Symposium: Whither Iran?
By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 27, 2003
As young Iranians take to the streets to protest against tyranny and to fight for freedom, it has become clear that a revolutionary situation might be developing in the country. How much power do the ruling mullahs really have? Is it possible that the Iranian people might actually overthrow the despotic clerics in the near future? What policy should the U.S. government pursue toward this boiling situation?
To discuss these and other questions with Frontpage Symposium, we are joined by: Dariush Homayoun, ex-Minister of Iranian Information (under the Shah) and today the most prominent leader of the Iranian opposition; Kaveh Ehsani, a research director at Jomhur Research Institute in Tehran and an editor of a journal called Goft-o-Gu (Dialogue); Reza Bayegan, a commentator on Iranian politics who was born in Iran and currently works for the British Council in Paris. He contributes weekly columns to the Iran va Jahan Website and is a regular guest on Iranian radio shows in exile; Daniel Brumberg, an Associate Professor of Government at Georgetown University, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and author of Reinventing Khomeini: The Struggle for Reform in Iran; and Jacob Heilbrunn, editoral writer and staff member of the Los Angeles Times, in Washington, DC.
Interlocutor: Welcome gentlemen. At this very moment, Iranians are protesting on the streets of Iran. Is a democratic revolution pending? Will there be a Tiananmen-type crackdown? What is your reading of the events?
Ehsani: A revolution? Probably not. Similar protests, on an even bigger scale, have take place in the past 6 years. The current student protests were spontaneous by all accounts and began with demands for maintaining tuition-free education. Chances are that protesters were provoked to come out of the campuses and give more radical political slogans as a result of provocations by agents of hardliners in Iran. This provocation limits the scale of protests as violence naturally intimidates others from joining in, as well as justifying crackdowns in the name of law and order. Also, this may have been a tactical move ahead of the expected larger student protests on the anniversary of July 9, the date that security forces cracked down on student campuses three years ago. The current skirmishes will take the wind out of that potentially larger and more universally recognized event.
Bayegan: The clerical regime has exhausted all its possibilities for survival. It no longer makes any bones about its total disregard for the nation's wishes and aspirations. Mr Khameini unabashedly threatens the students with further vigilante attacks should they continue their protests. The shouts of the young and old denouncing the regime and its custodians are heard everyday and are gathering strength by the minute. People have recognized that Khameini and Khatami are only variations on the same sordid theme of tyranny and repression. The Islamic Republic never was, and never will become, compatible with democratic principles.
The student movement in Iran is acting in a disciplined manner and its behavior is in total accordance with the tenets of a non-violent movement to bring about political change in the country. As the regime feels more and more threatened and takes further drastic measures to crush this peaceful protest, it makes itself uglier and uglier in the eyes of the population.
In Iran, the students have traditionally symbolized innocence and intelligence. These two qualities make them appear saintly in the eyes of a population who will not forgive anyone who dares to harm them under any pretext whatsoever.
The veneration and love the Iranians bestow on their Shia Imams comes from their belief that these great religious characters stood up for their convictions and died in the service of truth and justice. They were martyred by their accursed opponents who only thought of their own immediate political survival. Mr Khamenei cannot pretend to preserve the Shia faith by shedding the innocent blood of the Iranian youth. He is seen more and more as the cruel, unprincipled man who is really the antitheses of what he pretends to be. He is increasingly seen as the enemy of justice and the persecutor of the people. The students shouting “Death to Khamenei!” in the streets during the past seven days are clearly demonstrating what they think of the man who calls himself the leader of all Muslims and the protector of the underprivileged.
The comparison with Tiananmen Square is correct in so as far as the Iranian regime will act with the same cruelty if not worse to repress the student movement. What we have to realize however is that the Iranian government poses a far greater danger to world security than the Chinese government did in 1989. The Chinese government, although qualifying as a brutal dictatorship, did not harbor members of international assassins that were responsible for blowing up almost 3,000 people in New York in a single day and did not fund terrorist groups that were carrying out daily acts of violence in the Middle East in order to undermine peace and stability. The success of the freedom movement in Iran will not only serve to save the Iranian nation from a repressive regime, but needs full international support to put an end to a major menace facing the whole world and endangering the cause of freedom and democracy.
