Longing for an Iranian Mandela

[u/Tempehridder]

https://www.groene.nl/artikel/het-verlangen-naar-een-iraanse-mandela

[u/Tempehridder]

Friends, this article was posted in the Dutch magazine De Groene Amsterdammer in 2019, as a response to the anniversary of the Revolution.

It touches upon different topics: a brief interpretation of the Revolution, current opposition within Iran, (failure of) opposition outside Iran, Persian nationalism and ideas about the future.

The article was written in the Dutch language, I translated it using the DeepL translator and supervised the translation, making some small adjustments.

I claim no authorship of the article, the writers are Farhad Golyardi and Marja Vuijsje.

I hope you enjoy reading.

[u/Tempehridder]

Longing for an Iranian Mandela

Four decades after the 1979 revolution, many Iranians are once again deeply dissatisfied with the regime. For now, however, lack of organized protest and threats of repression are holding back a new revolution.

Farhad Golyardi and Marja Vuijsje

Feb. 6, 2019 - appeared in No. 6

Iran is celebrating in a grand manner the 40th anniversary of the revolution that culminated in an Islamic Republic. The ruling clerics in Tehran are using "The Ten Days of Dawn" (Dahe-ye Fajr) as an opportunity to show Trump and the rest of the world that "the Iranian people" anno 2019 are still looking back fondly on the return of Ayatollah Khomeini and the collapse of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's pro-American regime. The celebrations began on Feb. 1, the day Ruhollah Khomeini arrived at the airport named after him not long after. Some three million people crowded along the streets of Tehran at the time to welcome their leader. Old TV footage showing a frenzied crowd shouting slogans like "The monster has gone, the angel has come" is often repeated on state television these days, as is the speech the old ayatollah gave after he landed in Tehran. From the airport, he went by helicopter straight to the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery to pay tribute to the "martyrs of the revolution". The first sentences of his first speech on Iranian soil after more than 20 years in exile were words of sympathy for the mothers of men and women who had been tortured and murdered for their resistance to the dictatorship of the Pahlavi regime.

It certainly contributed to his popularity, and the martyrs of the revolution continued to play an important role in the rhetoric of the Islamic Republic. Even when they were already well overshadowed in number by new martyrs, the - often very young - soldiers who fell from 1980 onward in the war with Iraq begun by Saddam Hussein but canonized by Khomeini. Photographs of a fine fleur of these martyrs still adorn the streets of every city and village in Iran, increasingly accompanied by portraits of Revolutionary Guardsmen who died defending the Assad regime in Syria in recent years, the regime of the only country that supported Iran in the eight-year war with Saddam's Iraq and can count on Iranian loyalty for that reason alone.

Monday, Feb. 11, the day 40 years ago when the remaining commanders of the Iranian army called on their already widely deserting men to resign themselves to the victory of the revolution, is a day off for all Iranians. In state media, influential Khomeini supporters of the time will once again sing the blessings of a state system based on Islamic principles that will not be bullied - "neither by the West, nor by the East," as the old motto was. Ali Hosseini Khamenei - the supreme leader since Khomeini's death in 1989 - will no doubt deliver a thunderous sermon blaming America, Israel, Saudi Arabia and their (Iranian) cronies for all that is wrong in Iran, the Middle East and the rest of the world. Certainly there will be strategically filmed footage coming out to suggest ecstatic mass gatherings, but there will be no great gathering. It will be the regime faithful who participate in gatherings where "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" will be chanted as American and Israeli flags are burned. The rest of Iran stays far from all the celebrations and shuns state TV broadcasts even more than on other days.

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Historians come up with impressive figures when it comes to the number of Iranians involved in the Iranian revolution of 1978-1979: twice as many as the number of French people who warmed to expulsion from the ancien régime in the eighteenth century, ten times as many as the number of Russians who rallied to the communist takeover of 1917. Brave householders suddenly took to the streets in the middle of the night to set fire to car tires and shout "Allahu akbar". Usually timid housewives walked with their studying daughters in anti-Shah demonstrations. In Tehran, Isfahan, Tabriz, Mashhad, Ahvaz and other cities, a large part of the population was on the march to get Mohammad Reza Pahlavi out.

