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Exiled Iranians hatch a plan of their
own
By Safa Haeri
PARIS -
With elections going ahead as scheduled on Friday, many
eyes are on Iran, watching to see what will become of a
nation embroiled in chaos following the Guardians
Council's (GC) disqualification of more than 2,000
candidates, most of them reformists. But while many in
Iran are still crying "foul" over the elections, another
idea is emerging among dissidents - a national
referendum - which has become the leitmotiv of
the majority of Iranians opposed to the Islamic
Republic.
According to Prince Reza Pahlavi - the
son of the late Mohammad Reza Shah, the last monarch to
rule over Iran before being toppled by the Islamic
Revolution led by Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in
1979 - under the rule of the ayatollahs, Iran has
created a "brotherhood of terror which is the greatest
threat to international peace and security".
"The strategic vacuum created by the Islamic
Revolution in Iran drew the Soviets into Afghanistan the
following year. To counter them, the West organized and
trained the killers we now know as the Taliban.
Similarly, the Iran-Iraq war brought the West to
Saddam's support, fueling ambitions responsible for the
current predicament. Iran itself became a convention
center for the terrorist industry, a meeting place for
those who fund, organize, lend logistics and scientific
support, plan events and coordinate strategies against
the free world. Add up all of the cost. This is a
problem that must be solved," the 44-year-old exiled
opposition leader told Asia Times Online during his
recent visit to Paris.
Pahlavi, who lives in
Washington DC where he leads his campaign, suggests
"mass civil disobedience" as a solution to this problem,
a method initiated by Mahatma Gandhi in India and copied
by others in South Africa, former Soviet Union satellite
states like Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and in
some Latin America countries. But he stated that he had
"no other mission" than to help Iranians organize a
national and free referendum on the future regime of
Iran and called on all the personalities and
organizations, groups and formations with any ideology
to join the movement, assuring that he is not fighting
to restore monarchy in Iran unless, after the
referendum, Iranians chose this form of system.
"A constitutional monarchy where the king, or
queen, reign, but not rule," he insists. "We are all in
the same boat and we have to row in unison. In the past
25 years, we never had such a golden chance. It is up to
all of us to take it and the international community
will also help."
Other Iranian dissidents, such
as Mohammad Mohsen Sazegara, a former Islamist
revolutionary fighting the monarchy under the umbrella
of Khomeini, and Bizhan Hekmat, a nationalist republican
who also participated in the revolution as a leftist
student - both "confessing" that they have been "wrong"
in supporting the Islamic Revolution - also support the
idea of civil disobedience, aimed at forcing the ruling
ayatollahs to accept a national referendum on the
constitution that, in their view, would allow Iran a
peaceful change from the present theocracy to a
parliamentary democracy where the state is separate from
religion.
But Iran's Nationalist Republicans are
more cautious, preferring changes in the present
constitution, like limiting the unlimited powers of the
Supreme Leader - Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - and his
mandate to a complete change into full Western-type
democracy, changes that are defended by the monarchists
and the Iranians for Democracy, a party Sazegara and Dr
Qasem Sholeh Sa'di, a former member of the majlis
(parliament), are trying to launch officially.
"Iranian republicans are against the present
system of Velayat-e Faqih [supreme religious
jurisprudence] and instead, promote a secular,
democratic regime based on the power of parliament. But
at the same time, they rule out any covert or violent
methods to achieve their aims," said Hekmat, who
organized a recent meeting of the Iranian republicans in
the German capital Berlin and brought up the suggestion
of a referendum more than two years ago.
For
49-year-old Sazegara, the regime has been badly
weakened, losing all its pillars in popular vote and
support, religious legitimacy and revolutionary
ideology, "exposing itself to a dangerous vacuum created
and exacerbated by the absence of acceptable
alternatives". It is this vacuum that Sazegara proposes
to fill with colleagues supported by the bulk of
students and teachers - the main opponents to the
Islamic Republic - as well as some of the personalities
belonging to the reformist movement of current lamed
President Mohammad Khatami.
Looking back, it was
Dr Sho'leh Sa'di, a comrade-in-arms with Sazegara who,
more than a year ago, predicted the collapse of the
"clan of official reformists" and a "sad end" for
Khatami, now compared by some Iranians to sellout Judas,
after he failed to support reformist lawmakers,
including his younger brother Dr Mohammad Reza Khatami,
disqualified by the GC, in their calls for postponement
of the election, instead insisting that the polling must
take place on February 20, thus weakening the ranks of
the reformists.
"The bracket of reformism
functioning as a buffer between the ruling despots and
the people is closed and the president is doomed. Time
for a referendum under international supervision is fast
approaching and the most efficient, cheapest and
democratic way to bring radical changes is peaceful
civil disobedience, starting by boycotting the
elections," Sazegara told Asia Times Online.
Calls for a boycott may not even be necessary,
as the latest survey conducted by the Interior Ministry
shows that at least 90 percent of the 46 million
eligible voters, most of them aged between 16 and 25,
would abstain from going to the polling stations.
"If the elections are held without vote rigging
and frauds, it would become a referendum," said Hoseyn
Loqmanian, an outspoken reformist deputy from the
western city of Hamadan disqualified by the GC and the
only lawmaker arrested briefly on charges of insulting
the leader, an act that under the laws of the Islamic
Republic is considered as a criminal offence.
Pahlavi's sentiments are similar, who said that
"even perfect elections are meaningless for a parliament
that does not have the right to make laws. This is a
theocracy where daring to think free and decide your
future is seen as the arrogance of the infidel. The
obligation of the faithful is full obedience to those
who reveal the law of god, those around the
Faqih, or the Supreme Leader. This is not
election, but a masquerade of selection." (Khatami, on
the other hand, is urging Iranians to participate in the
elections, warning a low voter turnout will only benefit
the hardliners.)
Another common theme agreed on
by the political opponents interviewed by Asia Times
Online is that international pressures on the
conservatives could bring closer the materialization of
a referendum process, conceding, however, that the
"approach" of the European Union, mostly Germany, France
and Britain to the Iranian situation, only strengthens
the position of the "monopolists".
"You have to
choose between the 90 percent of the Iranians that
reject this regime and the 10 percent that cling to
power for their own personal interests. But don't forget
that the day the Iranians free themselves from this
regime, they will remember the governments that turned
their back to them during the hard years they suffered,"
Pahlavi said. "If you are really for democracy, human
rights and freedom in Iran, meeting and talking with the
powerless President Khatami about the so-called dialogue
of civilizations is not the best way," he observed,
referring to the trip to Iran by Prince Charles of
England and his meeting with Khatami.
Expressing
his "confidence" that the Islamic Republic will
"crumble" as did the Soviet Union, Pahlavi tells his
fellow Iranians: "We also would be free. Later if the
free world lends this regime credibility, sooner if it
supports the people in establishing a new order based on
the sovereignty of the people and fundamental human
rights."
Meanwhile, Sazegara says that it is a
fear of losing its power that motivates the GC: "Even
the mild criticism voiced by some reformist lawmakers or
reports and surveys carried by different commissions of
the sixth majlis were too much [for the GC] to take,
hence the disqualification of all the 'big mouths' of
the incumbent parliament. While democracy, freedom and
human rights have become a must for the Iranians, the
ruling monopolists can not cope with these
internationalized concepts."
(Copyright 2004
Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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