Ehsani: The situation in Iran is disturbing enough by itself and we should refrain from making hyperbolic statements of this kind that only serve to further confuse the picture: Iran is not ''the major menace facing the whole world''. The world has just witnessed the de-facto illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, based on the same kind of rhetoric. Although the reviled Baath regime is no longer there the consequences of that invasion and occupation for regional and world stability, for the functionality of multilateral institutions, and for the long-suffering Iraqi people are at best uncertain and quite disturbing.
As for Al Qaeda 'destroying peace and stability in the Middle East' I am sure very few informed and intelligent reader, no matter what their political persuasion, would label the pre-9/11 situation in the Middle East as 'peaceful and stable'!
Even the comparison with China is problematic: What if in 1989 several of China's neighbours had been invaded militarily, and there were hundreds of thousands of hostile troops on its borders, and the US administration and Congress were allocating substantial amounts of money and openly calling for the overthrow of the Chinese regime? Would China have become a greater menace to ''world security'' under such circumstances?
After half a century of flawed politics in the Middle East, most of which has been based on a simplistic and reductionist rhetoric of defining ''the evil enemy'', it is high time for insisting on more nuanced and insightful political analysis. Iran is certainly such a case, so let us avoid resorting to reductionist and apocalyptic rhetoric which will only hinder our understanding of a complex situation.
Currently, and for the past few years, any and all social gatherings and collective actions, no matter how apolitical and innocuous, (like people celebrating a soccer match, or New Year, or accompanying the funeral of a public figure, etc.) are harassed by groups of thugs and provoked into violent confrontations.
The logic is clear: Once any small gathering can be provoked into violence and crackdown it will prevent other sympathizers from joining in. This was definitely the case with these demonstrations. I sympathize with and fully share the emotional outrage of Mr Bayegan against the attacks on student demonstrations. But the fact of the matter is that the demonstrations did start spontaneously, over tuition demands, a highly important issue especially for provincial students. The unorganized students were then attacked by quickly assembled bands of thugs. And since the hardliners have encouraged a culture of public violence by attacking any legitimate public gathering, the disorganized students responded by counter-attacking, thus opening the way for large scale repression of the campuses. All of us who want to see democracy proceed and succeed in Iran need to keep our head, and avoid emotionalism, and analyze the political situation for what it is. The adoption of disciplined and appropriate tactics by the democratic movement are vital now.
Unfortunately, I believe the recent protests were a clear short-term victory for the hardliners. My guess is that the attacks on student demonstrations were orchestrated to radicalize the situation ahead of July 9, the anniversary of the crackdown on university uprisings in 1999. Once university gatherings become politicized and controlled by riot police the chance of the public at large practically supporting these actions become very remote.
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Iran Says 4,000 Arrested During Recent Protests
Analysts said the new number from Iran's Prosecutor General Ayatollah Abdonnabi Namazi suggested the protests had been larger than authorities had previously acknowledged.
''That's a lot of (arrested) people. It just shows that these protests were actually quite large and widespread,'' said one local analyst who declined to be named.
The demonstrations started in Tehran about three weeks ago. Hundreds of university students were joined by a few thousand ordinary people each night who chanted slogans against Iran's clerical rulers and called for greater democracy and freedom.
The protests, which included harsh criticism of moderate President Mohammad Khatami as well as the conservative clerics who have blocked his attempts at reform, spread to more than half a dozen other cities.
But they were soon stamped out by a large security response involving riot police and hardline vigilantes armed with batons and chains who are fiercely loyal to conservative clerics.
Namazi told the ISNA students news agency more than 4,000 people had been detained. He said about 40 percent of those had been released quickly. The remainder, including 800 students in Tehran alone, remained in custody.
Scores of student activists have been arrested in recent days, even after the protests had fizzled out, in an apparent attempt to prevent students marking the July 9 anniversary of a violent 1999 attack on a Tehran University dormitory by Islamic vigilantes.
Officials say they will prevent students holding any events to commemorate the 1999 attack which sparked the worst street unrest seen in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
''The high-ranking security officials believe July 9 is an event that does not need an anniversary. An incident which happened some years ago does not require an event to be held to commemorate it,'' Namazi said.
Reformist legislators this week criticised Khatami for not taking a firmer stand against the wave of recent arrests. Many families have not been informed where their arrested relatives are being held.
Tehran's Prosecutor General Saeed Mortazavi said 50 of those being held in Tehran were ready for trial. He said the judiciary was also investigating whether some MPs had encouraged students to go out and protest.
''We are investigating the issue and if we come to the conclusion that the parliamentarians encouraged the students, we will undoubtedly summon them and confront them,'' ISNA quoted Mortazavi as saying.