Generations of protest
Many young Iranians are not convinced that the 1979 revolution was more than an exchange of authoritarians. But for others, preserving the current orthodoxy is a holy struggle.Resilient Iranians still dream of a new revolution
Six months on from what the defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi calls a "coup d'etat" in which Khamenei reinstalled the hardline Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, this marathon confrontation is far from over. "Iran has totally changed since June," said Poorya Farmarzi, a student. "Now you can smell blood when you go out, you can smell teargas, you can smell injustice. This won't end soon."...Taboos that held sway for three decades have been smashed: public attacks on Khamenei – the Vali al-Faqih, or supreme jurist, at the apex of Iran's theocratic system – have become normal...
For one middle-class Tehrani who grew up during the revolution, much of this is about young Iranians asserting themselves, as they did in extraordinary scenes of exuberance and hope before the "stolen" election. "What a lot of people are asking for is what their parents asked for 30 years ago. The difference is that their parents trusted their elders and the keepers of the revolutionary faith to do the right thing. Young people don't have that trust any more."...
Karim Sadjapour, [an] Iran expert, calls it "a fool's errand" to try to predict how this will all play out...
In Iran, Protests Gaining a Radical Tinge
[The] creeping radicalization has underscored the rift within Iran’s opposition movement, analysts say, and poses a problem for its leaders, including Mr. Moussavi and the reformist cleric Mehdi Karroubi.
“The longer this goes on, the more difficult will it be for the likes of Moussavi and Karroubi to sustain their current position,” said Ray Takeyh, an Iran expert at the Council on Foreign Relations who has worked for the State Department. “They have to at some point opt for regime survival or become the leaders of an opposition movement calling for more than reform.”...
On the other hand...
Revolution halted in Iran
It has been a hell of a year for Iran. Just last winter the nation's elites were basking in 30 years of revolutionary triumph, launching satellites, enriching uranium, and holding neocon hawks at bay. Then, weeks of fervent presidential campaigning drew out the best and worst of Iranian society's antagonisms, culminating in a poll exactly six months ago. Overnight the revolution's orphans and cosmopolitan have-nots demanded their say...First, the narrative of a regime death match between President Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei on one side versus Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Ayatollah Rafsanjani, and the entire Iranian nation on the other doesn't help at all. Instead, one should read the political fallout over the last six months in the terms set by Khamenei and Rafsanjani's two major Friday sermons that took place within a month after the elections. Between the speeches, the extremes of both ends of political spectrum were curbed and governing elites began to circle their wagons to preserve the system...
The losers in the trade were the northern Tehranis who supplied the bulk of the street presence after the election. But this wasn't the first time in Iranian history that group of clerics extended a hand to populist causes, reneged, and pursued their own political ambitions. There was no reason to expect otherwise this time around...
The political capital released in the past six months is now being captured by mainstream conservative elites such as the Larijani brothers and Ghalibaf as well as symbolic figures such as MP Ali Motahhari and Ayatollah Shirazi who aim to minimise the damage done to the system by the current president. Parliament and the mosque then, not the presidential palace or Tehran University, are the places to read Iran's affairs and the supreme leader's political pulse.
What is being fought for today in Iran is the preservation a small space for political dissent and the prevention of the emergence of a militarised one-party system. This is a far cry from the "regime in its last throes" image we get in the mainstream press...
Iranian hard-liners rally for government
Thousands of Iranian government supporters staged rallies yesterday to denounce opposition students who burned photos of the country’s supreme leader in protests this week...
The demonstrations marked the first response by Iran’s clerical leadership and its supporters to the taboo-shattering actions of their opponents on Monday, when tens of thousands of students protested at universities around Iran...
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Labels: cleavages, history, Iran, participation, politics
posted by Ken Wedding @ 6:41 AM
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