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THE ROVING EYE
Taking the Iran
regime by the horns
By Pepe Escobar
A few thousand University of Tehran students
have shaken the Islamic Republic of Iran to the core.
Teary-eyed veterans of the student movements of the
1960s celebrated by dusting up their situationist
slogans and their Bob Dylan anthems: could this be the
first revolution of the 21st century?
It all
started a just over a week ago when a few hundred
students didn't take their nightly meal to protest
against the privatization of a university restaurant on
the campus. Radio Iran Farda, based in the US, and Los
Angeles-based satellite channels broadcasting in Farsi
immediately seized the story. As thousands converged to
the students' dormitories, the demonstration inevitably
became politicized. The defiance was vocal: down with
the mullah dictatorship, down with the "Leader of the
Revolution" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and down even with
reformist President Mohamad Khatami. The startled
regime, via intelligence minister Ali Yunisi, claimed
that "developments outside the campus were directed by
foreign media and satellite channels, and a few
extremists from within committed these acts". For
Mohammad Reza Djalili, professor at the Institut
Universitaire des Hautes Etudes Internationales in
Geneva, this 2003 Tehran spring reflects a very deep
social, political and economic malaise: "Iranian society
is about to implode. The system is totally blocked.
First of all politically, because the reformers can't
find a way to change the regime. And socially because
the regime can't come to grips with unemployment among
young people." Djalili agrees that Iran's actual
encirclement by the US - on the one side Afghanistan, on
the other Iraq - has added to the regime's extreme
nervousness, and has also given alternative ideas to a
lot of Iranians. "But all these factors have a relative
and marginal impact. The major problem is an internal
problem."
The religious conservative elite has
been forced to perform a dangerous balancing act: it
can't organize a massive crackdown, but at the same time
it must prevent the movement from spreading to the rest
of the country. Djalili confirms that instead of brutal
armed repression, the regime has preferred to send the
bassidjis - young Islamist militants, all
voluntary recruits - to confront the students, wielding
their chains, iron bars and riding their Harley
Davidsons.
The bassidjis - literally
"mobilization" - are part of an organization created
slightly after the Shah's fall in 1979 to entice poor
kids into the service of the embryonic Islamic
revolution. In the beginning of the war against Iraq in
the early 1980s, they were integrated into a special
army created to counter-balance a regular army "too
influenced by the West", according to the mullahs.
Farhad Khosrokhavar, an Iranian sociologist who teaches
in Paris, qualifies them as exponents of "lethal
Shi'ism, neo-mysticism and necro-mysticism".
Middle-class boys and girls in Tehran are experts in
dealing with the bassidjis. Whenever the
militants patrol the routine Friday get-together of
young people in the mountains north of Tehran, girls
instantly readjust their black veils over their dark
glasses and the odd stereo disappears inside a backpack.
And when the bassidjis discover cassettes of
"decadent" American pop, a bribe in the form of a pack
of cigarettes will do the trick. The bassidjis
are complemented by members of the Ansar-i Hizbullah, a
plainclothes, volunteer Islamic militia that suppresses
dissent and upholds strict codes of behavior by thuggish
means.
Djalili stresses that the regime at this
point simply cannot afford a repression with lots of
dead and wounded: "The students have families, and their
parents support them. And the conservatives have to be
even more careful because the demonstrators now want the
head of reformist President Khatami."
"This is
the main news. Until now, Khatami was the security valve
for the regime. But after seven years of Khatamism,
people are angry, they don't believe him anymore."
Significantly, Khatami has not been seen and has not
uttered a single public word since the beginning of the
protests a week ago.
Djalili poses many relevant
questions for the immediate future. How long will the
students be able to sustain their resistance? Will the
movement cross the gates of the university? Will the
state be divided? And in the event of a wave of strikes
- for instance in the oil industry - will the state keep
the means to take care of its clients? The major problem
for now seems to be the absence of a political network
to follow up on the students' demands. Djalili reminds
us that "in these last 20 years, all movements of the
left, liberals, nationalists, even monarchists, were
severely repressed".