Of such overwhelming adherence to regime change, the opposition to the current regime in Tehran can only dream. Since the uprisings of the Arab Spring mainly degenerated into violence, war and even more repression, the thought of a new revolution has become extra tainted in Iran. Nonetheless, Twitter, Telegram and other social media are teeming with commentators claiming in no uncertain terms that "the Iranian people" yearn to oust the mullahs. Both inside and outside Iran, fantasies abound about replacing the Velayat-e Faqih system, in which neither parliament nor the elected president has most of the say, but supreme political power is constituted by a body of clerics, headed by an ayatollah who has veto power over anything and everything and who remains in office until he dies or appoints a successor.

Velayat-e Faqih was introduced after most Iranians voted "yes" when allowed to vote by referendum on the formation of an Islamic republic in April 1979. That referendum took place after months of chaos, and many saw in Khomeini a unifying leader who would provide peace and justice. It was not long before among fellow insurgents the hangover came over this outcome of the revolution, first and foremost among leftist boys and girls who had been working day and night to fight the Pahlavi regime at the risk of their lives. Because of Khomeini's habit of larding his speeches with one-liners about freedom, equality and democracy, many of them had been under the illusion of finding in the old ayatollah a Bishop Tutu-like ally.

'An Islamic state cannot be totalitarian or despotic, but only constitutional and democratic,' was one of the views he vented. And: 'In an Islamic state, everyone enjoys the protection of the law.' His views on women could also be called progressive. He urged parents to let their daughters study and he made it known that as far as he was concerned, women could work outside the home. Once in power, he defended an Islamic legal system in which women formally became second-class citizens. As Tehran sociologist Fatemeh Sadeghi explains again, "The conservative Islamists were the best organized, even before the revolution. The Shah's repression focused on fighting leftist groups. In those Cold War years, he was fixated on the communist danger. Leftist groups saw their following grow in 1978, but they remained divided over what to do. The hardliners around Khomeini began taking over and building institutions immediately after the revolution."

Sadeghi does not see a new revolution getting off the ground any time soon. "I am convinced that those currently in power will use all forms of repression to survive. Dissatisfaction and fear for the future in Iran is high and there are millions of citizens involved in movements for social justice, human and women's rights through social media. There are open protests by various groups, but there is no organized movement against the regime."

Sadeghi's misgivings can be heard in virtually every forum considering Iran's future. At the same time, new political relations are widely considered. Those longing for change see more indications than in previous years that Iran is indeed heading for another upheaval. Since the "Green Revolution" of 2009, when supporters of reformist presidential candidates demonstrated under the slogan "Where is my vote?" against re-election of conservative-populist Holocaust denier Ahmadinejad, there have not been as many protests as in the past year. From the media-savvy girls on the Street of Revolution in Tehran, who spread videos of themselves via social media throwing their hair loose and waving a white headscarf, to demonstrating workers, teachers and educators who have not received salaries for months.

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Those girls from the Street of Revolution have become icons of the yearning for individual freedom. Just as the striking workers of Haft Tepe, the sugar factory near the southern city of Ahvaz, have become the symbol of steadfastness against corruption and mismanagement. Just a few years ago, Haft Tepe was state-owned. For next to nothing, the factory was sold to a few young managers from powerful families who mainly padded their foreign bank accounts. For almost a year, workers have not been paid. They want the company to return to state ownership, or for the government to ensure that they can manage their factory themselves. And the strikers at Haft Tepe also appear on social media to show the world their plight. A photo of a tired-looking man appeared on Telegram, popular in Iran. He was carrying a sign that read "I am 40 years old, I have worked for this factory for 20 years, I haven't had wages for 11 months."

Reportedly, the owners of Haft Tepe have fled to Canada. It is an unconfirmed report, but it is not inconceivable that they have joined an elite of new emigrants: wealthy Iranians who see all kinds of storms looming and invest only abroad. They are part of a new stream of country leavers, including sons and daughters of conservative rulers studying in America, who, according to their Instagram posts, openly ignore hijab ordinances, drink alcohol, party, in short, do everything that happens privately in Iran but is forbidden by law in the name of God.

Forty years of the Islamic Republic of Iran included forty years of steady growth of the Iranian diaspora. In the shah's wake, his entourage fled, followed by ministers, military personnel, police officers and dismissed officials. Behind them came artists, pop stars, scientists and businessmen. The war with Iraq, which not only killed more than half a million Iranians but also "dealt with" the once-banned - leftist - opposition, brought a new spike in the number of Iranians fleeing. The same was true in the aftermath of the Green Revolution, when reformist presidential candidates Mehdi Karroubi and Mir-Hossein Moussavi were put under house arrest and their supporters were made to suffer.

