By marshalling the regime's coercive instruments, Iran's 70-year-old Supreme
Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has, for now, succeeded in curbing the popular,
peaceful challenge to the authenticity of Iran's fateful June 12 presidential
election. But he has paid a heavy political price.
Before his June 19 hardline speech at a Friday prayer congregation, Khamenei
had the mystique of a just arbiter of authority, perched on a lofty platform
far above the contentiousness of day-to-day politics. In his sermon, he
asserted the validity of the re-election of Mahmud Ahmadinejad while the
Guardians Council, the constitutional body charged with validating any national
election, was still dealing with 646 complaints about possible election
misbehavior and fraud. As a result, he damaged his status as a just ruler, a
matter of grave importance since justice is a vital element in Islamic values.
Furthermore, by boycotting the June 19 congregation, former presidents Ali
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Muhammad Khatami, as well as Mahdi Karrubi, former
speaker of the Iranian parliament - all of them respected mullahs - exposed a
deep rift in the ruling religious establishment. That bodes ill for the future
of the Islamic Republic.
Khamenei has won the immediate battle, but the conflict between hardliners and
reformists is far from over. Taking a long-term view, Khamenei and his hardline
cohorts face a superhuman task of countering an inexorably rising trend. Quite
simply, the demographic make-up of Iran favors their reformist adversaries.
A glance at the republic's history bears this out.
Two decades of revolution
Between 1979, the year of the Islamic revolution, and 1999, Iran's population
doubled to 65 million, two-thirds of them under 25 years of age. Those young
Iranians had no direct experience or memory of the pre-Islamic regime of the
shah - its inequities and injustices, and its subservient relationship with
Washington. Therefore, their commitment to the Islamic regime was less than
total. Moreover, the post-revolutionary educational system had proven
inadequate when it came to socializing them the way the republic's religious
leaders wanted.
During those two decades, Iran's student body increased almost threefold, to 19
million. The overall literacy rate jumped from 58% to 82%, with the figure for
females - 28% in 1979 - tripling. There was a remarkable upsurge in the
enrollment of women in universities. Nationally, their share of university
student bodies shot up to 60%. At prestigious Tehran University, they were a
majority in all faculties, including science and law.
The total of university graduates, which stood at 430,000 in 1979, grew
nine-fold in those years. As elsewhere in the world, university students and
graduates would become a vital engine for change.
Much to the disappointment of the mullahs, a study of university students in
the late 1990s showed that whereas 83% of them watched television, only 5%
watched religious programs. Of the 58% who read extracurricular books, barely
6% showed interest in religious literature.
In his book, A Study of Student Political Behavior in Today's Iran,
Professor Majid Muhammadi divided university students into three categories:
those born into largely Islamic working or traditional middle-class households
(traders and craftsmen); those born to secular, or nominally Islamic, modern
middle class parents (teachers and doctors); and those raised in an environment
that mixed traditional Islam and secularism.
While the first category was loyal to the regime, and the second kept a low
profile, shunning politics, it was the students in the last, and largest,
category who felt deeply conflicted. While linked to Islam through tradition,
they were attracted to modern, Westernized culture politically and socially. In
attempting to resolve the conflict, most of them became politically active, and
were transformed into a force for social and political change.
By and large, university students were interested in watching foreign
television programs, finding the national channels unimaginative and
propagandistic. A poorly enforced ban on satellite dishes meant they could
easily get access to the BBC, CNN, and the Voice of America. In the post-1999
decade, the arrival of the Internet, e-mail, blogging, YouTube, Facebook, and
most recently Twitter, opened up opportunities previously not available to
their older peers.
Irrespective of their social backgrounds, what indisputably impinges on the
daily lives of university students and other young Iranians are the
restrictions the regime tries to impose on their social and personal freedoms,
including going to mixed-sex parties, holding hands with someone other than a
marriage partner, drinking alcoholic beverages, listening to modern Western
music, watching foreign television channels via satellite, and having
extramarital sex. While reformists recognize that restricting such activities
is having the singular effect of alienating the young from the Islamic
Republic, their conservative opponents consider these restrictions essential to
uphold Islamic morality and culture.
Not surprisingly, politically conscious university students have been striving
to enlarge the arena of personal freedoms as a means of countering social
repression and administrative corruption, and making the Islamic system more
transparent and accountable.
