While politics in the Islamic Republic had always featured a strong element of competition among the array of factions that comprised the revolutionary coalition, the Second of Khordad was the first time since the revolution that an Iranian presidential election proved genuinely competitive. The invocation of the date as a rallying cry was short-lived, however.
The agenda of the reform movement centered around the concepts of moderation, tolerance, accountability and rule of man-made law. These were revolutionary ideas in the Islamic Republic circa ; however, Khatami was determined both as a matter of strategy and as a function of his cautious nature to avoid revolutionary action.
This made the movement viable within the paranoid parameters of the revolutionary theocracy, but it ultimately left its agenda vulnerable to the willingness of their hard-line opponents to use any means necessary.
Ultimately, however, it was not simply repression that undermined the reformists. Rather, it was the evidence, borne of the eight-year Khatami experiment and the bald-faced manipulations of the system by his successor, that the Islamic Republic cannot be durably moderated by a movement that sidesteps its central idiosyncrasy— the divine mandate of the office of the Supreme Leader, which in the Islamic Republic transcends such trivialities as the rule of law. Despite the real tactical genius they displayed in seizing the presidency and sustaining their movement in its early years, the reformists never managed to navigate beyond this impasse, either intellectually or strategically.
And the events of further eroded the viability— and thus, the popular appeal— of the reformist approach of gradualism, incrementalism and change from within. Although the reform movement was stymied and largely forced to the sidelines of Iranian decision-making, it managed to have a meaningful, positive impact on the lives of Iranians through specific policy advances as well as the general reinvigoration of civil society and the media.
Even poorer Iranians, dislodged from rural districts and crammed into tiny urban apartments, adopted middle class aspirations for their children. Through it all, Iran emerged as a modern state. Since the s, Iran stopped being a vassal or client of any other world power, pursuing its own sometimes confounding regional policies; whether it was the Shah deploying troops and war planes to back the Omani Sultanate against leftists in the s or Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei dispatching the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to Syria to defend Bashar al-Assad in the s.
The alliance of Islamist clerics and military leaders that runs contemporary Iran has a keen sense of how the Qajars failed the country, just as it realizes full well how the failures of the Pahlavi dynasty shaped the way for the arrival of the Islamic Republic.
But, in many ways, the current elite seem determined and possibly even tragically fated to repeat the mistakes of the past. That century came to a sad, symbolic end, with the January accidental shootdown of a Ukrainian Airways flight loaded with aspiring Iranian engineers, scientists, and scholars at the hands of regime officials who have yet to suffer any consequences for their actions.
Iranians of all classes dream of modernizing the country. First, the Qajars and their allies in the clergy and among the Russians and British betrayed the constitutionalists and bombed the nascent parliament.
Then, the Pahlavis and their American allies—especially financiers and weapons dealers—squelched the democratic yearnings of Iranians.
This short-circuiting of middle-class aspirations and consistent abuse of skilled professionals, merchants, artists, and thinkers, who drive modernity in other nations, may be what distinguishes Iran from the rest of the developing world. Well, the upside is that Hasan Rowhani won on Friday's election because Iranian voters were intent on showing their leaders that they prefer as their president a man who suggests even the most minute revisions reigning order such as vague promises to rein in the widely hated morality police.
But the fact remains that, even if Rowhani wanted to implement even more far-reaching changes, Iran's current power structure gives the president minimal space to do so. Iranian voters may have signaled their desire for reform by voting for Rowhani, but that doesn't mean they're any likelier to get it. And that's just the way that Khomeini, the father of Iran's Islamic Revolution, would have wanted it. From the very beginning he and his followers aimed to transform Iran into a state where the Shiite clergy had the final say.
The Khomeinist constitution passed in and revised a few years later included some opportunities for limited political competition by embracing direct elections for local government, parliament, and the presidency with the proviso that only approved candidates were allowed to run.
But no one elected the Supreme Leader, the man who holds ultimate power. That's because, as clergyman-in-chief, he embodies the principle of divine rule.
God's sovereignty trumps the people's. He ultimately died in obscurity after enduring long years of intense persecution. There are few who would seriously dispute the imperative for change.