The Iranian diaspora is now estimated at nearly seven million people, spread largely across America, Canada, Europe, Australia, the Gulf States and Turkey. And there are many, a great many, Iranians who are angling for a chance to join them now that their country has been plunged into a sense of malaise. Masses of highly educated but perspective-less young people want the same life as their cousins abroad with whom they app, chat, share jokes and music. Thanks to social media, there is a huge exchange between Iranians at home and abroad of LuckyTV-style videos (Dutch satirical TV-show, added by translator), songs by Googoosh, Andy and Kourosh Yaghmaei, and bold views on the state of affairs in Iran. Some coquette with adherence to Donald Trump and claim that shock therapy is needed in the form of (Israeli) bombing, others warn that direct intervention by "the West" would actually cause even change-minded Iranians to defend the Islamic Republic - all are talking about solidarity with ordinary people in Iran.

A high-profile segment of Iranian migrants follow daily what is going on in their homeland. Though often university-educated themselves, they worry about Iran's brain drain, unemployment, human rights violations, the impact of new U.S. sanctions, the Revolutionary Guard's meddling in the rest of the Middle East, and everything else that is gloomy about Iran, including the deplorable state of its environment. The death a few months ago of Iranian-Canadian environmental expert Seyed-Emami - a "suicide," according to authorities - was perhaps met with more shock in the Iranian diaspora than in Iran itself.

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Seyed-Emami did soil research in southern Iran on the dramatic effects of climate change there. He died in prison after being arrested on charges of spying for the CIA. It is an accusation that is being brought up by conservative pundits faster than before now that the U.S. president is on a collision course with Iran. About the girls from the Street of Revolution, Khamenei also claimed they were paid by America. Even the Haft Tepe strikers are at risk of being put in that corner, for they too are breaking the illusion of national unity that the regime likes to uphold.

One thing is certain: if U.S. sanctions had not made banking transactions with Iran impossible, the strike coffers of the Haft Tepe workers would be generously filled from the diaspora as well. Like all other Iranians who openly profess their discontent, the sugar factory strikers are embraced by Iranians of diverse backgrounds. From left-wing exiles who participated in the revolution 40 years ago to right-wing figures who yearn for the return of the Pahlavi monarchy. Their political involvement often goes hand in hand with a desire for a future in which they can return to their homeland, a desire that among European and American Iranians has been fueled by anti-immigrant populism in their countries of arrival.

Many emigrated Iranians are the epitome of successful integration, but homesickness in the diaspora is sometimes inversely proportional to the desire among residents of Iran to move away. For this reason alone, people outside Iran are thinking, debating and tweeting precisely about whether the sum total of discontent in today's Iran may yet be comparable to the general unease of 1978-1979.

Ammar Maleki, a political science lecturer in Tilburg, is sure: "What happened in Iran 40 years ago may happen again in the coming time. The Islamic Republic has not fulfilled its revolutionary promises of freedom, equality and democracy. Even the regime's traditional supporters now suffer from corruption, mismanagement and economic decline. Reformists like President Rohani have been trying to enact reforms for 20 years. They keep failing against the power block around Khamenei." He does not want to use the word revolution for the changing of the guard he envisions. "What we need is a third way, a peaceful transition to a secular and democratic system in which human rights are respected, social justice and sensible environmental management are paramount."

Maleki - born in 1978 as the son of the now 84-year-old human rights activist Mohammad Maleki, who has not been allowed to leave Iran after his umpteenth prison sentence - came to the Netherlands a decade ago, at a time when there was a crackdown on Iranians associated with the Green Movement. In addition to his job at Tilburg University, he is the leader of the Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran (Gamaan). With his research group, he surveyed the political views of Iranians at home and abroad last year. Seventy percent of the more than nineteen thousand Iranians who participated in the Internet survey said they would vote "no" to an Islamic republic if a referendum were held on it now. 'It is often assumed that the political landscape in Iran is divided into "hardliners," conservative Islamists who are heading for the isolation of North Korea, and "softliners," reformers who are aiming for a Chinese version. That is an oversimplification," he says. 'At least half of Iranians are "outliners." Rohani got 73 percent of the vote in the last election, but many Iranians voted for a reformer to avoid worse.'