Politics in command
It was against this background that, in 1997, a presidential election was
conducted. Muhammad Khatami, a reformist outsider, unblemished by corruption,
proceeded to trounce his rival, Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri - the erstwhile speaker
of parliament favored by the religious establishment and perceived to be
corrupt - by a margin of almost three to one. In the next election, Khatami
trumped his nearest rival by a five-to-one margin.
Notwithstanding periodic setbacks due to a dispersion of power among the office
of president, the parliament, and the judiciary, Khatami created an environment
in which the area of social, cultural, and political freedoms expanded.
Initially, for instance, the authorities were very strict about enforcing the
wearing of the hijab (a head-covering scarf) and banning the use of
make-up for women, nor did they allow young men and women to sit in the same
classrooms in colleges and universities. By the time of Khatami's reelection in
2005, however, the authorities were tolerating young women who flouted the
strict Islamic dress code of covering themselves fully, except for face and
hands. They even allowed an occasional rock concert and they were giving more
leeway to non-governmental organizations.
During the first year of Khatami's presidency, the country experienced an
explosion of new publications. Following a landslide victory by the reformists
in the first round of parliamentary elections in February 2000, a newly bullish
pro-reform press even began publishing stories of corruption in the pre-Khatami
period. These proved immensely popular.
Khatami's supporters viewed this as a sign of the growing maturity of the
Islamic system and the evolution of democratic governance. Before the second
round of the elections could take place in May, however, a conservative-minded
parliament reacted speedily. Encouraged by Khamenei, it stiffened the Press Law
in April, leading to the closure of dozens of publications by the judiciary.
In the 2005 presidential contest, leading reformists were barred from the race
by the Guardians Council. Deprived of real choice, most reformist voters
boycotted the election. This enabled the hardline mayor of Tehran, Ahmadinejad
- a Khamenei favorite - to trounce Rafsanjani, an affluent, pragmatic
conservative blemished by a reputation for corruption.
During Ahmadinejad's presidency, university classes were re-segregated by
gender. The law banning satellite dishes was enforced vigorously. The morality
police resorted to patrolling the streets to ensure that women wore proper
Islamic dress and unmarried couples refrained from holding hands. This was but
a part of Ahmadinejad's drive to return society to the early years of the
Islamic revolution.
Little wonder then that, in the run-up to the 2009 presidential election, young
voters rallied behind Mir Hussein Mousavi, whose academic wife, the artist
Zahra Rahnavard, spoke of the hijab becoming optional for women. Mousavi
promised to disband the morality police and appoint women to important
government jobs.
The nature of the Iranian Revolution
In trying to recreate the environment of the early days of the Iranian
revolution in the absence of the conditions that brought about the collapse of
the old order of the shah, the country's hard line leaders are defying both
human nature and history.
They are ignoring the fact that most people tend to strive only to the extent
that is necessary to survive, procreate, and lead a comfortable life. More
important, human beings simply cannot continue functioning at a heightened
level for decades on end. Revolutions are born out of periods of acute crisis
and extraordinary fervor combined with high idealism. With time, red hot zeal
cools, and so does a revolution. Idealism gives way to pragmatism - and, of
course, corruption.
No less than the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini,
bowed to inescapable reality when he accepted a United Nations-brokered
ceasefire with Iraq in 1988, after endlessly exhorting Iranians to fight on for
20 years - until victory.
Such softening is common to all revolutions.
Yet in the regional context, what happened in Iran in the late 1970s had been
unique. Every previous post-World War II dramatic regime change in the Middle
East had come about thanks to overnight military coups. The overthrow of the
seemingly unassailable Shah of Iran in February 1979, on the other hand, was
the culmination of a relentless two-year-long revolutionary movement.
Globally, too, the Iranian revolution stood apart. All the revolutions of the
last century, starting with the Mexican revolution of 1910, were secular and
focused on changing property and class relations. Not the one in Iran.
Its leader, Khomeini, made adroit use of Shi'ite history and Iranian
nationalism to attract ever-increasing support. He managed to unite the
disparate anti-shah forces, both religious and secular - including Marxists of
various shades - by his most radical demand: the deposition of Muhammad Reza
Shah Pahlavi. Although his revolutionary movement included secularists, only
the religious segment was capable, via the mosque, of providing a national
organizational network down to the village level.
Both as an institution and a place of congregation, the mosque proved critical.
