Understanding Events in Iran - What Not to Do

Students attend a protest at Tehran University.

Watching the anti-government protests in Iran, one cannot help but wonder if by some seeming miracle the protests can succeed in regime change.  Realistically, the short term answer may be no, so the question becomes one of what can American policy do to aid the protesters.  Launching a war on Iran as Donald Trump and Nikki Haley - who has destroyed many f my initial positive thoughts about her - seem wont to do is likely NOT the answer.  One need only look at how Stalin used Hitler's invasion to rally popular support to "defend mother Russia" to know that providing an outside enemy would play right into the regime's hands (not that Der Trumpenführer knows any history or has any connection with the real world that isn't clouded by his narcissism).  Plus, despite the understanding of the Trump/GOP base, Iran is not a nation of "camel jockeys" and the nation, if unified by an eternal foe could make the disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan look like a cake walk.  An op-ed in the New York Times gives some insights likely lost on the White House and those seeking to the ignorant GOP base.  Here are excerpts:

In Iran, the obstacles to success are daunting. Whereas most Middle Eastern countries are ruled by secular autocrats focused on repressing primarily Islamist opposition, Iran is an Islamist autocracy focused on repressing secular opposition. This dynamic—unarmed, unorganized, leaderless citizens seeking economic dignity and pluralism, versus a heavily armed, organized, rapacious ruling theocracy that espouses martyrdom—is not a recipe for success.

And yet, against this inauspicious backdrop, Iran’s mushrooming anti-government protests—although so far much smaller in scale than the country’s 2009 uprising—have been unprecedented in their geographic scope and intensity. They began December 28 in Mashhad, a Shiite pilgrimage city often considered a regime stronghold, with protesters chanting slogans like “leave Syria alone, think about us.” They soon spread to Qom, Iran’s holiest city, where protesters expressed nostalgia for Reza Shah, the 20th-century modernizing autocrat who ruthlessly repressed the clergy. They continued in provincial towns, with thousands chanting, “we don’t want an Islamic Republic” in Najafabad, “death to the revolutionary guards” in Rasht, and “death to the dictator” in Khoramabad. They’ve since spread to Tehran, and hundreds have been arrested, the BBC reported, citing Iranian officials.  

What triggered these protests is a subject of debate—some evidence suggests they were initially encouraged by hardline forces to embarrass President Hassan Rouhani—but what has fueled them have been the same grievances that power anti-government protests everywhere: rising living costs, endemic corruption, fraud, mismanagement. In Iran, add to that bitter cocktail both political and social repression, all conducted from the moral pedestal of Islamist theocracy.

While these grievances have been festering for years and indeed decades, among the dozens of factors that distinguish today’s protests from 2009 is the smartphone. In 2009—when an estimated 2 million to 3 million Iranians protested silently in Tehran—fewer than 1 million Iranians owned such a device, and few outside Tehran. Today, an astonishing 48 million Iranians are thought to have smartphones, all of them equipped with social media and communication apps.

But while Iranians have a much better understanding how elsewhere is living, the rest of the world has had a less clear idea of how Iranians are living given Tehran’s effective distortion of Western media coverage. Since 2009 and even before, the dogged professional journalists covering Iran—including The Wall Street Journal’s Farnaz Fassihi, The New York Times’s Nazila Fathi, Newsweek’s Maziar Bahari, Reuters’s Parisa Hafezi and Babak Dehghanpisheh, and dozens more—have been intimidated, expelled, and in some cases imprisoned. The few journalists remaining in Iran rightfully worry about their personal safety. Many of the best Iranian writers, scholars, and artists of their generation have been similarly banished from Iran.

The Iranian government has the highest per capita execution rate in the world, treats women as second class citizens, persecutes gays and religious minorities, and stifles free speech. While there is a natural inclination among decent people everywhere to want a peaceful civil rights movement to succeed in Iran, there are ample reasons to believe it will not. The regime’s coercive apparatus—the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Bassij milita—are organized, armed, and abundant, and well-practiced in the brutal science of repression. Opponents of the government, in contrast, are unarmed, leaderless, and rudderless. In addition, Iran has at its disposal tens of thousands of Shia militiamen—including Lebanese Hezbollah—it has been cultivating for years and in some cases decades.

In the weeks and months to come, expect the regime to grow ever more repressive. Iran’s security forces thrive when there is insecurity. Some Iranians even fear the IRGC has allowed the protests to fester as a pretext for expanding their authority in the name of national security.  

It is only natural that popular agitations against a regime whose official slogan is “Death to America” will elicit strong support from U.S. politicians. The question, as always, is what is the most constructive way for Washington to “support” such protests? . . . . What’s more important than public statements are U.S. policies that can inhibit the regime’s coercive capacity and their ability to black out communications.