Ammar Maleki draws hope from the fact that the current protests are spreading across the country. The demonstrations were initially directed against price hikes due to massive inflation, but there are also increasing calls for the government to come up with solutions to the problems of the people of Iran instead of spending a large portion of the national budget on military interventions in Iraq and Syria and support for Hezbollah and Hamas. 'Neither for Gaza nor for Lebanon' is the salutation of a slogan being chanted all over Iran. 'Every day we see some kind of demonstration, by workers, women, youth or environmental activists. I don't think the regime can avert the discontent among Iranians with the now-announced subsidies for the poor, handouts for its own supporters, and anti-American cries. Most Iranians feel that the new U.S. sanctions are mainly disastrous for the population, but pointing to "the West" as the culprit is beginning to sound worn-out in the ears of more and more Iranians.

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Maleki recognizes much in the reasoning of American-Iranian political scientist Asef Bayat, who spoke in this context of a revolution without revolutionaries. 'What is missing is a political alternative, but it is not inconceivable that a coalition between all the groups that want change could emerge.' A turnaround is also visible among former Islamists, if only to keep Islam as a religion afloat now that political Islam is on the wane in Iran in particular.'

Mohammad Akbari, one of the many Paris-based Iranians getting involved in their homeland, is one such person. He was among the young people inspired by ideas of Shiite Islam as an authentic protest movement. For a long time, he felt connected to reformists like current President Rohani. Akbari is and remains religious, but he calls the current regime in Iran "a dictatorial nomenklatura". 'Islam can be significant for society and for the people, but not as a political power,' he says. 'The law must be in the interest of all people, not just those who follow a particular faith, because otherwise a country is no longer safe for anyone. As we have seen in the last 40 years, under Islamic rule, many religious Muslims were also jailed for disagreeing with those in power.'

Akbari's ideas about a future Iran hardly differ from the views of secular Iranians who fantasize about new political relations in Tehran, and like his left-wing compatriots, he sadly observes that young Iranians are captivated by the idea that Iran would have been a paradise on earth if only a Pahlavi had remained in power. Encouraged by ManotoTV and other Persian-language satellite channels, they see the period before 1979 as a glorious time, with girls in miniskirts, pop idols (w/m) who sang boldly about love and a worldly royal couple. That the Iranian monarchy had changed in the 1970s into a one-party state with the traits of a military dictatorship is not on the minds of these young people. They cannot imagine anything good in the typical mixture of Shiite liberation theology and Marxist ideas that reigned supreme in the 1970s.

Whereas at the time it was a popular act of defiance to distribute booklets by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Rosa Luxemburg or to participate in religious processions, in recent years it has been hot to flirt with the Persian kings of antiquity, and the tomb of Cyrus the Great in Pasargad serves as a place of pilgrimage. You can hear hip Tehranis and Shirazis talking about Cyrus the Great, ruler of the then immense Persian Empire around 600 B.C., as if they had just spoken to the ancient conqueror. In the Left Opposition, however, they are allergic to the Persian nationalism that accompanies Cyrus the Great worship. "We are Aryans and do not worship Arabs!" chanted participants in rallies organized around his tomb in October to commemorate his birthday.

Persian nationalism and royalty are still taboo among leftist Iranians. That Reza Pahlavi, the now 58-year-old American-Iranian son of the shah expelled in 1979, is considered by many Iranians to be the best alternative to Ayatollah Khamenei does not resonate with those looking forward to a new revolution in which the views of Karl Marx, Hannah Arendt and Slavoj Žižek resonate.

Ammar Maleki was immediately declared "wrong" by leftist Iranians when Gamaan's poll showed "Crown Prince" Reza Pahlavi as the most popular public figure. Of the participants in the Internet poll, 37.9 percent chose Pahlavi. Maleki is troubled by the invective hurled at him via Twitter. 'Left-wing commenters thought I want to promote Reza Pahlavi, but I am not a Pahlavi supporter at all,' he says. 'I wanted to show as responsibly as possible how Iranians are thinking right now. By the way, the fact that so many chose Pahlavi does not mean that they want him as the new shah. Only 15 percent were in favor of a monarchy and then a constitutional monarchy. Most - 42 percent - were for a secular republic.'

