent an apartment, let alone marry and raise a family and join the middle class in a principally oil-based economy that is not labor-intensive to begin with?

Another crucial statistic that Salehi-Isfahani does not cite is the fact that more than 63 percent of university entrants in Iran are women, but only 12 percent are part of the labor force. That means that the remaining 51 percent are out of a job, and yet the most visible aspect of these anti-Ahmadinejad demonstrations is that women visibly outnumber men. How could jobless men and women be participating in a massive middle-class uprising against their “uncouth” leaders?

If we were to look closely at Moussavi’s campaign commercials, his social and economic platforms since he entered the race, and the presidential debates with all the other candidates, we see that a sizable component of his supporters are indeed university students, young faculty and the urban intellectual elite –such as filmmakers, artists and the literati.

But the fact is that a major constituency of Moussavi is also the urban poor and particularly the war veterans who have no respect for Ahmadinejad, believing he had an inglorious war record, but are full of unsurpassed admiration for Moussavi because of his role as a fiercely dedicated prime minister during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988).

I think this is important as there have been a number of articles of late suggesting that the demonstrations are largely made up of the usual suspects, namely students and intellectuals. The striking difference with previous protests is that this time round they have caught on beyond this limited scope of participants.

Addendum: Roger Cohen’s Op-ed is also pretty spot-on:

[...] the hypocritical but effective contract that bound society has been broken. The regime never had active support from more than 20 percent of the population. But acquiescence was secured by using only highly targeted repression (leaving the majority free to go about its business), and by giving people a vote for the president every four years.That’s over. Repression will be broad and ferocious in the coming months. The acquiescent have already become the angry. You can’t turn Iran into Burma: The resistance of a society this varied and savvy will be fierce.

Do read the rest.

Tags: iran, Politics