[R-G] Iran: This Is Not a Revolution

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/aam230609.html>
Iran: This Is Not a Revolution
by Arshin Adib-Moghaddam

Political power is never good or bad, never really just or unjust;
political power is arbitrary, discriminatory, and most of the time
violent.  In Iran, the ongoing demonstrations sparked by the election
results in favor of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad indicate that such power can
never really be monopolized by the state.  Iran's civil society is
fighting; it is giving blood for a just cause.  It is displaying its
power, the power of the people.  Today, Iran must be considered one of
the most vibrant democracies in the world because it is the people who
are speaking.  The role of the supporters of the status quo has been
reduced to reaction, which is why they are lashing out violently at
those who question their legitimacy.

In all of this, the current civil unrest in Iran is historic, not only
because it has already elicited compromises by the state, but also
because it provides yet more evidence of the way societies can empower
themselves against all odds.  These brave men and women on the streets
of Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan, and other cities are moved by the same
utopia that inspired their fathers and mothers three decades ago: the
utopia of justice.  They believe that change is possible, that protest
is not futile.  Confronting the arrogance of the establishment has
been one of the main ideological planks of the Islamic revolution in
1979.  It is now coming back to haunt those who have invented such
slogans without necessarily adhering to them in the first place.

And yet the current situation in Iran is profoundly different from the
situation in 1978 and 1979.  First, the Islamic Republic has proven to
be rather responsive to societal demands and rather flexible
ideologically.  I don't mean to argue that the Iranian state is
entirely reflective of the will of the people.  I am saying that is it
is not a totalitarian monolith that is pitted against a politically
unified society.  The fissures of Iranian politics run through all
levers of power in the country, which is why the whole situation
appears scattered to us.  Whereas in 1979 the bad guy (the Shah) was
easily identifiable to all revolutionaries, in today's Iran such
immediate identification is not entirely possible.  Who is the villain
in the unfolding drama?  Ahmadinejad?  Those who demonstrated in
support of him would beg to differ.  Ayatollah Ali Khamenei?  I would
argue that he commands even stronger loyalties within the country and
beyond.  The Revolutionary Guard or the Basij?  Mohsen Rezai, one of
the presidential candidates and an opponent of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who
is contesting the election results, used to be the head of the former
institution.

The picture becomes even more complicated when we take into
consideration that some institutions of the state such as the
parliament -- via its speaker, Ali Larijani -- have called for a
thorough investigation of the violence perpetrated by members of the
Basij and the police forces in a raid of student dormitories of Tehran
University earlier this week.  "What does it mean that in the middle
of the night students are attacked in their dormitory?" Larijani
asked.  The fact that he said that "the interior ministry . . . should
answer for it" and that he stated that the "parliament is seriously
following the issue" indicate that the good-vs-bad verdict in today's
Iran is more blurred than in 1979.

There is a second major difference to 1979.  Today, the opposition to
Ahmadinejad is fighting the establishment with the establishment.  Mir
Hossein Mousavi himself was the prime minister of Iran during the
first decade of the revolution, during a period when the current
supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, was president.  Mohammad Khatami,
one of the main supporters of Mousavi, was president between 1997 and
2005.  Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, another political ally, is the
head of the Assembly of Experts and another former president.  They
are the engineers of the Islamic revolution and would never devour
their project.  When some commentators say that what we are witnessing
is a revolution they are at best naive and at worst following their
own destructive agenda.  The dispute is about the future path of the
Islamic Republic and the meaning of the revolution -- not about
overthrowing the whole system.  It is a game of politics and the
people who are putting their lives at risk seem to be aware of that.
They are aware, in other words, that they are the most important force
in the hands of those who want to gain or retain power.

Thus far the Iranian establishment has shown itself to be cunningly
adaptable to crisis situations.  Those who have staged a revolution
know how to sustain themselves.  And this is exactly what is happening
in Iran.  The state is rescuing its political power through a mixture
of incentives and pressure, compromise and detention, due process and
systematic violence.  Moreover, when push comes to shove, the
oppositional leaders around Mousavi would never question the system
they have built up.  As Mousavi himself said in his fifth and most
recent letter to the Iranian people: "We are not against our sacred
regime and its legal structures; this structure guards our
independence, freedom, and Islamic Republic."

Born in Istanbul and educated at the University of Hamburg, American
Universtiy (Washington DC), and Cambridge, Arshin Adib-Moghaddam
lectures on politics and international relations at the School of
Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.  The author
of Iran in World Politics: The Question of the Islamic Republic
(Hurst/ Columbia University Press, 2007/2008) and The International
Politics of the Persian Gulf (Routledge, 2006), he was the first
Jarvis Doctorow Fellow at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford.  He
was also elected Honorary Fellow of the Cambridge European Trust
Society at the University of Cambridge.  His latest publication Iran
in World Politics: The Question of the Islamic Republic is now
available for worldwide distribution from Hurst & Co., Amazon.com, and
Columbia University Press.