Last Friday, in the Azadi
stadium in Tehran, 100,000 people were watching a soccer
match between top local teams Persepolis and Istiqlal.
But only 3,000 or 4,000 people were at the Amir Abad
university campus - where the students were being hit by
the iron bars of the bassidjis and the Ansar-i
Hizbullah. Nevertheless, the number of protesters keeps
growing slowly but steadily, day by day. One university
after the next is being hit by the movement in key urban
centers like Isfahan, Shiraz and Mashad. Tahkim-e Wahdat
("Movement of the Consolidation of Unity"), a student
union, has been particularly active: three of its
leaders have already been arrested.
Many in the
Iranian diaspora in Europe, following the events
extremely closely, regret only one thing: that the
fusion between the very well-organized student movement
and the rest of the population still has not happened.
But the distance may now be only physical as the
campuses in Tehran have been isolated from the rest of
the city by anti-riot police. And this cordon sanitaire
has only had limited success in preventing the
bassidjis and the Ansar-i Hizbullah from
attacking the students. And it may prevent the general
population from enrolling in the protests. But it
certainly does not prevent them from expressing very
vocal support.
The key date to watch will be
July 9 - the anniversary of the brutal repression of the
student demonstrations of 1999. The regime, in full
balancing-act-mode, is negotiating a deal with the
students: the anniversary of 1999 may be celebrated, but
only inside the campuses. And Ansar-i Hizbullah will not
be able to invade the campuses to beat up students.
Roughly, south Tehran - very poor and ravaged by
the country's economic crisis - has been oblivious to
the protests. But north Tehran, middle-class and more
Westernized, is very much alert. North Tehran is
literally rolling with the arrangement - in their cars,
and with their hands on their horns: as reformist
journalist Issa Saharkhi put it, "this is protest by
honking". Some reformist members of parliament support
the student protests - but very carefully. They always
make sure to also denounce American interference. In a
recent open letter signed by 137 members of parliament,
the reformist camp warned that political legitimacy is
the only Iranian antidote against a possible American
intervention. Reformists have been threatening to resign
en masse for quite some time. But the conservatives
don't believe that they ever will. And even if they do,
the conservatives know they can blame them for the
inevitable consequences - or what the Iranian diaspora
has already dubbed American "occuberation" (occupation
plus liberation).
The conservatives are playing
hardball. Students and intellectuals can't do much
against the ultra-conservative judiciary. The unelected
Guardian Council once again humiliated them all, not to
mention President Khatami and the parliament, as it
recently rejected twin bills aimed at reclaiming more
political authority for the elected parliament and
president. The bills will be returned to parliament -
and then an extremely diluted version may eventually be
approved by the Guardian Council.
Things may be
about to implode, as Djalili warned. In another
unprecedented, very harsh open letter published last
Sunday, 248 Iranian personalities defended the Iranians'
right to criticize and even get rid of their leaders:
"The exercizing, because of its position, of a divine
and absolute power ... and instilling fear in people, is
an heresy against God and it oppresses human dignity",
reads the letter. The object of the intellectuals' anger
couldn't be more specific: the Supreme Leader Ayatollah
Khamenei - who according to the Islamic Republic's laws
simply cannot be criticized.
As much for its
mesmerizing cultural influence, dating back to more than
2,500 years, in the 20th century alone Iran has many
times left its lasting mark far beyond its borders -
from constitutional revolution and oil nationalization
to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The goal used to be
limited to a single theme: the establishment of a
judiciary, nationalization of oil, the end of absolute
monarchy. Now Iranians want real democracy: they want it
all, and they want it now. Many in East and West cannot
but see in these Tehran students the vanguard of a true,
indigenous revolution.
Next: Iraq
democratizing Iran?
(Copyright 2003 Asia
Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication
policies.)
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