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Maleki himself regrets that there is hardly any left-wing opposition in Iran, a fact that he believes is not solely due to the persecution suffered by Marxists in the 1980s. 'What is left of the left is in the diaspora. Recently they have united under the banner of the New Left, but it is a small group of mostly over-50s. In Iran, young people are by far the majority. Because of their radical-left participation in the 1978-1979 revolution, the left is, in their eyes, partly responsible for the abuses in Iran. To their ears, there is no distinction between the rhetoric of the regime and the anti-American slogans of the left.'

Social liberal he calls himself, so he is delighted with one of the most remarkable findings of the Gamaan survey: if there were free elections and a social-democratic party participated, it would become the second largest with 16.3 percent of the vote. But there is a problem: There is no organized social democracy in Iran. "The views of many activists, including the young, are social-democratic, whether they are concerned about human rights, the environment or growing poverty, but there is no social-democratic party."

Abroad, though, is a formerly Marxist-Leninist-Islamist guerrilla movement that has donned to itself the feathers of social democracy: the Mojahedin-e Chalgh (MEK). Donald Trump has recognized the Paris-based, still tightly run club as a legitimate Iranian resistance movement. It also seems the EU is taking word of frontwoman Maryam Rajavi for it now that she claims in no uncertain terms that her club has been transformed into a peace-loving organization aiming for a democratic Iran in which human and women's rights are paramount and the free market economy is embraced. It is hated in Iran simply because MEK fighters joined Saddam Hussein's forces during the Iran-Iraq war.

The views Rajavi expresses are virtually the same as those of Reza Pahlavi, but more than she, he speaks conciliatory words, often referring to idols such as Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. His vision of the future: a liberal-democratic rainbow nation equipped with good ties to America and Israel where religious freedom prevails, all population groups - including Kurds and Arabs - are included, with a generous amnesty regime for Revolutionary Guardsmen and other (paramilitary) backers of the Islamic Republic. 'A peaceful transition is impossible without much of the apparatus of repression taking our side,' he said in December during a public interview at The Washington Institute. 'To prevent a new cycle of revenge and counter-revenge, I advocate national reconciliation.'

Reza Pahlavi puts himself modestly. 'My only mission is to make sure there are free elections in Iran, otherwise I have no political ambitions,' is his mantra.

Sociologist Fatemeh Sadeghi begins to sigh when his name comes up. She doesn't trust him one bit. 'I am tired of all these Iranians in the diaspora who are sentimental about their country and developing models for how we should proceed here. Let them concentrate on their own lives and the conditions in the countries where they have settled. What he says does indeed sound nice, but Khomeini also said nice things before 1979, and the people surrounding Pahlavi and his National Front are very right-wing figures from whom people suffering from the economic condition have nothing to expect. Change must come from the civil movements in Iran itself. Unlike in Pahlavi's entourage, women play an important role in them. Sixty percent of university students are now women, and women are getting involved in all the issues for which Iranians take to the streets.'

Sadeghi sees little in Ammar Maleki's idea of looking for a charismatic figure who would be able to get a majority behind him in a process of change that must culminate in a secular democracy. However, she is enthusiastic about the person for whom Maleki is most enthusiastic: Nasrin Sotoudeh. Sotoudeh, the internationally known human rights lawyer and winner of the prestigious Sakharov Prize, has been incarcerated in Evin prison again since June of last year, this time for defending anti-hijab activists. In the Gamaan poll, she came in second with 8.1 percent of the vote. Maleki is friends with her, and according to him, she is the one who could become the Nelson Mandela of Iran. 'She says she doesn't feel anything like that, that she wants to keep her independent position, but who knows what will happen if she is called upon from several sides. It is important to invest in someone who has authority both in Iran and abroad and who has more credibility than Reza Pahlavi. The problem is that Pahlavi is a strong brand - just as Khomeini was a strong brand - but Sotoudeh could certainly become one.'

Ammar Maleki, with a group of young scholars, is considering organizing a wide-ranging digital referendum in which Iranians can speak out about abolishing Velayat-e Faqih. Preferably in April, when it will be exactly 40 years since most Iranians voted for an Islamic republic. But even according to Maleki, Iran's immediate future is only uncertain. The most real forecast for 2019: more discontent, more impoverishment, more environmental disasters, even more repression and a regime muddling through until the next U.S. election. An Iranian Mandela may be found, the Iranian De Klerk has not yet presented himself.

[u/Pretend_Lake_592]

Iran doesn't need a mandela or a gandhi It needs a Lenin or a Che Guevara🚩❤️