Since the state could not suppress the mosque in a country that was 98% Muslim,
it offered a sanctuary to the revolutionary movement. That was why Khomeini
instructed the clergy to base the Revolutionary Komitehs (committees)
coordinating the anti-shah movement in those mosques.
It was in this way that the unprecedented upheaval, claiming an estimated
10,000 to 40,000 lives (largely unarmed Iranians killed by military gunfire),
turned into the successful "Islamic revolution". It became a preamble to the
founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran. That term "republic" - not "state" or
"emirate" (as in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan under the Taliban) - in the
official title was, and remains, highly significant. Thirty years on, the
partisans of Mousavi are now arguing that the recent electoral fraud undermines
the founding principle of the post-shah regime: that power lies with the
public.
Overthrowing an established order is a hard, bloody affair, but making a
revolution stick is even more demanding. In the case of Iran, the revolutionary
regime became a target of aggression when Iraq's Saddam Hussein launched his
invasion in September 1980. The subsequent eight-year war helped merge Iranian
nationalism into the post-shah regime, and stabilized it.
Following Khomeini's death in 1989, the transition to his successor Khamenei as
the supreme leader, assisted by the popularly elected president Rafsanjani, was
smooth. Initially, Khamenei took his cues from Rafsanjani, a wily politician.
As he consolidated his hold over the military, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards
Corps, and its auxiliary, the Basiji militia, however, he began operating
independently and drifted away from Rafsanjani.
Now, both hardliners and reformists are competing to show their loyalty to
Shi'ite Islam. Its founder, Imam Hussein, the Great Martyr, leading a band of
72 retainers, died in 680 AD while battling a force of 4,000 to stake his
rightful claim to the caliphate usurped by his rival. The moral of this
episode, which lies at the heart of Shi'ite Islam, is that the true believer
must not shirk from challenging the established order if it has become unjust
and oppressive.
Competing loyalties to Shi'ite Islam
In today's Shi'ite Iran, the partisans of Mousavi have adopted green, the color
of Islam, as their brand. They shout "Allah-u Akbar" (God is Great) and "We
want [Imam] Hussein" in the streets and from the rooftops, while their leader
invokes the Koran to demand justice. They are not demanding regime change, only
an overdue change in the regime.
For his part, Khamenei sees the hand of God in the overwhelming victory of
Ahmadinejad. The riot police and Basiji militia regard him as their spiritual
guide and consider any challenge to his word or deed as a challenge to Islam.
Ignoring massive evidence to the contrary, Khamenei has ruled out an electoral
fraud on the grounds that such a possibility is inconceivable in Iran's Islamic
system.
While locked in a struggle, both sides claim to be pursuing the ideal of a just
Islamic state. Each remains aware of the value of martyrdom.
The Iranian security forces' beatings, baton charges, and tear-gassing of
unarmed, peaceful protestors, as well as mass arrests, are deplorable. It is
worth noting that most of the firing of live ammunition by the security
personnel seems to have been in the air. That explains why the fatalities in
the massive and repeated street protests in Tehran have remained relatively
low, totaling 15, according to official sources, which also claim that eight
Basiji militiamen have been killed. Media reports generally have cited 17
deaths of protesters so far, though rumors of higher death tolls abound.
What matters most to the government, as well as its opponents, is the number of
people killed, or "martyred".
The speed with which the authorities have tried to hijack the killing of
26-year-old Neda Aghan Soltan in Tehran by a bullet almost certainly fired by a
uniformed member of the security forces is illustrative. They have declared her
to be a Basiji martyr, allegedly killed by pro-Mousavi protesters, who, in
response, rushed to circulate worldwide the shocking image of her dying in the
street.
Given its Shi'ite underpinning, the government remains conscious that resorting
to excessive violence could turn opponents into that most dangerous of symbols:
martyrs.
Until the June 12 election - despite evidence of modest tinkering with the
first round of the 2005 presidential vote - post-shah Iran seemed to indicate
that Islam and democracy could work in harmony. The upheaval since then has
demonstrated that when strains between the two concepts develop, it is
democracy that gets short shrift.
That is bad news for Muslims - and non-Muslims - worldwide.
Dilip Hiro is the author of five books on Iran, the latest being The
Iranian Labyrinth: Journeys Through Theocratic Iran and its Furies (Nation
Books), as well as most recently Blood of the Earth: The Battle for the
World's Vanishing Oil Resources. His upcoming book After Empire: The
Rise of a Multipolar World will be published by Nation Books later this year.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