One concrete suggestion is to make it clear that companies and countries around the world complicit in Iran’s repressive apparatus—including those providing censorship technology—will face censure from the United States. The United States should also mobilize global partners that do have working relations with Iran—including Europe, Japan, South Korea, and India—to add their voices of concern and condemnation to Tehran’s repression. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini has been noticeably silent.    

Given the opacity of the Iranian system and its inaccessibility to independent investigation, the days and weeks ahead are eminently unpredictable. Khamenei and his IRGC backers appear firmly entrenched from thousands of miles away, but we also know from history that authoritarian stability can be a chimera. In August 1978, the CIA confidently assessed that the Pahlavi monarchy in Iran “is not in a revolutionary or even a pre-revolutionary situation.”

Two-thousand-five-hundred years of Persian civilization and a century-long quest for democracy offer hope about the irrepressible Iranian will for change. But the Islamic Republic’s four-decade history of brutality suggests that change will not come easily, or peacefully, or soon. 

Martyred and Murdered - And Show Trials

I continue to watch events in Iran with a mixture of hope and dismay. Personally, I think in the long term the Islamic dictators are making huge mistakes. While they seem intent on making examples of protesters and have started the equivalent of the old Soviet Union's show trials, ultimately they are creating a whole class of martyrs the memories of which will help keep opposition alive even if it takes a long time to finally boil over. Then again, when one's motivations are power and religious extremism, logic and thoughtful analysis of the bigger picture often isn't even on the radar screen. Tehran Bureau has a story that identifies some of those murdered by the dictators' thugs which is very sad and moving. Here are some highlights (I urge readers to review the site in order to realize that brutality of the current regime):
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A massive demonstration had been called for today [this past Thursday] to commemorate the dead of “Bloody Saturday” — the violent showdown on June 20 in central Tehran during which Neda Aga Soltan and others were killed. Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi’s Facebook page announced he would pay homage at her grave at Behesht Zahra cemetery on the outskirts of the capital. Mousavi invited other mourners to join him for the Shia 40-day memorial ritual. Tehran Bureau is compiling profiles of those who died in the post-election turmoil, as confirmed by official news sites Mowjcamp, Ghalam News and other reliable sources. The list (chronologically ordered) will be updated.

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Today's New York Times has coverage of the trials of protestors that the dictators wish to use as examples to deter others from challenging its regressive and anti-democratic policies. Again, I continue to hope that repression serves merely to inspire more contempt for the current rulers and cause fence sitters to go over to the side of the pro-democratic opposition. As with all despots, the regime is making allegations against protestors that are fabricated and hopefully will be seen as such by the wider population. Here are some highlights:

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TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- More than 100 opposition political activists and protesters stood trial in Tehran Saturday on charges of rioting and conspiring to topple the ruling system in the country's first trial since the disputed presidential election, Iran's state media reported. The trial underlines the government's efforts to bring to a close anti-government demonstrations that have persisted since the disputed June 12 presidential election.

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The defendants faced charges that include attacking military and government buildings, having links with armed opposition groups and conspiring against the ruling system, Iran's official news agency, IRNA, reported. During the session, prosecutors read out an indictment outlining what they said was a yearslong plot by the top pro-reform political parties to carry out a ''velvet revolution,'' a popular, non-violent uprising to overthrow the Islamic Republic similar to ones that have occurred in Eastern Europe.

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Among the defendants were several prominent reformist opposition activists, including former Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi, former government spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, former Vice Speaker of parliament Behzad Nabavi, former Deputy Foreign Minister Mohsen Aminzadeh and leader of the biggest reformist party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front, Mohsen Mirdamadi. The reformist Web site www.mowjcamp.com denounced Saturday's trial and said defendants had no access to lawyers and there was no jury.

Iran Protests: Phase 2

Like many political and news junkies, I continue to follow the ongoing developments in Iran and hope they will lead to the eventual overthrow of the current Islamic dictatorship and its replacement by a truly democratic government that allows for religious freedoms. As yet, it is still difficult to know where things will possibly lead, but it does seem that there might be a slow but steady undercurrent brewing that may yet build renewed steam and lead to change. A democratic Iran not dominated by extremist Islamic clerics would change the whole political and economic game in the Middle East. It could well undermine support for the Taliban and other Islamic fundamentalist extremists and lead to pressure for reform and increased freedoms in other Islamic countries. Time has article that looks at the unfolding events. Here are some highlights:

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Phase 2 has begun. Six weeks after millions took to the streets to protest Iran's presidential election, their uprising has morphed into a feistier, more imaginative and potentially enduring campaign. The second phase plays out in a boycott of goods advertised on state-controlled television. Just try buying a certain brand of dairy product, an Iranian human-rights activist told me, and the person behind you in line is likely to whisper, "Don't buy that. It's from an advertiser."

