Our entire appreciation of what has happened in Iran in the past week is skewed, and we don’t know by how much. I don’t: and I have more background on it than most of the opinion-makers I’ve read, if only because I have kept up a steady, private monitoring of Iran over seven or eight years, and not just that many days. In blogging and emailing friends, I’ve always tried to step cautiously into different kinds of Iranian shoes because there are so many viewpoints, of which the Reformist versus Islamist/Principalist dichotomy is a minor one. I’ll add another post, maybe two, before letting it drop for now, as Iran itself will, resentfully, let it all drop.
Despite the reported ban on internet usage, I received an email heads-up from Tehran Avenue today www.tehranavenue.com. If you try this link, be patient – the internet blocking is slowing things down. The editorial says:
“The vortex of affairs that is currently sweeping the country can only go in two directions: escalation of violence and the militarization of the country or acceptance of defeat by those who staged the election coup. Both are equally likely and impossible at the same time.”
But I was most struck by the first paragraph comment, “we have another revolution on our hands. We didn't ask for it, but we've got it.” This is coming out of the youthful arts-and-letters community, which is huge in Tehran, and is assumed by some western observers to be ready to take up arms. I have read the phrase “Tiananmen Square” more than once this week, which shows just how lost in their own dreams most western observers are. And given how <i>that</i> turned out, I wouldn’t wish it on the protesters.
The key issue here is still Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the (almost) Reformist candidate. In my head, I keep comparing him to Stephane Dion, the hapless, and now gone, leader of Canada’s Liberal Party, who had his 14 minutes of fame (the 15th was beyond him) at the end of last year. Or maybe John Kerry, the focus of so many hopes in 2004, who proved so inept in the presidential campaign that George W. Bush actually <i>gained</i> votes. Yes, Mousavi has an interesting and forthright wife, but he himself is just a floating photograph, a man without the charisma of his opponent. Like Dion and Kerry, a person with a keen intellect and good insights, but not the ability to inspire the masses.
Which, of course, is one reason he was allowed to run. But it does mean he is not leading a revolution. He is not even directing the demonstrations, which are led by a frustration that is both linked and also not linked to our ideas of political action and freedom. Perhaps it’s best to say that electoral politics is a mask for the emotions welling up in Iranian cities (but probably not elsewhere in the country).
This is Ayatollah Khamenei’s challenge, as well as Ahmadinejad’s. After 30 years, the Islamic Revolution has delivered neither an exalted Islam nor prosperity. Blaming the U.S. and Israel (and, I note today, fierce Canada) doesn’t cut it the way it used to. Educated Iranians know it’s the world economy that’s putting them through the grinder, not Obama and Netanyahu (or Canada’s Harper).
The election result is not going to be reversed, the demonstrations will fade out, and people will go back to regular life – for now. But Iran’s senior leadership has been reminded it is sitting on an expanding powder-keg, and simply sending out the Basiji to beat people up, or shoot them in a score of instances, has not intimidated the population. Jailing leading Reformers for a week or two doesn’t really intimidate even them any more.
Our media’s attention will be elsewhere by next week, which is a shame. The rest of this year (ours ends in December, Iran’s in March) should see some developments that will probably be as misunderstood and misinterpreted through our conventional, lazy conceptual filters as the events of the past week.
And I don’t think the rulers of Iran yet know what those developments are going to be. But they are more shaken right now than they have been since their war with Iraq, which ended 20 years ago.