The limited space for democratic participation originally allowed by the first generation of revolutionary leaders has steadily yielded to unvarnished authoritarianism. Talbot, a British citizen. One Islamic principle invoked by the merchants was that buyers and sellers must each agree to a purchase.
However, the concession mandated that Iranian tobacco growers sell their crops exclusively to Talbot, making it an un-Islamic accord. Eventually, the ulama partnered with the merchants, as mullahs began preaching against the concession. It declared:. In the name of God, the Merciful and Forgiving. As of now, the consumption of tobacco and tootoon in any form is tantamount to war against the Imam of the age.
Shirazi did not deny the fatwa , so a highly successful nationwide boycott ensued. At the end of January in , the Shah cancelled the Talbot concession. The Constitutional Revolution was no different. The ulama continued to play an important role in revolutionary activity as it partnered with dissenters against the regime. In the summer of , during the month of Muharrem, an attempt by police to arrest anti-government preachers led to an outbreak of protests, during which, a descendent of the Prophet Muhammad, or sayyid , was shot dead.
With this incident, the ulama started criticizing the regime openly. Consequently, the ulama went on strike. On 5 August , he signed a proclamation authorizing the establishment of the National Assembly, and the new constitution was fully enacted by October the following year. Take, for instance, the then-Supreme-Leader-to-be. The Islamic Republic of Iran IRI was founded on April 1 that year when people voted to establish the theocracy, and elected Khomeini as their supreme leader.
He is, after all, a sayyid. Actors in the passion play usually dawn the color green to represent Hossein and his forces, while the followers of Yazid are depicted in red.
This subconscious connection brings the legitimacy of Hossein to the Green Movement while simultaneously connecting Ahmadinejad to the tyranny of Yazid. So as demonstrators marched through the streets of Tehran decked out in green, the movement itself adopted the powerful symbol for its name. Mousavi and his supporters formally established the Green Path of Hope, the official political front—a structural, grassroots organization comprised of volunteers and independent social networks—meant to lead the Green Movement.
In doing so, he exploited a loophole that requires the Ministry of the Interior to approve the establishment of a political party, while still appealing to the legitimacy of Islam through the color green.
Some may argue that the appeals to Islam ultimately do not matter. These same individuals see Islam as the barrier to democratization, not just in Iran, but all over the Middle East and the Islamic World. Lewis does concede that Muslims may never initiate an event on the magnitude of the Protestant Reformation, but he says people should still hope.
Religion was not a barrier to the Green Movement. The absence of the clerical hierarchy did not doom it from the very beginning, though it certainly made reform more challenging. Still, this did not prevent reformers, opponents of the regime, Mousavi supporters, and others from appealing to Islam for legitimacy, and it certainly did not prevent some reform-minded spiritual leaders [27] from partaking in the Green Movement either.
In the end, it does not really matter. The election protests were not about religious reform, nor were they about regime change. The Green Movement was about math for a simple reason. High voter turnout and election enthusiasm were indicators that Mousavi would win the presidential election.
When the results were announced revealing how dramatic of a victory Ahmadinejad had claimed people all over Iran could not imagine how Mousavi could have lost, unless the elections had been rigged. They recognized, almost immediately, that their votes were essentially missing. The problem with the vote count was aggravated a few days after the election, when two Iranian filmmakers presented a letter apparently written by Minister Mahsouli to the European Parliament.
Addressed to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the letter clearly illustrates that the results of the election were forged. Nevertheless, activists from the Green Movement view it as legitimizing their grievances, so they photocopied the letter to circulate at opposition rallies and protests. The internet has played an important role in the Green Movement, and in fact, the Mahsouli letter was by no means the first, or most influential, thing to be published online.
Peterson goes further, saying that IRI officials would confiscate the passports of any Iranian returning to the country for a visit if they had posted any criticisms of the regime on the internet. Moreover, Iranian intelligence operatives were also responsible for intimidating activists abroad by videotaping rallies in Germany, where as many as Iranians were being monitored by their own government. Additionally, worries Evgeny Morozov, the internet affords authoritarian, totalitarian, and dictatorial regimes the world over with a new means by which to track, monitor, and identify dissenters.
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