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It includes calls to switch on every electric appliance in the house just before the evening TV news to trip up Tehran's grid. It features quickie "blitz" street demonstrations, lasting just long enough to chant "Death to the dictator!" several times but short enough to evade security forces. It involves identifying paramilitary Basij vigilantes linked to the crackdown and putting marks in green — the opposition color — or pictures of protest victims in front of their homes. It is scribbled antiregime slogans on money. And it is defiant drivers honking horns, flashing headlights and waving V signs at security forces.

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[T]heir variety and scope indicate that Iran's uprising is not a passing phenomenon like the student protests of 1999, which were quickly quashed. This time, Iranians are rising above their fears. Although embryonic, today's public resolve is reminiscent of civil disobedience in colonial India before independence or in the American Deep South in the 1960s. Mohandas Gandhi once mused that "even the most powerful cannot rule without the cooperation of the ruled." That quotation is now popular on Iranian websites.

The current uprising is nowhere near as widespread as that of 1979. Yet the activism is creating a new political space in Iran. The public is defining its own agenda, with Rafsanjani, Mousavi and other opposition figures responding to sentiment on the street rather than directing it. After meeting on July 20 with the families of people detained following the election, Mousavi warned the power structure, "You are facing something new: an awakened nation, a nation that has been born again and is here to defend its achievements." As Iran's second phase of protests takes shape, the regime's future may depend on whether it heeds that warning.

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I continue to hope that the protesters succeed and I will continue showing the green color of the protesters on this blog as a sign of support. Fareed Zakaria has an article in Newsweek that also looks at the situation in Iran and cautions that the U.S. should do nothing for the time being and allow the undercurrent of protest to grow.

More Thoughts on Iran

It is truly difficult to know what is really happening in Iran, but it truly appears that the Islamic dictatorship has unleashed much more than it bargained for in the apparent shameless rigging of the vote the week before last. Where it all will lead no one knows either here in the USA or in Iran. My thoughts and prayers go out to those demonstrating and demanding true democracy as opposed to what Iran has suffered under since 1979. Some of the best coverage is via Andrew Sullivan's blog which is demonstrating daily how the old media formula cannot deliver constantly updated information and analysis. As Andrew notes via a New Yorker article that quotes his blog, the big question is when and if the military begins to shift it's support to those in the streets:

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The footage from Tehran today looks like urban warfare. Gone are the massive crowds. Instead we see bands of civilians under attack from bands of thugs, gunshots, flames, thin crowds chased through side streets. If the authorities succeed in keeping demonstrators dispersed and on the run, they could swiftly seize the upper hand. The Web site Tehran Bureau is reporting forty dead and more than two hundred wounded. The victims are seeking aid in foreign embassies rather than hospitals, according to Twitter reports from Tehran.

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There are reports that those demonstrators who came out today planned, via the Internet, to bring Korans onto the streets, and to sit and read from them when attacked by militiamen. Such tactics are in keeping with these demonstrators’ use of slogans and imagery taken from religion and from the Islamic Revolution of 1979—shouting “Allahu Akbar” from the rooftops, organizing demonstrations as public memorials for the dead, refusing (for the most part, at least until today) to attack Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei by name or to call for an end to theocratic rule. In effect, they are saying, We are not against the revolution or against the Islamic Republic. We are its defenders from desecration. Having the former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi for a leader helps in this regard, because of his close historic association with the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

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I think there is still a battle being waged for the hearts and minds of the Revolutionary Guard and Basij. Successful nonviolent movements in other countries have depended on the cooptation of the rank and file in the armed forces; . . . It is one thing to unleash brutal force on crowds that insult the Leader or Islam. That was how the members of the Revolutionary Guards and Basij could defend their assault on demonstrators at Tehran University in 1999. But now, in the name of Ahmadinejad’s controversial presidency, they are being asked to violently disperse fellow Iranians who are chanting religious slogans, carrying Korans, and calling for the lawful counting of their votes. Whether or not the rumors of splits at the top of the Revolutionary Guards’ hierarchy are true, the rank and file is not necessarily monolithic.

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If the opposition does indeed hope to appeal to the common humanity of its attackers, however, today’s events have not been particularly encouraging. Reports on Andrew Sullivan’s indispensable blog show unremitting violence, and a turn toward more frankly oppositional slogans on the part of the demonstrators.