….that might or might not be loosely connected. Like a butterfly flapping its wing far-away in a rainforest, take it away Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri:
“If Iranians cannot talk about their legitimate rights at peaceful gatherings and are instead suppressed, complexities will build up which could possibly uproot the foundations of the government, no matter how powerful.”
Keeping in mind his age and position within the establishment.
Unlike their wide-eyed parents with their utopias and romanticization of revolutionary violence, the new young revolutionaries are sophisticated and canny. They have few illusions about the magnitude of the problems facing their country or the complexities of living in a highly traditional and religious society. For example, despite the fact that they are overwhelmingly secular, their slogans mingle political and religious themes to avoid alienating the faithful. Their response to Obama’s initially measured rhetoric is another sign of a new political sophistication at work: everyone understands that US meddling would be the proverbial kiss of death to the opposition’s cause.
In the days and weeks to come, this infant movement will face difficult challenges. It may suffer some setbacks and reversals, but what matters is the experience it has gained. At this stage, it is doubtful that fear alone can contain the rising tide of discontent or return things to the status quo ante.
When we first skyped after the demonstrations started, my father, who is currently in Tehran, stressed that Iran, for all the depiction in Western media is not a totalitarian but an authoritarian state. As of now that might prove to be a moot point. The apparently monolithic regime has been shown to be split to its core over the last few weeks. Yet as the crackdown on the streets seems to have been resolved the crackdown in the establishment itself might gather pace. Perhaps the question at this point is no longer who will be sidelined (former presidents Khatami and Rafsanjani – who might have actually stayed quiet for exactly these reasons, not to hand any excuse to his opponents to take him down -, never mind presidential candidates Mousevi and Karoubi as the perceived trouble-makers behind the uprising) but the manner in which this will happen. Not that this – I imagine – will be easy: all are stalwarts of the regime and will have their own – however currently silenced – powerbases and loyalties within the regime. If disposed of – whether this be a house arrest or worse – only the illegitimate shell of the regime will remain. But, as Khamanei has demonstrated to be acutely aware of as commander of the military apparatus, might is right. For now.
This might seem a very pessimistic reading, but hey, I am safely ensconsed here in Germany and from this distance, really, what do I know? Not a lot, but allow me to think aloud here. Even if the shell of a regime survives for now – in the sense of what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger – it must be kept in mind that Iran is not North Korea, which, bizarrely, is the comparison sometimes made. Even if this return to the purist ideals of the Islamic Revolution is exactly what Khamenei is aiming for I suspect this will be impossible. This excellent blog which is written from a position much more knowledgable persuasively argues – with plenty of caveats, because, really, no one in their right minds can claim to make any sure predictions on Iran – that a compromise between the pragmatists of Rafsanjani and the ultraconservatives under Khamenei is the most likely outcome.
One of the caveats here is that Rafsanjani has been progressively sidelined for a while, however, and I think this is banking too much on one person who to all accounts and purposes is no Ghandi or Mandela and therefore is not in a position to wield moral influence beyond Machiavellian power games. Khodorkovsky’s plight might be a timely reminder that wealth – even of a kind that Rafsanjani is purported to have amassed – is no protection against power hellbent on preservation and expansion. On the contrary, Rafsanjani’s personal stakes might be far too high for him to wish to risk to take too many risks – hence the allegations of corruption by Ahmadenijad and hence the arrest of his daughter and subsequent refusal to let his family leave the country.
Even if, for now, visible protests have been diminished by the brutal clampdown and as news now comes in that hardliners are calling for death sentences against the leaders of the protests the future lies not in the hands of individual players, but in the hands of a people that at one point numbered a cool 2m on the streets. A regime may remove dissent from its own ranks, but it cannot remove the people it claims to govern. And this people will remain dissatisfied as long as injustice reigns at the top, the economy remains in the dumps, opportunities for women to lead a fulfilling life remain extremely restricted and the ideal of Shia Islam remains in the grubby hands of politics. To quote from Ryszard Kapuscinski’s Shah of Shahs once more:
I once saw a spontaneous march come about. A man was walking down the street leading to the airport: he was singing. It was a song about Allah-Allah Akbar! He had a fine, carrying voice of splendid moving tone. He was paying attention to nothing and nobody as he walked. I followed him because I wanted to hear him singing. In a moment a handful of children playing in the street joined him and began to sing. Then there was a group of men and, emerging bashfully from the sides, some women. When there were about a hundred marchers, the crowd began to multiply quickly, at a geometric rate, in fact. A crowd draws a crowd, as Canetti remarked. Here they like to be a crowd, a crowd strengthens them and adds to their importance. They express themselves through the crowd, they seek the crowd, and in a crowd they obviously get rid of something they carry inside themselves when they are alone, something that makes them feel bad.
Whatever happens next at the top and whatever the bluster of hardliners, they will have to tread carefully. The crowd is unpredictable.
